Today and tomorrow loom before me hissing, “I dare ya. Come on, give us your best shot if you think you’re up to it. You’ll never make it.”
Do you ever hear life speaking to you in an intimidating voice? When my life does so, it primarily seeks to utilize demands of time upon me. Today begins in an hour with Alicia’s basketball team pictures, then her Saturday game an hour later. Immediately following the game we have to get the kids home and enjoy a long-overdue lunch with a couple that Amy and I have become good friends with. Though the game and the lunch are both occasions of ease, they are sandwiched into the remainder of my own day which involves an hour travel to a city where I’ll serve on an ordaining council and then an hour drive back home. I’ll get into the bed around 9 PM and my alarm will sound its trumpet at 3:15 AM on Sunday and the best Marathon I’m ever blessed to run will begin. Three hours of prayer and final sermon prep will conclude around 6:45, then a 7 AM staff meeting, stepping into the pulpit at 8 AM, substitute teaching an adult class at 9:15 AM, and then back in the pulpit at 10:30 AM for our second morning service. Mercifully there will be a brief lunch hour and then I will be back at the office for finalizing my thoughts for the evening service. At 4:30 PM I will be joining Meadow’s Capital Giving Team to discuss the financial needs of our ministry. Springing from that meeting into the pulpit at 6 PM I’m looking forward to the evening message which will be followed by a business conference around 7:30 PM.
I shall then drive home in quietness, have a bite to eat, and crawl into bed beside Amy with, hopefully, a deep satisfaction that God’s grace was sufficient and the intimidation of my schedule will disappear for a bit. Please understand that there is not a hint of complaining or boasting in what I’ve written. I simply share my next two days in order to remind us of what Jesus said in Luke 9:62:
“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” {ESV}
Lord willing, I will share from Luke 9:57-62 tomorrow night and speak on the subject of Suffering From Spiritual Superficiality. It is a short set of verses but Jesus is intense to a degree that we rarely see in the Gospels. He challenges flippant, word-only commitments to Him by warning and cornering those who wish to follow Him on their own terms. He tells them to expect hardship (we prefer worship, fellowship and kinship) as they answer the call to discipleship. He tells them that He owns nothing and that foxes and birds have more outward stability than He in this area. Jesus unapologetically tells the listeners that there is an urgency for them to obey His call and that He is preeminent over their family ties. The hearers respond with not a word.
Allow me to share something that has been really pounding my mind in the last week. As I’m finding myself around many people who are struggling in life, I’m seeing an increasing response of defeatism and defection. People are quitting and searching out a path of lesser resistance. We all know the struggle of becoming weary in well-doing but we seem to forget that hardship is a promised portion of this pilgrimage.
Here’s what God is giving me in these days: Tell My people that hard does not equal bad.
If you and I view hardship as being something inherently bad, sinful, in opposition to the glory of God, anti-faith, cursing rather than blessing or inconsistent with the God-favored life…then we are not as spiritual as we had hoped. Jesus teaches us above in Luke 9:62 that if we are not looking forward then we are not suited for God’s kingdom. We look back toward the past and, as a result, cannot discern the direction that Christ is leading us toward the future. We look down in the present and become myopic by only giving credence to whatever is right in front of us. Yet when we look forward our eyes find the horizon and we gain perspective on what has happened in the past, what is occurring in the present and where He is leading us in the future. Jesus doesn’t want us plowing zig-zags in our field of life – what kind of harvest could we expect from that? No, He wants our eyes on the horizon, our hands upon the plow He’s given us, and a willing exertion to finish the field assigned to our name. He has His eyes on Harvest time and empowers His laborers to work the field He has apportioned them.
Remember this: Hard is not the same as bad. We should, more often than not, flee what is bad. Yet if that is becoming a temptation to run from what is hard, we will miss the opportunity to pay the cost of discipleship. Think upon this today: have I been assuming what is hard in my life to be bad? If it’s hard but not bad, what would God have me to do in the midst of the hardness? Perhaps it’s as simple as keeping your hand on the plow, moving forward in daily faith and welcoming the personal transformation of your own weakness and fear into His glorious confidence. This is no small distinction for our lives. Heaven is the only place where there is neither hardness nor badness. You aren’t there yet so willingly shoulder the truth that there will be unavoidable hardness in life; don’t run from it. Endure it. Embrace it. Find God in it and know that you will experience precious aspects of him that you cannot experience in easy fields which have no rocks. He’s given you the plow, your hand has committed to it, keep your eyes on the horizon and you will reach the place He has chosen for you.