Remember the Alamo!

There is a park down the street from my house where I often played with friends as a kid. One very popular game we played was war. During one evening of play some neighborhood kids we didn’t know challenged us. We jumped at the opportunity. Huddled together closely at one end of the park we discussed our strategy. We decided that the far end of the creek would be our Alamo. If we were over taken we would yell, “Remember the Alamo!” and run back to regroup. As we forged ahead in our fight we were sure of victory until one of the kids pulled a broken glass bottle out of the creek and threatened to hit us with it. “Remember the Alamo!” rang out through the park and away we ran. The defeat was somewhat humiliating but we learned our lesson. After we regrouped we went back out with sticks.

This is how I feel now. I have had a broken glass bottle swung in my face and it is time to retreat, a strategic advance to the rear to regroup. It is time to come home. My time here is done. But I do not leave discouraged or defeated because it is not about winning or losing. In the end I can’t win souls for the Kingdom only God can do that. Only God can change hearts and draw people to himself. What I can do is walk out my relationship with Christ for all to see. This is a job. A bad job so I am leaving. God will take care of these people when I leave. It is prideful to think I was their only hope or their last chance. God ordained a random kid from FL to fly to Turkey and love on these people I am sure he could do it again.

I ran into this dark place guns blazing. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled I realized I was simply shooting into the abyss. My weapons can’t destroy the darkness. Only God can bring the light and when he does there is no struggle the place simply becomes light. Now I haven’t got to see that happen but I still believe it will. I return with a joyful heart and a lesson learned. I have seen God move in mighty ways and I stand back in awe and wonder. I can’t wait to see how God continues to move as I gracefully bow out.

I told my Patron and she was in shock. She just sat there eating her mosaic cake and looking at me. I explained to her that it wasn’t working and that I wasn’t meshing. It sounded like a middle school break up, “It’s not you it’s me.” The thing is it is you. I am not sure though how I could have said the truth without coming across too strong. I am not so sure how to tactfully tell someone they’re a terrible mother, self-consumed, and extremely hurtful to those around them. If she pushes the issue I will figure out a way to tell her. Pray for that moment.

“All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” Matthew 28:18-19

“The basis of missionary appeals is the authority of Jesus Christ, not the needs of the heathen. We are apt to look upon Our Lord as One Who assists us in our enterprises for God. Our Lord puts himself as the absolute sovereign supreme Lord over his disciples. He does not say the heathen will be lost if we do not go; He simply says – “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” Go on the revelation of my sovereignty of Christ; teach and preach out of a living experience of me.

“Then the eleven disciples went... unto a mountain where Jesus had appointed them”. If I want to know the universal Sovereignty of Christ, I must know Him for myself, and how to get alone with Him; I must take time to worship the Being Whose Name I bare. “Come unto Me”- that is the place to meet Jesus. Are you weary and heavy laden? How many missionaries are! We banish those marvelous words of the universal Sovereign of the world to the threshold of an after-meeting; they are the words of Jesus to His disciples.

“Go ye therefore…” Go simply means live. Acts 1:8 is the description of how to go. Jesus did not say – Go into Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, but, “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me” in all these places. He undertakes to establish the goings.

“If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you…” – that is the way to keep going in our personal lives. Where we are placed is a matter of indifference; God engineers the goings.

“None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself…” That is how to keep going till we’re gone.”

-OSWALD CHAMBERS-