Destruction

Has there ever been a time in your life when Jesus has come and destroyed everything?

For me, He came a year and a half ago, bearing a sizable wrecking ball. I had always, or at least since about 7th grade, wanted to be a lawyer. Initially, I had dreams of becoming an ambulance chaser or a divorce lawyer, someone who made a lot of money without having to do much. As I got older, my jurisprudential ambitions turned toward the more humanitarian aspects of law, such as human rights or government work.

By my senior year of high school, I had decided to go the University of Illinois and eventually the law school there. But in October of that year, one morning I woke up and knew I was actually going to be a pastor. The rest of that day, as I can recall, I was in a state of mild shock, slowly processing this bomb that the good Lord had dropped.

But the more I thought about it, the more I could link up events from over the previous year that had culminated in this vocational announcement.

It had all started in the early Fall of 2007. Throughout that year, a deep sense of disquiet and unrest filled me until I was nearly rupturing it from my joints. I could feel God urging me, pressuring me, to make a change. He was not entirely clear as to what that change should be, so I decided that I would step up and be more involved in student government, thus I ran in the election for student council president that spring.

That fever dream ended in a fiery crash, from which there were no survivors. And I was left dejected, not only because everyone hated me, but because I was convinced that me winning the election was God's plan (narcissistic much?). He wanted change, I tried to change, and failed. This event threw my entire outlook on life off balance. It redefined how I thought about myself - namely, with much more humility.

This newfound humility, for its part, led to what I sometimes refer to as my "second conversion", though that term does not do the event justice. While in Canada on a missions trip, God revealed Himself to me in an irrevocable and unequivocal way. Now I understood. The change would not be on my terms, but on His.

And so it happened. I started senior year with a vision and a purpose endowed by God. I founded a group of like-minded students who were all dedicated to enacting the Kingdom of Heaven in the here and now. I was back on top of the world, and as such my old ways of pride and arrogance began to creep back in.

But come that October, God had to debase me once again. Goodbye to law school, wealth, security, and prestige. Welcome to the land of the pastor, a land flowing with depression and small paychecks. Since then, I have tried to dutifully run the race marked out. Some mornings, most mornings, it feels like I've made a terrible mistake. Family and friends have, gently, expressed that I have lost my mind. They are probably right.

But I digress. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to simply ignore God's call on my life and carry on with my plans. And I could have done good works aplenty; served my fellow man, advanced the cause of Christ. But ultimately, I would have been going through the motions of religion, honoring God with my mouth but not with my life.

As we have discussed before, everyone has a calling to proclaim the gospel. But how does God want you to do it? Inquiring of the Lord, asking what He wants: that's the easy part. The trick of it is following His direction, even if He takes away your life. Or at least the one you planned to have.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1