Wednesday, November 18, 2020      (today’s lectionary)
No reserve, no retreat, no regret
I chose you from the world to go and bear fruit that will last. Day and night we will not stop proclaiming, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.”
At Life Community in Mahomet last Sunday, Greg Elliott expanded on the vision of the church. And he noticed in himself that he talks more about the “lost” than he talks to them.
At Grace Covenant in Austin, Matt Cassidy asked us to become “dangerous” Christians for a week, just to try it out. And he asked everyone to repeat the words, “No reserve, no retreat, no regret.” Perhaps you’ve heard that phrase before. William Borden wrote those words in the back of his Bible, two at a time at three important moments in his life. He left his family fortune to become a missionary but then died before he could begin.
Worthy are you, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things.
Standing on the lip of the canyon where Stephen was stoned to death, some of us, including Matt, wondered, “Was that necessary?” Did Stephen have to speak out the way he did? And when God did not intervene, we wondered some more.
I had a vision of an open door to heaven, and I heard the voice I’d heard before tell me, “Come up here and I will show you what must happen afterwards.”
Stephen’s martyrdom and consequent persecutions by Saul (later Paul) sent Christians scattering throughout the known world, thus fulfilling Jesus’ instruction, “Go into all the world and make disciples.” The same thing happened in China when Mao Tse-tung amped up his persecution of every religion in the 1960’s. Christians were sent to every part of the country, to be imprisoned. Wherever they went, they spread the gospel.
Take up what you did not lay down. Harvest what you did not plant. Use what I have given you. When you do, more will be given. When you do not, what you have will be taken away.
Talking to the lost can seem dangerous. Opening my purse in generosity when I might be taken advantage of, that’s dangerous. Not making time for the urgent things because God is guiding me to the Important, that’s dangerous. Whatever goes against my self-protective grain is dangerous. Just saying yes (damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead), that’s dangerous.
That list is endless, but that list also has to be personal or it’s pointless. And it won’t be personal until I hear, and hear again, and one more time I hear and say out loud those simple words that inspired thousands after Borden died: “No reserve, no retreat, no regrets.”
The last words of Psalm 150, the last words of the book of Psalms, invites me sing.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Alleluia!
(Revelation 4, Psalm 150, John 15, Luke 19)
#
