Heart Tracks - Living In Haran

Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:31-32...."The faith journey does not get easier. We get stronger." Erwin McManus

Somehow we hold to the idea that walking with Christ gets easier as we go along. That can be a subtle message in a great deal of our teaching and preaching. Things will go the way we want them to if we have enough faith and check enough of the right "boxes." We just have to learn the right formula, and life will become a lot more rewarding and certainly more comfortable. This may be the westernized gospel, but it's not the gospel. Jesus told Simon Peter that the devil had asked for permission to sift his life. When Christ added that He'd already prayed for Peter to come through it in victory, its clear that the Father had granted the permission. Jesus didn't say that the path would grow easier for Peter, but that he would grow stronger on the path, and in his growing strength, he was to minister that strength to his brothers.

Our flesh hates pain and adversity, and its natural response is to do anything to avoid it. We want Christ to make a way for us around it. Christ is committed to taking us through it, and in victory. And along the way, we're to live, we're to thrive. In the darkness, in the pain, in the loss, we show forth His resurrection life. We give witness and testimony to a life that has overcome death and the world. It doesn't mean that we're untouched by the pain and loss, it means that their chains cannot hold us. We continue to move onward and upward in Him.

In Genesis 11, Terah, the father of Abraham, has lost his son Haran. Afterwards he takes his family and moves away. He was intending to enter the land of Canaan, but only got as far as the village of Haran, and that was where he settled. I've often thought that Terah stayed there because the village carried the name of his beloved lost son. He couldn't go past it, couldn't get past the grief of his loss. The pain and sorrow kept him in their chains. So many of us have settled in our various "Harans." We can't get past the loss, the defeat, the failure. God calls us on to His fullness, but we live in our lack, in our loss. Terah stayed in Haran, living while waiting to die, yet not really living at all. How like him are we? McManus says that a great proof of life after death is life before death. That is, life that is really alive. Life that is abundant and full in Him. Death, and all that is attached to it could not keep Christ, and death and all its effects cannot keep us. We can live fully alive in the midst of our sorrows and losses. They are real, but He is more real.

Where in your life are you living in Haran? Don't die there while you still live. Press on in Him. The journey will not grow easier, but you will surely grow stronger, and as you do, He will open up a ministry for you to help all your fellow travelers on the way. Haran is the place of loss, Canaan, the promised land, the place of life. Have you settled in the first, or do you journey on with Him to the fulfillment of His promises to you? Where are you living?

Blessings,
Pastor O