Witnesses

My house church has prayer every Thursday night. Basically, we get together and we spend time focusing on a specific topic or idea that we feel like the Lord has brought to mind or is working on with our community. Some of the prayer happens through singing and music and some happens through more traditional praying. Some pray outloud and some pray silently, interceding on behalf of others or the community or even themselves, just using the space provided to get really intimate with the Lord.

This past Thursday during prayer I felt really led to Hebrews 11, a chapter that I have read over and over. But it was one of those experiences of reading something I have read before but reading it like I had never read it before. FAITH, the chapter starts out is about understanding and relying on what is not visible. That which cannot be seen. And banking your whole life on that. And we know about other people who have done that, totally put it all on the line for something that was not visible.

They were people did things like: being taken up to be with the Lord without having to die; building a huge boat before there was even a HINT of rain; leaving their country without knowing where they going; living like strangers in foreign countries; putting their son in a basket down a river; marching around city walls seven days and blowing the trumpets on the last day to make them fall down! And as if these things were not crazy enough (please re-read that list if you are not struck with the wierd things God ask his people to do) He goes on to say that they were mistreated, tortured, jeered, flogged, chained, put in prison, stoned, sawed in two and put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins, goatskins, despised, persecuted and mistreated and THE WORLD WAS NOT WORTHY OF THEM!

You know what else he says in Hebrews 11? "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had the opportunity to return. Instead they were longing for a better country -- a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."

Wow, I want to be in that place. A longing so deep within me for a better country that I will do whatever wierd things that God asks of me or things that make me seem foolish to this world. I want to be in that place where God is not ashamed to be called my God! I want to gain that perspective of living by faith in the promises that have been given to me, and going after it whole heartedly no matter how crazy it may look.

I have often wondered what I might think if some of these great "witnesses" that we are presented in Hebrews. I pray that God continues to tenderize my heart to His methods of spreading His Kingdom -- methods that are clearly beyond my understanding.