The past three years have been a mixture of trials and lessons meshed together to bring about one purpose: to make me more like Christ. When you pray with the right heart and desire for God to work in your life, not to bring you more riches or more blessings, but to multiply His character in you and His influence in your life, He always answers. My prayers went from, "Lord, please give me the ability to move to the mountains. I will glorify You there. Please allow us to build the log home we've always wanted and have the good life" to "Lord, my desire is to get out of debt. Help us to sell that piece of mountain property so that we can have the means to be generous and serve You. I know we dug that hole ourselves and I'm so sorry for being selfish with what You have given us. Remove my desire for riches and replace it with things of You. Give me boldness and courage to be Your follower."
I am learning how to become a disciplined Christian, focusing on the things of God: meditation, prayer, study, simplicity, solitude, fasting, service, submission, worship, confession,etc. I've learned how to ask for God's glory to be revealed and to praise Him for who He is.
My desire for His Word has gone from a have-to to a want-to. In searching His Word I see my reflection and it doesn't look like what it should be so the Holy Spirit continues to reveal to me the areas where I need to remove sin. I feel disgusted with my sin nature...stupid flesh nature that always brings me down. In the revelation of my sin, God pricks my heart and says, "remove it and move on." He reveals things that need to be removed...things like television, movies, Facebook, negative thoughts, judgmental thoughts, selfishness in my marriage and He is replacing them with the craving for His Word and His thoughts, real study, the search for good supplementary resources, and submission in my marriage.
He has showed me that my time spent in Honduras was not worthless but misguided. I went with the mindset that I would "help" them when in reality the goal was to Americanize them. The purpose should have been to preach and teach the Word and only that. I heard a pastor once say that people don't need you to surrender your life for their cause, they need you to open your mouth and tell them about Christ. He says until we: open our Bible and study the Scriptures, memorize chapters, organize our thoughts into systematic theology, know what we believe, be able to defend that Truth, understand Christian history, and become a teacher of God's Word, we should stay home. Wow! Talk about a wake up call! Needless to say, that was helpful fuel for me to study the Word more and hide it in my heart.
I've learned what it means to be a true disciple. Pretty much all of what I've learned recently is what a disciple should look like and more importantly, what one should do. A disciple is not one who has "accepted" Christ into his/her heart and gotten fire insurance all the while living his/her life for himself doing whatever he/she wants. I should be a new creation and the Holy Spirit should be molding me into Christ's image. Whoa! First, to have God in me blows my mind. I have God living inside of me. Do I even understand the brevity of that? Furthermore, everything was created/is created for Him and by Him. God created me, yeah, I know that. But I was created FOR Him? That's too much. So what does that mean to me? If I am created for Him then I should live for Him. Hello! That's not rocket science so why has it taken me so long to realize that?
That epiphany brings me to becoming the weird person that I am. True, I was already a little strange before but now it is an intentional weird. A weird that makes you quit your job and stay home with your new baby girl when you have always been raised to work and work hard earning money in addition to earning all kinds of rewards in the job you were successful at doing. Success is redefined. It is the kind of weird that causes you to talk about God in every conversation that you have and have extensive conversations about theology with your husband. The kind of weird that causes you to sell a brand new truck and accept the gift of an SUV with over 200,000 miles, to not have cable or satellite, to sell all your DVDs that aren't Christ honoring, to give away things that you don't use and even some that you do. Need is also redefined. What a strange life it is to meet with women and talk about how God is working in our lives? To sit and listen to sermons online from great theologians. There is no greater joy than knowing that I am living the life God has called me to live. Nothing else matters.
So what else is there? Yeah, looking at these things makes you think that we have it altogether. Not so. God is still removing things, thoughts, and our control from our lives. How exciting!!! To be a follower of Christ means that nothing else matters. Not being so strict as to be legalistic but I am simply looking to Christ to supply my every need, looking to Christ to guide my life, and sharing Christ in every situation. There is no worldly possession, no success, no human reward great enough to make me turn back from this path I'm on. I imagine standing in His presence one day. Oh what a beautiful vision I have of that day yet knowing that any image that I conjure up doesn't compare to the magnitude of that day. Nonetheless, I imagine being in God's presence and being in such awe without being able to find the words to say. I hope that I would be able to muster up the words "Thank you. Thank you Lord for allowing me to serve You!"
If you don't know Christ. If you have ever walked an aisle and checked a box. If you have ever prayed a prayer and that is all. If you once believed. If you are not sure. If your life doesn't reflect what a disciple should be...search the Word, study, pray. If you are serious about following Christ, He will be reflected in your life. If He is not evident in your life, there has been no change, others would question whether you know Him or not, you dodge talking about God every chance you get, you are probably lost. Heaven is not the default. No one is good...good doesn't get you to heaven anyway; ONLY Christ does. Are you living for Him?
If you have questions, wish to know more, or simply want to be a follower of Christ, please contact me at wilks_leslie@yahoo.com so we can make arrangements to talk.
Be blessed! Follow Christ!
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