This year has truly been an extraordinarily wonderful year. I have been placed around some very fine young men and women. Whether it is first years, third years, grad students, thirty year olds, or even sixty year olds – I have gotten the chance to meet a good handful of people who truly know and love God.
I used to think that you could just put on a good face and pretend to serve others – even against that evil voice only you can hear inside your head – and not a single soul would be able to notice a thing. This year, after meeting people who wear their hearts on their sleeves (a phrase I am stealing from a friend’s note), I have decided against such a naïve view of things. It’s a naïve view of life, to think that I can do anything well without aligning my heart to it.
It always occurred to me that to become a man (or a woman) is to be ignited with passion – to the extent of becoming selfless for a cause. To become a man (or a woman) of God then is to simply plug in “God and His people” as the “cause”. This is truly a cause worth suffering for. And guess what, nothing gives you more passion than the Word of God, as I have learned from the people I have met this year.
This is the passage that I believe sums up the attitude we ought to have when it comes to the Word:
2 Timothy 4:1-5 (ESV)
“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”
Paul calls Timothy to preach the Word and to do the work of an evangelist. I think it only requires simple logic to deduce that this ought to also be the calling for EVERY Christian young and old.
I have been privileged to personally witness the transformation process: that people who truly love God’s Word become people who genuinely love God and His people. Their lives become displays of authentic Christian living. They lift up every concern in prayer. They reprove, rebuke and exhort one another, doing so with complete patience. They can’t stop thinking of ways of which God can use them to transform the world.
Notice that I am talking about “them” and not “we” or “us”. I am still so immature. Most of the time I am.
A teen complained to us leaders that he got told off by the aunties at church to not play the drums, as it disturbs them.
My initial reaction was, “So what? Back in the day we didn’t even have a drumset at church. We practiced weekly at my place only to get a chance to lead worship once in a blue moon. Yet we didn’t complain. You are enjoying the fruit of our labor you spoiled kid!”
That’s how I felt. And no, that definitely does not fall under the “boasting in Christ” file cabinet. It’s a disgusting attitude to have.
Time to meditate on 2 Peter 1 again.
I leave you with some photographs of me and (most of) the lovely people I’ve gotten to meet this year:
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