What it takes to Finish Well

The actor Lee Marvin, who died of a heart attack in 1987 at the age of 63, once made this despondent statement: “They put your name on a star on Hollywood Boulevard and you find a pile of dog manure on it. That’s the whole story, baby.” If we are only citizens of this world, Marvin was right; the achievements of fame, position, possessions, and power will not endure and will not satisfy. Our monuments and accomplishments will crumble around us and offer little comfort at the end of our brief sojourn on this earth.

By contrast, consider Peter Kreeft’s words in his book, Three Philosophies of Life:

The world’s purest gold is only dung without Christ. But with Christ, the basest metal is transformed into the purest gold. The hopes of alchemy can come true, but on a spiritual level, not a chemical one. There is a “philosophers stone” that transmutes all things into gold. Its name is Christ. With him, poverty is riches, weakness is power, suffering is joy, to be despised is glory. Without him, riches are poverty, power is impotence, happiness is misery, glory is despised.

Once we have committed our lives to Christ, there should be no turning back—indeed, if we think about it, there is nothing of real and lasting substance to which we can turn apart from Him. In spite of this truth, there is an epidemic of believers who drop out of the race during their middle years. Many begin well but finish poorly. It can be gradual erosion through a series of small compromises or a more sudden point of departure, but any number of things can divert us from the course on which we are called to run.

What does it take to finish well? How can we run in such a way that we can say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7; Acts 20:24; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27)? A number of observers have considered the characteristics of people who “run with endurance the race that is set before [them]” (Hebrews 12:1). I have arrived at a set of seven such characteristics:

1. Intimacy with Christ

2. Fidelity in the spiritual disciplines

3. A biblical perspective on the circumstances of life

4. A teachable, responsive, humble, and obedient spirit

5. A clear sense of personal purpose and calling

6. Healthy relationships with resourceful people

7. Ongoing ministry investment in the lives of others

I have highlighted the seven key words (intimacy, disciplines, perspective, teachable, purpose, relationships, and ministry), and it is important to note that these characteristics move from the inside to the outside. The first two concern our vertical relationship with God (being), the next three concern our personal thinking and orientation (knowing), and the last two concern our horizontal relationships with others (doing). Here is a brief word about each of these seven crucial characteristics.

1. Intimacy with Christ

The exhortation, “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” in Hebrews 12:1 is immediately followed by these words in 12:2: “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.” If we wish to run with endurance and finish our race well, we must continue to look at Jesus rather than the circumstances or the other runners. Remember Jesus’ strong words in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” The Scriptures call us to love and serve these people, but our Lord tells us that He must be preeminent in our affections. Our love and pursuit of Him must make all other relationships seem like hatred in comparison.

Telescopic photographs of the sun often reveal massive areas on the solar photosphere called sunspots. These are temporary cool regions that appear dark by contrast against the hotter photosphere that surrounds them. But if we could see a sunspot by itself, it would actually be brilliant. In the same way, our love for others should shine except when compared with our love for the Lord Christ. Although we have not yet seen Jesus, we can love Him and hope in Him who first loved us and delivered Himself up for us (1 Peter 1:8; Ephesians 5:2).

Our highest calling is to grow in our knowledge of Christ and to make Him known to others. If any person, possession, or position is elevated above the Lord Jesus in our minds and affections, we will be unable to fulfill this great calling. Instead, we will sell ourselves cheaply for the empty promises of a fleeting world.

We would be wise to ask this question from time to time to examine our hearts and our direction in life: “Does my desire to know Christ exceed all other aspirations?” If not, whatever is taking His place in the center of our affections must yield to Him if we are to know the joy of bearing spiritual fruit as His disciples.

A key secret of those who finish well is to focus more on loving Jesus than on avoiding sin. The more we love Jesus, the more we will learn to put our confidence in Him alone. To quote Peter Kreeft again,

The great divide, the eternal divide, is not between theists and atheists, or between happiness and unhappiness, but between seekers (lovers) and nonseekers (nonlovers) of the Truth (for God is Truth). . . . We can seek health, happiness or holiness; physical health, mental health or spiritual health as our summum bonum, our greatest good. . . . Christ’s first question in John’s Gospel is the crucial one: “What do you seek?” (1:38). This question determines what we will find, determines our eternal destiny, determines everything. (Christianity for Modern Pagans)

2. Fidelity in the Spiritual Disciplines

In the section on disciplined spirituality, we saw that the disciplines are not ends in themselves, but means to the end of intimacy with Christ and spiritual formation. The problem is that anything, when left to itself, tends to decline and decay. The second law of thermodynamics, which says that the quantity of useful energy in any closed system gradually diminishes, can be broadly applied to other systems, from information theory to relationships. Without an infusion of ordered energy, entropy (a measure of randomness and disorder) increases. In the case of objects and relationships, an infusion of directed intentionality and effort is necessary to sustain order and growth.

The twenty disciplines we touched upon earlier (solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, meditation, fasting, chastity, secrecy, confession, fellowship, submission, guidance, simplicity, stewardship, sacrifice, worship, celebration, service, and witness) can enhance our character, our thinking, and our practice. No one consistently practices all of these disciplines, and some are less meaningful for some people than for others, but fidelity to the disciplines we most need in our spiritual journeys will keep us on the path and bring repeated times of personal renewal.

3. A Biblical Perspective on the Circumstances of Life

Without a growing sense of desperation, we will not maintain our focus on God. The Lord lovingly uses trials and adversities in a variety of creative ways in our lives, and part of the purpose of our suffering is to drive us to dependence on Him alone. (This is part of the point of the mid-life process, as we face the combination of diminishing capacity and increasing responsibility. We usually come to grips with our mortality in an experiential way in our late thirties to mid-forties, though some see it sooner and others manage to defer it for a few more years.)

As God’s children, our pain causes us to ask, to seek, and to knock (Matthew 7:7-8), and in His time, God responds by revealing more of Himself to us. This personal knowledge increases our faith and our capacity to trust His character and His promises. Only as we experientially realize that we cannot survive without God will we willingly submit to His purposes in the midst of affliction. A growing faith involves trusting God through the times we do not understand His purposes and His ways.

Tribulation plays a significant role in clarifying hope (see Romans 5:3-5), because it can force us to see the bigger picture. As we saw in the section on paradigm spirituality, we must cultivate an eternal perspective in this temporal arena in order to understand that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). When we view our circumstances in light of God’s character instead of God’s character in light of our circumstances, we come to see that God is never indifferent to us, and that He uses suffering for our good so that we will be more fully united to Christ (Hebrews 12:10-11; 1 Peter 4:12-17). In addition, He comforts us in our afflictions (2 Corinthians 1:3-5) and reminds us that they will not endure forever (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis argues that God allows pain in our lives not because He loves us less, but because He loves us more than we would wish:

Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man love a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute.

As we renew our minds with a growing biblical perspective on the experiences and circumstances of life, we come to see that this life is a time of sowing the seeds of eternity rather than multiplying ephemeral treasures on earth. Such a perspective reduces our anxieties (Matthew 6:25-34), increases our contentment (Philippians 4:11-13; 1 Timothy 6:6-8), and strengthens our trust and hope (Hebrews 6:13-20). With the shrinking of space and the acceleration of time in a postmodern age, we need rhythm and pacing or we will be in danger of spiraling downward and fading out in the end. It is always wise to review and adapt our pace to the larger Story.

4. A Teachable, Responsive, Humble, and Obedient Spirit

Those who finish well maintain an ongoing learning posture through the seasons of their lives. A smug, self-satisfied attitude causes people to plateau or decline on the learning curve, and this is inimical to spiritual vitality. In our youth, we have a problem with foolishness and lack of focus; in our middle years, we struggle with double-mindedness and entanglement; when we reach our later years, our great challenge is teachability. Those who maintain a childlike sense of wonder, surprise, and awe do not succumb to rigidity and “hardening of the categories.” Such people who continue to grow in grace “will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still yield fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and very green” (Psalm 92:13-14).

Humility and responsive obedience is the key to maintaining a teachable spirit. Humility is the disposition in which the soul realizes that all of life is about trust in God, and that “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Romans 11:36). The mystery of the grace of God humbles us more than our sinfulness, because grace teaches us to be preoccupied with God, and not with ourselves. When we surrender to this grace and invite God to be our all in all, we displace the self through the enthronement of Christ. We would do well to make the following prayer, adapted from the end of Andrew Murray’s book on Humility, a part of our devotional lives:

Lord God, I ask that out of Your great goodness You would make known to me, and take from my heart, every kind and form and degree of pride, whether it be from evil spirits, or my own corrupt nature; and that You would awaken in me the deepest depth and truth of that humility which can make me capable of Your light and Holy Spirit.

Like our Lord in the days of His flesh, we must learn obedience through the things which we suffer (Hebrews 5:7-8). As Thomas Merton put it in Spiritual Direction & Meditation, “We must be ready to cooperate not only with graces that console, but with graces that humiliate us. Not only with lights that exalt us, but with lights that blast our self-complacency.”

Obedience requires risk taking, because it is the application of biblical faith in that which is not seen, and that which is not yet (Hebrews 11:1). As we mature in Christ, we learn to live with ambiguity in this world by trusting God’s character and promises in spite of appearances to the contrary.

5. A Clear Sense of Personal Purpose and Calling

Life without a transcendent source of purpose would be an exercise in futility. As Malcolm Muggeridge puts it,

It has never been possible for me to persuade myself that the universe could have been created, and we, homo sapiens, so-called, have, generation after generation, somehow made our appearance to sojourn briefly on our tiny earth, solely in order to mount the interminable soap opera, with the same characters and situations endlessly recurring, that we call history. It would be like building a great stadium for a display of tiddly-winks, or a vast opera house for a mouth-organ recital. There must, in other words, be another reason for our existence and that of the universe than just getting through the days of our life as best we may; some other destiny than merely using up such physical, intellectual and spiritual creativity as has been vouchsafed us.

