If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them —John 13:17
This week is another Kairos retreat week. It is especially exciting to watch the “new guys” get caught up in the excitement of the ministry. It is a scary thing to go into Angola, once the bloodiest prison in America, now transformed by the love of God into the country’s largest church behind bars. It is exciting to see the new ones, at first tentative, then excited as the prospect of seeing God at work. One of the great times during the weekend occurs on Saturday night when the “new guys” are given a chance to share their thoughts and impressions. These reflections never fail to bring forth tears. Almost unanimously these people will tell you how they never envisioned themselves in prison ministry and that they fought mightily against the call if God.
If you yourself do not cut the lines that tie you to the dock, God will have to use a storm to sever them and to send you out to sea. Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened. If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself— begin to have spiritual discernment.
When you know that you should do something and you do it, immediately you know more. Examine where you have become sluggish, where you began losing interest spiritually, and you will find that it goes back to a point where you did not do something you knew you should do. You did not do it because there seemed to be no immediate call to do it. But now you have no insight or discernment, and at a time of crisis you are spiritually distracted instead of spiritually self-controlled. It is a dangerous thing to refuse to continue learning and knowing more.
Isn’t time to cast off the mooring lines that tie you to the dock and set forth on the great adventure God has planned for your life.
Set Sail and be blessed.
Nick
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