Tag Archives: purpose

Sharing the Good News

16 Nov

This weekend has been a culmination of sorts. It was the Dare 2 Share Invincible Conference in Denver. I was at the event for the whole weekend and while it was physically draining (I’ve had an incurable headache all day), it was spiritually nourishing. Not only did my personal relationship with the Lord benefit (which I will talk about in a little bit), my job became ever more valuable.

Over 7,000 people filled the Pepsi Center for the conference. That’s a lot of students. And I have to tell you, it is beyond amazing to see these young people on fire for Christ. Not only are they fellow members of the body of Christ, they have found something to live for, a purpose for their lives. I can’t help but think back on my own life. What would my life look like if I had discovered that purpose in high school or even junior high? I have no doubt that if I had been invited to a Dare 2 Share event in junior high or high school, I would have rolled my eyes and said no. But maybe I would’ve gone…

There are hundreds of kids just like me (when I was that age) at our events: disinterested, apathetic, cynical, hopeless. And they leave the conference believing in their souls that Christ died for them. They leave with hope. They leave with the knowledge that, no matter how many people in their lives don’t love them, God loves them. And best of all, they leave with a burning desire to see their unbelieving friends come to know Jesus as well.

It’s ironic that I struggle so much with sharing my faith and yet I work at a ministry dedicated to teaching teens how to share their faith. I know God did that on purpose. Where else would I be continually convicted over the importance of giving hope to the lost, especially teens?

Our President, Greg Stier, is an amazing person. I’ve obviously heard him speak/preach quite a bit and know that since he is very animated and outgoing, he’s a great person to have speaking to a teenage crowd. But more than that, he is an inspiration. He inspires me to evangelize. God created Greg to eat, breathe, and sleep evangelism. He’ll tell you that ever since he became a Christian as a young boy, he’s been going around his neighborhood, around the mall, and now, around the country sharing the gospel. And not just in a preachy sort of way (though he does that too). He has the God-given ability to bring up the gospel with anyone, in any conversation. A guy in my care group also has that ability too. I get so inspired listening to both of them. They remind me that sharing the gospel is not something Christians do once in a while; it’s a lifestyle:

It’s walking through each day with the desire to share the gospel with someone, somehow. It’s seeing every situation and every conversation as a segue into the gospel. It’s seeing the gospel relate to every aspect of life, from waiting for a bus to eating a meal. It’s sharing the good news of Christ with those who are going to hell but don’t know it.

The biggest thing that happened this weekend was that God spoke to me. Listening to Greg speak, I knew the answer to my question, “What does living out my faith practically look like?” God’s answer:

Evangelism.

I’m pretty sure that I knew that was the answer all this time. And even now when I’m sure that it is the answer, I want to go look for a different one, one that’s not so scary and risky. One that I can feel comfortable doing. I feel like saying “God, I said I would follow you anywhere, do anything for You. But this? Anything but this…”

Whenever I think about sharing my faith with our neighbors or my brothers or friends from Travis’ work (since all of my co-workers are already Christians), I get a feeling of dread in my stomach. It’s like I’m back in 9th grade, dreading my next speech in speech class, feeling the impending doom of that fateful day.

But I know that it’s the answer, no matter how hard it is to take. I try to envision the living out of my faith without evangelism and it’s sort of like playing basketball with no hoops. I’m dribbling and running around but when I look up, I see that I’m just playing with myself. Similarly, it would be easy for me to just focus on my personal Christian walk. But when I look up at God, I see that I’m not actually playing in His game, I’m just sitting on the bench.

I want to play. I’m called to play.

But how do I play?

I know places I can start: my neighbor Patty, my brother Brian, friends I know through Travis. But beyond that… [insert big question mark].

I do know that my style of evangelism is going to look a lot different than Greg’s. He’s an outgoing person who speaks his mind…sometimes a little too much. 🙂 I’m not shy but I wouldn’t say I’m outgoing either. And I definitely like getting to know people before sharing the gospel instead of doing cold evangelism. So where to get to know people?

I’ll let you know what I come up with.