Although we realize that we never arrive in this life, God has called each of us to a purposeful journey that involves risks along the way and is sustained by faithfulness and growing hope. This calling or vocation transcends our occupations and endures beyond the end of our careers. As we seek the Lord’s guidance in developing a personal vision and clarity of mission, we move beyond the level of tasks and accomplishments to the level of the purpose for which we “live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28). We are first called to a Person, and then we are called to express this defining relationship in the things we undertake, realizing that the final outcome of our lives is in the hands of God. We have a sense of destiny, but our ignorance of the invisible geography of the new creation means that we must trust God for what He is calling us to become. Reinhold Niebuhr put it well:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

There is always a chasm between our aspirations and our accomplishments, between our capacities and our contributions. This discrepancy turns from an occasion for despair to an opportunity for hope when we see it as our nostalgia for our true home. This hope is the realization that our purpose is not measurable and that our earthly calling is but the preface to the endless creative activity and community of heaven.

6. Healthy Relationships with Resourceful People

In the section on corporate spirituality, we looked at the spectrum of supportive soul-care relationships that moves from spiritual friendship to spiritual guidance to spiritual mentoring to spiritual direction. We also considered the important dimensions of servant leadership as well as personal and group accountability. Each of these relationships is a valuable resource that can encourage, equip, and exhort us to stay on the course we have been called to run. People who finish well do not do so without the caring support of other growing members of the body of Christ. These relationships help us to increase in intimacy with Christ, to maintain the needed disciplines, to clarify our long-term perspective, to sustain a teachable attitude, and to develop our purpose and calling.

7. Ongoing Ministry Investment in the Lives of Others

We saw in the exchanged life spirituality section that Jesus Christ gave His life for us (salvation), so that He could give His life to us (sanctification), so that He could live His life through us (service). Spirit-filled spirituality stressed the importance of discovering and developing the spiritual gifts we have received and of exercising them in the power of the Spirit for the edification of others. Nurturing spirituality centered on cultivating a lifestyle of evangelism and discipleship so that we are part of the process of introducing people to Jesus and assisting them in their spiritual growth after they have come to know Him. The life God implants within us is meant not only to permeate our beings, but also to penetrate and multiply in the lives of others. Believers who finish well are marked by ongoing outreach and sacrificial ministry for the good of other people. Those who squander the resources, gifts, experiences, and hard-learned insights God has given them by no longer investing them in the lives of others soon wither and withdraw.

Barriers to Finishing Well

It is obvious that when we reverse these seven characteristics of people who finish well, we arrive at a corresponding list of barriers to running the course. Instead of doing this, let me observe that a failure to sustain the first characteristic (intimacy with Christ) is the key obstruction to progress in the other six. Indeed, the others contribute to our intimacy with Christ, but regression in our relationship with Jesus will soon erode fidelity in the others. The real question then is, “What causes us drift away from abiding in Jesus?” In some way or another, the spiritual sin of pride and autonomy usually heads the list. This can take many forms, such as ego-driven ambition (often inspired by insecurity), unwillingness to learn from others, comparison and envy, refusal to submit to authority, strategies designed to avoid pain and vulnerability, and bitterness with God for allowing personal affliction and loss.

The more visible sins of moral or ethical compromise and failure are generally the byproducts of inner spiritual disintegration—the loss of the clear eye (Matthew 6:22-23) and the pure heart (Matthew 5:8; 1 Timothy 1:5; 2 Timothy 2:22). Declining passion for Christ eventually subverts calling and character.

More Thoughts on Perspective, Responsiveness, and Purpose

A Perspective on Problems

Have you ever seen another person grow in character and depth in times of apparent success? It would be so much simpler if having things go “our way” was also beneficial to us in the long run, but because of self-centeredness and shortsightedness, this is rarely the case. Until the Lord returns, we will continue to learn and grow more through setbacks and failures than through success as the world defines it. Listen to the observations of a man who had enjoyed an eminently successful career in the eyes of his peers:

Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my seventy-five years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained.—Malcolm Muggeridge

If any of us could be transported to heaven for even a five-minute visit, we would never be the same after our return to earth. For the first time, we would have a true perspective on the frailty and brevity of life on earth and the absurdity of giving our hearts to things that will not last.

John White observed that “It is want of faith that makes us opt for earthly rather than heavenly treasure. If we really believed in celestial treasures, who among us would be so stupid as to buy gold? We just do not believe. Heaven is a dream, a religious fantasy which we affirm because we are orthodox. If people believed in heaven, they would spend their time preparing for permanent residence there. But nobody does.”

Our perspective on life, whether temporal or eternal, will determine the set of rules by which we play, the standards and character we pursue, the source of our hope, and the difference between and obedience and disobedience to God’s precepts and principles.

In his essay, “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C. S. Lewis depicted the difference between looking at a beam of light and looking along the beam. As he entered a dark toolshed, he could see nothing but a sunbeam that came from a crack at the top of the door. At first, he looked at the shaft of light with thousands of specks of dust floating in it, but then he did something most of us have done at one time or another. He moved until the beam fell on his eyes, and at that moment, the toolshed and the sunbeam vanished. Looking along the beam, he saw green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside, and beyond that, the sun itself. Perspective makes all the difference.

Imagine a world where people’s problems cease at the moment they put their faith in Christ. They suddenly become immune to bodily ailments, they enjoy complete harmony in their personal and professional relationships, and success and affluence are theirs for the asking. Actually, this trouble-free state of affairs is not far from the scenario touted by the peddlers of the “prosperity gospel.”

It may sound good at first, but consider a few of the implications. They may trust Christ for their salvation, but it would be extremely difficult for them not to look to the world for everything else. Because there are no obstacles, they would soon take God for granted and presume upon His grace; their prayers would become more like conjuring tricks than acknowledgments of love and dependence on the Lord. And since everything goes “their way,” it would be almost impossible for them to cultivate true Christian character. They would never develop qualities like endurance (James 1:3), steadfastness (1 Corinthians 15:58), thanksgiving (1 Thessalonians 5:18), diligence, moral excellence, self-control, perseverance, godliness (2 Peter 1:5-6), compassion, humility, gentleness, patience (Colossians 3:12), and faithfulness (Galatians 5:22), since these are related to hoping in God in a context of adversity.

Far from promising a life of ease and prosperity, the New Testament actually affirms that those who follow Christ will face a new dimension of obstacles and struggles that they did not know before they committed their lives to Him. In fact, the intensity of the spiritual warfare is proportional to the seriousness of a believer’s response to the terms of discipleship. “And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). This is why Paul encouraged the disciples in Asia Minor to continue in the faith, saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). At the end of His last discourse to His disciples, Jesus assured them, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Our responses to the trials we encounter expose our level of trust in the sovereignty and goodness of the Lord. At a special exhibition of Rembrandt paintings, a custodian overheard some of the museum patrons making critical remarks about the work of the great artist. He quietly remarked, “It is not the artist, but the viewers who are on trial.”

I confess that when I move through times of conflict and adversity, it is all too easy for me to develop a wrong attitude toward God, and it is not so easy to thank Him for what He can accomplish through the problem. But I can also acknowledge with thanksgiving that whenever I stopped rebelling against Him and started trusting in His sovereignty, love, goodness, and wisdom, He never let me down. If you think back, I think you will be able to say the same.

Responding to God’s Initiatives

“You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain” (John 15:16).

God’s grace is always previous to our response; whenever we pursue Him it is because He has already pursued us. Whenever we love Him, it is because He has first loved us (1 John 4:8-21). Whenever we offer up prayers, it is because He has already invited us to do so.

Our Responses Determine Our Direction

Nevertheless, God holds us accountable for our responses to His initiatives. Indeed, the quality of our relationship with Him and the entire direction of our lives are determined by the nature of our responses to His loving impulses in our lives. We have been given a response-ability, an ability to respond to or neglect these divine initiatives, and from a human standpoint, our relationship with God is determined by our willingness to reciprocate. Without an ongoing response of our personality to God’s personality, our relationship with Him will be shallow or nonexistent.

Clearly, the most significant response we will ever make is related to the gospel, the good news about Christ’s gift of forgiveness and newness of life. This gift is not ours unless we respond to it by coming to Christ on His terms, which include not merely intellectual assent, but personal reception. Coming to Christ is a volitional commitment in which we turn away from our former trust in our own efforts to achieve or merit God’s favor and turn instead to an exclusive trust in Christ and His righteousness on our behalf. This faith response is an affront to our natural pride, because it involves the admission of our desperate need and hopeless condition without Jesus.

In 1938, a German merchant vessel was in the midst of a storm in the North Atlantic. The pressure of the sea was so great that the plates in the hull began to buckle, and within moments, the ship sank. Almost miraculously, one sailor stayed afloat by holding onto a cot mattress which had somehow not soaked through and was somewhat buoyant. Then from the south came a British cutter. The German sailor was spotted along with the wreckage of the sunken ship. The British ship “hove to,” even though this was a very dangerous thing to do in a storm. The German sailor rose and fell on the billowing waves. A seaman on deck threw out a lifesaver. The big doughnut landed next to the German sailor, but the sailor looked up and saw the British flag and the British faces. He knew that these people represented the traditional enemy of Germany. He turned his back on the lifesaver and slowly the mattress that buoyed him up sank under the waves. The sailor was lost.

When I read this account, I saw it as a parable of God’s offer of salvation. Jesus’ gift of deliverance from spiritual death is the lifesaver, and part of us instinctively resists taking hold of it because, without Christ, we are enemies of God (Romans 5:10). Like the German sailor, we can stubbornly refuse God’s offer, but if we do, we can never blame Him for our demise. The judgment is not a matter of degree. As Peter Kreeft observes, “There are only two kinds of people in the world; and they are not the good and the bad, but the living and the dead, the twice-born and the once-born, the children of God and the children of Adam, the pregnant and the barren. That is the difference between heaven and hell” (Love Is Stronger Than Death).

