Impressing God

We Don’t Have to Impress God

You see, He loves us as much when we’re asleep as when we’re awake.  He loves it when we sit down with Him and ask Him questions—but He also adores it when we just sit quietly before Him, listening for His voice and what’s on His heart.  Most of you probably know all this already, but I need constant reminders that I don’t have to do back flips to make God happy.

He once brought this point home at a hospital where a friend and I were visiting patients.  A nurse came to us and asked if we would visit a particular man who was a quadriplegic and who was dying.  When we went inside, the patient was talking to the nurse, and it was obvious she was so happy to be in that room.  Oddly enough—this man who was dying, who was unable to lift anything except an eyebrow—was speaking with tremendous kindness and encouragement to this nurse.  She started to leave the room so we could visit with him, but before she did, she leaned over and whispered to us, “He’s our favorite patient.  He never complains and is always such a pleasure to be around.” 

I was pretty taken aback by her words as I looked at this large man laying on a bed—completely immobile.  But he began to speak with my friend and I, and he was the same to us—encouraging, warm and friendly.  He told us he loved Jesus with all his heart.  When we talked about the severity of his illness, he said he was ready to go home whenever the Lord wanted to bring him—but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry, either—which I speculated to be rather odd, given his overall condition.

I have pondered that experience many, many times over the past 15 years or so.  The Lord has spoken to me about it, asking if I was any more pleasing to Him—as I visited patients as a volunteer chaplain in the hospital—than this dear brother was.  All of my earthly understanding wanted to say, “Of course I’m more valuable because I can talk and walk and do your work on the earth.”  But I knew in the core of my being that this wasn’t true.  This man held the same value to the Lord as any of us who are ministering for the Lord in our lives.  His whole being was focused on King Jesus, and his intense love for Him melted out of every pore.  This was True Love in action.   And that’s our destiny—showing Jesus’ love through our very existence.

But that’s another blog!  The point is—as our Beloved so graciously showed me on yet another occasion—that even a sleeping infant is as valuable to Him as say, someone like Billy Graham at his most active.  When a parent goes into a child’s room to check and see if the child is asleep and hears that restful breathing, the parent loves the child as much as if the child was up and running around the house, playing, shouting…being a child.

And this is how our Father loves us.  Whether we mess up and do something we shouldn’t (like the playful child when she knocks over a lamp) or whether we’re ministering for His glory with all of our hearts, He loves us just the same.  All He really desires is our love for Him, anyway, isn’t it?  Because when we love Him, whatever we do emanates from this place. 

As I listen to the call to prayer that mandates its religion’s followers stop everything, get on their knees and recite a rote set of words in a language most of its adherents don’t even comprehend, I’m so very, very grateful that Jesus died for us to be able to enter the throne of grace—over His dead body.  Nothing I do can impress Him any more than just sitting on His lap, still, listening to the incredible beat of His enormous heart. 

“We love because he first loved us.”  (1 John 4:19)

Stranger in a Strange Land

It sounds like I’m not living in my home country by that title, huh?  And that’s a fact…I’m not.  But I’m learning that there are two levels to understanding what being “a stranger in a strange land” really means. 

Someone recently told me that anywhere you have your pillow is home.  That sounded like a good guideline, but then I lost my comfy orange travel pillow that I take whenever I leave home for an overnight journey.  When the bus from the airport took off and I got home from a six-week trek across the seas, I realized my symbol for home was missing.  Of course I have a pillow where my residence is, and another when I visit my old homeland.  Actually, to be honest, I have several pillows.  But they don’t really make me feel like I’m home.

The older I get, the more I realize that I don’t belong on the earth. I’m just a visitor.  And I’m only just starting to discover what the purpose for this visit is!

When I quit my job a few years ago, and flew across an ocean and a sea to arrive in what-was-then the poorest country in the world, Mozambique, I began to realize that I have a higher purpose than earning a living, meeting with family and friends, or even serving at church and living in an upright and faithful way.

I began to discover, as I walked across the land (having no car) and interacted with its populace, that these impoverished people have a better quality of life than I did with all of my “stuff.”  They're content because they found real truth.  They have real faith in an almighty God, and know their purpose is to exalt Him in their daily lives, in the most simple ways we can't even imagine.  To speak with comfort to a crying child that never has enough to eat, because the love in your heart is born of another galaxy—that’s a true purpose.  It was there that I discovered—with my white face, clean clothes and teeth—what they have is more real than what I had.  They have…depth.  They don’t live for stuff…because they simply don’t have any.  They're completely dependent on the living God—and He meets their needs.  (And for those with no faith, they're simply hopeless—like everyone else on earth who doesn’t know their real Daddy.)

Back to being a stranger in a strange land…  Those of us who know our Creator personally, who confess His beloved Son Jesus—the Darling of heaven—as our Messiah, who are led by His Holy Spirit in our daily lives—we are not meant to be comfortable here.  There is a yawning gap between our “normal” and everyone else’s.  The greatest satisfaction I have in life is when I’m alone with the One Who never leaves me or forsakes  me, who never forgets to call, or never falls asleep when I’m sharing the deepest things in my heart.  In fact, I’m the one who frequently pulls away when things get too familiar and I feel His overwhelming power and presence and it envelops my tiny world.  But if I can be still, I find the greatest satisfaction in His arms, cradled between His gigantic hands of love as He pours over me His kindness and beauty from the place where He sits, His throne in His home (though I guess there’s no place that can actually contain Him!).  His beautiful heart cannot be kept hidden in a place, but searches for His creations to pour itself out.

So what’s my purpose as a sojourner?  I long to understand this question—to discover why I was sent here and then to act on it.  I don’t belong here, and long for my King, to walk with Him in the place where sin and pain are incapable of coexisting with One Who is perfection defined.  I know that once I complete my purpose, I get to fly home.  But since I don’t get to choose when I exit, while I’m here I want to do what I was sent to do—to show the world that He is God by reflecting Him, His Love, His Truth, His Glory.  Knowing how imperfect a vessel I am, He asks only that I give it all I’ve got.  And I know that as much as I mess things up, the fact remains that He gave me my personality and with it a passion and zeal that are like a fire burning in my heart that I can barely contain.  The more time I spend with Him, the more I become like Him.  And the more I must find outlets to give away the glory that He has given me (John 17:5) .  I wonder if this is the fuel that will propel this rocket into heaven when my time as a legal alien on earth is finished?  And what about you?  What is your purpose?

“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”  (Phil 3:20-21)