Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” —Matthew 28:18-19

The key to the missionary’s work is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the lost. We are inclined to look on our Lord as one who assists us in our endeavors for God. Yet our Lord places Himself as the absolute sovereign and supreme Lord over His disciples. He does not say that the lost will never be saved if we don’t go— He simply says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations….” He says, “Go on the basis of the revealed truth of My sovereignty, teaching and preaching out of your living experience of Me.”

“Then the eleven disciples went…to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them” (Matthew 28:16). If I want to know the universal sovereignty of Christ, I must know Him myself. I must take time to worship the One whose name I bear. Jesus says, “Come to Me…”— that is the place to meet Jesus— “all you who labor and are heavy laden…” (Matthew 11:28)— and how many missionaries are! We completely dismiss these wonderful words of the universal Sovereign of the world, but they are the words of Jesus to His disciples meant for here and now.

“Go therefore….” To “go” simply means to live. Acts 1:8 is the description of how to go. Jesus did not say in this verse, “Go into Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria,” but, “…you shall be witnesses to Me in [all these places].” He takes upon Himself the work of sending us.

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you…” (John 15:7)— that is the way to keep going. Where we are placed is then a matter of indifference to us, because God sovereignly engineers our goings.

“None of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus…” (Acts 20:24). That is how to keep going until we are gone from this life.

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October 14 2015

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Good morning God, and thank You once again for leading us to a deeper understanding of our surrender and connection. It is a good feeling to understand Chambers as he tells us that “to go” is simply meant …”to live”. As he writes…“Go therefore….” To “go” simply means to live. Once again You remind us that the mission or goal is not as important as our surrender and connection. And that out of surrender and connection, You will provide our “mission field”. We may think or believe it is supposed to look like this, or that…or that our work as missionaries requires us to go here or go there, but it seems to me that You are showing us that the whole world is our mission field as we live out of surrender, connection , curiosity and obedience.

And God says…”When you keep your eyes on Jesus, and surrender yourself and your rights to yourself to Him, your connected day to day living becomes your preaching and teaching. When you seek first the kingdom of God, which is Jesus, I will provide everything else you require for your life, including your mission field.  When you acknowledge Me in all your ways, and do not rely on your own understanding of missions and missionaries, the Spirit is free to live through you and make your paths straight.  How you are used, where you are used, what you are to say and do is of no concern of yours…trust in Me with all your heart.  Your work and impact as a disciple, missionary, or teacher is none of your concern, when you are surrendered and connected. In fact most of your impact will be oblivious to you except in retrospect.  You can be assured that when you are surrendered and connected to Me, there will always be a harvest.  John 15:7-8 The Message (MSG) 5-8 “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant.”

…when Moses was grown…he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. —Exodus 2:11

Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After he launched his first strike for God and for what was right, God allowed Moses to be driven into empty discouragement, sending him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared to Moses and said to him, “ ‘…bring My people…out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go…?’ ” (Exodus 3:10-11). In the beginning Moses had realized that he was the one to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in his individual perspective, but he was not the person for the work until he had learned true fellowship and oneness with God.

We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and yet when we start to do it, there comes to us something equivalent to Moses’ forty years in the wilderness. It’s as if God had ignored the entire thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged, God comes back and revives His call to us. And then we begin to tremble and say, “Who am I that I should go…?” We must learn that God’s great stride is summed up in these words— “I AM WHO I AM…has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). We must also learn that our individual effort for God shows nothing but disrespect for Him— our individuality is to be rendered radiant through a personal relationship with God, so that He may be “well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). We are focused on the right individual perspective of things; we have the vision and can say, “I know this is what God wants me to do.” But we have not yet learned to get into God’s stride. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead.

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Journal DJR
Good morning Lord,
The first lesson here seems to be that we will see more wrongs than we can right, and have more opportunities to do good than we can possibly do … so identifying right ones from the multitude of options is the key. We aspire to be like you in John 5:19 where you “only did what you saw the Father doing and only said what you heard the Father saying” Easier said than done I must say…. With all the clamoring voices, both outside and especially inside my head, it’s so easy to wind up finding myself out herding sheep in a desert, having missed you and wasted a lot of time.

