“If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?  If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”  Jeremiah 12:5

Does that verse encourage you or discourage you?

When I read that verse yesterday I was initially encouraged.  Of course, I will admit it was of a superficial nature.  I simply pictured how awesome it would be to be able to run with horses and keep up.  I might have actually let my mind go to the open plains of the West and pictured myself running full speed in the midst of a pack of wild stallions.  And maybe there were even a couple of fences that I came across and masterfully soared over in full gallop.  I said maybe.

As I processed the verse more, I realized I was becoming discouraged by it too though.  I realized what God was really saying to Jeremiah in it.  I encourage you to read the back story in earlier versus, but essentially Jeremiah has complained to God because he was tired of dealing with a situation that wasn’t giving him the results he wanted.  To paraphrase how God is responding he is saying “Wait a minute.  If you are going to complain about dealing with these issues while you are in your comfort zone, how the heck do you expect to endure through the challenges to come when I put you in a real situation?  If you want to chase after me, you are going to need to man up.”

As you can imagine for someone about to leave their comfort zone and enter into cross-cultural ministry I might have read into it that tough times loom ahead.  Our family is certain to be heading into some tough times as we learn to adjust to a new culture, how to deal with tough spiritual issues and the many other things this will bring. 

But more thought on it brings me back to the encouragement in knowing that God has awesome and amazing things in His plan for us.  Not just for Elder family in this journey, but for all of us as followers of Him.  He never promises us that any of it will be easy.  He does put things before us to prepare us and develop us into the people He needs us to be for those, and future, situations.  And He does expect us to be obedient in what He places in front of us and stay true to the knowledge and faith of who He is.  We should all be encouraged in knowing that greater challenges are to come because that means greater victories are certain to follow.

I had a conversation this weekend about ears with an audiologist friend of mine.  And then in my reading this morning in Jeremiah I came across a couple verses that were about hearing.  Makes perfect sense for a blog topic.

As I read in Jeremiah this morning I read chapter 5 where God is discussing the destruction of Jerusalem as the people have been taken over by idolatry and basically everything outside of God. In 5:21 it reads “Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear”.  Again just a little bit later in 6:10 it states “To whom can I speak and give warning?  Who will listen to me?  Their ears are closed so they cannot hear.  The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it”.

When I read that I immediately jumped back to where I was just 2-3 years ago.  Through watching some friends do what we thought at the time was ridiculous, irresponsible, and crazy (they uprooted and moved their family to South Africa for missions) I began to feel like a 4 year old asking a million questions that all started with "what" or the dreaded "why".  Why would they do this?  What kind of peace do you have to feel to make this call?  What do you hear from God that allows any of that to make sense?  What if God has been calling me to do something bold in my life and I have no clue what His voice sounds like?  That last question was the catalyst for me.  I knew I was not in the place I needed in order to be ready, willing or simply even able to hear a call from God.  I can tell you as well that I NEVER expected Him to say anything to the Elder’s about overseas missions.  Wasn’t expecting it related to a short term trip (wrong on that one) and it was inconceivable that it could be around anything long term (strike two).

This weekend as I was talking with my friend I asked her to walk me through what a typical patient visit would be for an audiologist.  What I really was curious about was simply the ear cleaning piece.  I wanted to know what role she had to play in cleaning out the ear of someone else and the horror stories that certainly came from that.  As she talked through it I just couldn’t stop visualizing her sitting there with a patient and using an otoscope (had to look that up) and seeing up close and personal a bunch of ear junk. Seeing her use some small stick to scrape out grossness from their ear.  Much to my surprise she spoke very plainly about that task and I almost sensed that while gross she was OK with it.  We all have ear junk and we all need it cleaned out regularly.

After reading the verses this morning and thinking back on this conversation with my friend, I couldn’t help but visualize God sitting next to me and picking out the junk that I had in there blocking the sound of His voice from getting through.  “Hey, Tate, this might hurt a little bit, but looks like you have a massive wad of selfishness caught in there.  Let me get that out”.  Or “Oh wow, no wonder you couldn’t hear anything, looks like this left ear is blocked by a big thing of materialism.” Just picture that.  We all have plenty of distractions and things that block the sound of God in our lives.  We cram them in our ears and smear them on our faces so they blur our senses.  I wish we could all do one big cleaning and be done with it, but unfortunately we all carry sin in our lives.  The junk is going to accumulate again from time to time.  Just like my friend and her patient’s we just need to make sure we are sitting down with God regularly so He can give us a good cleaning. 

As I write this post our country is wrapped up in one of the most heated and passionate debates of our time.  No, it is not about healthcare.  No, no, nothing to do with our involvement in foreign war.  It is about whether to eat at Chick-fil-a or to not eat at Chick-fil-a.  Now, I have a dog in this race like most as I believe a certain way in regards to the subject matter at heart.  If for any reason you have no clue what I am talking about as it relates to this...good for you.  I implore you not to bother finding out and to let me come live with you as you apparently live in a magical place void of all nonsense.
 
I am not going to dig any deeper into the Chick-fil-a debate here, but what it has done has gotten me thinking about the word "passion" and the things that we are passionate about.  The dictionary has several definitions listed for the word which relate to things like intense feelings, drive and desire.  But they also list a definition related to suffering.  In fact the word comes from the Latin word 'passus' which literally means "suffering".  (Let's pause briefly as you regroup from being blown away by my intelligence).  No, I know many of you already knew that the word is related to the meaning of suffering and and especially to Christ.  You certainly remember the movie by the name The Passion of the Christ. 

I am willing to bet if you are a believer many of you are probably like me and willing to answer "yes" if asked if you are passionate about God.  But I am also willing to bet that many of you are also like me in that you don't want a movie made titled The Passion of (Insert Your Name).  Heck, we don't even want a short story, paragraph or sentence to be about it.  But why not?  Why can't we do a better job suffering for God on a daily basis?  This is my challenge to myself and to you.  Let's purposely find ways to be passionate for God daily.  Let's suffer for Him by simply being the one who doesn't participate in that conversation our friends or co-workers have even if we feel left out.  Let's suffer for Him by being the one who doesn't hold a grudge at the guy driving the car that cut you off because he was so busy drinking his $8 coffee and texting on his cell that he didn't realize his turn was coming up. (this one might be tough).  Let's suffer for Him by simply saying no to the TV for a bit and giving him our time each day in prayer and thanks.

So, I am going to keep track as best I can and post in the future with some examples of both my successes and failures.  I would be interested for anyone else to do the same by leaving a comment to the post.  And by anyone, I mean the select person who actually knows this blog exists, has the password to access it and thinks to check it once in a blue moon.  Yeah, that means both of you.