I'm not better than you.
It may be easy to think that because I'm going on an eleven month missions trip to four different continents, I'm somehow more in line with the will of God or somehow a better Christian than you. And I'm here to tell you that's absolutely false. My spiritual status (and yours) is not affected by location or occupation. God's ability to use me (or you) to change someones life forever is not less potent in America than it is in Africa. And working a 9-5 office job is not less spiritually significant than living out of a backpack for a year.
But it's easy to think that isn't it?
It's easy to associate living for God with doing something radical and crazy and adventurous. Or think that if my life seems boring and mundane I must be missing God's direction somehow. I can't tell you how many times over the last few years I've felt that way. Like I was missing out because I was still in Conway, Arkansas working a sales job when I wanted so badly to do something different, something exciting. I tried several times in several different ways to move somewhere new and start doing something more fulfilling. All of those plans failed, one after another, until it felt like God was intentionally keeping me from what would make me happy.
That was wrong of course. God was doing was a fantastic job of saving me from second best. None of those opportunities were evil, but they were motivated more by a misplaced sense of adventure rather than an honest passion to find God's best for my life. He was saving me from distractions and along the way he was teaching me a valuable lesson: the secret of fulfillment in life is not in what I do, or even who I am.
Fulfillment and satisfaction are found in realizing and living in the truth of who God is.
Who God is to me, how God is for me, and what God is in me has little to do with me and everything to do with Him. In our performance driven society it's so easy for me to associate what I do for God with how meaningful my life is. By replacing relationship with acts of service, I can quickly turn my Christian life into a checklist, a flowchart, a clearly defined and measured point on a scale of spirituality.
But that's not what I was created for. I wasn't created to read through the Bible in a year, or serve in my local church, or lead a small group, or witness to my neighbor, or tithe, or go around the world proclaiming the name of Jesus. I was created to "walk with God in the cool of the day." All that other stuff is important. But it's a by-product. God doesn't want my money, or my stuff, or my church attendance, or my "good works."
He wants me.
He loves me more than anything I can imagine, and He wants me to enjoy who He is the same way He enjoys who I am. He's not worried about all of the other things because He knows they will come when He has my heart.
This is a lesson that took me years to learn, a lesson I'm still learning. But it has changed my life. When I stop trying to second-guess every situation God brings into my life and choose to be content with exactly where God has me in that moment, that is when I start living life to it's fullest. When I let go of my agenda, it gives God the opportunity to show me what He is up to. And His plan is always so much more than anything I could do on my own.
I want to encourage you, right now, wherever you are. God has something big for you, but it might not look like what you're expecting. But I can guarantee you it will be better. It might not be as dramatic as the World Race, but it will be just as important. God calls both radical goers and radical senders. He needs people brave enough to leave home to change the world and people brave enough to stay at home to change the world.
So take some time today to just enjoy God for who He is. He loves you just the way you are. He misses you. You're important to Him, essential to what He's doing.
I'm not better than you.
