Monday, September 24, 2012

This Life is not About What but For Whom...

In the past two months we have mourned the sudden deaths of two people in our small community.

The first was a student at Logos that I knew well and who was killed in a moto accident on the last day of school. The second was a teammate with Asian Hope who passed away this week because of a heart attack and is leaving behind a family and a community that he served for nearly 30 years.

Both of these individuals were great. They were the best at what they did. They served well and they served hard. They loved people around them and, because of their service, were loved back. But, should we praise them?

We were challenged by our pastor this week to remember that in the Christian faith, we should reconsider praising an individual for their accomplishments in life but instead praise the God who they serve. This might sound a bit controversial but I think it is truth. Here is why.

Neither of these two individuals who we have mourned would want us to cheer their accomplishments at their funeral. Instead, because they knew Jesus intimately, they would want us to praise the father for His work in them. There is a difference there.

At the end of the second book of Timothy, Paul is explaining that he will soon parish for the cause of Christ. He explains that he had finished the race, kept the faith and will receive what he knows is coming to him - a heavenly reward. Paul, the MVP of the Bible, is not explaining that we should now  praise him. Instead, at the end of his life and locked in prison, Paul is a testimony of what a complete transformation looks like. Christians now examine what God did in Paul not what Paul did for God and we should follow the same blueprint.

In Philippians, Paul outlines what a believer should look like and how they should act so that they have a great testimony of what God did in them despite their shortcomings. We can do a lot in our lives and if we as followers do it right, others can see that we did not work to tally our accomplishments but we worked to tell others about what we already knew. 

In our Christian life I believe we need to look at our end and begin to see who we are living for and not what we did while we were living.

I think that the general population is disconnected from church because those who attend mark their success on church numbers, tithing amounts, short-term teams sent to poor countries. However, if all Christians worked to imitate Jesus, desired to hang out with the sick and poor in spirit, if we all became meek and modest then I think there may be a great groundswell of new followers. Following Christ needs little convincing but asking others to be like other Christians, myself included, is a tall order.

I guess these deaths, and those that I have mourned before have really helped me understand that what I do is often insignificant but the God who I do it for is not. These lives well-lived have helped me begin to learn that my life is not to be defined by what I do but who I do it for. 

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