Who Do You Want To Be?

Over the past month, it has felt like a season of go go go. I got the opportunity to work my first set of Christmas Eve services that were so special. In the midst of this busy season, it made me realize what my priorities are, because we tend to push the things that we don't value as much to the side. In the midst of a busy season, you see what you truly value because they are the things that you make time for because you cannot survive without it.

This past month God did some crazy things, especially in our Kid's Ministry. I wouldn't want to close out the year any other way than to worship the Lord. And this trend got to continue into the new year as I began to enjoy time away from work and refuel physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Over the past few days, I had the opportunity to attend the Passion conference where over 55,000 young adults came together to worship the name of God. Their entire saying for this year was calling on Heaven and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. It's hard for me to put into words all that I learned and took away from what God spoke to me during the conference, but I am going to do my best.

The area that I want to focus on today specifically is around the question of "Who Do You Want To Be?" See a lot of the theme of Passion this year through my personal perspective focused on the urgency, fire, passion, and desire to proclaim His name to others. A lot of times we take our relationship with Christ for granted. We walk throughout our day without having a true burden to share the Gospel with those that we encounter. But if we knew that that person, we encountered had one more day on this planet, would we go about the interaction differently? Would you feel more inclined than to tell them the good news if you knew they had one last day to decide eternity? Why do we treat the Gospel as if it isn't something that we should be dying to tell others?

If we truly believe that Jesus is who He says He is, we need to be dying to warn and tell others. That's where I want to focus on today, being someone who is on fire for God, so much so that when people see you, they know exactly who you are and who you are all about. That's a convicting thing for me to think about. What do people think when they interact with me? People I meet once and people I have known over a long period of time. What would they say about my faith and who I am as a person? Then as I was thinking about these questions, I began to realize that these questions don't exactly matter as much as who God says that I am. It doesn't matter as much as who I am in Christ.

See as we begin this new year, many people tend to have New Year's resolutions cause people to make claims like "I will lose weight this year" or "I will go to the gym this year" or "I'm going to read more". For me, this year I want to grow so much in my walk with Christ that the person I am at the start of this year is unrecognizable compared to who I am at the end of the year. And I think that all of that starts with understanding who we are in Christ and why we serve Him in the first place.

Recently, I have been working on shifting my mindset and perspective from caring about the impact that I have on others and who people will remember me for, to a mindset of people remembering what God did. In all honesty, I could care less if people remember who I am because that is not what it is about. If we are proclaiming the name of Christ so that we can be remembered, I think we are doing it all wrong. We should be on fire for God in an effort to point all the glory back to Him, not to use it to benefit ourselves. Working in ministry, it can be very tempting to "do well" when it comes to doing a project, writing material, teaching a sermon, etc.

We all have that desire for people to approve, to tell us good job, and to feel like it was well received. Validation always feels good, I don't care who you are. But what if we shifted our perspective from desiring validation from others, to dwelling in the validation that our Heavenly Father already has given us. To be honest with you, I could teach a sermon and whether everyone is impacted or not a single person is impacted, my validation from Him should feel the same. The faithfulness to Him should remain the same because of our heart and passion for the Lord. Can He use you to do miraculous things? Absolutely. Does He need to? Absolutely not. But the crazy thing is He wants to. You just have to be willing to be used for His good, not your own.

That means that you are as content and as grateful when one person is impacted as you would be if the entire room is impacted by your words. But in reality, if you are truly following after Christ, it's not your words, but His. Personally, I want to live a life of words that are not my own, but His. Everything that comes out of my mouth should not be my own words, but words of the Spirit.

The trap that we can fall into with this concept is that we talk the talk, but then when it comes to truly living it out, we tend to shy away. I believe that that is where the enemy can get you. When we proclaim and say these things, but never truly live them out. Kind of like a New Year's resolution. We say that we are going to lose weight, then we go do curls with Big Macs rather than dumbbells. We say that we are going to read more but pick up the remote rather than picking up a book. We say that we are going to be all in for Christ, but we dwell in that sin rather than choosing to live in the freedom He has for us. Whatever that looks like for you, don't let the enemy get a hold of what God could have for you in this coming year.

