Success

How do I measure success? This question continues to haunt me even though I continue to grow more strongly in the conviction that faithful living in small things prepares a person to be faithful with larger responsibilities in the kingdom of God. When I look back on the rest of this year, how do I know that I have been successful in seeking first the kingdom of God? This is the one thing that I have defined as a goal for my life: to know God and to see His kingdom prosper here on earth.

If conventional wisdom is correct, I should be able to break this goal down into several smaller, achievable pieces that I can pursue one at a time. However, this is something like trying to manipulate a relationship using scientific principles. It just doesn’t work. The only way that I can accomplish my goal is by developing my relationship with God through everything that I do: prayer, work, Bible study, hanging out, eating. But how does one measure these things?

If it were in quantity of time spent in one or the other, it would be easy to determine success or failure. If it is the quality of each aspect that determines its effectiveness, the measurement becomes much more difficult. I would argue that the second, not the first, is the only real way to measure the growth of a relationship. Do I want to spend time in prayer? Why did I read my Bible today? What was the goal of my conversation with a friend? Was I eating in a way that God was glorified?

To stop and ask all these questions throughout the day would be not only joyless, but absolutely overwhelming. If I measure success by perfection, I will be sorely disappointed.

Thus, I tentatively conclude that two years from now I will view the intervening investment of my life as a success if at that point in time I can say with confidence that Christ is all I need, if I am living in a way that demonstrates a faith in what is unseen, and if I am loving in a way that defies human nature. Essentially, I am successful if God continues “to will and to do of His good pleasure” drawing me to Himself.

Since pursuing God is not something I initiate, but something I respond to, my responsibility for success rests largely outside my control. It is somewhere in that tricky combination of “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.”

My long-term success then, is not based on my careful planning, or on what I achieve financially, educationally, or even relationally. Instead, it is based on faithfulness to what I know to be true in the little things. Do not despise small things, for the kingdom of God is made up of the least of these.

Such a perspective provides an excellent counterbalance to the strongly-argued position that believers need to invest their talents wisely. Take a long-term view of how they can best prepare to serve the kingdom of God. But who knows how many years or minutes of life they have left. What if one’s entire  life is spent in preparation for a moment that never comes? What if it is not careful planning and perfect execution that provides one with wealth or power?

Ah, but here the dirty secret is revealed. For although I understand where my success truly lies, my heart would still have me pursue a faulty measurement of success through wealth or power. God, however, is not limited by my bank account, title, or connections. He only limits himself to the respect that I wish to assume His position.

While I intended to discover that there is a place for careful planning and foresight into the future, I believe this short journal has exposed my motives for pursuing such a conclusion. My long-term plans are still enslaved to the pursuit of wealth and power. Until my long-term purpose becomes nothing more than knowing Christ, long-term planning has the potential to throw me off course in my pursuit of the successful life. 

Real Joy

Last Saturday I showed up for a church service where there was a visiting speaker who has been a missionary overseas for years. He spent the entire sermon in a prayer for the congregation. It was a prayer for blessing through poverty, through suffering, through hunger, through unanswered prayers, and even through death. If we want to live like Jesus did, he said, we need to expect all of these things.

As I sat there listening, I realized how easy it was to pray that blessing over someone else, but how scary it was to admit that he was praying for me. Do I actually want to know God so badly that I am willing to give up having food to eat on a regular basis, a place to stay, a nice car, a job, my reputation, or even my life? Having to respond to these questions honestly, I found myself saying no. I am ready to give up the good things of life for Jesus, but I am not ready to embrace the difficult things of life for Him. I am scared of pain and suffering. I don’t know what to do about it. But I pray that God will show me more of who He is so that anything I might go through becomes insignificant compared to knowing Him.

I think this was one of the first times I sat through a message that so severely convicted me that I wanted to change and did not feel like I was a bad Christian. What I learned in Colorado has stayed with me. I will never be perfect and Jesus loves me exactly as I am. In fact, my focus was so drawn back to Jesus that I understood these ‘difficulties’ to be ‘blessings’ that I may not be prepared for now. It seems that truly following Jesus is a pretty radical and scary thing. I understand something of why the disciples had such difficulty being good followers of Jesus.

After the service I was so refreshed through prayer and worship that I want to meet with that church again. Leaving the building though, I began to feel a pressure inside that I could not understand. I wanted to shout. I wanted to run. I wanted to so something to express what I was feeling but did not know what it was. I was entirely discontent with reading, with praying, driving, thinking, or anything. I needed to share the love of God that I felt with someone.

