The Thirst

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful." 2 Timothy 4:7

Has it ever registered that the faith lives of we in the west don't often resemble the ones we see lived out in His Word? Abraham was directed to go out, but wasn't told where he was to go. Moses, raised in royal splendor in Egypt, spent 40 years tending sheep on the backside of the desert. Joseph, told he would be a ruler, first ended up a slave, then in prison for more than 10 years. The list goes on and on, all of them could testify to what Paul testifies to in the above Scripture. They ran the race the Father set before them. They fought the good fight of faith, in the power of His life and light against all the power of death and darkness. In it all, they remained faithful to One who called them. They endured to the very end....and into the fullness of all that He had promised them. That's what their eye was always upon....the fullness of eternity and the wonder it promised. That's where their citizenship lay. It was never here, and nothing here was going to keep them from it. They had a thirst. Larry Crabb, in his book, "When God's Ways Make No Sense," called it a "thirst to endure." Have we, you and I, such a thirst?

Somehow we've bought into the deception that when Jesus promised us an abundant life, we thought it was about our emotional, familial, material, and financial well-being. Though He does bless in all those ways, He never promised that we wouldn't face desert times in all of them. God's heroes of faith did. We will as well, but then, few of us really want to be heroes of the faith for Him. We'd rather just have the easiest route to heaven possible, accompanied by the least amount of loss possible. That's probably why we have so few "heroes" amongst us today. Entitlement has replaced sacrifice, and cheap grace has replaced blood bought kind. The result is a disaster, because what we have is a crossless, costless faith, which benefits no one, especially ourselves.

For those who've bought into such a "faith" all that can lie ahead is disappointment, discouragement, and alienation from Him, because, as Jesus promised, in this world we WILL have trouble. We emphasize the second part of His promise, that He has overcome the world, but we forget that in that, we will suffer loss, pain, heartache, betrayal, disappointment, and yes, deep challenges in our belief about the goodness of God and all His promises to us. We lose sight of the truth that He has promised to get us home, and to get us through every desert, wilderness, and mountain and giant along the way.....but not without many wounds. When we lose sight of that, we lose sight of Him, and....in that, as Crabb says, His ways make no sense....to our flawed understanding and expectations of Him.

When Crabb wrote of that thirst to endure, he told the story of his father. A faithful believer, he lost his own father at age 5. He lost his first son in a plane crash, his only brother to cancer, and his wife to Alzheimer's. Of his father he said, "Something survived in the deep places of his soul. He fought the good fight, he finished the race, he remained faithful to the end. One night, some years before his father died, he was woken with two words ringing in his mind; "sheer delight." Then God gave him a vision. He saw his father. "Papa, he said, "what's it like there." His father replied, "I don't want to ruin the surprise. It's good beyond telling." His father, having lived a very hard life, went back to sleep, his faith renewed for the final leg of his race. He had a thirst to endure, and it carried him into a place "good beyond telling."

Wherever your or my life is, do we have the thirst to endure all things that we might live for the One thing...Jesus Christ and the fullness of eternity? I want that thirst, and all the fullness of His life now, and into all His eternity. An eternity good beyond telling.

Blessings,
Pastor O