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The following excerpt is from Mark Frost's Doorpost newsletter, I found it very enlightening.
"Many times, our desire to fulfill our calling or our destiny, or as some like to phrase it, “to be greatly used of God”, is motivated more out of a desire for personal significance or fulfillment, than out of pure love for God. If you feel trapped by circumstances, unable to fulfill what you feel is your destiny, you can continually long and look for a different station in life, or you can long and look for ways to turn your many daily routines into sweet smelling offerings of love to God, as you do them with a pure motive of love and surrender to the will of God that has you enclosed or shut up in a narrow place... Don’t waste the mundane waiting for significance! Turn the mundane into sweet smelling sacrifice to God. It is that very offering of love to God out of a pure heart that turns the prison into paradise, the desert into a garden, and the shack into a mansion. If you have within you the life of Christ, through a true work of God’s grace, then you already possess all that you need in order to become a well-pleasing sacrifice to Jesus."
I would add- That if you have within you the life of Christ then you already have all you need to find fulfillment/significance in the place you're in.
In my theology I believe this, but my reality does not always line up with my beliefs. I guess what I mean is that some of my daily routines do not smell like "sweet smelling offerings" to me.
What I've done in the past when my place in life left me feeling unsatisfied, was to look for a new place, but after going around that merry-go-round a few times I know the grass is not really greener it just looks that way from a distance.
So how does the mundane start to smell a little less like shit and more like a fragrant offering?
I think it must start with (and come back to) God's ridiculous love for us. If we don't really get This, then everything will come up short, leave us feeling unfulfilled. This Love can't really be explained by anyone. Especially when religion and religious terminology have become the equivelant of white noise, when words like grace, mercy, "the Cross", forgiveness, redemption no longer carry much meaning.
But every once in a while we catch a glimpse of this love, and if our cluttered minds can see it for what it truly is... well there are no words.
I've put a link to a you tube video of Kim Walker singing "How He Loves Us". She's caught a glimpse of His Love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoC1ec-lYps
talon
Very well written. This is a life lesson I've had to remind myself over and over through the years. It's easy to get in our rut or routine of busyness and forget the simpliest thing - yet most powerful force - God's unconditional Love. In reading back over my journals, there is a repeated pattern of disatisfaction and searching for something "out there" to fulfil me. I've cried out to God, what is it you would have me to do? It's always the same answer that seems to quiet my soul as I settle my heart with Him and simple enjoy the moment with my Lord. The answer's not finding something else to do, the answer's realizing I don't have to "DO" anything. I am Loved. I have to continually talk to my soul, reminding it to smile, love, be happy where I am, love myself, accept this day for what it is. Keeping my heart grateful is a big part of fulfilling my destiny.
ReplyDeleteLove Mom
Thanks so much for posting this Talon. I really appreciate the quote from Mark Frost! It's a very balanced approach that seems to address folks who are living actual lives of work (and sometimes toil).
ReplyDeleteMy weekly men's group has been reading John Piper's "Don't Waste Your Life" and from what we've read in the first 3 chapters he can't seem to get beyond the attitude that everything we do must be earth-shatteringly amazing. I keep wanting to say "but what if your calling is not as a missionary in Africa but as a working guy in Dallas?"
Frost seems to remind us that sometimes we serve God with the little obediences (being kind to our nextdoor neighbors and spouse) just as much as our grand sacrifices (going to Africa).
-Shannon
Thank you guys for your comments (and you too Ashley for the email). It is encouraging to hear from you. Shannon, I've often thought of all the millions of folks throughout history that labored and toiled to eak out an existence without any recognition or signigicance- whether tilling the land, fishing, artists, or merchants. Who's to say they did not fulfill their destiny? Was God disappointed with their accomplishments? Where are the preachers that validate those people?
ReplyDeleteTalon