...The Reason We Live

The other breakthrough was equally a gift, a revelation. All at once God revealed my life purpose to me. I had an unmistakable and growing sense of a calling of God on my life. All at once verses seemed to be leaping out of the Scriptures to teach me that God was calling me to do something.

Now, it's not like I had never heard of being called before. I had often said, "I'm called to missions." But down at the root of it, it was nothing more than a regurgitation of the proper-sounding phrasing. Deep below all the layers of Christianese, I had to admit that I had practically called myself to missions. It was what I wanted to do, and while I don't doubt the Lord's role in giving me a heart for missions, I took the bit in my teeth and ran off without consulting God, assuming that he MUST accept that as my life calling. Wasn't that rare? Wasn't that admirable? Didn't he have few enough people signing up for the foreign field?

It was verses like Galatians 1:15-16 that pulled me up short.

But when it pleased God,
who separated me from my mother's womb,
and called me by his grace,
to reveal his Son in me,
that I might preach him among the heathen;
immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.

I thought, "Wow, God will do this WHEN IT PLEASES HIM." It was a paradigm-shifting thought, one that also revealed how wrong my view of God had been. I had been treating him like my tool--I was using His blessing to get where I hoped to go--when all along I was really supposed to be His tool, one that He could pick up and use or lay aside, at His pleasure.

When Ananias came to Paul, he said to him, "The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard" (Acts 22:14-15). Paul later said that Christ "counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry" (1 Tim 1:12). He further stated, "But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts" (1 Th 2:4).

God said to Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jer. 1:5)

The Holy Ghost said to the early church, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." (Acts 13:2)

But it was Isaiah's words that hit me the hardest and the most personally. "Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me; and said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. [...] And now, saith the LORD that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the LORD, and my God shall be my strength. And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." (Is. 49:1-3, 5-6)

God called me. He showed me that He had a purpose for me. And He even showed me what that purpose was. It was something so simple, so plain-sounding when you put it into words, so elementary. But at the same time, it was so profound, and struck so sharply at the root of who I was, and where I was, that it took it a year to sink in and become a part of my life.

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To Love Our God...

The two breakthroughs both developed simultaneously and were somewhat linked to each other, so I can't say which happened first or if one caused the other. Instead, both were causes and stimulants for what followed after.

One of these breakthroughs was a gift of love. Jesus revealed Himself to me in such a mighty, intimate, tender, breathtaking way that I fell in love with Him. Of course, I had always loved Jesus in a childish, "Jesus loves me" way. But now, I fell IN LOVE with Him, complete with stomach jiggles and a sparkle in my eye and heavy, pulsing breathing and an intense desire to be with Him, contemplate Him, and know Him more. (If you scroll through my xanga archives, you can see a post expressing this, though it was written months after this first happened. I kept half-expecting the emotions would fade and the strong feelings would go away, but they did nothing but increase.)

This pure, fervent, strong love stole upon my heart and captured me. I cannot describe it as anything other than a gift, because it was all initiated by Him. He courted me and won my heart as no earthly lover has ever done with a mortal maiden, and I was pleased to discover myself vanquished by such an inimitable Treasure.

It was especially precious because I had just walked away from a human love that God asked me to give up for His sake. How it hurt to give up that person no one can know who has not walked through the same thing. How long it hurt, too, and how often the wound opened freshly upon some remembrance, some contact, some association--I was not prepared for, though I endeavored to keep all this well concealed.

Thus it was that, loving Jesus, I began to feel that it had indeed been worthwhile and needful for me to follow God in surrender to not go right back to the mission field. If I had missed this--oh, that would be unthinkable.

And the Master Professor smiled as He saw His pupil beginning to learn and understand His ways.

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Pursuit of God

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2

“O God, thou art my God: early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.” Psalm 63:1

“My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” Psalm 84:2

At the beginning of my return from Spain, one thing was very clear. I was not to "push" my way forward or manipulate circumstances so that I could go back as soon as possible. Indeed, I felt quite forbidden to even go on mission trips. God closed the door to one fun-sounding mission opportunity after another, from accompanying my sister to Mexico to visiting the Philippines with our church to going to Nepal with a Nepalese friend of mine who invited me to go with her for a month. It was SO hard to turn down all these things and say, "I'm not going," not only because I really wanted to go, but also because no one would understand it. They would think I was losing my heart for missions or something. How could they see that I was flying in the face of my own desire?

All I knew was that the door to go back was closed for now. I realized God had other things in mind that were more important to work on. It was not pursuit of a life-calling to missions, it was something else. God had the answer, and in pursuing Him, all would eventually become clear. Clinging to all the light I had, I started a Word document called "Pursuit of God."

