Wheresoever You Are — Follow Me

✦ Deep Peace on the Road

Ten days with Kempis — and the teaching has become the road. Wheresoever you are, you are a stranger and a pilgrim. Caldas da Rainha. Pinhel. Dax. And now Agen — the motorhome moving northeast through the Garonne valley, the landscape of France opening around the pilgrim who carries no continuing city. And the testimony is not theory: deep peace. Not the absence of uncertainty. Not the clarity of a finished plan. Peace. The compass confirms: the direction is right.

Put your whole trust in God and let Him be your fear and your love. Whole trust. Not partial. Not mostly. Whole. And the promise that follows: He will answer for you Himself, and will do for you what is best. The soul does not need to defend herself. The soul does not need to argue her case. He will answer for you Himself. The God who sent a buyer to an unlisted apartment will do the rest.

You shall never have rest unless you are closely united to Christ within you. Not united to the country. Not united to the plan. Not united to the outcome. United to Christ within. The rest is inside — carried wherever the Benimar goes, available wherever the morning finds you. Agen today. Somewhere else tomorrow. The address changes. The union does not. 🙏

✦ Mind Only the Present Duty

Make no great account who is for you or against you. The opinions of others — who approves the move, who questions it, who understands it, who does not — these are not the measure. Kempis sweeps them aside in a single sentence. Mind only the present duty. The present duty today is the road. The present duty this morning was the open Bible. The present duty right now is the next mile.

Have a good conscience and God will defend you. The good conscience — Kempis has returned to it again and again across ten days. It is not the perfect conscience. It is not the sinless conscience. It is the conscience that has done what it knows to do — honestly, humbly, before God. And that conscience does not need to defend itself. God will defend it.

He knows we don't like standing still. He does. He made two pilgrims who spent thirty years in corporate Dallas and then crossed an ocean. He made a soul who rises before dawn because standing still before God is the only standing still she loves. The God who knows that about you is the God who sent the buyer to the door. He knows the character and circumstances. He ordereth all things for the welfare of His elect. And He set the road before you — because He knew you would walk it. 🙏

✦ The Beauty That Can Confuse

One sentence from Kempis — and it is enough. To God it belongeth to help and to deliver from all confusion. The deliverance from confusion is not the soul's responsibility. It belongs to God. The soul's responsibility is to ask for it — and to recognize that the confusion is a danger, not a virtue.

And the honesty of the heart on the road: we are in one of the greatest cultures of the world. France. The beauty. The food. The history. The landscape. The villages that look like paintings. Easy to make rash decisions. Easy to fall in love with a place before consulting the compass. Easy to be swept by the eyes instead of led by the Spirit. The beauty can confuse — not because beauty is wrong, but because beauty is powerful, and powerful things can rush the soul past wisdom if she is not watchful.

The compass is peace — and peace is not excitement. Peace is not the thrill of the new. Peace is the quiet confirmation that arrives after the impulse settles. To God it belongeth to deliver from all confusion. Ask Him. Wait. Let the confusion clear. The rash decision is the one made before the peace arrives. The good decision is the one made after. 🙏

✦ What Is That to You

After ten days of Kempis — stripping away the pride of knowledge, the curiosity about the future, the need to know — Lewis arrives with four syllables. Follow Me.

Peter wanted to know what would happen to John. He had just been told how he himself would die — and his first question was not about himself but about the other disciple: Lord, what about this man? And Jesus said: what is that to you? Follow Me. John 21:22. The question is not about the other person. The question is not about the future. The question is not about the unanswered mysteries of the faith. The question is: will you follow?

Lewis — one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century, a man who spent his life answering the hardest questions about Christianity — confesses that some questions may never be answered. Even in a better world. And he is at peace with that. Because the answer to the unanswered question is not information. It is obedience. It is trust. It is the two words that contain everything the soul needs to know: Follow Me.

Kempis said: do now what you would do then, and you shall be very secure. Lewis says: follow Me — and the rest is not your concern. The monk from 1379 and the Oxford don from 1963 — the same word. Stop asking. Start following. The road through France does not need a map to the end. It needs the next step. And the next step is always the same: Follow Me. 🙏