A Word of Encouragement for Ministry Leaders: Practice "Where Are You?"
Practice "Where are you?"
It’s an honor to be here, to be asked to encourage ministry leaders who serve here and in this region. I stubbornly and doggedly am convinced that pastors, shepherds, teachers, spiritual directors in all their forms and degrees do the most important job in the world.
The greatest challenge of ministry is finishing—and finishing well. How do we become people that can endure till the end? Better yet, how can we become people who thrive?
I don’t pretend to have the answer to this question. But I would like to share with you a practice that I have found to be sustaining and life giving.
Orienting Your Day with “Where are you?”
For the past three years (with varying degrees of consistency), I have incorporated a practice into my morning routine—one that emerged both as a result of my study of Genesis 3, but also from becoming more aware of some of my own self-sabotaging patterns. Rather than starting my day journaling about all the things I need to get done for the day or the week (as is my impulse and preference), or rather than writing down my complaints, doubts, reasons to despair, concerns, and/or frustrations that claw at me each morning (as is my tendency), that is, rather than outlining my agenda for the day or turning inward to myself with no reference to God, I start my day by unclenching my fists, taking some deep breaths, and attending to God and his first question to all of us who live in between the tragedy of the garden and the hope of new creation: “Where are you (Gen 3.9)?”
“Where are you?” It is the first question God asks in the Bible. And there is a surplus of meaning found in this question, especially given where it is strategically located—in the account of the origins of all things. But maybe the most important thing to ponder about this question that God first asks humanity is when it is offered? God asks “where are you?” after he has (1) explained to us what the world is for, (2) after we learn what people are for (invited to represent and reflect God’s loving rule to the world and to one another), (3) and after we have rejected his good gift of life and fellowship, after we have rejected his call on our lives.. Why is this important?
(a) Because it reminds us that we don’t have to construct our own reality; we don’t have to figure out on our own what this world is for and where our place is [despite what our world tells us today]. God has already given us our identity and purpose [more on that in a moment].
(b) But it is also important because he shows us (and reminds us each time we read the story) that God moves toward us when we are at our worst, when we are in our most precarious predicaments, when we have been deceived, when we have made bad choices, when we have rebelled, when we are lost, or when we think that our best option to fix the mess we are in is to try to hide from God! It is in that context that God moves towards us and says, “Where are you?”
It is an interesting question, not least because there are so many possible responses. When you hear it as it is, a word from God directed to you in the midst of your post-Eden life, it has the potential of becoming the most revealing and life-giving question that you will ever attend to. After all, God asks the question, not because he lacks information, but because he seeks to draw something out of you. It is clearly for our own good! Think about how complex the question is:
Where are you in relation to God?
Where are you in relation to others—your friends, your spouse, your kids, your goals in life, etc.?
Where are you as in Why are you hiding? Why are you feeling ashamed?
Where are you in relation to what God is up to–in you and through you? Are you walking with him, following his voice, listening to His words? Are you joining him in his mission? Are you tracking with God, or have you left the way?
Or more generally, What is this world we live in? What is it here for? What am I here for? Am I living with the grain of the way the world is made? What is right, good, true, and beautiful about this world?
We could go on. You get the picture. The point is that “Where are you?” is not a question of geography. Instead, it’s a question about relationships, about your relation to God, to yourself, and to those around you. And it’s a question that reminds us that God goes out looking for his prodigal sons and daughters, his lost sheep, the refugees who have no home. So, let’s give this a try. I would like to invite you to ponder this question for a moment—to hear this as God’s word to you this morning, to direct your attention to God paying attention to you: Where are you? (Pause for a minute)
What Does Jesus Want for Us?
Hopefully, there will be plenty of times when you direct your attention to God through this question and you are filled with joy and gratitude, delighting in a deep sense of satisfaction for being near to God, rightly related to others, experiencing God’s favor, direction, and provision, etc. But what about those time when that’s not where we are at? How can we be sure that God is coming after us and asking where we are with good intentions? (I have plenty of memories of my parents chasing me around the house, asking “where are you?” but perhaps with different motives!). What confidence do we have that we can turn to God, that we can come out of hiding, that we can expose ourselves to God when we feel lost, ashamed, frustrated, despairing, inadequate, or out of reach of God’s care; when we have been willingly disobedient, or deceived by despair? Our confidence comes from Jesus—as we might expect—but maybe not in a way that we might have anticipated. To explain this, let’s listen in on a prayer that Jesus offered to the Father. As we listen in, focus on this question: what does Jesus want for us?
24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because [1] you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that [2] the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
John 17:1-5, 24-26
The Father sent the Son on a “where are you?” mission—so that we might share in the love that Jesus delights in from the Father. . Jesus’ mission is accomplished when you enjoy what he has enjoyed from eternity— being loved by the Father? Jesus is the eternally Beloved. It is no coincidence that this is how the Father introduced Jesus to the world just as he began his public ministry. At his baptism the voice declared, “You are my son, the Beloved. I take delight in you. (Mark 1:11; translation mine).” All four Gospels make it clear, Jesus was sent as the Beloved to invite others into God’s life of love.
What confidence do we have to come out of hiding, to face God in our shame, doubt, frustration, and feelings of inadequacy when he asks us each morning “where are you”? Our confidence comes from the Belovedness of Jesus. We get what Jesus gets. As the Apostle Paul explains
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing…In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ….6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (Eph 1:3, 5-6)
This is our truest identity. There is no such thing as self-made belovedness. Who we are is given to us and has nothing to do with our performance or our own doing.
And so, my encouragement to you, ministry leaders, before you do anything else in the morning to prepare for your day of faithful ministry is that your first waking move is toward God, to attend to his movement toward you with the question: “where are you?” And as you turn to face God, no matter where you find yourself, know that God’s response to you is the same that Jesus heard in his baptism: “You are my child, my beloved. I take delight in you (Mark 1:11).” This is your superpower; this will keep you to the end. This is our superpower: belovedness. Jesus has shown us that nothing can stop belovedness; belovedness endures all things, hopes all things, belovedness never fails. This is how Jesus was sent out to represent God to the world. And it is how Jesus sends us out: “As you have sent me [as the Beloved] into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18)
Author Annie Dillard has famously written that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” [3] What she means is that the daily choices we make become habits, and those habits shape the trajectory and the quality of our lives. What might it mean for you, for us, for our families and friends, for the church, for the world, if we developed the habit of orienting ourselves to God each morning and receiving his gift of Belovedness?
Benediction
May the favor [4] of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!
Psalm 90:17
[1] “Because” represents the Greek word hoti, which signals that the clause that follows serves to explain what “my glory that you have given me” is.
[2] The “that” clause signals the purpose for which Jesus has come to make God’s name known.
[3] Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 32.
[4] The Hebrew word no’am can mean favor, delight, beauty (e.g. Psa 27:4), or kindness.
Comments
Post a Comment