I wrote the first entry in the car on the 6-hour drive home from the airport. It said,

I have several goals for this new period of my life. First, I hope to become supremely obedient to God. I want obedience to be a priority, where I don’t delay, I don’t question, and I don’t try to get out of doing what I know God wants me to do. I have been failing in this area too much lately, and I see my heart as very hard and unpliable and unyielded to God’s will.

Second, in looking at my life right now, I see that there really isn’t anything worthwhile that I’m really good at. Sure I have skills…sure I’m good at things, but in terms of an overarching skill that defines me, that I can say, “I do this, and I’ve studied it, and I know how to do it, and I’m really good at it,” I can’t point to anything. Look at my degree—I majored in communications, yet I don’t know that I could get a job at a newspaper and be a reporter (or get into any field in communications, for that matter). If there was one thing I wish I could say I was really good at, it would be leading people to Christ. I want to excel in it. I want to become experienced, an expert, a fisher of men. I want to study it, pursue it, and become very, very good at it, so that after I die, people will look back at my life and say, “You know, there was one main thing about Rebekah: she was always leading people to Christ, and she was good at it, too.”

To do that, it brings me to the third goal: I want to pray. I want to pray, not just wimpy prayers, but mighty, faith-filled prayers that connect with God. I want to pray, not just short prayers, but be able to spend hours on my knees with God. I want to pray, not once in a while when I think about it, but every day, as a matter of habit and discipline. I want to pray, not just to see my needs met and my requests answered, but to draw closer to God and communicate with him and learn His heart. I want to pray, not starting off well for a month and then slacking off, but continuing faithful in prayer as something that will characterize the rest of my life.

God is saying, “Get more of me! Want more of me! Fight for more of me! There is SO much more to me! Pursue me! Desire me! Push through obstacles to get to me!”

I didn't know it at the time, but two key breakthroughs were to appear in the coming months.

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Tutored Under the Master Professor

Where I was, where He led me, and perhaps an inkling of where I'm going.

Part 1. Following the Lamb wherever He leads

It all started back when God did the unthinkable. I had just returned from Spain, excited to go back and throw my life into God's service there, and He shut the door.

"I want you to die to your desire to go to the mission field," He said.

"What?" I responded, taken aback. "You can't mean that."

"Yes. In fact, I want you to move back home, be there for your brothers and sisters, and work so that you can contribute to providing for the needs of the family."

"I can't believe you would do this to me, God," I protested. "When your word says the laborers are few, and I'm over here waving my hand in the air, saying, 'Pick me! Pick me!'---what's up with that, Lord?"

"Nevertheless, I'm asking you to give that up. Will you place it in my hands, trust me with it, and die even to this?"

I gulped. Being a missionary was the only thing I had ever wanted to do. And working, being Miss Career Woman, was the last thing I ever wanted to do. How could God take my most precious, most treasured desire and say, "Thanks, but no thanks"? It made no sense.

God reminded me that I claimed I would die for the cause of Christ. "If you are you willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for my sake, then shouldn't you be willing to make a much smaller one?" And with this and many other persuasions, He gently led me to the place where I was willing to sacrifice even this. With tears, I laid it on the altar where it could be consumed by God's holy flame. I released it.

Thus it was that I found myself, in the summer of 2008, a college graduate in my 20s, still living in my parents' house, teaching three piano students, and feeling like the whole world would look on my life as a sad waste of potential.

Far from it... God had many things in mind, which I had yet to discover.


This is the first post in this series.
Next Post: Pursuit of God

The Most Productive Day Of My Life

Unsurpassed as of 7/7/13. I did all this in one day.

• Made breakfast
• Took the dogs out, fed them, etc.
• Planted two rows of corn
• Memorized 2 Corinthians 5:1-3
• Spent a couple of hours online
• Made a pot of chai tea
• Talked to Rosie on the phone quite a long time
• Practiced piano and memorized first three pages of Brahms’s Rhapsody, something I have not been able to do with any piece for a long time, yet the memorization was almost effortless today.
• Cleaned the bathtub, shower curtain, bathroom sink, & mirror
• Went through the hall closet, found receipt book, organized stuff in boxes & put them all back neatly, put all the coats back (they had been in James’ room for 2 weeks)
• Vacuumed living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, & laundry room
• Went through boxes in the attic, got out summer clothes, put back winter clothes
• Organized my closet, put winter shoes in boxes, got out summer shoes
• Returned to attic all odds & ends (like the embossing heat tool for stamping) that belonged there
• Took care of all the piles of paper sitting around in my room
• Got my top mirror dresser drawer cleaned out (***YAY!***) from all the junk it had accumulated over about 2 years
• Dusted top of bookshelves & re-did it with my Spain towel on top
• Organized music books from 3 different locations into one neat spot with bookends
• Read a chapter of Created to Be His Help Meet
• Emailed Rosie about 30 pictures of recent things we have been doing
• Picked grass and pet our neighbor’s horses
• Made dinner
• Took care of dogs
• Fed fish

Stubborn, Stupid, and Crazy me

On Saturday I got up with a plan: I wanted to climb a mountain here in the Malaga area that I had read about on the internet.