The most important response of our lives is to say Yes to the gospel. As Brennan Manning observes in The Lion and the Lamb, “There are two elements which are central in the Christian experience. First, a man hears God say, ‘Thou art the man.’ Secondly, he replies, ‘Thou art my God.’” The former is the point of conviction (see 2 Samuel 12:7), and the latter is the point of turning from self to Christ.

An Ongoing Series of Responses

Once having come to Christ in this way, the spiritual life becomes a continuous series of daily responses to the Lord’s promptings in our lives. In each case we will choose to walk by sight or by faith, by law or by grace, by the flesh or by the Spirit, by our will or God’s will, by submission or resistance, by dependence or by autonomy, by worldly wisdom or by divine wisdom, by betting everything on God’s promises and character or by trying to control our world on our own terms, by the temporal or by the eternal, by trying to find our lives or by losing them for Christ’s sake. Until we see Christ, we will always be engaged in this warfare in which we are tempted on a daily basis to drop out of the process of the obedience of faith.

One of the things that helps me gain a sense of perspective during times of temptation or discouragement is to review the fact that since I came to Christ in June of 1967, I have never once regretted an act of obedience, but I have always come to regret acts of disobedience. Yet obedience is still difficult, because it is sometimes counterintuitive and usually countercultural. As G. K. Chesterton put it, “The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult, and left untried.”

A clenched fist cannot receive the gift of the one thing most needful. Sin quenches the Holy Spirit and removes our joy, certainty, and peace. This is why it is wise to stop and ask God to reveal to you whatever is in your life that is blocking the Spirit of God. Name it for what it is and give it to God so that the blockage will be removed.

As Romans 12:1-2 makes clear, God does not ask us to do anything for Him until He has informed us about what He has done for us. But overexposure and underresponse leads to a bad heart. God is more pleased with our response than with how much we know. The reason that Rahab the harlot is found in Hebrews 11 as an illustration of faith is that although she knew little, she applied what little she knew. The Pharisees, by contrast, knew a great deal but did not respond in their hearts to what they knew. The magi had very little knowledge about the Messiah but engaged in a long and tedious journey to find Him, while the scribes in Jerusalem, knowing Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, didn’t even bother to accompany the magi on the six-mile journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

May God grant us the grace to respond in faith and obedience to the things He calls us to trust and apply.

Developing a Biblical Purpose

We mentioned the importance of purpose in the discussions of motivated and holistic spirituality, and the following thoughts are supplementary.

Missing the Plane of Life

How did it happen that now for the first time in his life he could see everything so clearly? Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he allowed himself to come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself forward from some dark past he could not remember to a future which did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream.

Is it possible for people to miss their lives in the same way one misses a plane?

The answer to this question raised in Walker Percy’s novel, The Second Coming, is an unqualified affirmative. Someone once said, “Fear not that your life will come to an end, but rather that it will never have had a beginning.”

In the recent film, Awakenings, a number of patients who had been in a catatonic state for some thirty years were temporarily brought to full consciousness through a new medication. While some were elated, others were embittered that so much of their lives was spent in oblivion. But they all seized the preciousness of each day, especially when they learned that their “awakenings” would only be temporary.

There is a sense in which many people live without being truly awake, without thinking and questioning, without a sense of wonder and awe. It is easy, even for believers in Christ, to lurch through life, never developing a clear picture of the unique purpose for which God placed them on this planet.

People without a Purpose

In the words of Vclav Havel, “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.” I find it astounding that the bulk of people on our planet seem to journey through years and even decades without seriously wrestling with the fundamental question of they are here and what they want their lives to add up to in the end. Many business and professional people get on a fast track in pursuit of an elusive vision of success without questioning whether they are selling themselves too cheaply by investing their precious years of life in something that, even if attained, will never satisfy. It is like the two-edged story of the airline pilot who announced the good news that due to a strong tail wind, the plane was making great time, but the bad news that due to an equipment failure, they were hopelessly lost. Many people appear to be making great time on a journey to futility. They may experience the thrill of the bungee jump without realizing the cord is not attached to their ankles or waists, but to their necks.

In a conversation from Alice in Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. If we have not decided where we are going, one road will do as well or as poorly as another. The problem is that the outcome of the unexamined life is rarely satisfactory. If we fail to pursue God’s purpose for our lives, we are likely to suffer from destination sickness, the discovery that when we reach our destination, it’s not all it was cracked up to be (cf. Ecclesiastes 2:17). This sickness is captured in John Steinbeck’s summation of a character in East of Eden who gave his life for that which let him down in the end: “He took no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.”

Letting the Destiny Determine the Journey

It is much wiser to follow Kierkegaard’s advice to define life backwards and live it forwards—start from the destiny and define the journey in light of it. Few of us would think of taking a two-week vacation without any plans as to where we will go or what we will do. But what many wouldn’t dream of doing on this scale, they do on the greatest scale of all: their entire earthly existence. To avoid this fatal error we should ask ourselves, “What do I want my life to add up to, and why?” “At the end of my sojourn, what will I want to see when I look back?” From a biblical perspective, the real question is not what we will leave behind (the answer to this is always the same—we will leave everything behind), but what will we send on ahead (cf. Matthew 6:20).

Many people define themselves in terms of their activities and accomplishments. But those who have experienced the grace, forgiveness, and newness of life in Christ are recipients of a new source of identity that redefines their mission and purpose on earth. Instead of seeking purpose by comparing themselves with others, they can discover God’s purpose for their lives in the pages of His revealed Word.

God’s Ultimate Purpose

It has been observed that there are three dimensions of purpose in Scripture (see the helpful Vision Foundation booklet, Establishing Your Purpose). The first is God’s ultimate purpose in creating all things. Prior to creating time, space, energy, and matter, God alone existed, complete and perfect in Himself. As a triune, loving community of being, He had no needs, and it was not out of loneliness or boredom that He created the realms of angels and men. We know from Scripture that part of God’s ultimate purpose in creation is the manifestation of His glory to intelligent moral agents who bear His image and who can respond in praise and wonder to His awesome Person, powers, and perfections. But in our present state, we can hardly scratch the surface of the unfathomable wisdom of God’s ultimate purpose for the created order.

God’s Universal Purpose

The second dimension of biblical purpose is God’s universal purpose, the intention He has for all people who acknowledge the lordship of Jesus. This level of purpose is shared by all believers and is communicated to us in a number of passages. There are various ways of expressing it, but they can be reduced to two essential areas: knowing God experientially (spiritual growth), and making God known to others (spiritual reproduction).

In His high priestly prayer after the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus said, “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). This knowledge is not merely propositional and theological, but also personal and devotional. Eternal life is the experiential knowledge of God, and it involves a growth process that is inaugurated when a person trusts Christ and receives His gift of forgiveness and new life. The greatest treasure a person can own is increasing intimacy with the living Lord of all creation. Although this should be our highest ambition, many believers give their hearts to the quest for lesser goods and boast and delight in things that are destined to perish. This is why we should frequently heed the powerful words of Jeremiah 9:23-24: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,’ declares the Lord.”

The Scriptures expressly communicate the purpose for which we have been created: “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29). God’s purpose for us is nothing less than Christlikeness! Here are four observations on this high and holy purpose: (1) It is impossible for us to attain. Only when we recognize our weakness and inability to be conformed to the image of Christ will we be ready to allow Him to live His life through us, for this is the genius of the spiritual life. (2) On the human side of the coin, we will only be as spiritually mature as we chose to be. If we do not engage in the disciplines of discipleship, such as habitual time in the Word of God and prayer, we will not become more intimate with God. (3) Growing intimacy with God is crucial to Christlike character. The personal, experiential knowledge of God transforms the heart and expresses itself in sacrificial acts of love and service toward others. (4) If God’s purpose for us is not the focus of our lives, something else will be, and whatever it is will not be worthy of our ultimate allegiance. Therefore ask God for the grace to make it your highest ambition to be pleasing to Him (2 Corinthians 5:9).

We summarized God’s universal purpose for all who know Christ as knowing God experientially (spiritual growth), and making Him known to others (spiritual reproduction). The first part relates to the question, “Who do You want me to be, Lord?” The second relates to the question, “What do You want me to do?” It is prudent to consider the first question before launching into the second, because biblically speaking, being precedes doing; who we are in Christ is foundational to what we do. Typically, however, we put activities and objectives before purpose and define ourselves more by measurable accomplishments than by godly character. The result is that our activities determine our purposes. But purposes developed in this way are shaped by comparison with peers and role models and never lead to the universal and unique purposes for which God created us. Instead, we should embrace a biblical perspective on purpose and let this determine our objectives and activities.

Developing a Vision of Your Unique Purpose

If God’s universal purpose for us is to grow in the knowledge of Christ (edification) and to make Him known (evangelism), how do we develop a vision of the unique ways He would have us apply this purpose in our lives? The answer is that we must launch a prayerful process of discovery that involves a thoughtful assessment of what God has gifted, called, and equipped us to do. Every believer has a unique combination of experiences, gifts, and relational networks that form a sphere of ministry opportunities. We can be assured that the Lord will not call us to a task for which He has not equipped us (1 Thessalonians 5:24), but we can also be certain that the development of our life message and purpose does not happen suddenly.

The most critical component in the process of discerning our unique purpose is prayer. We would do well to persist in asking God to clarify the vision of our calling, since we will never be able to discover it on our own. This is a divine-human process of preparation and illumination in which each of our positive and negative experiences can be sovereignly used by God in such a way that we can, through His power, make a lasting impact in the lives of others. But commitment must precede knowledge (John 7:17); we must trust God enough to commit ourselves in advance to whatever He calls us to be and to do.

