endurance

It is for discipline that you have to endure.  Hebrews 12:7

For those of you who don’t know, my family recently moved to the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area to plant a church.  It was a call I wasn’t really expecting.  I’d planted a church before and it was the hardest thing that I’d ever done, in spite of the fact that I was only 25ish and quite dumb.    I can look back and say that it still is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

God’s latest call may surpass that.  I’ve never…and I mean never…felt so much opposition and oppression to what I was trying to do than I have since we moved.  On the other hand, I’ve never felt so clear about the need to be somewhere.  My family is being hit through my wife’s job (huge), the clarity of who we are planting with (changed at the last minute), when the plant will start, the exact location of the plant, and pushing every flesh button I have.  Honestly, I know “what” to do, I’m just not sure “how” to do it.  I have an enemy that is being revealed more and more clearly as someone who is opposing me at every corner that could keep me in confusion.

Before, the location chose itself…money fell on the table…small groups just formed.  Now, not so much.  I can say that I have seen 1000 points of light that are clearly from Him…I just don’t know how to translate.  Clarity is coming, but not nearly as quickly as I’d like.  The scary thing is that the clarity is leading to that place where it is the “so big” thing that only God could accomplish it.

I covet your prayers.  My family covets your prayers.  (I guess prayer gets a 10 commandments pass??)

The start of the passage above goes like this, and it is going to become my mantra…

Romans 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.

7 It is for discipline that you have to endure.

I need to smoke on that one.