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Never good enough

13 Nov

If you asked me or my husband what we fight about the most, we would say something along the lines of “tidyness,” “cleanliness,” “organization.” I am a very neat, organized, clean person. Travis…not so much. He can be organized with the stuff that is important to him…hunting gear, tools… But when I ask Travis to do something in the house (take out the trash, put away his shoes, make the bed), I almost always have to ask more than once.

I’ve learned that he doesn’t not do these things on purpose. Most of the time, he honestly forgets (the other times, he procrastinates until he forgets). I can understand his forgetfulness because I had a similar relationship with one of my college roommates. But when he does remember to do what I have asked, he gets excited and tells me that he remembered to do what I asked him to do! Surely I will be thrilled beyond belief!

Oh, no, I won’t be. You see, I always find something to criticize. Maybe he took the trash out but forgot to put a new bag in the garbage can. Or he cleaned his stuff off the kitchen table only to throw it on top of our dresser. Or he dusted and didn’t put the picture frames back exactly how they were before. Or he put away the dishes but they’re in the wrong place. It’s pathetic that I can remember all these things but I’m a very particular person when it comes to organization. Everything has its place–you can’t leave things sitting out but you can’t put them back just anywhere either.

As you can guess, it deflates Travis’ spirits pretty quickly when he announces his achievement and I respond with “Yes, but…” It is understandable that his response to my response would be, “I feel like I can never do anything good enough for you.” Silently, I respond, “That’s because you can’t.”

I have been made to realize time and time again that Travis will not do everything I want him to do, exactly the way I want it done. He is not only a different person, he’s also a man. He’s a rational thinker; I’m emotional. He likes to think through every single possibility; I choose the first one that sounds good. He is slow to anger; I am like a firecracker with a 1/8” fuse. All that to say, I do see my sin in wanting Travis to be the male version of me. 🙂

Lately though, I’ve had the thought that I’m just as hard on myself. Nothing I do is ever good enough for me either. Even if I listed all of my accomplishments, I would say “So? Look at all these other things you didn’t do.” If I have one success and one failure, the success becomes invisible…because I failed once. It strikes me as kind of ironic because even though I’m an optimist (in that I’m always hoping for the best) when it comes to every other area of life, I am a pessimist (in that I only focus on the negatives) when it comes to my life (and Travis’ too I guess…but only the organizational part of it).  

So it is with my life right now. I have a very blessed life. I get to spend a lot of time with my loving husband. I have a job that utilizes my skills and interests. I work in the nursery at church. I attend a weekly Bible study/women’s group. I have been redeemed by the King and now have an eternal relationship with Him. But do I feel good about any of that? Nope. Because I’m not volunteering, mentoring, evangelizing, discipling, serving, sharing, the list goes on and on of the things I should/could be doing but am not doing.

It begs the question: what, then, is enough? What could I be doing with my life that would make me think “Yep, I feel like I am doing enough. I am living for God’s glory and this is exactly where He’s called me to be.” Will I ever feel like I am doing enough? Will I ever be content where I am? Or will I always feel this restlessness of not being good enough?

God accepts me exactly as I am, this I know. I am not struggling with how I can earn God’s favor because I know that even if I filled every waking moment with good deeds, my life without Christ would still be a filthy rag to God. I am only accepted because of Christ’s death on the cross.

I read somewhere (I think in Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel) that “God loves you just as you are but He loves you too much to let you stay there.” Not only does that idea give me hope that the Spirit will ever be taking me upward and onward (even if I feel like I’m not moving), it also convicts me that God’s acceptance does not mean my stagnation. Rather, His acceptance enables my change–because it dispels my fear of failure (easier said than done).

A question we talked about in our care group last night was “What if the next 20 years looked like today?” The thought scares me. What if my life is the same 20 years from now? What if I don’t grow? What if I don’t change? What if I never get out there and take a risk? It would be a sad existence for sure.

You may be asking, so why don’t I get out there and take a risk TODAY?

That is a good question… I’ll get back to you.

