Who Will Go for Us?

Isaiah 6:8-10
"Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying:
Who shall I send? Who will go for Us?

I said: Here I am. Send me.

And He replied:
Go! Say to these people: keep listening, but do not understand;
keep looking, but do not perceive.
Dull the minds of these people; deafen their ears and blind their eyes;
otherwise they might see with their eyes
and hear with their ears, understand with their minds, turn back, and be healed."

I am quoting this verse because it reminded me of what I want to accomplish in my writing. I was inspired to type a blog post tonight because I just finished another book by my favorite author, Ted Dekker...and I couldn't help but tell God,
"Lord - now that is how I want to tell people your message. I want to help people feel what You are all about through the writing, as seemingly effortless as Dekker."

I enjoy reading almost any story with good working action, and old Ted does not disappoint. But I am amazed at how he weaves a fictional tale and yet still helps you visualize how Jesus takes hold of the character's heart. I want to capture that feeling, and pass it on.

Which brings me back to Mr. Isaiah. If you haven't ever read the book of Isaiah, I recommend it. Yes, it can get quite heady at times, but it really helps one understand just how magnificent God is - and makes you really glad He is on our side if you are a believer. And he also has that amazing ability to help the reader feel God's power taking hold over him - which if you get to read the verses just previous to this, you learn the ability was given to him by God.

When you read, don't you want to feel good about what you read? I absolutely love when an author's words help me achieve a greater understanding of something than I had before. But then, if you read the verses above, God still doesn't want us to have all the answers, does He? This is something I have had to improve upon as I have taken on the endeavor of writing Christian suspense thrillers. I think I am getting better at it, by the way. But when writing suspense, you don't want to answer all the readers' questions. You want to make them think. I have actually gotten in a better habit of answering reader's questions on this blog than anything else. I will keep the thrills coming, I assure you, and the curve balls. But I am learning how to get the readers to 'keep looking, but do not understand.'

If you like to write, and if you like to share your thoughts, but haven't really voiced the thoughts you may think God has placed on your heart, let it out. Let the evangelical blogger within you out. Let the world know that God loves all the people. As hard as it is for me to say, He even loves the ISIS terrorists, too. If they would only open their hearts and listen, instead of be controlled by their radical ideology. Perhaps if more of us attempt to reach out, who knows?
Yes, I just typed that. Does that mean I want us to open the borders to all refugees? No - not without a solid safety check in place. If we were a truly Christian nation and our leaders wanted to pray about how to do just that, than that would be a good start. I am not present within the walls of our top government officials to know whether they pray or not (other than just invocations), but in my experience one can usually tell a man of faith and prayer without ever hearing the man pray aloud...I cannot say I have that perception of any of our current most influential government leaders.

As I said, I was inspired tonight. I just felt like sharing my thoughts. I will continue to try to positively effect my little section of the world, one reader at a time. I will attempt to do that through what I know and believe about Jesus my Savior. I would love to hear some of the other readers out there and their thoughts on the matter. In the meantime-

Here I am, Lord...send me.

Make sure you're riding a good bike...

Are you cycling through this world on a good bike? And I don't mean in the literal sense (Literally speaking, I don't often ride a bike).

Life is full of ups and downs. The hardships we all encounter throughout life are inevitable; there is no way to avoid suffering in this world. It is also kind of rare to never ever have one positive thing in your life happen if one pays attention to their surroundings. Experiencing these positive things and negative things in life, or ups and downs if you will, are very analogous to riding a bicycle through a given course.

The way I see it, a cyclist has to have a good bicycle to make it through the toughest of courses. Now this course could have lots of twists, turns, steep climbs, and long racing hills. There can also be all sorts of terrain on the course. If you have a cheaper made, more degradable material that makes up your bicycle, it won't last. If you have a bicycle that doesn't have any extra gears, that can cause problems as well. You can encounter hills too tough to climb. You can also lose control if you pedal too fast down hill. The true cyclists out there want a bicycle they can depend on.

Here's the problem - I think all of us start out trying to be the bicycle ourselves. The real problem is evident when we see just how flawed a bicycle we have when we make ourselves the bicycle, and try to take on more than we can handle. We become misguided by other things out there telling us that self-self-self is what you need to rely on. So we keep trying to make it through the course without any help.

What if I told you there is a bicycle that was unbreakable? What would you say to getting on a bike that never wears out, and can get you through even the most difficult and challenging courses? Doesn't that sound like the bicycle for you?

See, I think God meant for us to just push the pedals; He just wants us to be the cyclists. He will be our unbreakable bicycle. We are born learning how to ride a bike that just gets us by for a while, but God wants you to get on His Bicycle. Live the way God teaches us to in the Bible; give your life to Him and trust him, and all you have to do is keep pedaling. Sure - there will still be tough hills to climb...some suffering to go through. And there will be those steep hills to coast down with the wind in your face, or even race down pedaling hard.

But if you are on a good bike, isn't the ride worth it?