Another essential component in this process is our time in the Scriptures. God uses His Word to train and equip us for ministry, and our effectiveness is related to the depth of our Bible reading, study, and memorization. The price tag is time and discipline, but the benefits are always disproportionate to the expenditures. If we are shallow in the Word, we will be superficial in our knowledge of God and less effective in our relationships with others.

Other components that relate to your unique purpose are your personal experiences, skills, education, temperament, and roles as well as your spiritual gifts. Each of these elements is relevant to your vision of the specific outworking of God’s universal purpose in your life.

Begin to ask God to clarify your personal vision of purpose. This will not happen by doubling up on activities, but through prayer, exposure to Scripture, and times of reflection. This process may take months or years, but it should lead to a brief written statement of purpose that can be used to determine and evaluate your objectives and activities. In this way, your activities will be determined more by the Word than by the external pressures of the world.

A biblical purpose is always an unchanging reason for being. It holds true for you regardless of your circumstances or season of life. When a Christ-centered purpose becomes the focus of your life, it harmonizes all the other areas, such as family, work, finances, and ministry.

A Final Word on the Twelve Facets

Recall the point we made in the introduction that the twelve facets of spiritual formation are all part of the same gem, and thus are inextricably bound together. For example, Spirit-filled spirituality informs all the others, because it is only in the power of the Holy Spirit that we can be formed into the image of Christ. Relational spirituality affects all the others, because loving God and others is the central expression of our faith. And so it is with the remaining ten.

But we also observed that because of our widely differing temperaments, each of us has a unique personal pattern that involves differing degrees of attraction and resistance to the various facets. It is good to understand that we are naturally drawn to some more than others, but it is also beneficial to stretch ourselves through deliberate exposure to the ones we tend to resist.

It is my prayer that you benefit from this diversity of approaches that have been used to cultivate spiritual growth and that you explore some of the facets that may have been less familiar to you.

The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance on you,
And give you peace.
(Numbers 6:24-26)

A boy valiantly, but unsuccessfully, attempted to move a heavy log to clear a pathway to his favorite hideout. His dad stood quietly nearby, watching his son straining against the load. Finally he said, “Son, why aren’t you using all of your strength?”

Confused and a little angry, the boy responded, “Dad, I’m using every last little bit of strength I have!”

“No, son; you’re not,” his dad quietly responded. “You haven’t asked me to help.”

Effective leaders know to reach beyond themselves for strength. They recognize, develop and utilize the strength of people around them. They develop healthy alliances both with those on their own team and those on other teams.

The Strength of Healthy Alliances

While fleeing from Saul, David certainly demonstrated the ability to build healthy alliances:

David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were distressed or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him.

From there David went to Mizpah in Moab and said to the king of Moab, “Would you let my father and mother come and stay with you until I learn what God will do for me?” So he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him as long as David was in the stronghold.

But the prophet Gad said to David, “Do not stay in the stronghold. Go into the land of Judah.” So David left and went to the forest of Hereth.

1 Samuel 22:1-5

Two miles from the city of Gath is a labyrinth of hills and valleys, honeycombed with caves. One cave stood near the ancient city of Adullam, and David found refuge in it. While he was in hiding with his family, David attracted to himself others who were also experiencing hardship. In fact, somewhere between 400 and 600 men eventually allied themselves with David. But it wasn’t simply David’s charisma that drew people to him. By studying David’s life, we find out that he not only had a tremendous loyalty to people, but he was also fiercely dedicated to serving others. People were loyal and committed to David because of the loyalty and service he had consistently showed them.

In addition to those alliances, David connected with the king of Moab, who provided shelter for his parents. Notice that in the midst of his own trials, David still considers the needs of his parents. This surely must have made an impression on the king of Moab. Here is a man who does not merely think of himself. Rather, David remains calm enough to consider the needs of others.

Finally, David listened as the prophet Gad offered the fugitive direction from God. Here we see another pattern in David’s life: he remained loyal to people even when they had hard truth to tell him (see David’s interaction with Nathan in 2 Samuel 12). This was not only a rare quality for biblical times; it remains a rare quality today.

David possessed the foresight to know that he couldn’t go it alone. He worked to build others’ trust in his leadership ability, and he evidently proved himself. David’s forces were loyal to him, and together they realized success against the enemies of Israel (see 23:1-6).

Effective leaders possess the unique ability to build alliances with people who can help to advance their causes. Think again about the short story we began with. Are there people who are standing quietly by, watching you strain away at your tasks? Part of your task as a leader is to form healthy alliances and to inspire others to step forward and help you. By doing so, you’ll accomplish two goals: lightening your own load and helping to develop leadership qualities in others.

If we fail to consider our strengths and weaknesses as we make alliances with others, we may consign ourselves and our organizations to mediocrity. Leaders should commit themselves to doing what they do best and forging synergistic alliances with others who have different skills and abilities. Then a leader can be said to be doing his best – when he is willing to surrender tasks to those who are more adept.

The God of Healthy Alliances

As the perfect and eternal community of being, God is the ultimate embodiment of a healthy alliance. In a truly mystifying way, he himself is a healthy alliance. The perfect love that flows between the Father and the Son is manifested as a third eternal Person, the Holy Spirit.

No one can fully understand this mystery, but it provides the ultimate foundation for relationships, communication and love. Within the divine Trinity, there has always been perfect communion, perfect community. Our perfectly inter-related and inter-relating God provides a picture of the unity and diversity that we can enjoy in our own earthly lives as well, as we live in healthy alliances with others. In other words, God not only affirms diversity in community, he actually models it.

John De Gruchy’s statement about the Trinity goes to the heart of the matter: “The triune God is not a homogeneous collectivity in which the uniqueness of each person is subsumed within the whole, but a community within which the distinctness of each person is affirmed and therefore within which the other remains a significant other.”¹

The triune nature of healthy relationships can be seen in any good friendship, marriage or partnership. There are three parts to all healthy relationships: there is you, there is me and there is us. As a relationship deepens, the love between the two individuals becomes a kind of third person. That love is the us of a relationship; our love creates a “significant other.” In a fitful and imperfect way, this dynamic reflects the glories and mystery of the divine Trinity. Incomplete as our picture will remain, the amazing truth is that God wants us to enter into the depths of this unity.

Before coming to know Jesus, we were in a position of hostility and alienation from God. We were dead in our trespasses and sins, being “without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). God, however, in his incredible grace, has forgiven us our sins through the work of Christ. That fact in itself should be sufficient for us to ponder for an eternity. But God went beyond mere forgiveness of sin; he gave us his very life and personally indwells us. The mystery that is encapsulated in Jesus’ words, “you are in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20), is really beyond our comprehension and exceeds all that we could ever have hoped or guessed.

But the Lord tells us that even this is not the whole story. In his high priestly prayer on the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus prayed not only for his disciples, but “also for those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20). What a marvelous thought to have been prayed for by Jesus himself in his moment of crisis. And from generation to generation, there has been an unbroken chain of believers. One changed life invested in someone else from their time to ours. We who are in the covenant community of God’s people are now the recipients of all the blessings inherent in those relationships. Someone invested in your life; now you are called to go and do likewise, to become a part of the continuity of alliances that has existed and will until Christ returns.

Christ’s petition to the Father was nothing less than a request that believers might experience “complete unity” (v. 23) with one another and with God himself. Jesus asked that we might enter fully into the fellowship that exists between himself and his Father, and that we might delight in his presence and behold his eternal glory. In this way the divine love of the Holy Trinity will be in us, and we in them (v. 26).

To be invited into the love of the Godhead is to be drawn into the ultimate communion and alliance. As members of that alliance, we discover our true source of significance and hope.

The Need for Healthy Alliances

On the way to Jericho from Jerusalem, in the barren hills of the desert is a colony of hermits. They all have their own private caves, but they live in close proximity to one another. They may go weeks or months without seeing each other, but they seem to find comfort and strength from the knowledge that there are others doing similar activities nearby.

Perhaps this best illustrates that people were created for community. Even hermits frequently live in colonies! But alliances with others can be either healthy or toxic, and it is essential that we take this into account when we engage in personal and business partnerships. Again, we see the biblical character of David as a great example of this.

When David arrived in Ziklag, he sent some of the plunder to the elders of Judah, who were his friends, saying, “Here is a present for you from the plunder of the Lord’s enemies.”

He sent it…to those in all the…places where David and his men had roamed.

1 Samuel 30:26-27, 31b

By distributing part of the plunder to the elders in various parts of Israel, David wisely promoted goodwill with potential allies. In some way, he was telling them that they were part of what he was doing. He understood the importance of planning for the future and of building relationships based upon trust and mutual benefit that would serve him well in the years ahead. Leaders who look for and participate in strong alliances build a store of relational resources that can be of immeasurable value in times of change or crisis.

All of us have a need for fellowship, encouragement and accountability. Given a choice, few people would opt for the years of isolation experienced by Robinson Crusoe instead of the family ties enjoyed by the Swiss Family Robinson.

Clearly, the most important alliance we can experience is with the triune God, but this alliance should be reflected in the way we relate to others. Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton turn a common notion on its head when they write, “God never intended anyone to be so focused on him that there is no need to stay connected with people.”² The body of Christ provides a network of personal and group alliances that are critical to our spiritual well-being.

Not all alliances are beneficial, however; and Scripture is just as clear about the other side of the coin. “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character’” (1 Corinthians 15:33). And again, “He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm” (Proverbs 13:20; cf. 28:7; 29:3). Unhealthy alliances can erode our character and our convictions. The 12^th century English abbot Aelred of Rievaulx wrote that we owe love to all people, but only to a proven friend are we to entrust “the secrets of the heart.”³

In order to make certain that the alliances into which we enter are healthy and appropriate, we must first be convinced of whom we are and whose we are. When the truth of God’s Word begins to define our self-image, we find ourselves secure enough to love and serve others without seeking our interests first. Just as loving God completely is the key to loving ourselves correctly, this in turn is the key to loving others compassionately. As we grow in our understanding of God’s unconditional love and acceptance of us in Christ, we are increasingly liberated from using people to meet our needs. Once we know how seriously God takes us, we no longer need to take ourselves so seriously.

