all in

I wish there was some dramatic story I could tell behind why I have not done something I really love to do (write) in almost two months, but there’s not.  Like many of you, life has been moving along as it usually does—rhythmic, mostly pretty good, busy days, slower days, work, play, meet for coffee, read, clean, sleep, you know the drill. 

And tucked neatly away in a corner of my life is faith.  While discontent has been stirring in my heart for months, it hit me really hard not too long ago that the very same faith I claim to have— the one that keeps my life pretty dang comfortable— is the faith people all over the world will hide in a basement to talk about because they can be thrown in prison if they bring the conversation to a restaurant.  The faith people willingly give their lives to tell others about.  The faith that brings hope into a very dark world.  The faith that would cause a man to sell anything and everything he has ever owned just so he could follow with only one purpose the One at the center of it all.  This is my faith, but that is not what my life looks like.

So I stopped writing, because I felt like a fraud.  And yet somewhere in the act of admitting that, a small sense of relief hovered over my heart.  In my head, Jesus was saying something like this to me:

“Yes!  Get mad, be frustrated with your lack of passion for me.  I am not content either, Katie, because I don’t have your whole heart, we both know that.  And these things all around you that make you question where I am, finally, you notice them!  Please don’t act like this is something new, I have been begging my followers since the day I allowed them to walk on the earth to love justice as much as I love justice.   But you don’t.  You love your own lives, your jobs, your homes and everything you can keep not one day longer than I allow you to, and you work to protect those much harder than you work for my kingdom to come right where you are.  I could not be more clear about these things than I already have been… seek Me first, and everything else you worry so much about will be there.  But I meant it when I gave you those instructions in that order.  I will never leave you or forsake you, but that does not mean I do not ask anything of you…  Are you going to take my path, or yours?"

And that is where I am today, trying with all of my might to discern what He asks from my life.  Because it is not going to be the same thing He asks of you.  It is not going to be the same thing He asks of the widows and the orphans.  It is not going to be the same thing He asks of the millionaire, either.  But I think for most of us it is something more than we are giving him right now.  This is the cool thing about our God: He knows before we do when He has our hearts.  We want to put our devotion to Him into a monetary scale, or measure it in time, record it in a journal, or just compare it to other believers around us.  Who are we kidding?  The grave is empty, people, and if my most “sacrificial” response to that is to write a bigger check than I normally would, I may just have my Savior confused with something else.

I want my single-minded purpose to be God’s kingdom.  But you know what else, I love my job working with students and I want to do it really well.  I love reading books, and I want to build a huge library in our house someday.  I love having people over, and I want to be able to feed crowds with great food and decorate the table beautifully.  And I want kids—lots of them—and I would love to be able to paint their rooms fun colors, sign them up for every sport they want to play, and someday help them out with college educations.  But at a moment’s notice, without thought of a bank account, clothing, food or anything else, I want to respond to God.  If that means walking through muddy and garbage filled slums to bring a blanket to a shivering little girl, if it means taking the bus so that we have more to give, if it means our only vacations ever are to a Guatemalan orphanage, or if it means none of this and something I can’t even picture in my head right now… if responding to God means He is allowing us to be part of bringing His kingdom to earth, I want my heart to be so ready to say “Here I am, send me.”  It is funny how I have given myself the option lately, to be all in or not, because I don’t think God’s word gives us a choice. 

I don’t want to be a fraud.  I believe with every ounce of me that Jesus is who He says He is.  So it is time to be all in.  As I learn what that looks like in my life, in my marriage—because it is really our life—I am sure I will miss it, I will be too easy on myself, and I will still work pretty hard to stay comfortable.  But if Jesus is truly the only hope this world has, and if I let that dictate everything else I do with the years God gives me, maybe life will feel as full of joy as it ever could. 

In just a few days we get to celebrate the humble birth of a King.  Our King.  Let's give him everything we have... He did it for us.       

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Just like you, I’m very, very imperfect and still searching for God in so many ways.  But if it is at all helpful on your pursuit of being all in, these books below have been incredibly humbling and heart-shaping for me:

The book of Jeremiah
Yep, the one in the Bible.  Wow, ours is not a God who messes around.

The Inner Life by Thomas a Kempis
I think I underlined something on every page.  Kempis might as well have been talking directly to me when he wrote it!

A Place for Truth edited by Dallas Willard
Super academic and philosophical, but well worth the effort!  Basically, some of the smartest people in the world talking about truth, faith, Christianity, and really hard questions.  It is a big collection of speeches and essays and while I am not even finished with it, this book is bringing me deeply back to why I believe at all.