It really is a rare thing that God brings someone into your life, even if for a short while, who immediately and without reservation wants to talk about the things you want to talk about. More than that, even rarer to find an individual who has actively wrestled with similar things you’ve wrestled with.
It happened to me last week.
It was the timeliest meeting – a ‘divine appointment’, if you like. You have no idea the extent to which my heart has been troubled by certain things in this first part of 2024 – not relating to things happening now or the ministries I’m in, I should add. I hadn’t long prayed the prayer, ‘God, I need a kick start to know what to do with this to recover some ground.’ The kick start arrived.
As I mentioned in my blog yesterday, I’ve been increasingly troubled by the way I’ve allowed myself to be silenced on things that I know to be foundational, and woolly on things that were once crystal clear. I’ve put this gradual ‘softening’ down to maturity and, fundamentally, being ‘nice.’ All the while, the inner movements of the Spirit in my spirit give me no rest and no sense of consistency.
I’ve been on a reforming journey since 2010 when I left The Salvation Army. I chose, at that point, to question everything I’d learned up until that point. Not because it was all wrong, but because I’d been wrong at one key juncture and God deserved a thorough repentance – a thorough rethinking. I’ll be truthful, that journey has led me down some false tracks too – tracks with a stinking pool of death and lies at the end.
I’ve just been tracing back the path, not of the incidental wrong turns and dark alley explorations, but the central path of my following of Jesus to seek to understand where my gait started to wobble. It does no health to name them now, but I understand what the pebbles (aka boulders) in the shoes were.
So, I suppose I am at a the other side of a multifaceted crossroads, having stepped back onto the ancient path. Jeremiah told Israel they were at a crossroads and that they should seek the ancient path. Today, we think that’s looking at saints of old or something like that, but it’s much more radical than that. It’s hearing the call of Jesus to ‘take up your cross and follow.’
I know where I left my cross, and behold, by grace here it is.
Andrew S M Clark 