IS GOD’S WILL ALWAYS UNCOMFORTABLE?

 Psalm 37:4

Delight yourself in the Lord

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

                 As I was doing my devotions this morning, I came across a reading that brought back some old memories from when I was a young boy. Growing up in church, I had developed the distinct impression that to follow Christ a person had to abandon the things you enjoyed and was good at and do things that you did not enjoy and were not good at. This was called sacrifice and was lauded as the path to spiritual maturity. Consequently, I refused to acknowledge the things I was good at. Somehow, I thought that was pride and pride was a sin. I am not sure where this idea came from, but it was reinforced by things like the reading I mentioned. Here is an excerpt from that reading.

                “St. Ambrose and St. Augustine did not want to be overworked and worried bishops. Nothing was farther from their intention. St. Cuthbert wanted the solitude and freedom of his heritage on the Farne; but he did not often get there. St. Francis Xavier’s preference was for an orderly life close to his beloved master, St. Ignatius. At a few hours’ notice he was sent out to be the Apostle of the Indies and never returned to Europe again. Henry Martyn, the fragile and exquisite scholar, was compelled to sacrifice the intellectual life to which he was so perfectly fitted for the missionary life to which he felt decisively called. In all these, a power beyond themselves decided the direction of life.” (Evelyn Underhill)

                Upon reading this, one could get the distinct impression that God’s will is to ignore a person’s natural talents and desires and to lead people into avenues of service for which they are unsuited. Instead of sounding like a loving father, that sounds like a twisted control freak who likes to make others uncomfortable.

                When I was in high school, I took a mission trip to Haiti. It was on that trip that I felt the call of God on my heart to go into full-time ministry. On that trip I met a couple who felt that God’s highest calling for every Christian was to be a foreign missionary. He was a dentist and they worked together at a mission hospital. The one thing that this dentist hated more than anything else was pulling teeth. Yet, the majority of what he did, day in and day out, was pull teeth. That couple lasted one term; returning home with a feeling of failure. Was it really God’s will that he should spend his time doing the very thing he hated the most?

                When I was a boy, I too had the feeling that the highest calling for a Christian is to be a foreign missionary. With that thought firmly planted in my mind, I set my life’s course to that end. From that trip to Haiti until my first year in seminary, I diligently pursued my goal to be a missionary. Then God stepped in and changed the course of my life. He showed me, in a dramatic way, that I did not have the skills needed to be the missionary that I thought He wanted me to be. Instead, He began to show me that He had given me certain desires and talents, which I had subdued, that He wanted to use for His glory. Once I was willing to embrace the talents that God had endowed me with, I began to see how God had been directing me all along.

                The Christian life definitely requires that we sacrifice some of our wishes and desires. Jesus said that we had to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Him. He also called us to seek first the kingdom of God. But neither of those commands tell us to negate the way that God made us. God has given each of us certain gifts, talents, and abilities that He wants to use for His Kingdom and His glory. When these are properly viewed as tools in God’s hands and not ends in themselves, they become powerful motivators for action.

                David said that if we will delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our heart. When we align our heart with the heart of God, our desires become sign posts to God’s leading and directing. God's will is not that we would all abandon our current lives and become foreign missionaries. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:17-18, If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.

                God does not call all of us to leave what we know and go to some far-flung place to spend our life in service there. No, God has placed each of us where He wants us to serve. He has given us talents and even desires that He wants us to use right where we are. There will be sacrifice along the way, that is for sure. But there will also be the delight of doing the things we were created to do.

                God is not asking us to give up everything that makes us happy and comfortable to live lives in uncomfortable situations. What He is asking of us is that we submit all of our talents, gifts, and desires to Him for His use. To use our talents for God’s glory is an amazing experience of joy and delight, even if there is some sacrifice along the way. Who has God created you to be? Be that person to the fullest of your ability.

Colossians 3:17

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.