Finding Momentum

This post has big britches to fill if it’s going to live up to its title. I’m going to do my best. I was about to start writ­ing this entry when to my amaze­ment (and slight hor­ror), I dis­cov­ered Justin has already writ­ten it. Big ups to him.

I’m going to tie down three recent themes in my life as they relate to man­hood and mission:

A desire to become a man

When I talk about “becom­ing a man,” I don’t nec­es­sar­ily mean the desire to kill ani­mals with my bare hands. I’m refer­ring to devel­op­ing char­ac­ter qual­i­ties of lead­er­ship, integrity and God­li­ness. I’m talk­ing about becom­ing a man wor­thy of trust, good to his word, and nur­tur­ing those in his care. I want to be a man known for phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual dis­ci­pline. And most impor­tantly, it’s about get­ting huge [biceps] (kidding).

I’m under­stand­ing that my recent desire to move for­ward in life is a tad more than just want­ing to “grow up,” it’s the whole pack­age deal of becom­ing a man. It’s not just grab­bing onto more respon­si­bil­i­ties, it’s the desire to fill the role I have as a leader, provider and nur­turer. That gives me a good frame­work for think­ing about the fol­low­ing two things:

Dis­ci­pline and becom­ing a soldier

Paul, in Scrip­ture, pulls no punches when he’s talk­ing to young Tim­o­thy, a man not much older than myself:

 Suf­fer hard­ship with me, as a good sol­dier of Christ Jesus. (2 Tim­o­thy 2:3)

That means stick­ing it out. That means giv­ing myself com­pletely to the ser­vice of the King. That means not wimp­ing out when the times get tough or I don’t get my way.

As Paul writes shortly prior:

For God has not given us a spirit of timid­ity, but of power and love and dis­ci­pline. (2 Tim­o­thy 1:7)

The way to develop char­ac­ter and spir­i­tual matu­rity is through dis­ci­plines (and let the Spirit do the trans­for­ma­tion). It’s very much like a train­ing reg­i­men, right?

A good sol­dier must go through train­ing. It’s going to suck. But the good sol­dier “makes [his] body [his] slave” in prepa­ra­tion for the suf­fer­ing ahead. I don’t know who made fol­low­ing Jesus sound easy or pain­less, but the cost is high. The body count is high. The good sol­dier trains any­ways, because:

The mis­sion: Fight­ing for joy

I hear this one clearly. As a sol­dier, you must fight for joy. Your mis­sion is to see Him for who he is. Everything’s work­ing against you–your loud­est doubts, your self­ish motives, your deep­est fears, your dark­est guilts, your parent’s expec­ta­tions, your glar­ing inse­cu­ri­ties, the Amer­i­can milk of pros­per­ity. Your mis­sion is to pur­sue him hard… and to join fel­low friends, sol­diers, jour­ney­men & women along the way.

Isn’t it easy to fall back on your butt and just feel sorry for your­self? Isn’t it easy to just take the easy pick­ings from life’s spoils and call it your just reward? I think there’s some­thing big­ger in the woodwork.

So get up, sol­dier, and let’s go. The Reward, the prize, the trea­sure is great–the gift of the Father him­self. In Him we find our full joy and fullest satisfaction.