Working and Trusting

For reasons that are regularly re-curring in my twelve years and eight weeks in ministry, I was wrestling with the Lord last week about my work and his work. What role does doing things with excellence and thoroughness and thoughtfulness play in the work that he's given me to do bearing fruit? At what point does the pursuit of excellence become this never-ending, exhausting, foolish, pride-full and deeply sinful activity that forgets that God does the importnat stuff?

This tension plays out in me more or less constantly.

On the one hand, we need to do things well. In InterVarsity, we have students who lead small groups. We don't just tell those students to "let go and let God." We train them--darn well, in my humble opinion. There are skills involved that help to create holy space.

But I am aware that this can play out terribly. The temptation for Adam and Eve was that they would be like God. If excellence becomes an obsession, I can have ministry be place where I'm eating the forbidden fruit. I become the center of things rather than God. This is the cause of approximately 95% of the misery of the world. The rest is caused by country music.

In the midst of my wrestling freshly with this question last week, the Lord gave me a good passage to consider from the Psalm 4: "Offer right sacrifices and trust in the Lord."

So there's the work that we are commanded to do (offer right sacrifices) but our trust is not in those sacrifices to somehow secure our lives or successes or whatever. We have work to do, and that work matters. But our hope is in the Lord.

My trust is to be in him, even as I offer right sacrifices. And this means that there actually could be wrong sacrifices, which I need to ask the Lord for guidance about. I can do my work poorly, I need to continuously be a student, learning my craft and my trade.

But in the end, my trust is in the Lord. For all of it. Me, my staff team, my students. I work, but then I wait in trust. Today, I think I get that. Ask me again tomorrow.