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Making my life worthwhile

1 Nov

My past few blogs have been about my life purpose and my feeling like I’m wasting my time doing what I’m doing. Numerous times, my heart’s unrest has called to mind the sentiments of Solomon in Ecclesiastes: “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” And by the time Solomon wrote that, he had done GREAT things…and he STILL felt that way!

After more informal meditation on these things, I began to realize that I am restless because I can’t see how what I’m doing today will lead me to where I want to be tomorrow. While praying one day, I also realized that I can’t assume that my life tomorrow will actually look like what I think it should look like–it may very well be completely different. God is the One who orders things, not me.

All this has contributed to a sort of stalemate in my life. I’ve been left with the feeling that I want to do something different but can’t, because I’m not in control anyway. And my life is my life for a reason; even if those reasons involve sin, it’s not ALL sin. God’s purposes triumph even in spite of my failures and weaknesses. So what is the purpose of me being here, doing this?

I’ve been reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer (great book so far!) and I came across this passage the other day in the chapter entitled “God’s Wisdom and Ours”: “The harder you try to understand the divine purpose in the ordinary providential course of events, the more obsessed and oppressed you grow with the apparent aimlessness of everything, and the more you are tempted to conclude [with Solomon] that life really is as pointless as it looks.” When I read that, I immediately knew that that was what I have been doing all this time: wanting to see the big picture; wanting to understand how my present circumstances will aid and prepare me for the times to come; wanting to see what are the times to come; wanting to have some control over my own life and purpose; wanting more than what God has ordained for me in His word.

Packer goes on to write: “For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.” So while my desire to make my life count more now is a good thing, my desire to make my life count more now in order to make it better in the future, is not. I am not to be concerned with the future–I live my whole life in only one day at a time.

And I should not concern myself with the task of making my life eternally worthwhile–that is God’s purpose and He will carry it out. As Packer writes, my purpose in life is to “‘Fear God and keep his commandments’…trust and obey him, reverence him, worship him, be humble before him…Live in the present, and enjoy it thoroughly; present pleasures are God’s good gifts…Seek grace to work hard at whatever life calls you to do, and enjoy your work as you do it…Leave to God its issues; let him measure its ultimate worth; your part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at your command in exploiting the opportunities that lie before you.”

So I see that my problem has been one of faith: not being able to trust God that He can use me and make my life worthwhile–and make it worthwhile according to HIS standards, because they are surely different than what I suppose them to be. My anxiety over wasting my life is revealed as an inability to trust God in the midst of the questioning and restlessness. My part is to use all the good sense and enterprise at my command in exploiting the opportunities that lie before me–and to leave the rest to God.

Speaking of opportunities, my old boss, Carol Ann, called me yesterday and left a message wondering if I’d be interested in teaching a ESL class 2x a week for adults. My first thought was: “I don’t know how to teach! I’m not capable!” My next thought was: “This is an opportunity that God has laid before me.” My third thought was: “This is my chance to not let fear dominate my desire to serve and make a difference.” I still have lot of questions about the opportunity (training, what hours on what days, length of commitment, curriculum, etc) but I’m leaning toward stepping out in faith on this one (even though it scares me to!). But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I have been going through this soul-searching process, praying for God to open doors of opportunity for me, and then this comes along. I’m still going to pray about it and think about it. But this could be God making my life worthwhile…not because of me, but in spite of me.

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Hope amidst Hopelessness

24 Oct

I talked to Travis on Wednesday night about what I wrote in my last post. He said that he felt that way at times too, though not to that extent. I think a natural part of our human nature craves to be part of something bigger than ourselves. I know that I had that desire even before I became a Christian–in fact, it was the biggest thing that attracted me to becoming a Christian: something to live for.

So what has happened since then? Christ is still my only hope of salvation. I still daily surrender (or at least try to!) my life and will to the Father’s. But I lack one very important thing: courage.

As I was praying about this Wednesday morning, it dawned on me that even though I know what I want to be doing and what kind of life I want to be living, it is still a giant leap from where I am now to that place. And to be honest, that giant leap scares the $#!* out of me.