In Acts 2, the disciples waited to be filled with the Holy Spirit and immediately thereafter were out in the streets proclaiming the work of God in a supernatural way. When they were filled with the Holy Spirit, their reaction was to share it with someone else. When I became filled up with the Holy Spirit, I wanted to burst because I had to find a way to share it with someone else. It was only through a conversation with another believer that I ‘let off some steam.’

Next time I want to be prepared for the power of God to overwhelm me by having some outlet to share His goodness with another person.

I began to understand the idea that God fills us up as we pour ourselves out last fall when I began to pray for other people and realized that God filled me up with love and joy as I shared it with others. Now, I wonder at my cupidity in requesting the power of God for my own enjoyment and marvel at the fact that He so often fills me fuller even when I am already satisfied. I think He is trying to get me to spill over into the lives of people around me so that they can know the joy that I have found.

Grace

For the past two and a half weeks, I have found very little time to pray and even less time to reflect. But as time goes by between the moments I still spend with God, I find my attention slipping onto things that do not matter and even into religious ritual that I hope will jump-start the engine of self-motivated, successful Christian living. I begin to forget that my identity is not found in what I have or what I do, but in the love that God has for me. I forget that I am not the one who I depend on for life, for food, and for a car to drive. I forget that my relationship with God can be so much more than simply praying, acting in a certain way, or knowing certain things.

I recognize what is happening as a slip into a world that looks less and less like the kingdom of God and more like my pride, but I am too busy in pursuit of what I want to take more than a token step back in the right direction. I am learning that not only am I unable to follow God without His grace, but apart from His work, I do not even want to try.

The evil that is inside me would draw me further and further into myself, the busyness of my world, and the hollow joys of my success. Even the love that I would show to others becomes a meaningless action when I am in such a condition. 


Then like Peter who lost his focus on Jesus while walking on the water, I notice the waves around me and begin to sink. My only hope is that the Son of God will once again reach out His arm to pull me back to Him.

That is grace!

Faith and Action

[an excerpt from 'the journey] 

I find myself in some regard, caught between two extremes.  There is a reason why I really liked what the church I visited in Denver was doing back in summer 2010. It makes sense and can really be boiled down into the idea of serving people. Being plugged into a community to make a difference does seem to be the call of the church – the church, which is made up of individuals. It also leads to discipleship and transformation of people’s lives. All this is good, but the question remains, who does it?

Any group can do what that church is doing for the sake of ‘the cause.’ In their case, ‘the cause’ is the gospel and one worth fighting for. They are obviously seeking God’s help, spending time in the Bible, and praying, but when it comes to who receives the praise for what is happening, it seems the answer is the system, the church structure, the philosophy of life. The answer I expected to hear was God’s work in my life and the lives of others. Here’s my problem, God uses people to do His work, but we are talking about miracles and lives transformed. This is something people can’t do.

In contrast, I believe that my philosophy may be one in which I try to do nothing and let God do all the work. I believe that even if I didn’t accomplish anything great, but simply enjoyed time in His presence that He would use me to do work in people’s lives. My focus is on Him only and whatever work He does through me is simply a blessing and a way for me to know Him more fully. This does not preclude me from work, but directs me from a different aspect toward what should be the same results. If God’s heart truly is revealed in the scripture, then as He aligns mine with His, I will be reaching out and serving my community in a way that looks very similar to what happens here.

In conversations last night, I encountered once again, the split vision that I have of what it means to be a Christian. On the one hand, you have a lifestyle, a community, and a way of living that is set out in the Bible. In order to live this effectively, God must work, and believers must ask for help. On the other hand you have a lifestyle, a community, and a way of life that is instilled in one’s heart through prayer. In order to be effective, a person must check his growth against the Bible, but nothing can happen if God doesn’t do it. The end of the first is accomplishing something for the kingdom of God. The end of the second knows God.

Jesus described this difference in a parable about sheep and goats that is incredibly scary. In the parable, Jesus told the goats who had worked all sorts of signs and wonders in His name, ‘I never knew you.’ The sheep who had served other people were welcomed into His joy. Notice a fine line appearing between doing things in Jesus’ name, and doing things for others. Between serving the action, and serving the person. 

To put this question personally to myself, I wonder if I am continuing to hide behind a shroud of religiousness in order to avoid doing the work that God has called me to. I know my faith is strong, but I don’t believe this means God always fights all my battles for me. Sometimes, I have to struggle through.

I think I will find as I continue to study this, that both paths can lead to legalism and are actually much more similar than I might have imagined. Action requires prayer. Effective prayer leads to action. Faith without works is dead. Works without love are worthless.