All

I am already starting to see how this new job is going to be a refining one for me. We had our very first staff meeting today and I think I bawled through half of it. Pastor Brian was just going to step in and talk to us staff briefly before we had our meeting about upcoming events at the church etc. and it turned into a three-hour hanky-fest. He was talking about the cost of following the Lord and how we don't want to truly pay the cost. He has just come back from a trip to Turkey and has seen how true missionaries live and the cost that they pay, as well as the cost that disciples had to pay. And the bottom line is: I have not been willing to pay the cost.

There are so many things that I just hold onto so dearly and with clenched fists.....I fight to keep them and do not want to give them up. My time, my reputation, my house. You name it, and it is something I have held onto. No, the Lord is not asking me to be perfect at this yet. But, if I truly want revival to break out, if I truly want others to know the Lord, if I truly want those things it could very well cost me everything.

Giving up what is really nothing in order to gain everything is the truth of the matter. Yet I somehow still look at those things that are "nothing" and think that somehow they have merit. Where do I get that idea?

My life should be lived to serve, to come low, to obey at first ask, to love others, and I see that I do very little of that. Even today at my job, having opportunity after opportunity to just be less of "me" and more of "Jesus" to my co-workers, I am convicted of how little I did just that. How much harder to bless and serve those who are not easy to love. Yet those are the very people who need it most.

I am pressed this evening, and need more of Jesus to meet me here.
Erin