Tangent: It’s kind of ironic that the thing in the Christian life that I’m the worst at (in the sense that I don’t do it at all) is evangelism. I can’t remember the last time I shared my faith, it’s that bad. The reason why it’s ironic is because I was deeply involved in Campus Outreach in college–a campus ministry that focused on reaching the lost world for Christ–and now I work at Dare 2 Share Ministries–if you didn’t catch it in the name, we’re all teaching and mobilizing teens to share their faith with the teens they know.

My lack of courage is what is currently holding me back. Before, I didn’t even realize that I was moving through life on a conveyor belt. There was an expected progression to things; I accepted it without question. I realize now that I haven’t really strived for anything. I’ve worked hard (to graduate with honors and get a good job) but that’s just because I’m anal-retentive.

But now that I’m out of college and married, I have realized that I have something they call “options.” I can choose what to do with my life. It’s very weird and hard to get used to. As I’ve been mulling this over in my mind, I have come up with some ideas of what I could do to move myself toward the life I want to be living:

1. Start intentionally writing–whether it be the full story of how I became a Christian, or just freelancing to build a portfolio.

2. Take a class–or two. I really want to take a class on Photoshop (for my current job) and a class on writing non-fiction (for my dream job).

3. Get a new job (shhh…don’t tell my boss) writing for a magazine or Christian company.

4. Read books about Marketing and Leadership to continue to grow in my current role at D2S.

5. Get my ESL (English as a Second Language) license and teach immigrants (with CAK?)

6. Find an organization that I can get involved with through volunteering. Thoughts have been: Big Sister, a pregnancy center, Samaritans Purse, a nursing home, etc.

7. Plan a mission trip with Travis (it might have to be in 2010…)

8. Volunteer more at my church by helping with planning/organizing events or translating resources into Spanish (though I would definitely have to brush up on my skills!!)

I feel like these are good ideas but I am aware that I have only so many hours in the day. I can’t do them all, nor do I want to. I need to figure out what my passions are and what I really want to invest in.

But the good news is, God is faithful!! (like He ever isn’t…) On Wednesday during chapel I had to laugh at God a little–only He would give me hope amidst hopelessness. Kind of like Abraham and Sarah–they hoped against hope. God is a God of hope when there is no hope. And I feel the sparks of excitement and anticipation of what I can make my life be like with God’s help. I am not relegated to being a mediocre bum!!

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How am I spending my time?

26 Aug

This question has been nagging at me for the past few weeks as I started to build a bio for my profile on The Nest. (See the unfinished product here). I can’t for the life of me find a legitimate, God-honoring reason to continue spending time creating this thing. It has taken hours–first I have to take the pictures, then I upload them, then I create the pages, insert the pictures, type in the captions. But I walk away from it all feeling like I just wasted hours of my life with nothing to show for it but a shrine to my life–and an enabler to my pride. I just know that when I get to heaven, there will be a record of all the hours I wasted on earth–and even though I won’t be remorseful there (because there is no sadness in heaven!) I want to put an end to the wasted time while I can.

I also find that I spend all of my time outside of work doing things for myself. I live in my own little world. I hate that!! I am praying for God to open the door to volunteer opportunities near my house so I can do something for other people rather than live in my own little bubble.

When I stumbled across a website today that asked this very same question and listed some analysis questions, I realized that I need to do a self-evaluation. These are the questions:

  • Where are you spending your time?
  • What would you really like to be doing?
  • Where would you really like to live?
  • How is your relationship with your loved ones?
  • Do you have time to help others in your town?
  • Do you have a hobby, a passion?
  • Do you spend time on your hobby or passion?
  • Do you focus on your health, your weight, your appearance?

    • I have also been going through this period of wondering what my life purpose is. I initially thought that it meant I should get a new job (though I haven’t even been at my current job for a year yet and it is seemingly the perfect job for me). But now I see that what I really need is an attitude/perspective adjustment. The Lord revealed to me last night that I was trying to live according to my own standards–my attitude was “I don’t want to go to a job every day that I’m not crazy about. I just don’t want to live that way.” Well, a crucial part of being a Christian is not living the way I want to live, but living the way God wants me to live.

    This verse has been convicting:

    “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

    I will post more on this topic when I have time to digest my answers to the questions above.

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