Well, I understand your desire to get it right the first time and all the time. But don’t be so quick to judge your failures, or Moses. What if my plan was to make Moses … “a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth?” Numbers 12:3 You can see that the 40 years of sheepherding got used to change Moses. I will use all the things that happen to you as well. Good things, Bad things, all things.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose.

It seems like you are saying not to strive to do good and fight evil etc.

Well, how has that worked out for you and how well did it work out for Moses? You can strive, but it will only work well when you are connected to me and following my lead. So if you want to strive… just strive to stay connected and be obedient to the nudges and cues from my Spirit. Then stop trying to work for me and stop “working” on your sins. Just live with me and we’ll have a good time together. As you live in me, those sins will just fall away. Pretty simple, don’t complicate it. A couple of non-striving things that won’t get you off track killing Egyptians are curiosity and gratitude. I recommend those two for you…

…present…your members as instruments of righteousness to God. —Romans 6:13

Come to Me… —Matthew 11:28

Isn’t it humiliating to be told that we must come to Jesus! Think of the things about which we will not come to Jesus Christ. If you want to know how real you are, test yourself by these words— “Come to Me….” In every dimension in which you are not real, you will argue or evade the issue altogether rather than come; you will go through sorrow rather than come; and you will do anything rather than come the last lap of the race of seemingly unspeakable foolishness and say, “Just as I am, I come.” As long as you have even the least bit of spiritual disrespect, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do something very big, and yet all He is telling you to do is to “Come….”

“Come to Me….” When you hear those words, you will know that something must happen in you before you can come. The Holy Spirit will show you what you have to do, and it will involve anything that will uproot whatever is preventing you from getting through to Jesus. And you will never get any further until you are willing to do that very thing. The Holy Spirit will search out that one immovable stronghold within you, but He cannot budge it unless you are willing to let Him do so.

How often have you come to God with your requests and gone away thinking, “I’ve really received what I wanted this time!” And yet you go away with nothing, while all the time God has stood with His hands outstretched not only to take you but also for you to take Him. Just think of the invincible, unconquerable, and untiring patience of Jesus, who lovingly says, “Come to Me….”

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October 8, 2015

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Lord, thank you for this devotional and the reminder about manna and surrender. How the Israelites could not store up manna any more that we can store up surrender. They are both daily “real time” blessings and opportunities. You fed the Israelites manna that was only good for the day; it could not be stored or hoarded. They were required to rely on you daily. It seems that it is the same with our surrender; it is a daily, perhaps even minute by minute activity. And Lord, thank you for answering our prayers to and for our good, not necessarily as we imagined or asked. Thank You as well for the prayers you did not, and will not answer. You are God, we are not, and our total daily surrender acknowledges that.

And God says…”Come to Jesus, surrender all that you are and ever will be to Him: Trust in Me with all your heart…acknowledge Me in all your ways….seek first the Kingdom of God, which is Jesus. Delight yourself in the Lord, and I will give you the desires of your heart. It may be that your heart changes or that you did not even know your desires all that well, but I will meet all your needs as you trust in Me enough to surrender what it is you think you need or what you think you must have. And as you live surrendered daily, you will look back and see evidence that I was there, and met all your needs, you can also observe that you are being transformed day by day, surrender by surrender, into the very likeness of Jesus. “

When it pleased God…to reveal His Son in me… —Galatians 1:15-16

If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.

The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a person is hit by his own sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God— “…until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put a new nature into me through which I can live a totally new life. When I finally reach the edge of my need and know my own limitations, then Jesus says, “Blessed are you…” (Matthew 5:11). But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.

Just as the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man, the Holy Spirit entered into the human race through another Man (see Romans 5:12-19). And redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin, and that through Jesus Christ I can receive a pure and spotless heredity, namely, the Holy Spirit.