Second, we must not enter into deep alliances lightly. Often, because of some emotional neediness or poor judgment or pain, someone will share too deeply too quickly with a person they don’t know. Generally, this is a recipe for disaster. But, as John Ortberg has outlined, there are certain warning signs to watch for that may help you know when to slow down with a person. These warning signs may include inappropriate use of humor, judgmental statements, premature advice or violating a confidence. As Ortberg says, “Test someone’s ability to keep small confidences before you trust them with big ones.”⁴

The Cost of Healthy Alliances

We all need allies on whom we can rely and whom we can trust in tough times. “Call it a clan,” says Jane Howard, “call it a network, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”⁵ David, as we have seen, illustrates how healthy alliances work. Second Samuel 16:15-17:23 provides an extended story of David’s strength – and weakness – in the craft of forming healthy alliances.

In this passage, we see both good and bad news about healthy alliances. The bad news is that David was running for his life because he had earlier refused to form a healthy alliance with his own son, Absalom (13:1-15:12). This scene ranks among the lower moments of David’s “best and worst of” biography. It warns us about the dangers of handling alliances, especially those in our own families, poorly.

But the good news is that David had previously formed a number of healthy alliances. Whether you refer to this as building alliances or use the more current term, “networking,” David demonstrated in this passage that leaders need to pay attention to this function.

David used his resources to help others succeed. He genuinely befriended people and repaid loyalty. Because of these things he had loyal friends who were willing to invest their resources in his continued success.

This story of intrigue has “spy novel” written all over it, but this is no novel. Hushai, a friend of David, literally put his life on the line for the king. The best part of the story appears in another passage:

When David arrived at the summit, where people used to worship God, Hushai the Arkite was there to meet him, his robe torn and dust on his head. David said to him, “If you go with me, you will be a burden to me. But if you return to the city and say to Absalom, ‘I will be your servant, O king; I was your father’s servant in the past, but now I will be your servant,’ then you can help me by frustrating Ahithophel’s advice. Won’t the priests Zadok and Abiathar be there with you? Tell them anything you hear in the king’s palace. Their two sons…are there with them. Send them to me with anything you hear.”

2 Samuel 15:32-36

After he and David had devised the dangerous strategy of placing Hushai as a mole in Absalom’s court, the record tells us: “So David’s friend Hushai arrived at Jerusalem” (v. 37). This guy had guts, courage and cunning, and he was willing to step in when no one else could have successfully served in this manner. Why? Because he and David had cultivated a deep and trusting relationship over the years.

Great leaders must have allies, and allies are cultivated. This cultivation carries a cost in time, thoughtfulness and devotion. As psychologist Alan McGinnis notes, the number one rule for entering into deep relationships is deceptively simple: we must assign top priority to these relationships. We tend to spend massive amounts of time and energy in pursuit of secondary things while relegating the most important things (healthy relationships) to the bottom of our priority list.⁶ Allies are expensive, but genuine allies are valuable because they can’t be bought.

The Payoff of Healthy Alliances

Perhaps no other American leader is as admired as Abraham Lincoln. And one of this great leader’s greatest assets was his ability to build healthy alliances – even with difficult people. In his excellent book, Lincoln on Leadership, Donald T. Phillips points out how Lincoln built such strong alliances: “Abraham Lincoln gained the trust and respect of his subordinates, building strong alliances on both a personal and professional level.”⁷ Lincoln knew what every skilled leader knows: Healthy alliances are crucial to making a leader’s vision become a reality.

Solomon’s words in Proverbs 13:20 encapsulate both the benefits and the dangers of forming alliances: “He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.” While those words reflect wisdom, putting them into practice requires skill. Lincoln was so skilled at and committed to forging strong alliances that, upon occasion, he overcame others’ negative feelings toward him. William H. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, initially considered the president unqualified and incompetent to run the administration and lead the country. Seward’s feelings were so negative that he submitted his resignation before the inauguration.

Because Lincoln considered Seward a strategic leader, he met with him immediately after taking oath and persuaded him to stay by appealing to his patriotism and sense of self-worth. In the months that followed, their relationship hit a few bumps: Seward discovered that he couldn’t control the president.

Yet in spite of their differences, Lincoln won Seward’s support and loyalty by reaching out on a personal level. The president would stop by the secretary’s home for lengthy visits. The two would take carriage rides together in and around Washington. Because they shared a deep commitment to the country and a common set of values and ethics, they eventually forged a strong friendship.

While no leader will win every potential ally into his or her camp, following Lincoln’s example might prove helpful. Phillips summarized Lincoln’s strategy when he wrote,

Simply spending time together and getting to know one’s subordinates can overcome mountains of personal differences and hard feelings. If followers learn that their leader is firm, resolute, and committed in the daily performance of his duty, respect can be gained and trust will soon follow. Lincoln’s approach won’t work for everyone. Some employees will not come around. However, the vast majority – the most competent and honest ones – will.⁸

As important as it is to learn whom to avoid, it is more important to learn who to trust. If you are fortunate enough to have built strong and trusted associations with others, treasure them. Nurture these healthy alliances. Spread the word of their credibility. Talk them up when the opportunity arises and defend them when they’re unfairly attacked. There may come a day when you might need defending. Who will stand up for you?

In spite of our individual independence and the natural anonymity our cyberspace culture affords, the world remains a pretty tight community. We must watch out for each other. We must inform one another. We must learn again what it means to be our brother’s keeper. It is through partnerships, mentoring, and healthy alliances that we become stronger.

Find a partner. Find a trusted associate. Find a friend. You may be a leader but no leader is an island.

¹ John W. De Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy: A Theology for a Just World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 240-41.

² Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton, More Jesus, Less Religion (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2000), pp. 136-37.

³ Aelred of Rievaulx: Spiritual Friendship, Book 1 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1994).

⁴ John Ortberg, Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), pp. 84-85.

⁵ Jane Howard: Quoted in the Franklin-Covey Day Planner for February 1, 2002.

⁶ Alan Loy McGinnis, The Friendship Factor (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1979.

⁷ Donald T. Phillips, Lincoln on Leadership (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 27.

⁸ Ibid., 31.

A chicken and a pig were walking down the road together. They passed a sign for a local diner advertising its breakfast special: “Ham and Eggs – $2.95!” The chicken said, “That’s our whole contribution to society: breakfast food!” The pig replied, “For you, it may be a contribution. For me it’s a total commitment.”

Life in the modern world has programmed us to expect a life of ease. It’s not merely that we want everything to be easy; who wouldn’t want that? What is troubling is that we now expect to receive abundant rewards with minimal effort. If something requires effort or time, it must not be meant to be, and we feel thoroughly justified giving up. Worse yet are those who believe legitimate goals may be sought through illegitimate means, provided that those means offer a short-cut to the goal in mind.

Take, for example, the professional athlete who chooses to illegally enhance his performance through the use of steroids. Not only has he cheapened himself, he has robbed his fellow athletes of any kind of fair competition. He does this simply because he does not want to put in the time and effort necessary to better himself.

This is a dangerous road to travel. Common sense reveals that some of the best things in life demand effort and prove worthy of whatever amount of labor we endure in the pursuit. The best relationships require work. The best businesses have been built on the blood, sweat and tears of their leaders. Even our spiritual growth is reflective of our faithful investment. G.K. Chesterton once quipped, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.”¹

Of course, this is nothing new. Thousands of years ago, God asked, “Who is he who will devote himself to be close to me?” (Jeremiah 30:21). We don’t want to hear it, but the fact of the matter is that following God involves sacrifice, effort, devotion. We much prefer the spiritual growth plans that guarantee complete maturity in “15 minutes a day!”

Mark Oppenheimer has written of the proliferation of these mistaken ideas regarding what is truly involved in personal life-change. These false notions can be found in everything from the Chicken Soup for the Soul books to WWJD bracelets to the awe-inspiring angelic visitations received in the lives of television characters. It all sounds good, but there’s never any kind of demand or call for commitment or life-change involved. “Just Do It” doesn’t really mean, “Just run 100 miles every week like marathon runners do.” “Just Do It” means, “Just buy the shoes – swift feet sure to follow.”² As if you’ll become magically fit simply by purchasing the proper footwear.

Leaders know that this is not so. Leaders know that such behavior used to have a name; it was called sloth. In “The Other Six Deadly Sins,” Dorothy Sayers said,

In the world it is called tolerance, but in hell it is called despair. It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for. We have known it far too well for many years. The only thing perhaps that we have not known about it is that it is mortal sin.³

Leaders know the truth of Theodore Roosevelt’s words: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” There is a great danger in our time of succumbing to mediocrity not through incompetence or a lack of integrity but simply from a lack of genuine commitment. To live without such commitment is to live in that “gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

Godly men and women understand that effective leadership flows from being deeply committed to the right things. As followers of Christ, the single most important commitment of our lives is, obviously, to God. Any lasting success we experience as leaders will flow from that commitment. This is why the apostle Paul writes:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1-2

The word “Therefore” points to all the apostle has written in the previous 11 chapters. In light of God’s mercy, which justifies, sanctifies and will someday glorify us, we are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to him. In other words, we should allow God’s mercy to accomplish this additional work in our lives. We should let it drive us to absolute commitment.

Those who have been taken captive by the love of God will affirm the lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives by heeding this call to “offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” (12:1b).

