I needed this reminder. I was just telling someone how I had been sitting and pondering how to increase the reach of my blog. How can I increase my influence? How can I make a more significant mark? How could I learn to market this so well and produce things that people will be interested in enough to make the most of my gifts and talents? But then, from an unexpected place, came the suggestion of a book that I had never heard of before, from an author I had never heard of before. In fact, this wasn't even a suggestion as much as a mention of a book that was part of a larger personal story that the person was telling. So, out of curiosity, I just decided to check out the introduction to the book to see what it was like. That small couple of minutes helped me get my mind out of excessive reasoning and what I should do next and put my focus back where it should be: on God himself.
The author tells a story about a young college student who says he wanted to live a radical life for God. But the student's understanding and expectations of what it means to live a radical life from God all had to do with his external accomplishments. The student had likely unintentionally conflated his impact on the world and how significant he appeared in it. The author points out that Jesus lived the most radical life of anyone of all time. Yet, he did this while spending most of his life in obscurity. I would add that Jesus didn't travel very far from his home throughout his entire life. Yet the whole world has known who he is ever since, with many of those people believing that Jesus is not just the most important person to ever live, but the incarnation of God himself. The most significant line that impacted me in the introduction is when the author said that we need to redirect where we find our value, away from an external impact upon the world and toward an inner communion with God.
That solved my dilemma. I was sitting here trying to excessively reason my way to more significant influence, bigger numbers, and more engagement. But God never asks or expects us to worry about focusing on how to provide for ourselves better. Jesus doesn't spend a good portion of his ministry teaching people how to increase their influence or maximize their cultural footprint. Instead, he calls us to make our lives what they are really supposed to be all about: Him. It's by Jesus that all things were created, whether that be heavenly things or earthly things, whether they be visible things or invisible things. Thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, anything and everything was created by Jesus and for Jesus. That includes you and me because we are his creations. So when we get the focus off of him and onto whatever agenda we happen to be thinking about at the time, even if it's for the intended purpose of being about him, we can veer off into a land of confusion and set ourselves up for frustration, possibly failure.
It's incredible how God uses so many different types of people and things to provide the answers we are looking for. Even if the problems we have or the questions we ask don't seem that significant to us in the big scheme of things, we have to remember that everything is essential to God. Even things that we might be tempted to think are too small for him to focus on are of the utmost importance to him because YOU are of the utmost importance to him. So this unexpected interruption in plans ended up helping me. Thank you, God, for using a friend and the introduction of a book from an author I have never heard of to speak to me in such a way that it got my mind refocused on where it should always be.
SOURCES
- What if Jesus Was Serious ... About Prayer?: A Visual Guide to the Spiritual Practice Most of Us Get Wrong by Skye Jethani
- Matthew 6:25-34
- Colossians 1:16
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