Relationships vs. Ministry

Next week I turn 25. As I mark this milestone in my life, I can’t help but notice the ways my life is different from how I imagined it would be at 16, 18, even 22. I thought by now I would have my career and finances figured out, that I’d feel more at home in the “real” world, that I would have a more definite sense of home. Most strikingly different: I thought I’d be married.

Of course, I never would have admitted to such a strict deadline on a serious commitment like marriage. But in my ideal life plan, I had long ago penciled it in at 25, nestled comfortably between “finish college” (age 22) and “have kids” (sometime before or around 30). It sounds a bit silly when I write it down, but don’t we all have these kinds of “plans” for our lives that don’t quite end up happening as we always imagined they would? It was so easy, so comforting, to look ahead in high school and college, when 25 still seemed so far away. But then, gradually, my hopes about what life might be became expectations I’d unintentionally placed upon myself—expectations I now realize I’ve failed to meet. So quickly—too quickly, it selfishly feels—my college friends and roommates started dating, then getting engaged, and after three whirlwind years of bachelorette parties, bridal showers, and bridesmaid dress fittings I suddenly find myself single and surrounded by married friends, unsure of where I fit in to my rapidly fragmenting social circle.

Where once it was easy (or at least easier) to balance work, ministry, and social life, I find myself increasingly worried that one of the three must suffer at the hands of the other. Since my paycheck demands that devoting less time to work is not optional, I find myself balancing ministry in one hand and my social life in the other, wondering which will drop first.

I recently expressed my concerns with a close married friend. My work with the church’s junior high youth group is time-consuming, at times physically and emotionally exhausting, and a calling about which I’m growing increasingly passionate. But with so little free time to find and pursue new relationships, let alone maintain the ones I already have, I have trouble discerning where and how to spend my time. Ministry is important, but so are my non-junior-high relationships. Is it enough simply to throw myself into ministry and trust that God will make things happen in his time? Or is pursuing relationships, romantic, and otherwise, an equally worthy and God-honoring investment of my time? How can I balance the two without losing myself in either one?

My friend told me a story of a man she spoke to when she worked a job calling our college’s alumni to ask for donations. This man told her she should not date anyone in college. “Not that there's anything wrong with dating,” he said. “But at this point in your life, you just need to love people. If you’re focused on loving the people around you, that’s the most important thing, and if something is going to happen, it will happen.”

What simple, beautiful wisdom! When I heard her recounting of the story, the superficial barriers I’d placed on the “competing” commitments in my life melted away to reveal God’s singular purpose that unifies, or should unify, every aspect of my life. Pursuing that purpose in this moment, I realized, isn’t about finding a husband, nor is it about throwing myself into a specific ministry. The motivation behind every aspect of my life needs to be glorifying God. I can do this by loving everyone God has placed in my life in the way he loves them. All too often, I realized, I commodify people and relationships based on what they offer me or what role I think they can fill in my life. When I’m tired and allow myself to operate this way, I see relationships as commitments rather than opportunities to demonstrate Christ’s love and to receive it in return.

So as I’m getting ready to celebrate 25 years of life and look ahead at what is to come, I’m making it my goal to release myself from the expectations I’ve allowed to creep in. God offers freedom from these self-imposed categories we allow to define us and the ways we organize our social and ministry lives by offering his love freely to us and allowing us to share it with others through relationships. And whatever happens from there—I can know that it will have started with a solid foundation in the type of love that matters most.

A Holy Discontent

I’m a daydreamer. I dream about anything really—life, love, God. If there are truths to be realized, I want to sit and ponder them; experiences to be had, well, I long to have them. I unashamedly live for those moments when my soul is awakened, where ordinary events become extraordinary, and my entire being is inspired and alive.

Life makes the most sense when I allow my mind simply to go completely blank. When I pull my head out of the equation, stop analyzing everything I do, and let God’s creation speak to my soul. There’s something humbling and calming about watching a sunset or listening to the sound of running water as it crashes against a rock. I appreciate these times of reflection and solitude as I think about the world as it is; the world as it could be.

Often it feels as if I’m standing at a distance, examining the earth from outside its boundaries. As if my brain functions with its own internal world of ideals, ideals that have now turned into desires. I desire, for instance, that in my lifetime, I’ll see a generation of people righteously indignant to the injustices of our society and passionately faithful in their relationship with Jesus Christ, living every day to worship him with reckless abandonment. I desire to see believers hungry for living a life of service and outreach, and desiring to see the transforming power of the Holy Spirit move through this nation and to the outermost parts of our world.

Often though, I feel alone with these desires. At times I wish I could bottle this passion and store it on a shelf somewhere, so that I can get back to just thinking about makeup and movies and shopping. Perhaps then I wouldn’t feel so disappointed engaging in empty conversation or feeling bored with the routine things in this world. Is there not another out there who ponders the spectrum of life as I do? And I’m left wondering, will my life ever be the adventure story that I envision it as?

Could it be that I doubt the creativity of the very One who spoke all of creation into existence with his breath? The One who painted the night sky with thousands and thousands of stars, simply put there to reflect the goodness of himself? The One who continues to wow me with his majesty?

And then it hits me: I don’t have to write my own story. And even if I tried, it would always fall short. Our ceiling is God’s floor, and his creativity is inexhaustible. There’s an exciting adventure ahead of me, and he’s just asking, Do you trust me for it? Are you ready for it?

I realize that the desires in my heart for a generation to rise up begin with an individual: me. That I can live out those desires and pray that they become contagious. And the possibilities become endless again.

