It’s strange to note the range of conversations one can have in a week when you are involved in people’s lives. An average week ranges from discussions about marriage defeats to victories, a loss of financial security to financial blessing. There are moments of excitement when someone finds new love or the burden of grieving with someone who loses a life-long love. Life is best lived with the heart engaged with God in all of it.
Sometimes our hearts are stirred in intercessory conversation with God for someone on their way to emergency treatment or for someone’s life to be spared from destruction. Other times we share joyful thanksgiving when we see Father showing up to give mercy and grace to someone we know and we see something good is about to break forth. However, it’s still a crazy world out there, and the sheer weight of caring for people around us does tend to weary and numb the human soul.
One of the conversations Denise and I had, with a young couple from another state, caused me to think about the pastors and leaders I have known over the years. I’ve seen good people who became tired people. Soldiers on the front line who cared too long in the weary campaign of life and death and did not notice that, in not caring for their own soul, the enjoyment of their Savior became more duty than life-giving. Their life and dreams atrophying on the vine.
This young couple, by comparison, is choosing a different path. Both have a pastoral gift on their lives and after a stint in pastoral “ministry” have noticed some “fault lines” in their lives that they, out of passion for Jesus, know they must address. These beautiful people simply don’t want to lose Jesus in serving Jesus, and they have chosen the better way of sitting at His feet to be taught and loved some more. I predict an ever-expanding life of adventure and fruitfulness for them if they keep stirring their passion to be the real deal before God and man.
The apostle Paul put it this way:
“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.” Philippians 3.13-15 ESV
This is how we stay fresh, green, and curious in life. We keep running to be alive in God in Christ Jesus. It’s more important than what we do and what people think or expect of us. When we do, our story has an ultimate victory and a long line of people who get stirred for more in God in ways that our sheer duty can never produce on its own.
In this way, we change our whole conversation from death to life.
—George Davis
*Please be advised that this blog represents the views, opinions and beliefs of the writer and does not necessarily reflect those of our church leadership or denominational affiliation.