Just call me Hadassah.

So a great friend, Andre Henry, has started a wonderful project call Fidelity[?] http://fidelityblog.tumblr.com/. Very quickly, this project is an ongoing conversation about the journey of loving God. The first posts have challenged me beyond explanation. The content of the posts are nothing short of a message from God straight to my heart. This summer, I have spent so much time thinking about the pitiful thing that I call my walk with God. I say pitiful not because of not desiring intimacy but because I spend so much time thinking and journaling about going deeper with God, but never DO anything to change my condition. Andre presents a brillant question, "why do I care about going to Heaven?" Frankly, this question was almost offensive to me. However, I know Andre well and he always asks the right questions to bring about a challenge of thought so figured it would do me well to keep reading. He goes on to say that it isn't about heaven or hell, but in reality it is about where God is or isn't.

Today, Dr. John Bosman was a guest speaker on our World Compassion Sunday (missions Sunday). His message was from the book of Esther. Now, Esther is one of those women in the Bible who stands out to a little girl. She competes with the likes of women such as Ruth, Deborah, and Rahab. Oh to be courageous.... But how about we take a chance to strip Esther down to the girl she truely is... Hadassah. Let's take away the year of beauty treatments, the title of Queen and the favor of the King. Underneath it all she was a only Jewish girl who had a divine appointment to save her people... to save herself. Nothing mattered when she stood in the moment of decision. The begging of her beloved Mordecai probably seemed to her a death sentence. Hadassah had a divine appointment... I say all this to mention a powerful point, "You were not born to escape hell. You were not born to make it to heaven. You were born to do what God has for you- to take up your assignment. Because it's not about you. It's not about others. It's all about him."-Dr. Bosman. I thought, "Alright, I get it God", as I smiled huge with the realization that God found it important enough to use two men of God to relay and enforce a message from His heart. I believe the personal call here is to re-think what it means to be on this journey. Do I really just want to live life and make it to heaven, knowing that I have done just enough of the "Do's and "Don'ts" to escape hell and barely slip into to where God is. Or is it more important to milk the life from every moment?