Two summers ago I read the book, Mutant Message Down Under-by Marlo Morgan. The first story told by the Aborigines to an outsider about their beliefs and culture.Ms. Morgan was unwillingly constricted to a walkabout in the Outback of Australia. A fascinating read, it chronicled Marlo's journey from affluence, to loss of all. The most intriguing part is that she came to love and respect, her unusual captors.
The story made me grateful for my apparent life of ease and I put it on the shelf pondering it. How could you be grateful for so little? Why would you prefer such a life? In the book it was revealed that the Aborigines called us (anyone outside themselves) mutants. They felt sorry for the mutants who they said, were cut off from God by their love and drive to accumulate things. Hmmm!
In 1991 I stood on the brink of financial ruin and the probability that all I had spent my life working for would shortly be gone. There was however something worse that happened during that time. I can only recall it as deadness. Nothing in life held my interest, brought joy or excitement for me.
All of life became pressing to maintain the things we owned. So I functioned as I assumed was needed. My main conversations with my Father were, why and help! He did intervene and sixteen years later I am on my way back to what I considered normal. However, when I met Jack almost two years ago, I was still struggling to see the purpose of God in all that had happened. Jack posed some questions to me about the way of the cross and surrender. Most of his thoughts I had forsaken when I entered the Faith Movement some twenty years before. His words caused me to take a second look at the book of Job and reevaluate my spiritual foundation. I did not want to think what I had gone through could have been brought on because I followed my own flesh/soul. Nor did I want to believe God could have allowed any of it. I would much rather believe.....the devil was to blame. Other than learning that God will get you out of a mess of your own making. I wonder if loss of this kind adds one bit to the losing your life and finding his.
Perhaps it is only a willing heart that is involved in the process of, He must increase and I must decrease…… To willingly give up all and follow him……when I can't see what exactly he is asking or expecting is a frightening prospect. I know it is not even within me to trust in such a radical way to the point of GIVING MY LIFE. But surely this is "THE WAY" Jesus spoke about when he said ........to find your life you must lose it and-Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
Again I pray, Father, illuminate yourself in me that I may follow you………down the road to my own cross and death to my will and way……………may I not shrink back.
Joian
Chip Brogden-Do We Look For Another?
Shortly thereafter, John was arrested and put into prison. His work was complete, his sun was setting, and just as he had said, Jesus was increasing and John was decreasing. But oh, what a decrease! The ministry was finished, the crowds were gone, and John was left alone in prison with only a few disciples who came to visit him.
When everything is stripped away you are soon left with little but your own thoughts. In prison, John had a lot of time to think. And the essence of his thoughts were along these lines: Did I make a mistake? Is Jesus the Son of God, or not? If He is the Messiah then where is His Kingdom? Why doesn’t Jesus do something? Did I really see the Spirit and hear the Voice, or was that just my imagination? And if He isn’t the One, do we need to start looking for another?
We can all take comfort in the knowledge that even the greatest prophet who ever lived (Luke 7:28) can have troubling thoughts, moments of doubt, and crises of faith. We all experience times when the darkness mocks us and circumstances try to convince us that the best course is to “curse God and die” (as Job’s wife so eloquently put it).
We can afford to be philosophical and detached about Jesus increasing and us decreasing while we are still ministering out by the Jordan, but in prison the truth of what we have been proclaiming is put to the test. Sadly, many of us fail the test. Jesus simply does not do what we expect – and this upsets us!
The real crisis of faith is along the lines of this Man. We can all disagree over Bible doctrine and interpretations of Scripture. But what will you do about Jesus?
He will not change Who He is to accommodate Who we think He is. He is Who He is. We either have to come to grips with Jesus as He in fact is, or we have to settle for something less or something else. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).
So the question we all have to answer is this: Is Jesus enough? Is He enough, just as He is? Or do we still need Him to do something else in order to satisfy us? Intellectually we can say, “Yes, Jesus is enough. Amen to that. I believe it.” But I am surprised at the growing number of people who are openly suggesting that Jesus really is not enough for them!
We need fellowship, they say. Or we need God’s blessings. Or we need spiritual gifts and more powerful anointings. To believe that Jesus is Enough (they say) is simply too mystical, too simplistic, too out-of-touch with the real world – no matter what Colossians 2:10 says.
I would suggest, brothers and sisters, that if Jesus is not enough for us then we have not really met Him yet, or at the very least, we do not know Him very well. Corrie Ten Boom said, “You may never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” That is the purpose of all God’s dealings with us in this area of being decreased (or as I like to say, being reduced to Christ). Jesus is not quite all we HAVE, and so we are reluctant to say that Jesus is all we NEED. The problem, dear friends, is not that we have too little, but that we have too much………..read more at the following link-
http://www.theschoolofchrist.org/articles/another.html
