Our Ambitious Western Christianity

Our desire to partake in God’s spiritual assignments is good, but let’s take heed that we don’t esteem ourselves higher than God Himself esteems us. As we embrace whatever spiritual assets we possess naturally, we’ll find that they amount to… not much. Our spiritual helplessness is obvious enough, we might even talk about this sometimes, but it’s still difficult for us to actively accept because we want to be experts in our own right.

We westerners are accustomed to esteeming ourselves ambitious for God. We enjoy looking at global maps so we can put our fingers on that paper representation of some far-off place and imagine ourselves there, accomplishing some glorious work for Jesus on a long or short-term mission trip. However, as our minds wander deeper into the fog of our imaginary plans, we forget that we are still sitting here, safe and sound in our own home town.
Even if money enables us to fly our planes or drive our cars or sail our boats off to some far-off locale, that does not necessarily mean we have landed ourselves on the same spiritual page as Christ. However we will be on the same spiritual page as Christ whenever He catapults us there.
An unalterable truth that God's people are God's… the way our lives play out is only a physical aftereffect of this truth. Therefore, in the same way that even the fastest plane cannot outrun the sovereignty of God, so also not even the fastest plane can catch up with Him either.
To those whom Christ has taught to prefer reality, walking the path is better than tracing fingers along a map of the path. Living the Way is better than filling in right answers about the Way. Waking up and going outside of our safe little camp is better than staying in bed and dreaming about going outside our safe little camp.
We do well to ask Christ to make our hearts willing, no matter what it takes. We are wise to keep asking Him for the wisdom and ability to accept what He knows is best. If we open ourselves to His Spirit, He will tear down and cut out whatever we have built up in opposition to His Holiness.
Let’s embrace our lowly position if that is, in fact, the case. If we westerners start by embracing the obvious things about our spiritual health as a whole church then, God willing, we might also move on toward the freedom of being completely open and honest before Him. We should confess to Him all that we are and all that we are not, because He knows all about us anyway. If He permits, we will be ready and willing to discard anything, no matter how much we have trained ourselves to fearfully cling.

by Patrick Roberts BooksByPatrick.com

Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people to Jesus Christ.