Heart Tracks - The Forerunner

"But after I have been resurrected, I will go ahead of you to Galilee." Mark 14:28...."There is nowhere you can go that you will not find Christ waiting to join you." Henry Blackaby

I'm retiring. These are two words that I never expected to utter, but I am. Yet even as I write them, I know that they don't mean what many may think. The word "retire" usually brings up thoughts of sitting back, taking it easy, relaxing, and even the sense of just accepting that the prime years are past, and what's left is a kind of waiting for my eventual departure from this realm. I don't see it in any of those ways. For me, it is the closing of the time for one aspect of my ministry in order to enter into a new one. A wide vista of the unknown lies before me, but really, that has been the description of my journey with Him since the very beginning. The details of His calling change, His presence in the midst of them all doesn't. He's proven the truth of that over and over again. The twists and turns of life are mostly unexpected for all of us. I think I've had more than my share of those, but in every twist, every turn, He's been there. He's seen me through. Even in the darkest and deadliest of them, He empowered me to overcome. I've learned to expect the unexpected, but to also expect the Author of Life to be my victory in all of it.

He's given me the testimony of this through every phase of the journey. From those first steps taken as a young man, following His call to step out and onto a college campus 1500 miles from the only home I'd ever known and where all was unknown, and with Him as my only resource and source. To and through the entering of a marriage, and the eventual destruction of that marriage. Into a pastoral calling, and the seeming end of that calling. And then into the resurrection of that calling when it seemed everyone else had pronounced it fully dead, completely gone. The Lord of the Resurrection showed forth His resurrection life to, in, and through me. He continued to do so when He called me to plant a church in one of the most challenging areas of this nation. An area that has been a graveyard for churches. And yet the calling and the work didn't just survive, it thrived. The Holy Spirit told Paul that a "wide door for effective service has been opened to you, but many are the adversaries." I found that to be so for all of the 27 years I have labored with Him here in Northern Virginia, but there was never an adversary that could stand against Him. In my own strength, I was easy to defeat. Yet the Lord I lived in and for was undefeatable. There were times, many, when the work and ministry seemed sure to fail. Where the visible resources were non-existent. Where hope seemed gone and despair the only thing present. Yet He was there in the midst, and the Lord of the Resurrection brought forth His Life anew, again, always.

Twenty seven years yields far too many stories to share in a single writing. Those years have come to an end....here. But they aren't over. He's leading me onto and into a new realm, a new calling. I've no doubt that the adversaries will still be many, the unknown just as unknown. And the stories of His faithfulness, His endless supply of Himself to me in them, will go on. My body has grown old. I don't possess the physical vitality that I once had, but I believe my spiritual vitality only burns brighter. I'm stepping back from one form of ministry, but I enter into a new one. No doubt the adversaries will be many, and they'll be empowered by one the who has been my adversary, and who's sought my destruction from the beginning. He doesn't fear me a bit, but he trembles, and flees at the name of the One who goes with me....Jesus Christ the King. Lord of the Resurrection. Lord over all darkness and death. Lord over the Adversary. My Lord, your Lord. Lord over all. He goes before me. The Forerunner. Who and what can stand before Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O