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Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord, It is so awesome, what You can do, put your Holy Life into my unholy life. It’s so profound, and so simple. And I can mess it up and miss it so many ways. As Chambers says, my part is to just show up and agree with your position on sin, especially as it resides in me. Then I can simply take you up on your offer, which Jesus provides … as long as I don’t complicate it, codify it, politicize it, or make it into a religious system. Since it is so clearly a wonderful deal… Why do I stumble back into my old ways so easily?

Those old ways will always be easy to walk in. It’s always about choice. I give humans free will and choice. Many little choices every day. How will you respond to that driver who cut you off? Will you strike back at the office slight? Will you join in on the gossip? You don’t even have the power to make all the best choices in all those situations with all the willpower you can muster in your own nature. But with my nature in you by my Holy Spirit, you can amaze even yourself.

Joshua 24:15 The Message (MSG)

15 “If you decide that it’s a bad thing to worship God, then choose a god you’d rather serve—and do it today. Choose one of the gods your ancestors worshiped from the country beyond The River, or one of the gods of the Amorites, on whose land you’re now living. As for me and my family, we’ll worship God.”

Just remember, what you are choosing is agreement with me and surrender of your own rights and agenda and letting my power flow thru you to accomplish my agenda which becomes our agenda together. It’s not just choosing to stop bad habits. You won’t have the power to do that. Choose to agree with me and accept my gift of my Life and Spirit and we’ll walk together.

…Jesus took…them up on a high mountain apart by themselves… —Mark 9:2

We have all experienced times of exaltation on the mountain, when we have seen things from God’s perspective and have wanted to stay there. But God will never allow us to stay there. The true test of our spiritual life is in exhibiting the power to descend from the mountain. If we only have the power to go up, something is wrong. It is a wonderful thing to be on the mountain with God, but a person only gets there so that he may later go down and lift up the demon-possessed people in the valley (see Mark 9:14-18). We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life— those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life, and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength. Yet our spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mountain. We feel that we could talk and live like perfect angels, if we could only stay on the mountaintop. Those times of exaltation are exceptional and they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware to prevent our spiritual selfishness from wanting to make them the only time.

We are inclined to think that everything that happens is to be turned into useful teaching. In actual fact, it is to be turned into something even better than teaching, namely, character. The mountaintop is not meant to teach us anything, it is meant to make us something. There is a terrible trap in always asking, “What’s the use of this experience?” We can never measure spiritual matters in that way. The moments on the mountaintop are rare moments, and they are meant for something in God’s purpose.

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Journal DJR
Good morning Lord, I’m reminded that JD and I went to the mountain, seeking a mountaintop experience 5 years ago. We’d had them before and were feeling kind of dry and thought that by going to the mountain … we could re-create a mountaintop experience. We set aside the time, spent some money and by most any measurement, we were committed. At least as committed as your team when you took them …Jesus took…them up on a high mountain apart by themselves… —Mark 9:2.

We didn’t get what we were looking for. But I guess we got what you were looking for. We didn’t get emotional highs, like we’ve experienced at mountain retreats before. But we started doing this CO2 together and have been meeting together, us and you, for 5 years now. We’ve learned a lot, but more importantly we’ve changed a lot. Strangely also, we are not getting tired or bored. You know we’ve told you we’re ready to change to a different format … but it seems that you like this one. So we’ll keep on. I think it’s fair to say that when we went to the mountain, following this verse, we didn’t get what we were looking for but we got what we needed and in the longer view, we did get what we were looking for… it just took some years and some surrender to grasp it and realize it.

I’m reminded of Bono’s U2 song, “still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” I hope he’s found what he needs… and maybe what he’s looking for…

I know for sure that I don’t know for sure what I’m looking for. My history is that when I get to where I thought I wanted to go, it’s not what I thought. There’s always a higher mountain perhaps. But when I come back to staying connected with you, staying curious and waiting for nudges from your Spirit, and just simply living out of that… Then I can face high mountains and demon possessed valleys and all the stuff in between. Thank you for that. For loving me and promising to never leave or forsake me… even when circumstances don’t look so good or lack mountaintop excitement.