“What is more important?” God asked me “that you are right or that they are wrong?”
Same thing, I thought surely, but the lack of any further response meant I had to sit with that question a little longer. I hadn’t met up with these friends for a long while and in that time I had thrown everything in for Jesus. Not just Jesus but His church and that was where I was anticipating conflict. They didn’t see the Church as His bride but a Whore. I didn’t want to hear what they had to say, I realised I was scared they would come up with a question or valid argument that made every sacrifice and decision of that last year and half seem foolish. I didn’t want to hear anything that would shake my newly fledged faith, I didn’t want the Brides grubby underskirts pointed out to me. I wanted to always see the Church as Christ sees her, Spotless.
What is it you are afraid of hearing? What do you refuse to see? Do we leave the uncomfortable parts of the gospel to that stony edge, hoping they will just vanish? Are we fearful that if we allow anything to be sown into our shallow soil, it will be revealed that we don’t have the depth to be anymore than we are? Do we permit a light sowing in the weedy bed of our lives because it won’t come to anything to worry about. Safer, yes to forbid any sowing at all, no risk, no vulnerability, no failure…oh and yes no harvest….a sterile and fruitless existence.
What if you risked opening those eyes just a little, uncupped your ears to hear the invite from His word to a dangerous call, yes, dangerous, world upside down in a heartbeat kind of danger? A Life filled with living, not existing but living. Living awake. A life where you arrive breathless from the battle, flushed and exhilarated, the bruising not yet a full autumn hue. Yet with one look into the eyes of the one writing the script, willing to do it all again for the smallest glimpse of the love He has for you. I wonder what is more important to you? Safety and insignificance or living for a wild lover that ruins you for all else accept Him.
The answer to the question was that it was more important that I was right, not in a pretentious way but in the understanding, that I had heard God and followed, I was where I was meant to be. There wasn’t anything that shook my foundations in that afternoon, it turns out I had been planted on fertile soil. Not just a chance fissure in the bedrock but a wide rich ground in which to put down roots….and those grubby underskirts, yeah, they are there, but I know they will soon be washed clean in the blood of the lamb.