MOST people, to get to the top, ride a Teleferry.



Slight hitch: The teleferry is closed from Jan 1-Feb 15. But no worries!

If I couldn't go up the teleferry, I could go up the trail. I have two good sturdy legs that could carry me. Sure, it would take more than the 15 minutes for the teleferry ride, but hey...it was going to be worth the effort!

Slight hitch: I didn't know exactly where it was, and I couldn't get anyone to go with me. But no worries!

After getting onto the wrong bus, changing to a train, and finally getting to the right town, I got off, full of anticipation.

Slight hitch: It was already 5:00 pm. But no worries!

After asking a lot of people and walking a long, long way, I finally made it to the trail. I started ascending, enjoying myself immensely.



Slight hitch: I got onto what looked like a trail and wasn't. Before I knew it, I found myself in the middle of nowhere. But no worries!

Where I lost the trail:


Looking up:


I was picking my way through unforgivably prickly bushes, climbing straight up what must have been the steepest side of the mountain. "But I think I can make it up this way," I thought to myself. So, breathing heavily, with my heart beating in my ears, resting every 3 steps, I started making it up that way.

Slight hitch: There were cactuses and thistles everywhere. But no worries!



I just wouldn't use my hands to help me climb. So there.

Slight hitch: There were unsettlingly large animal tracks about, and unexplained rustlings of the bushes in various parts. But no worries!



I kept seeing what I thought would be a path just a little above me, but when I would get there, I would find out that it wasn't. I finally made it to a patch of stones. I had seen it from below before losing the trail, and it was because of this that I thought there would be a trail farther up.



I started climbing up the stones, grateful to be free from the bushes.

Slight hitch: The stones were small and loose, and for every step I advanced, I slid back half a step. But no worries!

The stones ended, the bushes surrounded me again, and huffing and puffing and with great effort, I made it to the top.

Slight hitch: A man dressed in black with his arms crossed was standing in the middle of the path to the top. But no worries!

He was a security guard. He launched into a lecture in Spanish on how I shouldn't have come up that way, looked at me, saw that I was a foreigner, and started trying to speak German with me. I replied in Spanish that I spoke Spanish or English. "Oh, you speak a little Spanish?" he said (in Spanish). Then he began to talk to me in very simplified Spanish, roughly translated thus: "Do you know the word DOG? Woof woof, bow wow, Grrrr," he said. "Yes," I replied. He continued, "Four (One-two-three-four) DOGS. Big. Grrrr. Dogs catch you. Head--off. Face--off. Arm--off. You--hurt. Me--can do nothing." I smiled and apologized as profusely as I could in my best Spanish for having come up that way, and explained that I had lost my way and gotten onto something that I thought was a trail but wasn't. "You--I think--Crazy," he said, shaking his head. "Well... is it closed?" I asked. "Can I at least go up to the outlook spot and look around?" "All right. I guess you can go up and take a look," he replied, in normal Spanish this time. "But don't be long."

No one else was up there, and I went up for a look. The view was SPECTACULAR! The day was so clear, I could see the coast of Africa across the Mediterranean, Gibraltar, and the Sierra Nevada mountains in the other direction.



Slight hitch: The sun was already setting. But no worries!



I went back and asked the security guard how to get down on the correct trail. He pointed to a narrow, winding road that started off in the opposite direction and wound around a long, long way. "That way," he said. "It's very long. I have no idea how many kilometers. You would have to walk a long way. It would be better to use a car." (You can see a bit of this road in the above picture at the left.)

Slight hitch: I didn't have a car. But no worries!

However, there was a wide tire-track dirt path that led straight towards where I wanted to go. "And how about this way?" I asked. "Well, you can go that way, too," he said. "But it's more dangerous." "Dangerous in what way? Danger of falling? Danger of thieves? Danger of animals?" I inquired. "Yeah, danger of animals and of stepping wrong and twisting your ankle," he replied. "Well, I'm not afraid of those things," I said. I thanked him and headed off on the more direct route, already slightly concerned about losing my daylight and preferring to get down quickly and go home as soon as possible on the train.