The word “offer” implies that this act, much like a wedding vow, occurs once. It may be renewed, but at some point we should be motivated by God’s mercy to devote ourselves to him. When we take this step, we’re acknowledging Christ’s leadership in our lives. We sacrifice our selfish desires and misguided ambitions as we strive to align ourselves with God’s will. Once this act of commitment occurs, our talents and dreams will be surrendered to his purpose. And the more we give ourselves to him, the more he will bless and use us.

The sequence here is vitally important. In the Old Testament, there are two broad categories of sacrifice that one might offer to God under different circumstances. There were atonement sacrifices and celebration sacrifices. Atonement sacrifices were for the covering of sin with blood and the reconciliation of men with God or one another. These sacrifices were offered as a response to sin and guilt.

On the other hand, the Law of Moses also made provision for sacrifices of joy. When the crops were harvested, when a child was born, when a great deliverance had occurred – the people would come before God to offer gifts of thanksgiving and celebration.

Christians acknowledge one and only one atonement sacrifice: Jesus himself. But we engage in perpetual sacrifices of celebration and thanksgiving to the God who has saved us. While it is true that we offer God our talents, abilities and money, the most fundamental sacrifice we give him is our very bodies. Paul, the writer of this text, will not abide abstract or ethereal religion. Our bodies are the instruments of all our actions in this world. Therefore, it is our bodies themselves which must be yielded to God in every area.

We naturally expect people to conform to their environment. The phrase most often used in this vein is, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Those of us who have been justified, sanctified and consecrated to God, however, face a different set of expectations. People who have received God’s grace and been transported out of darkness into his kingdom of marvelous light will be shaped and molded by their new experience. Such an overwhelming experience is bound to have some impact on our lives. That is only logical, isn’t it?

In fact, the word translated “spiritual” is the Greek term logikos. The word fundamentally means “rational” or “reasonable.” In view of the mercy of God toward me, it is only rational or reasonable that I should give my heart, mind and body to be shaped by his gracious control. In view of the personal relationship God has purchased and established with me, no mere ceremony or ritual is enough to offer him; he deserves the intelligent and rational surrender of every fiber of my being to him.

The God Who Commits

Douglas Rumford makes a profound statement in his book SoulShaping. He writes, “We make our commitments, then our commitments make us. Once they are chosen, many other choices follow as a matter of course.”⁴ Once we commit to follow Jesus, many other decisions in life must fall into line or we overturn our prior commitment.

But how are we to know that our commitment to God will be honored? All of the commitments we make should flow from the commitment God has first made to us. Once God committed himself to our highest good, his will toward us was sealed. God tells us that he is committed to all who are in Christ, and that our relationship with him will last forever. Jeremiah 31:31-36 shows us the covenant of commitment the Lord made with his people:

“The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name: “Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,” declares the Lord, “will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.”

The ultimate basis for security and significance in life relates to commitment (security) and to how long something will last (significance). In these six verses, God provides for his people a sense of both security and significance – a sure word that his commitment to them will never fail.

In spite of the rebelliousness of the people of Judah, the Lord assured them through the prophet Jeremiah that he was committed to their ultimate good. Judgment was inevitable because they had flagrantly violated God’s commands, but the prophet looked beyond this impending condemnation to a time of consolation. There will be a faithful remnant, and God’s people will eventually enjoy the blessings of forgiveness and complete renewal.

In this covenant, God commits himself to the welfare of the house of Israel and Judah and predicts a time when they will all know him and when his law will be written on their hearts. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11).

God’s grace is always previous to our respons e and demonstrates his unshakeable commitment to us. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). When we love God, it is “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Lewis Thomas, scientist and philosopher, described humans best when he said, “We are, perhaps, uniquely among earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.”⁵ God’s promise of abiding love and commitment to our well-being enables us to live above worry, above fear. His commitment to us empowers us to follow through on our commitment to him. As Martin Luther said, “It is not imitation which brings about our sonship of God, but our sonship which makes possible imitation.”⁶

Being Committed to God

Quality relationships are founded on the rock of commitment, not the shifting sand of feelings or emotions. God calls us to be people of commitment, first to him and then to others. As a great leader of Israel, Joshua’s entire life was marked by commitment. We even hear this in his final words:

“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”

Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”

But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”

Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”

“Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.

“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”

On that day Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem he drew up for them decrees and laws. And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord.

“See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.”

Joshua 24:14-27

Joshua told the people that even if they chose not to serve the Lord, they would still not be exempt from service. If we do not serve the Creator, we will unavoidably serve some part of the creation. But the gods of success, position and possessions are cruel taskmasters and never deliver the profound satisfaction they promise. God alone is the worthy object of our total commitment, and if we direct our highest commitment to anything else, we commit idolatry. We were designed to serve God and to find our deepest satisfaction in him, but we will be half-hearted at best if we try to play by two sets of rules and serve two masters (Luke 16:13).

In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays Mitch – a confused, dissatisfied man with a vague sense that life is passing him by. Jack Palance plays the ancient sage Curly – “a saddlebag with eyes.” At a critical moment in the film, Curly asks Mitch if he would like to know the secret of life.

“It’s this,” Curly says, holding up his index finger.

“The secret of life is your finger?” asks Mitch.

“It’s one thing,” Curly replies. “The secret of life is pursuing one thing.”

Something about this strikes a chord deep within Mitch. His life is a mess; he feels pulled by his obligations to his family and his desire for fulfillment at his work – torn between his need for security and his longing for excitement. Like many men, Mitch is divided. His life is about too many different things. Thus, he feels it is about nothing.

He asks Curly to tell him what that one thing is, but the best Curly can do is to tell Mitch, “You have to find it for yourself.”

Believe it or not, the wise, old cowboy is parroting Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who saw double-mindedness as the primary affliction of modern man. His book Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing is a meditation on the biblical statement: “Purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). The sickness, according to Kierkegaard, is really a failure to achieve an integrated life, a life that is focused on one thing. It is the failure to make an ultimate commitment to “the Good,” to “seeking first the kingdom of God.”⁷

Many of those who followed Jesus were merely curious. Others were convinced of the truth of what he was teaching, but only a few were fully and personally committed to him. When his uncommitted followers began to leave him in response to his difficult sayings, Jesus turned to the 12 and asked if they wanted to leave with the others. Although it is doubtful that they understood the Lord better than those who were leaving, they realized that once having committed themselves to him, there was no turning back (John 6:60-69). As disciples of Christ, we are called to remain committed to him, even when we don’t fully understand all of his plans for us. Failure to do so leads to misery and a lack of effectiveness in ministry. As François Fénelon wrote,

Woe to those weak and timid souls who are divided between God and their world! They want and they do not want. They are torn by desire and remorse at the same time…. They have a horror of evil and a shame of good. They have the pains of virtue without tasting its sweet consolations. O how wretched they are.⁸

As a godly leader, “You are [a witness] against [yourself] that you have chosen to serve the Lord” (v. 22). Have you assessed how that commitment has been played out in your life? In what ways has your level of commitment to the Lord been conditioned by your understanding of what he is doing in your life? The call to commitment is a call to constant vigilance in maintaining and understanding the standards of that commitment. No matter what distractions a godly leader may encounter, he or she needs to maintain his or her focus on serving the Lord.

Committing vs. Bargaining

How on earth do leaders establish and retain committed followers? How, in some cases, do we get ourselves committed enough to pay the high price of success? God knows how, and the prophet Habakkuk models an essential truth about God-focused commitment:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

What a refreshing statement! Many leaders would love to have followers who are this committed to the cause. In fact, many leaders would love to have this level of commitment to their own cause. The key ingredient to Habakkuk’s statement is that it is unidirectional; he promised to maintain his attitude regardless of the payback.

That’s really what “commitment” is. The statement, “I will be committed if” isn’t commitment-making; it’s deal-making. It’s not committing; it’s bargaining. In Habakkuk chapter 2, God explained his justice and his majesty to the prophet. The passage above is the prophet’s response to that revelation of God’s character.

In the absence of a life-consuming ideal, asking for the level of commitment Habakkuk expressed is absurd. Leaders must identify what it is within their organization that is genuinely worthy of commitment. Until leaders complete this definition, they sound rather shallow even talking about it. No sane person will commit to things that don’t really matter. But when an organization’s goals and outcomes are properly related to the living God and its activities honor him, then commitment makes sense. Instead of asking, “How do we get commitment?” effective leaders will begin by asking, “To what (or whom) are we committed?”

The Rewards of Commitment

What does commitment look like in a leader, and how can we practice it? Jesus reveals his standard of deeper commitment in Matthew’s Gospel:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?

Matthew 16:24-26

Jesus spoke these words to his disciples, but they still call us to action today. Through these living words, Jesus makes it clear that he requires total commitment of his followers. He said that unless one commits everything, one loses everything. For the Christian leader, that commitment must remain strong until the end of our earthly walk. Inspirational and motivational speaker Og Mandino expands on the necessity of strong, long-term commitment.

One of Mandino’s 10 common causes of failure is “quitting too soon.” Mandino tells the story of Raphael Solano and his companions, who were looking for diamonds in a dry river bed in Venezuela. Discouraged, and facing the thought of returning home to his very poor family empty-handed, Solano claimed he had picked up about 999,999 rocks and was quitting. His companions said, “Pick up one more and make it a million.” That “millionth” rock was the 155-carat “Liberator,” the largest and purest diamond ever found. Mandino writes,

I think he [Solano] must have known a happiness that went beyond the financial. He had set his course; the odds were against him; he had persevered; he had won. He had not only done what he had set out to do – which is a reward in itself – but he had done it in the face of failure and obscurity.⁹

Jesus urged his followers, “Take up your cross and follow me.” He knew better than anyone else how elusive the great prize is. But he also knew that anything less than a total commitment to achieving the prize would not suffice. In the Christian life, as in the leader’s organizational life, total commitment to the cause facilitates success.

¹ G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton ed. George Marlin (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), 4:61.

