Know Him and make Him known

A few months ago I claimed this as my family's Mission statement:

Know Him and make Him known

I think from before we even started a family, from before we were even a couple this was my goal for life. But a few months ago, I consciously claimed it to my children and John. This is our official mission statement. These are our only goals in this life:

*know Jesus
*make Jesus known

All my life choices... all my decisions... I want them to filter back to this....

But sometimes life just doesn't LOOK like what you thought it would look like. Sometimes the pieces are scattered all over the floor and they make no discernible image. Sometimes words like cancer, and guilty, and unfaithful shatter the image we have of what our life was going to be like. I've been there. In fact for about a year and a half now, my tent's been pitched there. In this wilderness... where I keep looking around thinking THIS is MY life?!?!? How can that BE??? Even though the Bible constantly disproves this notion, somehow I keep thinking if you love God, if you follow His decrees, if you dedicate your life to serving Him and doing His will then things should go your way. But they don't always.  And in fact often in Scripture I see the opposite... for Joseph... for Job... for Jesus!

Recently in one of the particularly dark shadows of this valley we're in, I stopped... I looked around at the UGLY filth and thought how can this awful landscape be my life. Then right there, midthought the Holy Spirit spoke to me. And I looked around again at the ugly... the waste... the broken parts... and I thought, here, at the bottom of this outhouse pit do I know Him? YES! Possibly more intimately than ever before. Am I making Him known? YES! Over and over... blow after blow... sitting here on this hardly inhabited island waiting for the Lord to send a search plane to rescue us... I am SCREAMING my belief that eventually HE will have HIS way. No matter how dark and desolate this gets, I will NOT stop saying HIS WILL BE DONE. So yes... this IS my life. The ugly... the broken... the awful.... if those things are making me know Him and I'm making Him known... it's. my. life.

I realized life's ick... Satan's attacks... these potholes along the way.... they don't matter.... what matters is that my mission statement stays true:  know Him and make Him known.

The things that happen along your road to Heaven are not what's important.  Don't let them define you! It's your mission.  It's your journey. Those are the things that matter.

I want to know Christ....
Philippians 3:10