Oh God, I am ready for the adventure. Take me there.

Spiritually Malnourished

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about nourishment.

A few months ago, I was surprised to find myself dealing with some issues that I thought had long been resolved. Despite fervent prayer and careful action, I found the problem cropping up in ways that reminded me of a persistent cough: ill-timed, intrusive, and occasionally embarrassing.

As I prayed and sought the insight of wise Christians, I slowly realized that one component of my problem was that I was spiritually malnourished.

This was not the kind of issue I was used to dealing with.

I’m surrounded by spiritual resources—at home, my bookshelf holds several Bibles and sags with faith-oriented books, and I own more Christian music than it’s possible to listen to. I live in an area where there is no shortage of churches. Yet I’d been engaging these resources in the most perfunctory of ways, if at all. I’d mistaken being surrounded by these things for actually being fed by them.

Although I’d been enjoying good music, good art, and even television shows that spoke to my situation, I’d failed to seek nourishment from spiritual sources.

As a result, my soul had withered in a land of plenty. I didn’t have the strength to speak God’s truth to my heart, or to stand firm in spiritual battle, the way Paul instructed Christians to in the sixth chapter of Ephesians.

As I thought about this one evening, I wondered: What if I fed my body at the same frequency I’ve been taking in spiritual food? I imagined my body, once well-nourished, shrunken and emaciated. I saw my limbs, spindly and lost in the bright clothes I like to wear. My normally full cheeks were hollow, my hair flat and sparse.

I imagined myself struggling through the basic tasks of my day, like climbing stairs or walking uphill. At the same time, I was cheerfully impervious to my struggle. I noticed looks of concern on the faces of my co-workers and friends, but didn’t realize why they were worried.

I appeared satisfied on the food I’d eaten in the past. After all, I knew where to find food if I wanted it, and had even been able to feed others before.

Startled, I realized that God had used my imagination to give me insight into the condition of my heart. He gently revealed my need for humility, repentance, and recommitment to the nourishing spiritual practices I’d neglected.

I memorized Matthew 4:4 as a child. But lately I’ve appreciated the contemporary rendering of the verse in The Message: “It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God’s mouth.” Now, more than ever, I’m mindful of my need for that steady stream.

God and the News

I’m a news nerd. I listen to it almost constantly.

I’ve had people tell me they don’t listen to the news anymore because it’s “all bad; it’s so depressing.”
That it is. I can’t deny it.

But there’s another reason I watch the news: it informs how I pray. And I’ve been praying a lot lately—specifically for our brothers and sisters in Egypt.

Several years ago when I visited Israel, I had a chance to visit the Bethlehem Bible College (located in Palestine)—where evangelical Palestinian Christians are reaching out to the Muslim community, mentoring, serving, sharing Christ’s love. I met Palestinian Christians who pleaded, “Please don’t forget to pray for us. We are here and forgotten. But we are Christians!”

Watching the news, it’s easy to make the tension black and white—Mubarak and democracy; Jews and Muslims; Israel and Palestine (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, fill in the blank with a Middle Eastern country). It’s easy to forget that Christians are living and serving and risking their lives every day in those hidden places between the black and white of our news.

So my friends are right not to watch the news—if watching is all they’re doing. But if they’re serious about heeding God’s call to pray, then they should be watching. We should all be watching. And then praying.

We aren’t helpless! And our family of believers in every country of the world needs our prayers—in some cases, desperately.

Perhaps, God uses the news to highlight places he wants us to focus on in our prayers. Of course we pray for peace, for God to show himself in the midst of conflict, for him to bring order in the place of chaos. But we also remember the Christians, such as in Egypt. That God would protect them. But more so, that he would give them courage in the midst of fear, that he would surround them with his presence, that he would grow and strengthen their faith.

Prayer is the most powerful weapon a Christian has to change the world. And when we watch the violence taking place throughout the globe, including the streets of Cairo, instead of wringing our hands and feeling sad and helpless by what we see, we must remember that we are powerful beyond words. We have an entire spiritual army behind us waiting to move at our prayers (see Daniel 10:10–14). Let’s call out the forces—for his glory, for his sake, for the kingdom.

Who Are You Imitating?

I drive like my dad. Well, maybe not as aggressively, but similarly nonetheless. As a grown-up daughter I see how influential my parents’ example has been in my life and in the lives of my sisters. From simple driving habits to the complex way we handle anger, my sisters and I are in many ways just mirroring the examples we’ve seen throughout our lives.

It seems like this is an established pattern. Jesus did what he saw his Father doing: “I assure you, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does” (John 5:19). I love how Paul Miller puts it in his book A Praying Life, “Jesus was the first person who didn’t seek independence.” And we are to follow Jesus’ example by living as dependent children of God. In one of my favorite verses, Paul tells us to be imitators of God because we are his dearly loved children (Ephesians 5:1).

Imitating someone hits home because I’m a visual learner. I need to see things to be able to learn how to do them. How does this apply to my spiritual life? I want to do what I see my Father doing. And the way I learn how he does things is by seeing it in his Word. You can’t follow an example you don’t know, or ignore.

“Keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish” (Hebrews 12:2) is hard. There are a million things and people clamoring for our attention and enticing us to independence. It can get overwhelming trying to discern and balance all the demands made on us. But Jesus and the New Testament writers keep it simple: “Be imitators of God.” The Message puts it this way: “Watch what God does, and then you do it.”

What about you? What helps you to see and imitate God? How can you simplify who and what you follow? How can knowing your learning style help you keep your eyes on Jesus?