Purpose

Ambitious for Him

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Ambition is often celebrated in our world.

We applaud the man or woman who had a dream and wouldn’t let anything stop them from achieving it.

We celebrate the athlete who pushed through obstacles in order to reach the pinnacle of their sport.

We read biographies of military leaders who overcame the odds to win decisive battles.

And we admire the entrepreneurs who built mammoth enterprises from seemingly nothing more than pure ingenuity and hard work.

We celebrate ambition because we long to accomplish similar feats. We want to be great; we want to matter. At the end of the day, we want our life to be significant – not only for who we are but for what we achieved.

The Christian, however, must have a different take on ambition. Their ambition shouldn’t be that they would be acclaimed but that Christ would be. Our focus shouldn’t be on making ourselves look good, but ensuring that He does. Our lives should echo the words of John the Baptist – “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30).

Most of the time we know this. We are well aware of the fact that our lives should be about God’s glory and not our own. Far too often, however, we fail to live it out. We let our own concerns and our own priorities cloud our perspective. We let our fears drive us to worry rather than trust in His provision. Our insecurities prompt us to fight for “what is ours” rather than giving it al to Him.

Our words say we want to live for God but our lives tell a different story. As one speaker recently shared, if we want to see what is important to someone you just need to look at three things – their calendar, their checkbook, and their conversation. As we ponder each of these things can we honestly say that we are living lives that our fully ambitious for Christ? Are we managing our time well in order to invest in the things that will have eternal significance? Are we driven towards good stewardship so that we are taken care of or so that God may use these resources to further His Kingdom? Is our conversation “seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:6) so that it both preserve and protects for the sake of His renown?

Christians should be ambitious, but we should be selflessly so. Our ambition, our drive and our efforts should be focused on bringing our Savior praise and increasing knowledge and love of Him. May this be what propels us. May our hearts and minds be so focused on displaying His greatness that we are concerned with how people perceive us only insomuch as it reflects on the One we serve and praise.

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Growth Purpose

Blooming Where Planted

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I’m a task-oriented person. I like to-do lists and the ability to cross things off of them. I like to be focused on a specific goal and working towards accomplishing it. Defined roles, detailed plans, and clear expectations are all my friends. I, in other words, am a friend of order and clarity.

Despite my affinity for these things, life doesn’t always reflect them. As history and science will tell us the world is in a constant state of atrophy. Things are naturally disposed to go from order to disorder unless some outside force acts upon them. This is true in nature, and it’s true in our lives as well. Chaos is bound to occur; we can do our best to manage it, but things will not always be as clear-cut as we may desire them to be.

Sometimes the hardest area for me to reconcile my desire for order with a state of uncertainty is in the area of ministry. In my mind, having clear expectations produces better results. However, ministry is not about crossing things off a to-do list but showing Christ’s love to other people. Because life is sometimes messy, so will ministry be. I may want to confine it to my carefully crafted plans, but God may have bigger and better expectations for what He has called me to do.

This was brought home to me recently as I went to serve at an event my church was having. I wasn’t originally scheduled to participate, and because I’m pregnant and it was an outside even on a hot day there was limited work that I could do. I wanted a concrete task; I was asked instead to simply hang out in a shaded area and greet people. While I was looking for clarity, the opportunity was ambiguous.

Yet as I stood there wrestling with whether I should go ask someone to give me something specific to do, I realized that serving God doesn’t always come with concrete measures of success. There was nothing for me to cross of the list that day – except whether or not I served God in such a way that it would please Him. Did I do the best with the opportunity that He had called me to? Did I greet people as if I was greeting Christ Himself? The task may have been ambiguous, but the expectation wasn’t. My goal needed to serve the people that came across my path as if my Lord and Savior was the one who was walking before me.

This is the same objective regardless of the clarity that we have in ministry. In whatever God has called us to do, our desire should be to use that opportunity to its fullest in order to bring God the most glory. The task may be small, but that doesn’t mean it’s significance in the Kingdom is. If God plants us somewhere, it’s because that is where He wants to use us. Our objective then should be to bloom wherever He plants – to make the most of every opportunity for His honor and renown.

When Christ was on this Earth He taught His disciples that what they did for the “least of these” was done unto Him (Mt. 25:40) When we have been given the opportunity to serve our focus shouldn’t be on the nature of the task but on the need of the people.  If this is the case, if we are more concerned with demonstrating Christ’s love than we our with our own comfort and convenience, we can be confident that God is able to use the small seeds we may plant to grow something beautiful – in their lives and in our own.

 

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