² Mark Oppenheimer, “Salvation Without Sacrifice,” Charlotte Observer, 30 October 2000, sec. 11A.

³ Dorothy Sayers, “The Other Six Deadly Sins: An Address Given to the Public Morality Council at Claxton Hall, Westminster, on October 23^rd, 1941,” (London: Methuen, 1943).

⁴ Douglas J. Rumford, SoulShaping: Taking Care of Your Spiritual Life (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1996), p. 91.

⁵ The Medusa & the Snail, quoted in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 15^th ed. Emily Morison Beck (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), p. 884.

⁶ Quoted in Gordon S. Wakefield, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), p. 209.

⁷ Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing (New York: Harper Bros., 1938).

⁸ François Fénelon, Christian Perfection, quoted in Richard Foster and J.B. Smith, eds., Devotional Classics (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 48.

⁹ Adapted from Og Mandino’s University of Success (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), pp. 44-45.

**The audio for this article is in two parts, click for part 1 and for part 2.**

A man was struggling to get his washing machine through the front door of his home as his neighbor was walking past. The neighbor, being a good neighbor, stopped and asked if he could help. The man breathed a sigh of relief and said, “That would be great. I’ll get it from the inside and you get it from the outside. We should be able to handle this quickly.”

But after five minutes of continual struggle, they were both exhausted. Wiping the sweat from his brow, the neighbor said, “This thing is bigger than it looks. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get it into your house.”

“Into my house? I’m trying to get this thing out of my house!”

Few things are more vital than clear communication, particularly for leaders. The great Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini was notoriously bad at being able to communicate what he wanted to his musicians. His fits of frustration at his own lack of communication skills were legendary. After trying several times to convey something very particular to a trumpet player, he threw up his hands and shouted, “God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way!” On another occasion, during a rehearsal of Debussy’s La Mer, he found himself yet again at a loss for words to describe the effect he hoped to achieve from a particular passage. He thought for a moment, then took a silk handkerchief from his pocket and tossed it high in the air. The mesmerized musicians watched its slow and graceful descent through the air. “There,” said the maestro, “play it like that.”¹

It is one thing to have vision, but without clear communication, vision will never become reality. Until others have understood the vision well enough to articulate it themselves, they cannot be expected to pursue it with passion. Leonard Sweet wisely reminds us, “It’s not people who are right who change the world. It’s people who can communicate their definition of right to others who change the world.”²

Casting God’s Vision

When God provided David with a vision of the Jerusalem temple, the king wanted to be personally instrumental in making that dream a reality. But the Lord told David that the job of building the temple would be given to Solomon, David’s son and successor. David chose not to view himself as having been cut out of the action. Instead, he energetically undertook his new charge – that of instilling his vision and passion for the temple in Solomon and enlisting his unqualified support:

King David rose to his feet and said: “Listen to me, my brothers and my people. I had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it. But God said to me, ‘You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood…. Solomon your son is the one who will build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father. I will establish his kingdom forever if he is unswerving in carrying out my commands and laws, as is being done at this time.’

“So now I charge you in the sight of all Israel and of the assembly of the Lord, and in the hearing of our God: Be careful to follow all the commands of the Lord your God, that you may possess this good land and pass it on as an inheritance to your descendants forever.

“And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. Consider now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a temple as a sanctuary. Be strong and do the work.”

Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement. He gave him the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind for the courts of the temple of the Lord and all the surrounding rooms, for the treasuries for the dedicated things…. He also gave him the plan for the chariot, that is, the cherubim of gold that spread their wings and shelter the ark of the covenant of the Lord.

“All this,” David said, “I have in writing from the hand of the Lord upon me, and he gave me understanding in all the details of the plan.”

David also said to Solomon his son, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished. The divisions of the priests and Levites are ready for all the work on the temple of God, and every willing man skilled in any craft will help you in all the work. The officials and all the people will obey your every command.

1 Chronicles 28:2-21

Notice how David proceeded. First, he made it clear that the vision had come from God (vv. 2-3). Second, he informed Solomon that his role would be to lead the charge in building the temple (vv. 6-7). Such a task would require total devotion to the Lord and to the work. A halfhearted effort wouldn’t get the job done (vv. 8-10). Third, David assured the people that this enormous task would be accomplished because God would enable Solomon to get the job done (v. 6). Fourth, David gave his son sufficient detail about the temple that Solomon could visualize what it would look like (vv. 11-19). Finally, after casting the vision, the king gave his son another dose of encouragement (vv. 20-21).

David actively participated in preparing his successor. He passed the baton to his son publicly and privately by endowing his son with the vision for the temple. One of the most significant tasks of a leader is to transmit the organizational vision to others.

Acts 29

The most influential leader the world has ever known, Jesus of Nazareth, modeled this for us. In fact, it could be said that the entire Bible is a vision-casting book that invites us not only to look ahead to God’s promises for the future, but also to participate in their realization. God has granted us the immeasurable privilege of participating in his work, and he offers us “a slice of the action” that will have enduring consequences. James Emery White writes:

You were given life because God had a dream for you. Individually, specifically, by name. You were no accident. God willed you into existence, and He not only gave you life, but He also invested you with promise and potential. Within you is the opportunity to join with God in fulfilling the great adventure birthed in His mind for you from eternity.³

The book of Acts is the glorious story of Christ’s vision being realized, but if we open our Bibles to Acts 29 we will discover that there is no Acts 29. The reason there is no Acts 29 in the Bible is because it is being written right now by each of us as the good news of Jesus Christ is being proclaimed and lived out all over the world. In Acts 1:8, Luke (the author of Acts) gives us the outline for this volume through something Jesus told his followers just before his ascension: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” We are active participants in that last phrase; we are witnesses charged with taking the life of Christ “to the ends of the earth.”

At the end of Acts, Paul is under house arrest. He’s made it to Rome, which was near the ends of the earth in the first century, and he knows that if the gospel takes root in Rome, it will spread all over. So Luke tells us, “For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:30-31). That’s the end.

Now, for any modern-day readers of the book of Acts, when we get to this statement, we wonder what happens next. Does Paul make it to Caesar with his appeal? Does he live or does he die? But Luke never tells us. What matters is that Paul has invested his entire life in helping God’s glorious vision become a reality. And he handed the baton off to men like Timothy and Titus, and they handed it off to faithful men and women who passed it to others. Down through the centuries the baton got passed until someone placed it in your hands and said, “Go, be his witness to the ends of the earth.”

The Apostle John records for us a time when Jesus imparted his vision to his disciples in the fourth chapter of his Gospel. After his disciples returned from buying food, Jesus surprised them by telling them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about” (v. 32). At first they assumed he meant physical food, but he was referring to another kind of nourishment – that of participating in God’s will: “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest” (vv. 34-35).

Before the disciples arrived on the scene, the Samaritan woman with whom Jesus had been talking had gone to tell the people of her village about the man who knew everything she ever did. When Jesus told his disciples to look at the fields that were ripe for harvest, it may be that he was referring to the Samaritans who were on their way to talk with him. This passage illustrates how Jesus constantly sought to communicate a greater vision of the Father’s will to his disciples. Dr. Hans Finzel, Executive Director of a large church-planting organization, writes:

Though much of my job as a CEO is communicating our vision and selling our dream out there among the public constituents, my insiders need to hear from me just as much if not more. In fact, I expend as much energy on internal as on external communications. I never assume anymore that even my closest associates can read my mind – I’ve learned too much watching false information spread.⁴

Once a vision is cast, it may need to be cast again – several times. Since God’s vision always surpasses human comprehension, it requires persistence on the part of leaders to make sure everyone catches it and remembers it.

Ultimately, God’s vision must be transmitted by the Spirit of God. This principle was demonstrated in the Old Testament. When the Arameans tried to capture the prophet Elisha, his servant despaired, saying, “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” (2 Kings 6:15). Elisha’s response communicated a vision of God’s control over the situation:

“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes so he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

2 Kings 6:16-17

Paul expanded on this principle in his writings to the church at Corinth. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14); “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The implications of the life of Christ will be lost to an unbeliever apart from the convicting work of the Holy Spirit.

But for those of us who have the Holy Spirit living in us, we are called to be kingdom builders who play an active role in the realization of God’s vision. Through mentoring relationships, we enlist others in this grand scheme of redemption that God planned out before the foundations of the world were set. We recruit men and women to participate in a vision that will have eternal ramifications, eternal consequences. This is the longing of every heart: to participate in something that will outlive them.

Steve always dreamed of owning his own business, but more than that, Steve truly believed in his dream to put affordable computers in every home and office. He really believed that it would revolutionize the world. So he took the plunge and started his own computer company. The only problem was that he knew computers; he didn’t know business. He needed the best CEO he could get, and that meant John Sculley, CEO of Pepsi-Cola. Somehow Steve had to convince Sculley to leave his prominent position at one of the most prestigious and profitable companies in the world and run Steve’s fledgling company.

Somehow, some way, Steve managed to schedule a meeting with John Sculley. Mr. Sculley listened patiently to the young man’s presentation. He even allowed Steve to schedule another meeting. Finally, after several appointments, Sculley introduced Steve to reality: “You’d have to give me a million-dollar salary, a million-dollar signing bonus and a million-dollar severance package.”

Steve was shocked. He couldn’t afford anything close to those figures. Still, his boldness and passion blurted words out of his mouth: “You’ve got it. Even if I have to pay for it out of my own pocket.”

Sculley didn’t become CEO of a multi-national corporation by being foolish. He knew a bluff when he heard one. “Steve, I’d love to be an adviser, but I don’t think I can come.”

Steve dropped his head, took a long breath and issued a challenge that pierced Sculley to the core. Looking him right in the eye, Steve simply asked, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” John Sculley resigned from Pepsi-Cola and took Steve Jobs up on his offer to lead a fledgling computer company called Apple. And together they really did change the world.⁵

God placed in each of us a yearning for significance. Yet few of us actually devote our lives to great endeavors. The message of Christianity tells us that we can participate in something that stretches beyond our brief lives on earth. By passing on the vision of God to the next generation of his people, we can have a hand in eternity.

