This is the crazy thing and you may not believe me but the most “radical” thing we can do in our society is be consistent, self-sacrificing, and humble. Think about it before you object. There are so many obvious signs that our culture doesn’t hold these things to high esteem. In fact, our culture values the exact opposites. We are praise inconsistency (if it makes us feel good), self-preservation, and pride.
So often in our American culture, we are taught whether explicitly or implicitly that for us to have a life worth living we must do big things. And those big things need to be seen and recognized by the masses for there to be an impact. I cannot tell you how often I have made decisions for my life based on this extremely unbiblical principle. This belief can be very harmful and that may be confusing. Here is why this idea is harmful:
It creates this false narrative of what is productive
We will never live up to this idea because you have to ask the question in this pursuit, what it big enough?
We were never told that our lives needed to be big
We can steal the spotlight from Jesus by trying to create big things for our lives and become a barrier to the Gospel
I have been reminded during this quarantine that our walk with Christ is often more filled with the small ways that we honor Christ in our everyday lives than it ever will be with huge things that make us feel seen and appreciated by others. We can honor Christ abundantly with the small things that we do daily to worship him. Think about it….. I know a lot of PKs (preacher’s kids) or even just church kids that grew up in homes where their parent’s actions did not align with what they said on Sundays. This created a rift between what they were told God was like and how they experienced God through their parents. The way that a Christian parent loves and disciplines their child has a bigger impact on the child’s view of God than that of a sermon that they preach on Sunday. It’s about the little things, not necessarily the big things. This is an example of the fact that everything doesn’t have to look radical. Our lives are made up of a lot of small decisions and small ways that we continue to follow Christ in the face of a lot of temptation and distractions.
I don’t know about you, but that honestly makes me feel a lot less stressed about finding something radical to do with my life. Though I probably will end up doing something crazy because that is my personality. I am able to experience God in the mundane. I hope that you don’t think I am writing this thinking that I am saying something novel. I am saying something that I believe a lot of Christians before me have said. I simply want to be another voice that says that our lives more typically will not be extravagant and that is okay. In fact, the reach that our extremely ordinary lives lead may have a bigger impact than one big thing we do. This is not to downplay the big things that we get to be apart of for the kingdom. I am always selfishly hoping that I get to do big things for God, but this is to say that if you or I never get to do those big things that we would be satisfied knowing that the ordinary things are just as glorifying to God. This goes against EVERYTHING our culture tells us. We are told that we are nothing if we don’t have thousands of people that care about what we are doing. We are nothing if what we did wasn’t recorded and posted on the internet for posterity. If we allow the culture to continue to speak into our walk with Christ we will continue to walk down a dark and unsatisfying path.
I think this conversation brings up the question of, Why do we feel the need to do extravagant things for God? Do those things in some way make us feel accomplished? Why do we feel the need to do extravagant things because we want to live a life of significance. I don’t believe that the desire for significance is a sinful desire I think it is something that God has given us. What can be sinful is how you pursue significance. We can look to relationships, status, profession, achievements, and wealth to find significance. When we look to these things we are sinfully pursuing the fulfillment of significance. God wants us to find our significance in Him and who he says we are. God is the only thing that can truly make us significant. Everything else can give us the illusion of significance but you actually make us significant.
My prayer for you:
Lord, would you please allow us to have our veiled eyes opened to understand that we are called to significance in you alone. Would you help us to know that we don’t have to do radical things to be seen as significant to you? Help us dismantle culture’s understanding of significance and fill in the truth in our hearts. We want to do things for the kingdom. We want to be used by you. We surrender our hearts to you and pray that you would be made famous at our expense.
