Rescue Mission

I can be a blunt person at times. Some would call it pushy, but I'll stick with "blunt". It's just that I want so much for them to know that, "I get the skepticism. Really I do. I was that highly skeptical person. And I still am a bit." But once I acknowledged that my constant skepticism was, in effect, blocking my willingness to look further into this "faith" concept, things started popping up out of thin air. 

These "things" were there all along, of course, but I had put up impenetrable blinders that had me, well, blind. The terms "dead in my sin" or "asleep" are often used to describe how I was.

And I was just that: asleep ... with that blurred forward vision you get when driving sometimes. You've experienced what I'm talking about. You get zoned out and do not notice what you've passed, the cars around you, the clouds up ahead, and so forth. That's where I was. Of course, when you're in that zone, anything you're not focused on is blurry at best (completely absent more likely), resulting in an incomplete grasp on reality.

And when I look back on my asleep self, I'm painfully aware of the same blindness in people all around me. I want to shake them awake ... and sometimes that bluntness angers people. That's not my intention, of course, but it is the periodic outcome.

But I know, now awake, that these people and really just the former me. They are zombies who don't know they are zombies. Just like I did, they scoff at the mere idea that they might be entirely blind to what is most definitely there. And that scoffing doesn't offend me at all. Rather it makes me ache for them, as though they literally are the old me. I yearn for them to take a break, a small sabbatical from their pride, to consider ... to just take a naked, vulnerable moment to seek the Truth behind the facade.

This is not an easy thing to do, I know. In fact it's an incredibly hard thing to do. We're all pretty sure we're dead right. To stop in our tracks and consider a possibility that we are the one missing something? That takes extraordinary humility. That takes making oneself fully vulnerable for a moment, which the world teaches us from day one to never, ever do. But that humility is what God is actually waiting for.

God is not looking for pride, ego or an "I'm strong on my own" demeanor. In fact, he hates that. What He is looking for is for us to - in His time - empty ourselves of this delusion that we are all that ... so that He can create in us what He initially intended. The perfect, far far better us.

And this makes me seemingly (sometimes actually) blunt, even pushy sometimes. But it's not in the way I used to be when arguing a topic. Back then, it was all about me winning the argument and being right. Now, it's to draw people to Him, to figure it out on their own, simply pointing out the first step with hope of motivating them to take that step.

Lord, I ask for patience and trust in Your timing. I ask that the seeds I cast take root and blossom under Your care. Thank You for allowing me to be a small part of Your Rescue Mission.

In Jesus name. 

Amen.