Giving Up Everything
If you were to ask me a month ago to write a blog about sacrifice, it would have been a fluffy, superficial piece of writing that lacked substance.
However, it’s not “a month ago” anymore, and this blog will not be a hypothetical, frilly piece about sacrifice.
This piece about sacrifice will have substance and it will be real. Because “sacrifice” is the theme of my life right now. Let me tell you a story.
Around a month ago, my husband and I went to Louisville for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary. We had no reason to go there; we just wanted to get out of town to celebrate, so we picked Louisville because, why not? We had a great weekend there and enjoyed spending time in the city. On Sunday we attended a church in the city called Sojourn. While I was sitting in church, I felt God speaking to my heart, saying to me, “This is where you’re supposed to be.” (Little did I know, God was speaking this to my husband as well during church).
When I felt God saying this to me in church, my heart started racing and I immediately started arguing with God and telling him all of the reasons why there’s no way he was actually asking me to move to Louisville. Because of course I know better than him, right?
After church ended, we were getting ready to leave the building when my husband said to me, “I see the husband of a woman I deployed with. I don’t know him, but for some reason I feel like I should go talk to him.” I was ready to go, but I begrudgingly agreed.
As we were talking with this man (whose name I’ve forgotten), he looked at me in the middle of the conversation and said, “You guys should move here.” His comment took me aback–especially after what I’d heard the Lord saying to me during church. Also, who says something like that to someone they’ve just met? As the conversation ended, the man shook our hands and said, “Let me know if you need help looking for houses.”
Weird, right? Just keep reading.
Something about that conversation left me feeling shooketh. I could not stop thinking about it. So I texted Kelsey Canterbury, one of my closest friends, and said, “This random man I don’t know just told me I should move to Louisville and for some reason, it shook me. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
She didn’t reply right away, so in the interim, my husband and I went to lunch, where I said to him,
“I know this is going to sound absolutely crazy, but I think we need to pray about moving to Louisville.”
At the time my husband and I were talking, my friend Kelsey texted me and said, “Lauren, we need to talk.”
We spoke on the phone later that afternoon and she told me–get this–that she and her husband are moving to Louisville to plant a church (I had no clue about this). She also told me that just the night before, they were praying about who would join them in planting this church, and my husband and I were some of the first people who came to mind.
Then she said something I will never forget:
“I wasn’t sure if I should ask you or not, because you guys are so settled and have such a good life where you are...but now I’m asking you: Will you move to Louisville to help us plant this church?”
… Yeah.
Along with all of these events, so many other things have transpired over the last month that have made it abundantly clear to my husband and me that this is what God is calling us to do. So we are doing it. We are moving to Louisville to help plant a church.
But let me be clear that this move will not be without sacrifice. Lots of it. My husband and I are not “city people:” We live on an acre of land in the middle of a forest and we love it. We were preparing to build a beautiful new home in Richmond. It’s expensive to live in Louisville. We don’t like traffic or crowds. I have a great job here in Richmond. We love our church. We love our gym and the community we have there. We love our friends, our people, that we have grown with and worked hard to cultivate community with, and I am beyond broken-hearted to leave them. I love living close to my brothers, who are some of my best friends, and I’m devastated that I won’t be a short drive away from them anymore.
But I am willing to sacrifice all of this because I believe God is trustworthy and he is faithful. I do not believe that he would call me to something and then not provide abundantly. I believe he loves his children and takes care of them. He’s never failed me yet, and he would not clearly call me to drastically alter my life and then leave me high and dry. I believe God is who he says he is. I believe that he has made us ambassadors and that there is a world that is hurting that we are called to bring light and abundance to. I believe he is going to grow me so much through this process. I believe God asks us to do hard things.
I also never want to look back at my life and regret my blatant disobedience. I don’t ever want to wonder, “What would have happened if we would have said ‘Yes’?”
I have had so many moments throughout my life where I knew God was asking me to do something, and I just decided not to listen to him. I decided to be selfish and put my comfort ahead of my calling.
I don’t want to do that anymore.
This time, I’m listening. And I’m obeying. And I’m willing to give everything up.
Because I wasn’t created to live a tidy life in my comfort zone.
I wasn’t created to live in fear.
I was created to live and walk in Christ’s abundant power and strength.
Luke 9:23-25 (TPT)
Jesus said to all of his followers, “If you truly desire to be my disciple, you must disown your life completely, embrace my ‘cross’ as your own, and surrender to my ways. For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for my glory, you will embark on a discovery of more and more of true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep. Even if you gained all the wealth and power of this world, everything it could offer you, yet lost your soul in the process, what good is that?
Pray for us, friends. We’re moving to the big city.
Over the next few weeks, you can find reflections here at vineyardrichmond.com. Use them to prompt yourself to focus on your faith in a fresh way. Each week we will consider a different theme as we build up to the resurrection event. On Mondays, we will draw your attention to a biblical focus on a character in the gospel accounts. On Wednesdays, we will reflect personally on how that theme affects our spiritual lives. On Fridays, we will focus outwardly as we consider how God is inviting us to engage the world around us for his kingdom. If what you are learning is meaningful to you, click one of the share buttons at the top of these posts to share it with your friends. Let this be a time of personal reflection and careful examination of our own hearts and minds.