Kansas City Chronicles - Day 7

One thing I am really taking away from this week is a refined focus concerning what God has called me to in the few years I have left before I meet Christ. The prayer of Ephesians 1:18 is that we would know the hope of His calling for our life. Well, if that calling is so hope-filled, what the heck is it? In the midst of the struggles of these past months I believe that I have inadvertently slipped into a false paradigm of what my life on earth is “supposed” to look like. My vision for God's fullness has been subtly reduced to getting by, surviving - just a few "deserved" comforts in a world full of pain. Unfortunately, in an attempt to comfort me in my miseries, many people have perpetuated these ideals. I’m here to be happy, healthy, successful, and see all my dreams come true…right?

Well, sort of. There is truth in that statement, but for it to really match up with what the Bible actually says, there need to be some pretty weighty qualifications attached to it. That sounds a lot more like the American dream than the dream of the Father of Glory and His Son, Jesus Christ.

The asterisk next to that statement might look something like this: God wants you happy, but He wants you holy even more. Yes, there is something He desires even more than for you to experience unbroken surges of joy on this side of eternity - the deepest parts of your being conformed to the image of His Son. Only with this true Christian paradigm of life can we make sense of our trials. Romans 8:29 follows Romans 8:28 for a reason: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” If we continue to trust in the Father, our trials can work for us many good things, but the most important is more Christ-likeness. If the point of life were to simply avoid pain and sadness at all costs, we would have to seriously question the sovereignty and goodness of God in the midst of some of the circumstances we go through. We would also quickly fall into hopelessness and condemnation if we are not enjoying every moment of our life and that is the ideal that has been painted for us. But if the point of life is to know our Lord and be transformed into His courageous and loving Being, than we start to understand how important hardship can be to our true calling.

Continuing with the asterisk, yes – God wants you to be healthy. And apparently so did the Apostle John, who knew Jesus’ heart as well as anyone in his generation: “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2). Sickness in and of itself does not reflect the glory of God. There is no illness or disease in His Kingdom of light, and He delights in bringing tokens of that Kingdom to the earth by manifesting His healing power. But let me ask you this – is a fully functional body God’s highest aspiration for you in this age? Friends, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and then a few years later he died. Again. In fact, when God heals me from Lyme Disease, I have a good unction that I might not be fully immune to all sicknesses for the duration of my life. And unless I survive to see the Return of Jesus, I will probably be killed by angry people or perhaps deteriorate from some other earthly cause. Like happiness, health is extremely important to God, but it is not the end goal. A heart that is wholly like Jesus, bursting with the love of the Father, and faithful to keep His commands until the very end, is worth more than all the health and wealth of this age. If a man would give all the wealth [or health] of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned (Song of Songs 8:7). Utterly scorned, says our Divine Bridegroom. Nothing is more important than the love of Christ filling a human heart. In the words of Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman afflicted with quadriplegia for the majority of her life, there are more important things in life than walking.

I think by now we have almost covered the subjects of nearly every book I have seen on the plane that I am currently on. Happiness, health, and now, success and dreams fulfilled. As the titles of numerous Christian books on the market now suggest, God wants to make all of your dreams come true. And He does…as long as you read the footnote with bold letters at the bottom of the page.

Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart, says David in Psalm 37:4. If you put Jesus first and make Him your highest delight, you will begin to dream new dreams. God will give you the desires of your heart, inasmuch as they are in alignment with the desires of His heart. Jesus dreams a million dreams, every one of them beautiful and full of purpose, and He lets His friends in on them. God wants to make the dreams He has given you come true, not just every whim and want that wanders into your heart.

The good part is that God has deposited these dreams inside of you since the moment you were born, and often you don’t have to be super spiritual to figure them out. He will reveal them to you as you lean into Him. That is why our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Colossian 3:3) – we find out who we are and what we were made for as we look to Him. As the beginning of that verse states, we died to our old lives; our selfish dreams, our vain hopes, and our fleshly fantasies. A destiny that brings joy to our souls is hidden in the knowledge of Christ.

These dreams will make you come alive on the inside as you think on them, plan for them, and begin to walk in them. But the true fulfillment of them is contingent on a relationship with Him that values Him more than the dream itself. So the true Christian version of the American Dream is qualified by this: God wants to make His dreams come true for your life, and His highest dream is for you to look like Jesus! The hope of our calling is to know Him, to love Him, and to be like Him in all settings and circumstances. And yes, we have a pretty important job to do here on the earth as well.

So God is realigning my expectations for life in this age. He wants me happy and healthy, no doubt, but more than that, He wants my heart to be healed and whole by the power of His Spirit. If there is a looming boulder of oppression that seems to come between me and my calling, I can look it in the face and know that God will crush it into a runway of destiny that actually catapults me forward with even more power. And I can say with Paul, “…we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

Hope born of hardship does not disappoint because the hardship has refined it into a living hope, a hope fully set on Jesus and His Kingdom. Hope in superficial happiness in this age disappoints. Man, does it. Jesus tried His best to warn us – “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33) – or in other words, “Don’t get too comfortable here.” “But take heart,” He goes on, “I have overcome the world.”

The one thing we can count on in every season, whether it be a valley of pain and confusion or a mountain top of glory, is the love of God being poured out into our hearts. If you want, you can have more of HIM in every circumstance, and that hope will never let you down. Period.