No Reserves. No Retreats. No Regrets.
These are not my words.
Honestly, until today I haven't thought much about those six words on the top of the Bible in several, even when reading verses on that page.
But today they came resounding back to me.
Killing time, I scrolled through my twitter account and came to a tweet reading, "There are worse things than dying for Christ. Chiefly, living without Him." Liking the quote, I retweeted it before noticing the link that followed those words. I clicked and ended up reading.
On the blog the writer wrote about living a safe life. Choosing the safe path rather than choosing the path Christ calls us to. Choosing that means I'm living for something other than Christ - myself.
As I read her challenge, the Spirit brought those six words to mind along with Luke 9:23, the reason those six words are written on that page.
I grew up in church, I grew up in a Christian school. I know I heard Luke 9:23 read, preached, and given as a challenge. But those words never struck a chord with me. I took them as take up your burden, your hardship for Christ. Which yes they are...but they are so much more.
To me those words in Luke 9:23 meant simply take up the hardship within the confines of American middle class reason. Don't venture to the rough areas. Don't go here or there. Don't talk to that person. Don't live in that country. You might get killed. You might die. You might get hurt. You might not be comfortable.
Then I went to college. New Testament 101 with Dr. Williams rocked my world along with his Synoptic Gospels class the following year. My comfortable Christianity did not mix well with what he said as lectured on Luke 9:23.
"Then He said to them all, 'If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.'"
As he read those words Dr. Williams looked at us and said, "Take up your cross. Let's think about this in the context the disciples would have heard it. Take up your death, your humiliating, degrading death sentence and follow me. He - Jesus - is telling them to pick up their torture and follow Him. And you know what, the majority of them did."
Somewhere along the line I missed what Jesus was asking those disciples, what He asks of me. He doesn't ask them to follow Him to a life of comfort and ease. He doesn't ask me to follow Him to prosperity. He asks them to come, deny themselves - their wants, their dreams, their lives - and follow Him. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He is brutally honest in His words, "Take up your cross and follow me." I live in the US where capital punishment is ever present but in the form of lethal injection and before that electric chairs and hanging. I can't fully imagine a death by those means, let alone the brutality and humiliation of being crucified.
As an 18 year old what baffled me most as I tried to work all this out compared to what I had always thought, the disciples followed. They saw what happened to Christ, and yet they knew going with Him was better than their safety. Their comfort. Their life.
Bringing me back to those six words. No Reserves. No Retreats. No Regrets.
A few years later in college our campus pastor preached on Luke 9:23 and the verses around it. As Tracey spoke he shared with us the story of William Borden, the one who wrote those six words in his own Bible about 100 years ago. Borden, the heir to a family fortune, forsake the comfortable and eventually his own life to share the Gospel of Christ. He wrote those words in his personal Bible as his own challenge. To live without reserves - holding nothing back. To live without retreating - saying yes to Christ, and no to self. To live without regrets - living a life worthy of Christ's sacrifice.
As I think about those six words, I know that's where I am today.
Right now the Lord is not calling me to a place where I will be in daily life threatening danger. But the decision to say yes to go to Wales was not as easy as many might think.
Yes, Michael is there and to be in the same place with him right now does involve me making the move due to his job. In the beginning when Michael and I started talking about such things, it was easy to say yes to move to Wales. But that's when it was hypothetical. When there was no reality yet or set plans. When I was seeking as to what would even be the next step after my commitment to ECA ended.
Funny how things changed when reality set in. Part of me thinks I went into culture shock before there was any concrete way to move to Wales. But I must honestly admit, I cried a lot last summer and early in the fall about the idea of moving to Wales. When it was a dream I longed for it daily; it seemed perfect. But when it became real, the realization of what this would mean set in.
Suddenly, returning to the US or even staying in Spain had a new appeal.
Why? To be honest living abroad is not as glamorous as it seems. Wonderful and amazing, absolutely. Easy, heck no. In your home country, you take for granted simple things like knowing how to properly enter and exit a grocery store. I never once thought about how to correctly enter and exit Publix or Ingles or any grocery store in the US. But in Spain you do. You have to learn how to do things differently. Living abroad has many blessings, but it is also exhausting. And the idea of learning how do all these simple tasks again when I was just finally getting the hang of them in Spain left me not really wanting to go to Wales.
In September, despite clearly knowing God was telling me to leave ECA, I started debating as to whether I should stay another year. With some gentle prodding God opened my eyes to heart longing to retreat to the easy. When the news came that my teaching license would expire at the end of the year, again I questioned but God said to live no reserves, putting all of trust and security in Him.
As I prepare to go to Wales in a few months, going to serve in a way I never imagined, but am so excited for. My prayer is to live by those six words.
No reserves. No retreats. No regrets.
To Him be the glory.
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