Monday, October 18, 2010

MEMORY OF INDIA

“You are leaving with memory of India” the gentleman at the passport control desk says to me.  Of course (as happens most of the time when people talk to me), I didn’t get it all the first time, so I asked him to repeat himself.  He said again, “you are leaving with memory of India” and then pointed to the henna (on my hands and arms) that the girls had done just before we got ready to head to the airport for our flights back to the US.

A note about the trip, the time in India was absolutely incredible!  It was definitely a time to completely rely on the LORD and His Spirit to work - no television, no phone calls, very few e-mails, and no work for 10 days.  Of course, the compromise to that was cold showers, nominal AC at times and hot, humid weather.  This was my 5th time out of the United States and it definitely had the most impact on me.  The LORD revealed to me time and again how I am so inadequate to do anything in this life apart from His grace and mercy and strength.  I realized that, at that point, I had never brought a biblical truth to a guy over the age of 18 years old (sure I’ve taught younger boys and girls and I’m honored to lead an amazing group of young ladies in Bible study each week, but I had never led men in any study of the Word - always felt that was the job of another godly man).  I realized that I spend more time by myself than I had ever thought - these things become apparent when you are literally always with someone else for 10 days.  I realized how amazing the people are that the LORD brought together to be a part of this particular team and I so enjoyed getting to know everyone better.  It only took me an hour after getting home to start to miss all of these people with whom I had spent the previous 10 days. I found that I liked the fact that someone else got to make all of the decisions!  And, I was amazed at the beauty of the people there, a natural beauty, and their wonderful, servant hearts.  There are so many personal stories about this trip and the ways that LORD stretched me, in particular, but I won’t go into those details right now.
The thing that has struck me the most since being back is how quickly we forget.  As the henna started to fade from my hands and arms, it was just a shocking visual reminder of how much information we take in on a regular basis and how quickly we forget it.  The scary part of that is that we take in God’s creation on a daily basis; by this, I mean, we see the beauty of the flowers, feel the heat of the sun and coolness of the wind, we see the starry hosts that He brings out one by one and He knows their names, and we forget that so quickly.  We forget that He created us and that He is the one who is giving us breath and life and money to pay our bills and the job that we have....even on the worst of the bad days, we are still His representative to the people who are around us.  It’s His grace that lets us be His ambassadors to those that are in the circle of influence that He has given us.  How do we think that we can ever give God anything?  It’s all His already!  We allow ourselves to get so distracted by television, music, work, computers, and, well, life in general that we sometimes don’t even make time to read the Word that He has given us so that we can know Him.  And, we justify it by saying things like, “well, God, I’m just too tired because I was out being that light in the world that you called me to be” or “God, I told somebody about you today, surely that’ll give me a pass on my time with You tonight.”  Or, maybe we’re not so bold to actually say that or think that, but we spend an extra hour watching that favorite show on TV, or playing on facebook a little longer than we planned or get caught up playing “angry birds” on our iPhone (oh wait, maybe that's just me that does that).  By doing that, we have totally looked God in the face and said, “I don’t have time for You, Creator of the universe, because I’m too busy worshiping the things that You’ve made.”  You might think that it sounds harsh.....it is harsh!  Because, the more time we spend making excuses, the less time we spend on our knees before Him in prayer and in His Word getting to know Him.  And, the easier it becomes to not make time for Him tomorrow.  But, scripture says that we are “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23).  How can we do that if we don’t spend time in His Word daily and spend time in prayer daily?  God knows that we are very temporal creatures, only interested in the “here and now,” and that we can’t retain a lot of information beyond that.  But, He is worthy of all of our time and all of our efforts and all of our thoughts should be nothing but praise and adoration for Him....for He is the one who gives us the time that we have and the ability to think thoughts of praise and honor toward Him.  Could you imagine getting to know a friend by maybe calling them only on Sundays when there are a lot of other people around you and you can’t really focus on what you needed to hear or say?  Or, maybe only calling them on holidays?  Yet, we don’t see anything wrong with someone claiming they are a Christian (someone who says that they want their lives to mirror Christ) when they only participate in corporate worship on Easter and Christmas and we see no fruit of their faith in their daily lives.....and we ask ourselves, what’s wrong with our culture?  Well, clearly we aren’t renewing our minds regularly with the scriptures AND we don’t know what scripture says.  We may read a verse like 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” and think, and maybe even say out loud, “Amen, amen.”  But, what do we think when we read verses like Matthew 8:19-22, which says, “Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’  Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’  But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”  Or Matthew 19:21-22 which says, “Jesus answered, ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.’  When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth." (NIV)
Do we know these verses?  Do we memorize them and hide them in our heart so that we can always be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15)?  And, how active are we when we do work to memorize something?  It’s a constant process; a daily battle!  And, yes, it’s easy to forget that there’s a battle raging in the heavenly realms right now, for souls that we have no idea about.  Christ has won this battle for all eternity, but the enemy is still trying to draw souls away from Him and does a pretty good job when we who are weak justify to ourselves, “I went to church today, so I’m a good person; I’m on the right track” or “I read my Bible this week, so I’ve done better than Sally.”  We live in a culture that is so bent on competition that we don’t even know what the true standard is anymore.  The standard is Christ!  The only way that we can live a life honoring to Christ is by His grace and by faith in Him alone!  The way we get to know Christ is through constant prayer and staying in His Word daily!  It takes that daily renewal to keep our minds off of the temporal and fleeting things of this world and put our focus on the One who is eternal and who alone holds the reason that we live.  See, our minds are so distracted by so many external things that don’t matter that the truth seems to get mixed in somewhere and we either forget the truth, or we water it down because we want to be accepted and we end up giving a half-gospel, which is no gospel at all.  I mean, we live in a world that says, come to Christ and you can have (fill in the blank), when the Bible says, come to Christ and get persecution, no home, etc....  
So, I guess my point in all of this is that we cannot neglect the privilege we have to spend time with God daily!  He will teach us, love us, correct us, shelter us, provide for our needs, and, best of all, He will give us Himself!  He is more than enough to meet all our needs.  But, it’s easy to forget that, right??  Don’t let your memory fade so quickly.  Constantly renew your mind with His Word and stay in prayer and rely on Him and trust His Spirit.  Journal what He has done for you....go back and read your journal.  See how He’s proven His faithfulness (even when you haven’t been faithful).  I can’t seem to get the people that I spent that 10 days with, and the people that I met while I was there, off of my mind these days.  Keep your own “Memory of India” visible so that you don’t ever forget what a special privilege you have when you can call the God of the universe, Creator of all, your Father!!