Casting the Vision at Home

It is one thing to have vision; it is quite another to communicate that vision to others to enable them to embrace and internalize it. Those who follow Christ are commissioned to communicate the vision of newness of life to others within their spheres of influence. The obvious place for this to start is in the home with our own children. In his book Visioneering, Andy Stanley writes:

The most significant visions are not cast by great orators from a stage. They are cast at the bedsides of our children. The greatest visioncasting opportunities happen between the hours of 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. Monday through Sunday. In these closing hours of the day we have a unique opportunity to plant the seeds of what could be and what should be. Take advantage of every opportunity you get.⁶

The central biblical passage concerning parents’ responsibility to create an environment in which their children will hear and embrace the teachings and principles of Scripture is the great shema of Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Because people cannot give away what they do not possess, it is first necessary that parents know and love the Lord before they can hope to instill spiritual truth in the hearts of the next generation. Only those who love the Lord themselves will be effective in passing on this love to others.

Many people were raised by parents who did not love God in an all-encompassing way. There was a great disparity between what the parents said they wanted their children to do and the way they actually lived their lives. These parents use the classic statement, “Do as I say, not as I do.” There’s something inherently wrong about that. Such a lack of integrity undermines a person’s ability to communicate their vision in a way that will infect others. Communication involves more than words. It involves logos (words and concepts), ethos (behavior and character) and pathos (passion and sympathy). Clear communication is borne of what you say, what you do and who you are. There must be integrity and alignment in order for your communication to be credible and persuasive.

Many parents have discovered the futility of trying to raise their children to have moral standards they themselves do not possess. It is pointless to try to get children to obey God without loving him, and it is impossible for parents to teach their children to love God if they themselves do not.

This passage also underscores the fact that vision is imparted in both formal and informal ways. In these verses, parents are told to impress God’s commandments on their children not only in more structured settings (“when you sit at home”), but also in unstructured and spontaneous ways (“when you walk along the road”). When people are serious about knowing God, they begin to incarnate and exhibit what they speak. Spiritual and moral principles are best conveyed in the laboratory of life; they are conveyed as much through character as they are through words. Truth is most effectively proclaimed through the consistency of words and work.

The message of Proverbs 2 is that wisdom can only be found if it is sought intentionally:

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 2:1-5

The reason this father can implore his son to pursue wisdom is because the son has seen the father do the same. Parents who try to instruct their children to fear the Lord without fearing the Lord themselves are like people who try to describe something they haven’t seen. Larry Crabb expands upon the power and importance of casting a vision for another person:

What would it be like if we had a vision for each other, if we could see the lost glory in ourselves, our family, and our friends? What would the effect on your sons and daughters be if they realized that you were caught up with the possibilities of restored glory, of what they could become – not successful, talented, good looking, or rich but kind, strong and self-assured, fully alive.

When people connect with each other on the basis of a vision for who they are and what they could become; when we see in others what little of Jesus has already begun to form beneath the insecurity, fear and pride; when we long beyond anything else to see that little bit of Jesus develop and mature; then something is released from within us that has the power to form more of Jesus within them. That power is the life of Christ, carried into another soul across the bridge of our vision for them, a life that touches the life in another with nourishing power. Vision for others both bridges the distance between two souls and triggers the release of the power within us.⁷

Making Sure the Vision is “Caught”

Obviously, when communication breaks down, there could be a number of problems. The problem could be in transmission. As we have just seen, trying to transfer something before it is truly in your possession leads to a breakdown in communication. But sometimes the problem is in the reception. For example, God had a great vision that he wanted Moses to “catch.” But he encountered resistance when he communicated his vision to his reluctant servant. Through this story we learn a great deal about how to help those who don’t buy into a vision when they first hear it. Despite Moses’ initial strong resistance, God finally sold him on the vision.

Every leader occasionally faces seemingly impossible challenges. The opposition appears too strong, too entrenched and too well-organized. His or her own resources seem too small by comparison. That’s how Moses must have felt when God appeared to him in the burning bush:

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

Exodus 3:7-10

Moses responded to God’s call with three questions and an objection that expressed his unbelief and lack of confidence.

First, Moses asked, “Who am I?” (v. 11). That question revealed a radical change in Moses. Forty years earlier, Moses had impulsively taken it upon himself to vindicate a fellow Hebrew for a beating he had endured from an Egyptian (2:11-12). Now he felt inadequate for the task, even though God himself was commissioning him. God’s response was exactly what Moses needed: “And God said, ‘I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain’” (3:12). Moses would soon discover that one plus God equals a majority.

Moses’ second question was, “What shall I tell them?” (v. 13). Demanding the release of over two million slaves was a tall order. Moses would need an authority higher than himself to persuade Pharaoh. Again God gave Moses what he needed: “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (v. 14). By calling himself “I AM,” God revealed his identity as the eternal God who is always there for his people. He was the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac, a description that would resonate with the Hebrew slaves in Egypt.

Still unconvinced, Moses asked a third question: “What if they do not believe me?” (4:1). Moses no doubt remembered what had happened 40 years earlier. While Moses was trying to settle a dispute between two Hebrew men, one of them had scornfully asked, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” (2:14). With those words still echoing in his mind, it’s understandable that Moses would fear rejection. But God told Moses that he would validate his leadership through a series of miracles that would convince even the most skeptical person in Egypt. As long as Moses stayed at God’s side, he wouldn’t have cause for worry.

With Moses’ fourth and final objection, he implied that he wasn’t qualified to lead the people to freedom because he wasn’t an eloquent speaker (4:10). At this point Moses’ fear of failure prevailed over his memory. So many years had passed since Moses had used his skills of persuasion that he thought he had lost them. Once more God responded to Moses with compassion. God promised to give him words to say and then deputized Aaron to help him:

The Lord said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say….What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad when he sees you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him.”

Exodus 4:11-12, 14-16

Without question, Moses was one of the greatest leaders of world history. When God directed him to lead in a difficult situation, Moses hesitated before he obeyed – but he did obey. God showed Moses genuine understanding of his fears and concerns about what God wanted him to contribute to this overwhelming vision. God validated each of Moses’ statements and addressed them. As Moses’ concerns went away, so did his resistance to the vision. Like Moses, all leaders will occasionally face tough challenges, and seemingly impossible situations. At such times they need to follow Moses’ lead: Assess the situation, take their fears to God, listen for his response and then obey.

How exactly did God lead Moses from resisting the vision of deliverance to leading it? Let’s review the five points of resistance to the vision and God’s response to each point.

“Who am I?” (3:11). This sense of being overwhelmed should accompany any well-formed vision statement. If the statement doesn’t have a sense of the ridiculous about it, and if the hearers don’t, at least initially, feel they are in over their heads, then there is no challenge, no spark that calls them to stretch and push. But the strength of the vision statement will both stimulate and overcome resistance. “Who am I?” God said in effect, “I have called you and I am doing this. It’s not who you are, but who I am and what I want you to do” (3:1-12).

“What shall I tell them?” (3:13). This statement reflects the concerns of cost and value. “Who’s behind this?” “Who will accept the final responsibility for such an overwhelming vision?” Moses was looking for some authoritative back-up. So will the people within your organization. “What shall I tell them?” “Tell them I am with you in this because you are fulfilling what I want done” (3:14-22).

“What if they don’t believe me?” (4:1). Most people’s reactions to vision statements go from being overwhelmed (point 1), to legitimate skepticism (point 2), to serious investigation of legitimacy. If a vision is well-stated, people will demand evidence. “What if they don’t believe me?” “Doubts are to be expected when presenting a grand vision. Give them enough evidence and rationale to help them address their doubts” (4:2-9).

“O Lord, I have never been eloquent” (4:10). This reflects the painful fact that people have tried great and glorious projects in the past, only to be disappointed or embarrassed. But people eagerly desire to invest their time and effort in successful ventures and will be motivated to do their best if consistently empowered to do so. “O Lord, I have not been eloquent.” “Trust me and let me show you what I can do” (4:11).

“Send someone else” (4:13). Moses’ final resistance was, “Please, Lord, not me. I’m too overwhelmed. It’s just easier to stay where I am.” The leader who can effectively address this final appeal and get people excited about new possibilities will go a long way toward developing an effective team. “Send someone else.” God persuaded Moses, urging his reluctant messenger to get on with it and trust his faithfulness. There is a time for persuasion and selling the vision, and a time for pushing to get it done.

All of us have challenges, problems, fears and anxieties. We worry about the future, about the economy, about our families. As we get older, we become more aware of health issues and concerns about our own mortality. In such a context, we need to be assured of God’s vision for our lives. He does have a purpose for each of us, and we are immortal until his purpose is fulfilled.

For some, God’s vision may only require a few years to be fully realized. Others may live so long that they are tempted to become world-weary. Still, God has a specific vision for each of us as individuals. God has a two-fold plan for all of us – to be conformed to the image of his Son and to reproduce the life of Christ in others. Beyond that, however, God has a unique vision for each of his children, and nothing will infuse our lives with more meaning, purpose and fulfillment than investing them to make God’s vision a reality.

¹ Clifton Fadiman (ed.), The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), p. 548.

² Leonard Sweet, Aqua Church (Loveland, CO: 1999), p. 167.

³ James Emery White, Life-Defining Moments (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press, 2001), p. 69.

⁴ Hans Finzel, The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications Ministries, 2000), p. 115.

⁵ Adapted from John Sculley, Odyssey (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 56-91.

⁶ Andy Stanley, Visioneering (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1999), p. 114.

⁷ Larry Crabb, Connecting (Nashville: Word, 1997), p. 65.