I couldn’t sleep, woke up at 4:15am… I know crazy for someone who doesn’t do mornings!  I tried hard to go back to sleep, but God kept calling me awake.  I got up sat on the deck and prayed for the church, the leaders and the finances, people in my life, and people I don’t know that I have been asked to pray for, I prayed for myself.

I checked my e-mail, and this new book “Kingdom Journeys” was offered to me from Seth Barns, Adventures in Missions.  I down loaded to my kindle and scanned through “Take a Look” on Amazon… this is what jumped out at me. 

 Jesus and Journey

A journey is an act of leaving – process of physical abandon that teaches us how to do the same spiritually.  Perhaps, to find your true identity you need to abandon everything else.

We know that Jesus said about the journey to which he invited his disciples on:

• To discover the kingdom, you have to lay aside your possession and go on the road with him (Mark 10:17-27)
• To find your calling, you have to quit your job. “Leave your nets,” he says to us. ‘Follow me… and I will make you fishers of men: (Mark 1”17-18).
•  To see the dead raised, you have to leave the funeral, “Follow me,” he commands.  “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60).
•  To become rich, you have to give up everything.  If you want to be perfect, go, “sell your possessions and give to the poor.”  You will have “treasures in heaven.” The come, follow me (Luke 2:33)
•  To get what you want, you have to abandon desires.  “Whoever want to be my disciple must deny himself and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

We go on a journey because he tells us to go – to leave.  In physically leaving, we discover spiritual possibilities.  Jesus spent three years leaving places, leaving people before finally leaving life itself.  To know Jesus, you have to learn how to leave.  In the end, the leaving is the finding.  You abandon your earthly treasure; you receive a treasure in heaven. You abandon your father and your mother; you get the family of God. You abandon your life, and like a seed that dies and grows a hundred time its size, you find new abundant life.

You know how I love adventure, so I have asked God to give me wisdom and discernment, and what this means to me and why he woke me to see this – this morning.  

Just thought I would share…. thanks for listening…. I am excited to read “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey always said.