Chapter Eighteen--Putting It All Together
Chapter Eighteen
Putting It All Together
Zack is engaged. I don’t mean in the romantic sense. I mean in the sense that he is involved. On the surface, Zack’s life looks pretty ordinary. He lives in the city and is the manager of a local grocery store. He has a tight circle of friends with whom he stays in close contact. He is very involved with the church in his neighborhood. Zack is thirty-one and not yet married, although there is a woman in his life.
When I say that Zack is engaged, I mean that the way he lives is a concrete example of what this book is all about. Zack gets it; he gets what it means to expand his life to the size of God’s kingdom. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to quit his job and go to some remote country as a missionary. You really can live for God’s kingdom right where you are. In fact, that is exactly what God has called you and given you the grace to do. Let’s look at Zack’s life a little more closely.
Zach is in the city because the largest concentration of people is there. Zack is excited about the fact that in the city there is loads of public space that he shares with scores of other people every day. This provides him with natural opportunities to greet and eventually meet people he would not otherwise know. And why does he want to do this? Because he is serious about God’s call to be salt and light in the place where God has put him. He is excited about the opportunities that he has every day to incarnate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you were to walk the streets with Zack, you would be convinced that he knows everyone in his neighborhood. He is never too busy or self-absorbed to stop and say hello. After his MBA, Zack purposely looked for a job in his neighborhood that would put him in daily contact with the people in his neighborhood. All of the regular shoppers at the store know Zack.
Zack is known for his willingness to help. He regularly takes care of his neighbor’s boxer. The dog is too big for Zack’s condo and slobbers a lot, but he has also provided an opportunity for Zack to be engaged in the life of the career-driven couple who live next door. He has also become a surrogate son to the elderly lady down the street. Without Zack, her sidewalks would never be shoveled in the winter, and he regularly delivers her groceries to her.
Saturday morning is Zack’s time in the neighborhood park. Yes, he needs to exercise and is concerned about staying fit as he gets older, but there is more going on here. The touch football and three-on-three basketball games at the park have enabled Zack to get to know lots of the young guys in his neighborhood. Although it would be more efficient for Zack to join a gym, he has bigger reasons for staying in the park.
In the summers, Zack does everything he can to make his deck barbecue central, inviting someone to have a meal with him almost every weekend. Zack is a natural evangelist, but not in a forced, button-holing way. By the time Zack begins to talk about his relationship with Christ, the people around him are already attracted to who he is, and they already wonder what makes him tick.
When the Big Kingdom Meets the Sidewalk
Zack lives the way he does for one reason: he has his eyes on the big kingdom. He could be living in a bigger place. He could have a more prestigious, better paying job. He could own nicer things and have much more free time to himself. He could have all of these things, but he chooses not to because Zack isn’t living for Zack. Zack really loves living for the King. Here are the foundation stones of what that means.
Zack believes in the importance of place. He believes that the sovereign King of the universe has put him exactly where he wants him. And that means he should love the people in it and do everything he can to make it a better place.
Zack believes in ministry as a lifestyle. Most Christians make the mistake of thinking about ministry in a formal sense. They think of ministry as a program that is scheduled. In this model, you step out of your life into ministry, and then out of ministry back into your life. Zack believes that life is ministry, that every dimension of human life is at once a forum for ministry.
Zack believes in the redemptive power of relationships. Zack believes the Bible’s teaching that redemptive activity always takes place in the context of relationships. This is how God works in our lives. Through Christ, he accepts us into loving relationship with him, and then he goes to work to radically change us. So Zack looks for every opening he can find to build relationships with the people around him.
Zack believes in the importance of hospitality. Just as God opens the doors of his family to him, Zack believes he makes a very powerful statement when he opens the doors of his private world to the people that God has placed near him.
Zack believes that he is called to live with patience and perseverance. Ministry is always a process and not an event. Ministry is the willingness to make long-term investments in the lives of others, with the hope that God will do what he alone can do as we are making those investments. As Zack commits himself to a long-term investment in loving others, he reminds himself of the patience with which he has been treated by his heavenly Father.
Because Zack is living this way, everything he does is bigger than it seems. Work has expanded to the size of God’s kingdom. Walking to work becomes more than walking to work; it, too, becomes kingdom work. Things as mundane as exercise and barbecuing take on new significance because even they are part of Zack’s living large.
Sure, there are times when Zack goes out to eat just to have a good meal or goes to a movie simply for the sake of entertainment. But even these activities Zack holds with an open hand, always ready for God to alter the plan.
What Does It Mean for You? Some Personal Questions
As you are now near the end of this book, it’s important for you to use it as a mirror. Looking at yourself through the truths of this book, what do you see? What kingdom shapes your decisions and sets your schedule? Have you shrunk your life to the size of your life, or have you expanded everything you are doing to the size of God’s kingdom? These final questions are designed to help you accurately evaluate your lifestyle, and my hope is that they will produce in you a quest for more.
1. Are you doing the concrete things in your life regularly because you are living for something bigger than your own personal definition of happiness?
2. Do you live aware of the deceptive nature of the kingdom of self (remember, it really is a costume kingdom), regularly examining your motives and how you are investing your time and energy?
3. Are you living that form-and-freedom jazz life that God has called you to? Are you committed to staying within the boundaries of what he has written, yet enjoying the freedom to improvise in the situations and relationships where he has placed you?
4. Are you dissatisfied with the broken world that you live and work in every day? And do you work for its restoration to wholeness in any way you can?
5. Have you allowed yourself to be so busy with work on earth that you do not have time to long for heaven? Or is everything you do done with one eye on the present and one eye on eternity? Are you able to deal with the pain and disappointment of today because you really have embraced the promise of a day when this world and everything in it will be made completely new?
6. Do you hold loosely to your plans, your schedule, your agenda, your expectations? Are you always looking for ways to be part of what God is doing wherever you are, no matter how mundane the moment is?
7. Do you live with a deep appreciation for the Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of grace that has fundamentally changed you and the course of your life? Do you work to keep your love and worship of him fresh and new? Do you live with a sense of humble privilege that not only have you been chosen to be a citizen of his kingdom, but his ambassador as well?
We were never made or remade to live for ourselves. We were created for transcendence. The borders of our lives were always meant to be way bigger than the borders of our lives. When we live this way, by his grace, we not only become part of the most important work in the universe, but we are given back our humanity. This is the way every human being was designed to live! Though God is infinitely patient, he will never accept our little kingdom purposes. Since he loves us so, he will again and again reach into our claustrophobic little kingdoms of one and pry us out. And he will keep doing this until his will is finally done and his kingdom has finally come. Now that is a reason for celebration!