The Way Of The Quiet Sandal

The more intimate I become with Christ, the more I realize the horrifying reality that He is not in many of our churches. Leonard Ravenhill said of the text at Revelation 3:20, when the Lord says to the lukewarm Laodicean church, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock," that it has nothing to do with sinners and a waiting Savior.  But that it is the tragic picture of our Lord at the door of His own lukewarm church trying to get in.

I see many big, happy, shiny, busy churches, but I see no Christ in them.  Not the real Christ.  I see a lot of self-promotion disguised as gospel promotion.  I see the Americanized version of Christ that just wants us to be happy and blessed, but not Jesus from Nazareth Who teaches us the way of the quiet sandal.  I don't see the Jesus of the Bible-- the One Who isn't calling us to be great, but rather Who is calling us to be nothing.  I don't see the real Jesus Who said to gain life, you must lose it (Mark 8:35).  I don't see a lot of people saying, "I want to be great in You, but not with a heart that longs for greatness, but with a heart that longs for You."  I don't see a lot of people saying, "Let my greatness be in humility, love, obedience, truth, discernment, and wisdom."

What if God isn't calling you to be great?  What if He is calling you to quietly serve Him in obscurity?  What if He is calling you to be faithful in the mundane?  What if God isn't calling you to build that mega-church or gain that huge following?  What if God's blessing on your life isn't that perfect career?  What if God's blessing on your life doesn't look like what the Laodicean church says it should look like?  What if God's blessing on your life looks like being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life so that He can show His power in you and through you?  What if God's blessing on your life is for you to endure the despair and unknowns of having a young daughter with an inoperable brain tumor so He can show His faithfulness and provision through you?  Because I know people whose blessings look like that.

What if God's desire for you isn't to be happy but to be holy?  Because I can tell you, the real God of the Bible will always forfeit your happiness if it threatens your holiness.  He will not rip our idols from our hands, but He will burn them away with the holy fire of His presence.  John the Baptist cried out to the masses that Christ "will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Matt 3:11; Luke 3:16).  Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were kindled already!" (luke 12:49).  How I wish this fire would be cast into our churches, to burn away all that is not of the real Jesus.  To burn away all our empty blessings and selfish pursuits and replace them with the want to be made holy.

To have deep, genuine intimacy with Christ, you must know loss.  He said so.  Jesus said we must lose to gain (Mark 8:35).  That is what carrying your cross means.  The cross was not yet a symbol of hope and salvation when He preached, "anyone who does not take up their cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me" (Matt 10:38).  When Jesus said that to people during His ministry, they understood the cross to be a symbol of torment and death.  At that time, the cross was the symbol of ultimate loss--  loss of self, loss of dignity, loss of status, loss of comfort, loss of life.  Those who died by crucifixion were considered cursed by the world-- a world that cannot comprehend a God Who can turn a curse into a blessing.

What Jesus was telling them was that to have deep fellowship with Him, there must be death.  Jesus was telling us that to truly gain intimate knowledge of Him, we must know loneliness, rejection, and loss.  Paul says that we are heirs with Christ, "if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory" (Rom 8:17).  What Paul tells us here is that to share in Christ's glory, we must first share in His sufferings.

When you take up your cross to follow the real Jesus of the Bible, you must walk the way of the quiet sandal.  You must tread the lonely desert.  You must climb the jagged mountain and sit atop in silence.  You must embrace the position in which you must get the answer from God, and God alone.  You must become completely unsatisfied with the things of this world, so that you can find your only fulfillment in the things of heaven.  You must lose your life in this world, so that you can find it in Christ-- you must die to self so that you can live for Him.  The way of the quiet sandal leads only to the door of the furnace, it has no other destination.  And when you get to that door, you must close your eyes, lift up your head, and step into the furnace as you say in your heart, "You are my God.  I believe that You can save me from this blazing torment.  And even if you do not, You are still my God."

"If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from Your Majesty's hand. But even if He does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:17,18)

"I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, so that I may somehow attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil 3:10,11)

"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always consigned to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal bodies." (2 Cor 4:10,11)

"But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." (Luke 5:16)

"After He had dismissed them, He went up on a mountainside by Himself to pray. Later that night, He was there alone." (Matt 14:23)

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed." (Mark 1:35)