You Love my Mission more than Me

I tend to read dangerous books. I don't mean dangerous books on the order of the Monster Book of Monsters that bit several students in the Harry Potter series, but rather dangerous to my mind, my heart, and my lifestyle. On the back cover of The New Friars a reviewer writes, "This book needs a warning label: Beware, dangerous to your health, your service, your life." And so I read the book.

And for a while I was berating myself for doing so. I've just recently began feeling a measure of emotional, physical, and spiritual health. I told myself that this book was going to make me feel discontent again and that it would stir up longings that were not going to be able to be met.

Ever since I was 14 years old, I've wanted to live on the edge of Christianity. This desire formed the greater portion of my identity. I would go to the least reached and share the gospel with those who were least likely to hear. I read and listened to Keith Green with a passion not understood by my classmates.

And then life happened. And suddenly I was back living in the town that I swore I would never live in again and attending the church that I thought I would only visit once every four years while home on furlough. Or maybe, I thought, I would never take a furlough.

Actually there was a lot of time in there where I was living on the front lines. And I loved it. I was passionate about the work I was doing, and while I was also being abused, I didn't care all that much. It was just part of the price that I felt I had to pay to be in God's beautiful service. I loved his mission.

And then the darkness came. Suddenly I was cynical about all of it. I've spent the better part of the past eight years in very difficult times. I'm just now walking into the light and seeing how dark my life was.

Enter The New Friars. It is the first "mission" book that I've picked up in over ten years. I felt a little guilty reading it because I didn't think it would be safe for me. I almost felt a little rebellious. I certainly wasn't going to tell anyone that I was reading it. I knew that it would feed my guilt about what I felt was a wasted life, but I didn't care.

And God surprised me. In a major way. Because, while this book is most certainly about an amazing group of young people who have taken on vows of poverty that I envy, I found something much more important in the book. I discovered that all of my life I have loved God's mission more than I have loved him.

Scott Bessenecker writes of this experience learning this for himself. He tells of shoveling snow off his driveway on a grey snowy day. He talks of the disappointment he felt with his life and begged God to give him a calling. Scott writes:

"You love my mission more than you love me," Jesus said to me. At first I found this a bit offensive. I suppose Peter might have felt the same way when Jesus kept asking him later, "Do you love me?" (John 21:15-17). How can this be, I wondered? Of course I love you, Lord. But then I began to ask myself, what was it that motivated me? What was it that I thought about and dreamed about and obsessed about? It was his mission. Indeed, I did love his mission more than I loved him. It was true. I was in pursuit of Christ's mission, and in the process I had passed by the Mission Giver without so much as a "hello."

As wonderful as it is to bring the kingdom of God to the hollow places on earth, even this is rubbish in comparision to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus. Intimacy with Christ must be first. Without it, mission is empty and self-serving. I stopped purusing his mission on that day and began giving myself more completely to him -- whether that would lead me permanently overseas or not. (p. 98-99)

I stopped reading at this point and realized that this was me. I could easily have written these words. I wanted to Do for God, not Be for God. I didn't want to pursue loving him first; I wanted to show him my love through my actions in his service. And the more "on the edge" that service was, the better for me.

So, I've been basking in the love of God for the past few days. I've been learning to love Him, and making him supreme in my life. As I see it, this journey of loving God has enough to keep me busy for a lifetime. I'm learning to enjoy and live in the very moment that I am in, rather than obsessing about future plans for my life. Much of the anxiety that I've struggled with for the past few years seems to be melting away.

I'm thankful for dangerous books. And even more thankful for a gracious Father who created in me a desire to read such things and then used that desire to teach me far more than I ever imagined about myself. I finished "the guilt" book two days ago and didn't feel the overwhelming presence of guilt that I had expected. Instead I was filled with an amazing sense of the grace and goodness of God.