“Sifting” is a word God gave back in January. He often speaks to me in just one word, which is a little obnoxious sometimes, but also really cool.
Obnoxious because I don’t always know what it means.
Cool because it becomes this scavenger hunt of sorts and the word often means multiple different things. Classic!
When I first heard ‘Sifting’ there was a lot of downsizing and shifting at work, so I thought it applied there.
Once that settled, I recognized a deep sifting God was doing in me, stripping the things that aren’t beneficial. A painful, but needed process!
Most recently, He’s been showing me a sifting in the Church, specifically the body of Christ in America.
There is a sifting of the true followers of Christ from the members of a social club we call Church. In many of the American churches we haven’t been taught the fullness of what it means to follow Christ. It means the extent of your love and dedication to Him make your relationship with your family look like you don’t even like them. It means you lay down your own personal desires and pick up His. It means you actively choose to pick up an instrument of your own death and carry it every day. (Luke 14:26-27)
How many of us actually live like that? How many of us have actually counted the cost of what it means to follow Christ? How many of us have chosen to say “Yes” to that and not just prayed a prayer inviting Jesus into our heart? How many will say, “Lord, Lord…” only to hear “Depart from Me..” (Matt 7:21-23)
I don’t say this to incite fear. I say it as a call to a new depth of relationship with Abba!
There is a sifting, but, in the sifting, there is also an invitation. God is inviting all who are willing to accept into a deeper intimacy with Him. He wants relationship! He doesn’t want a once a week check in, He wants a daily investment. He wants a chosen partnership. He wants a living sacrifice – a sacrifice that, in the end, really isn’t a sacrifice at all. It’s a privilege!
Accepting this invitation isn’t easy and shouldn’t be done flippantly! The journey isn’t easy and God isn’t flippant about anything. In every sense of the physical world, it will be hard! Followers of Christ aren’t promised ease. We’re invited into a suffering with Christ and in that suffering we find Joy! (1 Pet. 4:13)
It’s an upside down place, this Kingdom of God, but the more I discover in it, the more I know I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
The sifting is happening. The invitation is out. The RSVP is a choice and this choice is up to you!
