“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 1:6-7)
“But earnestly desire the greater gifts, and I will show you a still more excellent way.” (1 Cor. 12:31)
One beautiful fall Colorado day in 2016, my wife and I took one of our grandchildren out for a morning of exploration and much needed exercise. We rode our bikes along a river not too far from our home. We stopped to rest and our grandson Peter [fictitious name] started throwing stones into the river. Initially, we worked on teaching him how to skip the small, flat ones. But soon that no longer held his interest, and he wandered off looking for the largest boulders he could possibly carry. He would throw them as far as he could, making the biggest splash he could make. The risks of failure and even injury seemed to pale in comparison to conquering the biggest mountain he could find.
The Spirit of the Lord immediately spoke to mine, “Why is it the men I created and commanded to make a splash and lead others to do so in My kingdom, get this backwards? Why do they start out looking to take risks that will make a big splash for Me on earth, and yet as time goes by drop their boulders and settle for skipping small stones instead?”
The Lord also brought to my remembrance a friend and brother I knew in my younger days as a Christian. He was a brilliant man who worked for a high-tech company. Joe [fictitious name] was a father of four, and he and I were involved in leadership in our congregation. Like me, he loved the Lord and was very active in his faith. Then the economy turned. He got laid off, and was forced to take a job doing menial labor in a factory to make ends meet. At first he hated it, for it provided no challenge to his considerable gifts. But as time went on he got used to the “comfortableness” of it, and stopped seeking more challenging opportunities. Sadly, during the process he dropped his boulders and began settling for stones. As always, there was a price to pay, as there always is for settling for mediocrity in the kingdom of God. He eventually became very disillusioned with life, dropped out of fellowship, divorced his wife, and walked away from his kids.
Jesus calls us to a process of constant maturing during our time spent on earth, as the verses above illustrate. If we continue to try to live for the comforts of the world or turn back to them after an initial pursuit of our faith, we simply cannot grow in our relationship with Christ, and along with that our fruitfulness in the world suffers. We pick up the stones of work, school, recreation, retirement, politics, and other interests that keep our hands so full we simply have to drop the boulders we were once willing to pick up for Jesus. As our comforts or responsibilities in the world increase, our willingness to take risks of any kind for the kingdom decrease. Soon we are crushed under a comfortable boulder for the world while casting pebbles for God. Jesus said of such men, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom” (Luke 9:62).
The enemy always tries to turn us from our boulders. If he can’t blow us away from Jesus while new in the faith, he then moves to the second seed of the Sowar and turns up the heat. If he can’t burn us out, he moves on to the third seed, surrounding us with the comforts and rewards of the world to choke our faith out, and this because there simply becomes no time nor priority for both. Satan tried this with Jesus in the desert, offering Him “all the kingdoms of the world” if Jesus would simply drop the biggest boulder of all [bringing the kingdom to earth and reconciling us with the Father], to settle for the pebbles bowing to him would have represented. But oh, they are beautiful pebbles are they not?
Our Lord picked up the greatest boulder of all for us, took the biggest risk, and made the biggest splash in history when He sent His Son to bring His kingdom to earth and give His all on the cross. It cost Him everything. Is He going to simply overlook it in the name of grace when we offer no return on his investment, because we refused to sacrifice much of anything and traded our boulders for pebbles? I think the servant who hid his talent under the rock might have an opinion or two on that one if he could tell us. But he has bigger problems right now.
The Awakened Christian Man ministry exists to call men away from their earthly pebbles, no matter how brightly they shine, and call them back to our Rock: the biggest, baddest, most awesome boulder-thrower of all! Time to rid ourselves of the comforts and rewards of this world, gentlemen, and start taking risks again for the One who wrote the book on them.
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