Doing things you don’t think you can do…

The last several years has been a test turned into a testimony.  A mess turned into a message.  I think it’s important to do hard things, I’ve said that to my kids over and over, so I guess I have to keep thinking it’s important.  Ha.  But I can’t say that I like doing hard things.  I still have to make myself do them most of the time.  “Is there any other way around it?” usually is where I start, but in time, you discover that a good many things can’t happen without painstaking effort and unreasonable risk.  It’s just how it works.

I’m not altogether sure as to why I was thinking about this last night, but I got to thinking how many things I’ve done over the past 5 years of my life.  Things that if you would have told me I would be doing/leading I would have gladly laughed, maybe spit, in your face.

-       Pulling the church out of a financial crisis when I first became the lead pastor.

-       Doing an $800,000 expansion on our church and retiring $200,000 of our debt

-       Adopting 2 boys from Ethiopia with about $4,000 in our bank account.  All together it cost about $55,000 and after all the grants and gifts…we emerged with $1,000 in the bank.

-       Moving and building a new house in the first year of that adoption and during the church expansion.

-       Planting about 10 more churches in Michigan, our region, and in Africa.

-       Leading a 22-month campaign to raise money for a $7,000,000 new facility for our church and the future of our mission.  We actually did it.

There are meetings I never thought I could lead.  There are trips I never thought I’d take.  There are miracles that I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.  There are conversations that I never thought I’d have.  There are capacities and competencies that have been stretched and revealed that I never thought I possessed.  There are emotions that have undulated from elation to depression in the midst of it all.  I have been rejected and criticized and maligned, but I’ve also been affirmed and validated and encouraged.  I have experienced pain in the process, the building of new muscle that only comes from pushing through the pain and strain. 

There have been moments where I had absolutely nothing left and no idea what to do next, and God would show up and just give me an idea to run with that ended up being a game changer.  Days where I was a flaccid sail, aimless and clueless…and all the sudden a gust of gusto and grit would carry me like a great wind toward a solution…moving me to action in faith. 

Speaking of faith…there were days of fueled faith and others where I couldn’t even catch a scent of the fumes of faith…rather, my tank would be filled with such fear and failure that I was almost paralyzed in place.  And then, the voices of friends and the voice of God would fan my heart into flame warming me toward movement again…resurrecting motion and emotion to stay the course and fight the good fight.

I’m leaving so much out…but I’ll swing back around to what I said to start this little riff…sometimes you just have to just do hard things.  Occasionally something will just happen and you won’t do a blessed thing to deserve it or earn it, but most anything good takes ridiculous suffering and relentless determination to follow through with the original dream or desire or calling.  The hard work doesn’t always pay off, but it always gives a sense that you’re alive and that you’re trying to kick the can down the road.  You aren’t just existing, you’re living. 

And that’s what I feel so acutely today, that I’ve lived the last several years.  One of my friends calls it the “full-orbed life.”  The life filled with the full range of emotions…the life that stays present when others go absent.  The life that stay at it when others turn tail and run.  The life that has the hard conversation and asks a second question, the life that risks failure while daring greatly.  This is the life that comes with a great cost, but nothing worth having is priceless or precious.

And that’s what I have…a precious life.  A precious wife.  A precious quiver full of children.  A precious church.  A precious community.  A precious piece of property to live on.  A precious group of friends.  A precious team I get to work with.  A precious Jesus that I co-labor with to get the “good news” out to the masses. 

“To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy which so powerfully works within me.” – Col. 1:29 

This verse is my sustenance and the substance of my passion and purpose in this life.  It is labor, for sure.  But it is a labor of love.