Point of No Return

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

Very often, when we agree to follow Jesus, what we mean is "Lord, I'll go wherever it's easiest for me to go." There's nothing wrong with walking through open doors, or recognizing when one is closed. I use that philosophy myself -but it is a philosophy, which is only worth so much.

We need to remember that Jesus said "I am the door." He also said that few would enter. Why is that? I submit that not every door opens easily, even those which should be opened. This is the same Jesus who said that the "Gates of Hell will not prevail" against the Church. If ever there was a door that Jesus should open for us, it's that one. Yet, is it opening easily? Is the Church effortlessly storming the Gates of Hell and putting the adversary on the defensive?

A friend and dear brother of mine today was asking how Lebanon related to the "10/40 window". It's a keyhole, a doorway into that forbidden land. An entire region of the earth is in bondage to Satan, and the door is not yet open.

This door is blocked to missionaries by many things. There are armed militias, border skirmishes with Israel, Shiite Muslim and Palestinian militants, complacency and cultural identity among the Christian minority. There's the cost of doing missions there, cultural differences, and the language barrier between English and اللغة العربية .

Yet, Jesus is knocking at that door. He is calling his Church to storm that gate. It will not stand against us if we storm it. Would the walls of Jericho have fallen if Israel had stayed in the camps and blew their horns? Why do we assume that the 10/40 window will open if we call loudly for it to do so? Let's go there and knock the gate down.


He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

We spend tremendous amounts of time and energy trying to bring life to dying Churches here in the US. This is a waste of time and energy.

I spent a year as the interim Pastor of a totally dead Church. They didn't even want to live, and resented any attempt to bring life to the Church. They would talk about how nice it would be if the Church grew, but apparently thought it could do that without any outsiders coming in with their newfangled ideas.

Church planting is so effective at reaching the lost because it puts that energy and time to better use. Instead of holding meetings to decide whether the WMU or the Brotherhood budget will pay for toilet paper for the mission fair, they're actually ministering to a needy community.


Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.”

Jesus replied, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

There's a point we reach where there is no turning back. When God calls us and we follow his calling, we have to put away anything that hinders us or holds us back.

We had the final appraisal done on our farm this week. It's going to be on the market next week, God willing. Our children have never known another home. They've spent their lives running around carefree in the woods. We have a beautiful home, with a view from our back deck that belongs in Gatlinburg. Over the years we've acquired a lot of comforts-a commercial cooler, double ovens, jacuzzi -that we w0n't have in an apartment in Beirut. Kim and I will miss them no doubt.

We can't look back. People who look back are halfway to turning around and staying. There's a point of no return for each of us when we serve the kingdom of God. It's frightening -and yet very exciting- to find one.