What if by the end of this year you could look back and say "Man, the person I was and the person I am is unrecognizable because of the growth I had in my relationship with Christ". This isn't something that we can get by the skin of our teeth on either. It is something that is going to take a lot of work, effort, heart, potential suffering, and so much more. The things that have the most tension in life, are the things that cause us to grow the most. It's like the gym. You aren't going to grow in much muscle mass if you are lifting weights that are easy and unchallenging. The growth in muscle mass comes from lifting weights that cause you to push further than what you thought was possible. What then if this year you allowed God to stretch and grow you outside of your comfort and what you thought was possible?

Now back to my original question. Who do you want to be? What if you knew you had one year left to go completely after God? How then would you live differently? In the midst of urgency and awareness of us having limited time, we tend to go after the desires of our hearts. That is why I think ultimately the real question we have to ask ourselves is who do I want to live for, me or Him? Because if your answer is Him, then we should be living every day as if it is our last.

We should be going throughout our day with an urgency to tell others about Christ, regardless of what they think, say, or do. At the Passion Conference, there was a number of speakers, but a part that really stuck out to me was from Jonathan Pokluda. During his message he uses the analogy of an airport terminal. In this story he had gone on a mission trip with his daughter, and she had gotten very sick. Through his efforts to get home, they ended up in an airport in Quatar, which led to confusion and frustration when he could not figure out which gate would get him home. He said that he would have done anything to have someone tell him the way home.

Now another layer to this that he added was that if someone came up to him and told him that every gate would get him home, that's a pretty unreasonable assumption. Especially if he listened and found out that what the man told him was a lie. The reality is that there is only one gate to get home. I don't know about you, but if I needed to get home and didn't know how, I would hope someone would tell me if they knew. This is the same thing with Christ. Some people have no idea how to get there and need someone to "show them the way". What if you went out of your comfort zone and out of your way to make sure that people know how to get home?

Hopefully thus far you have been able to follow along with what I am getting at here. Our answer to this question of who do I want to be should come from a desire to be someone completely bought in for Christ. Not a half-hearted life where we follow Christ when it is convenient for us, but one that we live out in our daily walk. My hope is that you and I are able to walk through this together. A lot of people argue that it is easier to follow Christ when things are going well, but I would argue the opposite to a certain degree. I think that in times of struggle and heartache are the times where we realize that we need Christ to even make it by. Then, when things go back to being good, we put Him on the back burner. We then develop this on and off relationship with Him where it becomes "what I need" rather than "what He needs".

Now let me reiterate, He doesn't need you at all. But He chooses to use you if you are willing to let Him. God didn't need me in Kid's Ministry, but He wanted me in Kid's Ministry. That idea is something I have wrestled with for some time because I want to have a heart that is more burdened for Him and His ministry that I get to be a part of. That isn't something that anyone should take lightly. Whether you are in ministry or if your ministry is in your workspace. Whatever that looks like for you, God doesn't need you there, but He wants you there to use you to impact others. How cool is it that God uses other people to make an impact for His glory. What a blessing it is that God walks with us through all of our pain, mess, happiness, sorrow, joy, and so much more.

As I do my best to close this out, I wanted to share a quote from Levi Lusko that really resonated with me. He said this in his message at Passion, "God wants to do more in you than you think He will, but it will hurt more than you think it will." See I think back to the analogy of lifting weights at the gym. After a workout of being stretched and pushing your limits, you are going to be sore. The more you work out and the harder you push yourself, the sorer you are going to be. As time goes on, however, the more your body starts to recover when the weights that used to be too heavy for you to even lift are now weights that you lift for sets.

I think this concept can be applied to our faith. Through being stretched and growing in our faith, there is going to be things that we suffer through and things that cause us to be in pain or to be "sore". The more that we lean into "lifting spiritual weights" and growing in our relationship with Him, the more we are going to be able to look back and be amazed at the things God will do through us that we never thought were possible or achievable in the past. I pray that you and me both will look back to this start of the year in gratitude through what God does in our lives this next year if we choose to go completely after Him with all we have. Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you have a blessed week in the Lord!