Leaving for the Trail!

Today is the
day!  I am embarking on a journey.  The wilderness is calling me and I am finally
going to respond.  I am about to start
the Appalachian Trail today at Springer Mountain, Georgia and I hope to hike
thru to Damascus, Virginia.  The reason
that I am hiking the trail is that I have come off of a really difficult season
in my life that has left me a little more beat up and broken than I let
on.  I have deliberately set aside the
next three weeks to seek the Lord, as well as his healing and direction for my
life.

            The Lord has been stirring my heart
and preparing me for this time.  He has
been convicting me a lot lately with a passage out of the book of Revelation.  It is his call to the Church of Sardis:

“I know all
the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive, but you are
dead.  Now wake up!  Strengthen what little remains, for even what
is left is at the point of death.  Your
deeds are far from the sight of God.  Go
back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly and turn to me
again.  Unless you do, I will come upon
you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief (Revelation 3:1b-3 NLT).”

            I feel like the Lord has been
challenging me and stripping me of everything that gave me identity or purpose
in order to draw me closer to him.  I don’t
really know how to explain it, but at some point my focus became being a good
leader and a man who hears from the Lord. 
My identity became so wrapped up in it so that I continued to become all
puffed up spiritually.  This then became
the motive that drove me to do a lot of the things that I did.  Now, that I have had time to think about it
and am allowing myself to be brutally honest; I can see how I got caught up in being
a self-promoter.  This allowed me to
build a great reputation.  However, I
found that I was doing less and less of what I enjoyed with more and more
effort.  Now that I have given you this
ridiculously long explanation I will finally tie it in to the scripture from Revelation.  The charge to me from scripture is to
rediscover my faith and even the reasons that I became involved in missions in
the first place. 

When I first discovered missions; I loved it because it
allowed me to glorify the Lord through my skills and abilities.  I found myself serving all of the time, often
without people even noticing it.  I didn’t
care what people thought of what I was doing and I didn’t need any kind of
special recognition because I was only out to please the Lord not man. 

            I am heading to the trail because I
want to rediscover whatever it is that allowed me to be a blessing not because
it is a good thing to do or it gives me warm fuzzy feelings, but because the
Lord has truly blessed me.  The least I
can do is return it to him.  I am excited
about what the Lord has for me in this time. 
I would greatly appreciate your prayers over the next three weeks of my
hike.  Thank you for your love and
support.