Back when we had permed hair and were twentysomething vibrant, we used to talk about how we hoped God would never send us as missionaries to Africa.
My best friend and I recently revisit this twenty-year-old conversation: how while we walked the halls of a seminary where we studied God, we secretly feared a call on our lives that would make us do something radical and hard. Now, on one hand, we cringe at this. We want to judge it and call it ignorance or selfishness or being really young or thinking life was just up to us, but then we step back, pause, and get honest.
Were we really that different from most believers? We say we want God but sit with fingers crossed behind our backs, hoping He will never ask us to do something too sacrificial.
The truth is that our fear was never really about Africa. Africa just represented something that was unknown. Africa got blamed for what was really a small faith — a mindset whereby we could love God but never let that love interrupt our plan for a beautiful house, a handsome husband, three kids, a dog or two, manicured nails, church on Sunday, and cute jeans. It was never about Africa. It was about wanting life both ways.
Somewhere in the midst of the daily whirlwind of life, we have convinced ourselves that we can live in the in-between when it comes to God. We are convinced we can make our faith what we want it to be — customize it like we do with food at restaurants, ordering faith to fit our tastes. But when we become followers of Christ, we don't get to make up the script.
- It's either all God or no God, He says.
I think of the church at Laodicea and feel akin. If I'm honest, I also feel scared and convicted. God is always blunt and to the point. But these verses are awakeners of a different kind.
I know you inside and out, and find little to my liking. You're not cold, you're not hot — far better to be either cold or hot! You're stale. You're stagnant. You make me want to vomit. — Revelation 3:15–16 MSG
The idea that I could make God want to vomit chills me to the bone.
But I am the church at Laodicea. We are the church at Laodicea. We may be hotter than we are cold, less stale and stagnant than we used to be, and, indeed, we should be grateful for the forward progress. But God doesn't compare us to ourselves as the measuring stick. He compares us to Him.
Our desire for control — for logic, for reason, for that which makes sense to us — is one of the biggest factors in why we don't have more of God. It's not that God is displeased with our logic or that we shouldn't seek spiritual understanding through the studying of Scripture. In fact, this is the essence of spiritual growth: we want more of God the more we know Him. But if we truly want God, the piece that must be abandoned is our demand for logic. We have to want Him more than what we can understand, since intellect gets in the way of unvarnished love. When we demand that God make sense, we overstep our role and show our sense of entitlement. In life God calls us to scary places we can't understand, and we must have an open heart of faith to take the leap with Him. We must come as children who know and care nothing of formulas, calculations, and risk. That is faith. That is what makes a Father glad.
- Life with God was never meant to be a calculated risk; it was meant to be an illogical surety.
Logical people are at risk of stepping in the way of the supernatural. We don't mean to — it's just that often there's a core incompatibility between what is known (tangible, flesh, earth) and the Unknown (God), and when we choose logic, it hinders His work. Don't misunderstand — God doesn't need us to understand to do His thing. He can work under any conditions, at any time, in any way. But whether we submit to His working is in our hands.
He wanted us to choose things and see things and experience things from a free will and open heart. Otherwise He would have created robots to simply do His bidding. But He didn't. Because He is God, a part of Him will always be unknown to us as humans with limited minds. Yet so much of Him can be known by way of Scripture, experience, the heart, the mind, and the senses. We don't need logic and reason to know we love and trust God.
And while logic feels good because it is a controllable entity, God often calls us to the illogical and unreasonable places to expose what position control holds in our life. He calls us to the things we fear because they're foreign and require sacrifice. The things we don't want to face because they seem too hard.
I wonder: What is your Africa?
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