As soon as I was out of his sight, I started going as quickly as I could, running at times, speedwalking at others, thinking, "Hey, it's downhill from here!" However, at every switchback, the trail got narrower. I was a little concerned at this, but kept going. The trail kept getting narrower. Once I thought it had disappeared completely, but I backtracked and found it again.

Then I got to a place where I could not go any farther. The trail, which had been just a faint dirt track, finally dwindled away completely and I was left standing on the top of a cliff with no way to get down. Perhaps I could have made a rock-climbing expedition out of it if there had been enough light, but there wasn't. So that's what he meant by twisting my ankle.

Where I found myself (approximately)


I was left with no other option but to climb all the way back up to the top (which was quite a ways) and descend by the long road the security guard had showed me.

It was already getting dark by that time.


By the time I got back to the top, it was darker.


I snuck past the security guard without him seeing me (he was in the building with the radio on loud), snuck past his dog without it barking, and started down the long road, accompanied by a thin sliver of a crescent moon. Three cars passed me. I made it safely back to the train station and got home about 10pm, tired, thirsty, and satisfied. HAPPY ENDING!!! Yay!!!

Morocco Trip: Train to Rabat

At midnight last night, I have officially been here for a week! I’ve done so much, it’s amazing. It feels like longer than a week.

I had to teach school in the morning, so I ate a yummy breakfast of cherries and then caught a taxi. I told the driver where the subdivision was, what it was called, what road to take, and showed him on the map, but he didn’t really know where it was, and I was fuzzy on how to get to the school once I got into the neighborhood. We did get to the general vicinity, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to the school, because it is sort of hidden down a side street in the middle of a bunch of newly-constructed buildings that look almost identical. I was thinking that I could do it, but I couldn’t, so I just got out of the taxi once I got as close as I could, paid the driver, went to a teleboutique, and called Mr. B. The person working there was a woman, which was unusual, but nice for me, and she gave directions of where we were to Mr. B's secretary.

He came to pick me up, and while I waited, I sat with the woman and showed her pictures of my family. (That photo album I put together before this trip has been great! I’ve showed it to just about every person I’ve met, and it’s a great conversation starter.) She didn’t speak a word of any language besides Arabic, and I didn’t speak Arabic, so we tried to talk to each other without too much success. However, when Mr. B got there, she gave me a big hug goodbye and the Moroccan kisses on the cheeks, and I felt like I had made a friend.

My time at the school was not that great. I taught from 10:30to 11:45 and basically let the kids walk all over me. It was not good. (We were playing mafia and looking at pictures on my computer.) I left feeling blah. It was a waste of my time and theirs to cater to their whims that way. L I guess I learned about what NOT to do. These aren’t Verity kids.

When I got home, I had to pack, and Marie and I left for the train station at about 2:00. We walked the mile or so to get there, with Marie carrying a backpack and me pulling my small carry-on suitcase. If wheels could talk, these wheels sure could tell you a story! They’ve been to China, the Dominican Republic, all over America, and now, here they were, bumping over the dusty Moroccan streets and sidewalks.

We met Adair at the train station, bought our tickets to Rabat, and departed at 3:00. We had bought first class tickets in order to be assured of getting a seat, which I guess can be a problem, plus, the air conditioning is supposed to work better in first class. However, it wasn’t working at all in our compartment, and we were all stifling hot. (That was the first time I had actually felt uncomfortably hot.) Finally I walked down the train and into a different car. I found a compartment that was completely empty, and the A/C worked, so we all moved. It was over 100 degrees that day, the sun was beating down on the train, and no air was moving inside, so the A/C helped a lot.

We arrived in Rabat around 6:15 and met up with F and her 3 friends. We went to their friend’s house and sat around for a while. We looked for a soccer game to watch on TV, but we couldn’t find one, despite her’s 5 satellite dishes with about 400 channels each. Then we found out that the game we wanted to watch was not until tomorrow.

For dinner, we went to an Assyrian restaurant. The falafel was the best I had ever had, and the pita and hummus were delicious. But the most fascinating, interesting, intriguing part was the smoking. They have these huge smoking pipes (about 1 ½ inches in diameter) that are connected to a pot on a stand that burns little coals. The tubes collect the smoke, and the people suck it in through a silver mouthpiece. Then they exhale a huge cloud of smoke. Needless to say, none of our group tried that.

I didn’t get any pictures, because I had accidentally left the memory stick for my camera back at our apartment in Fez. That was stupid.

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