Day 2950 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 9:62 NIV

To be fit for service.

Have we ever really thought about what we’re doing here? Not in a personal sense but from a widespread, communal, societal perspective. Have we ever really given any thought to the gravity of this calling that we’ve been granted? Have we ever truly lowered our shoulder and pressed into this undertaking of not only knowing Christ but of making Him known?

I think, for the most part, faith is sadly allowed to exist on this extemporaneous plane that has us missing the meaning of this middle ground we’re called to inhabit. I think that we fail to see ourselves as the intermediaries that we’ve been called to be. I think we may very well be missing out on the whole ‘service’ aspect of our faith as we’ve come to know life as being mainly based on serving ourselves and even approaching that in a very simplistic and bare bones sort of manner.

Perhaps it’s a symptom of this worldly mindset built on constant consumption that has us focused almost entirely on the promises we’re hoping for and the work that we’re doing in our lives to do our best to follow the One that leads the way home. Or maybe we’re just truly selfish and lazy and therefore basically disinterested in investing any time or effort whatsoever into anything that takes any longer than we wish to remain interested.

But just how invested are we in this calling that we've been granted and asked to undertake? Just how important is this opportunity to go into all the world and do something other than seek our own gain or comfort or prosperity? Just how much are we willing to devote to this job, this mission, this chance? Just how much does our faith amount to in our lives?

Truth be told, I think many of us tend to be far more distracted than we really care to admit, or are even able to notice. It's no debate that we live in a world filled with distractions and possibilities and differing perspectives and shifting priorities. But, it's not really something that I think any of us give all that much thought. Instead, typically it seems as though we tend to just roll through our days assuming that our best is hopefully good enough and that we don't really have too many things pulling us in directions that may prove unhelpful or unhealthy.

But the fact is that all of us have a very limited amount of attention. We have a strict limit as to how many things we can focus on, give our time to, worry about and seek to affect. All of us have only so many hours in however many days we've been allotted on this earth. And as that time dwindles, so should our list of things that still hold importance enough to require little bits and pieces of our time and attention.

In other words, if we're truly growing and maturing as we claim to be, or at least ought to be, then we should be pruning away the distractions we've allowed to take root in our eyes that keep turning us away from the things that we know deeply matter most. Things like laziness and complacency, disinterest and half-hearted devotion, fear and hesitancy all have to be addressed and defeated. The reason being that we already have plenty of challenges awaiting along this road of serving Christ in a world that’s never really wanted Him.

We don’t need to be placing more stumbling blocks in our own way that make this task even more difficult than it already is assured to be.

But again, just how devoted are we to the task to which we've been called? Are we willing to get rid of things that we don't need in order to have more room to store up more of Him? Are we willing to get rid of things that we enjoy in order to lose a little more of the worldly distractions that we tend to overlook? Are we willing to let go of everything so that we can give Him everything so that He can do all that He's planned to do through us without our incessant insistence upon carrying with us all of our other interests?

Are we willing to simply go, to follow, to strive, to contend and to never again compromise?

So much of the time we talk a line that we don't choose to follow all that closely. We put forth this image of being devoted followers of this faith, but our actions and our lives evidence an entirely erratic sense of discombobulation. We speak with authority knowing that we do believe in what we're saying, but we may not believe in what we're saying enough to actually put it into practice. In short, we may well be deceiving ourselves by reading the Word, sharing the Word, believing the Word, yet not actually living the Word.

You see, so much of life as we know it is built with all of this extra storage built in. It's like we assume that our lives, our hearts, our minds come equipped with endless totes and bins and boxes and bags in which we can keep all of our varying interests and desires and plans and dreams and possessions and prized preferences. But in truth, that whole 'less is more' figure of speech that we've all heard does actually have a whole lot of truth to it.

As we talked about yesterday, we tend to divide our time and energy and attention across a rather vast array of differing interests and priorities. We live our lives according to schedules made to fit as many of our wants and wishes into the few fleeting hours we have in every day. We adhere our existence to this outline of expectations built entirely upon our receiving the outcomes and profits that we wish to achieve.

But in all of that dividing up of our time and attention, what we find is that while we have many interests and passions and pursuits, each of them is completely incomplete. They're all forced to share the hours in which we're limited to focusing on them in a day. All of our goals and dreams and things to get done must all compete with one another, and in the end, they all lose in some way as we simply do not have the time nor the ability to give everything everything it needs to prosper.

Which is exactly why we must not only embrace God's willingness to prune our lives, but we must also undertake that responsibility ourselves. We have to start choosing. We have to start limiting. We have to start cutting away the things that, while maybe fun or interesting or enjoyable, simply don't matter. We have to begin determining what is worth our time knowing that we don't have an endless supply of hours or days in which to do everything, have everything, be everything that we may have once wanted.

And so, we have to narrow it down. We have to start taking some responsibility. We have to realize that there is this hierarchy of importance upon which everything fits. And simply put, the further down the list it resides, the quicker we need to cut it loose. Because again, while it may be fun or popular or interesting, if it's not helping us do the things we know matter most, then it's a detraction that is only stealing time and energy that can and should be given to what matters more.

Which brings us back to just how much our faith means to us. Just how important is this chance to tell others about Jesus? Is it worth letting go of other things? Well, it should be worth letting go of everything else. It should be worth ignoring everything else. It should be the upmost importance in our lives because we claim to have been on the receiving end of new heart, a new life, a new hope, a new future.

And if we've truly been saved and set free, then what else could possibly remain of any importance to us? If we've found freedom in the salvation of Christ, then what else deserves our time and attention? If we truly believe that every human will wind up in either Heaven or hell, how can we possibly afford to divide our focus? What else is worth our time but serving Christ? What could we possibly accomplish that is better than maybe helping save someone by sharing with them the Gospel?

So many things have been given so much false importance that we've lived our lives shifting from one to the next, never once coming to a realization that it was all simply wasting our time. All of us, without exclusion, have lived our lives distracted to the point that the things that mattered were left undone, unaddressed, untended. And, while that may have worked for a time, times change.

And one of the biggest things that we need to change is this assumption that we can graft faith into our lives and give it a little bit of time when and where we have some extra not filled with other things.

This message in the book of Luke is what ought to be one of the most terrifying reminders in all of Scripture. Why? Because we all look back. Because we all worry about other things. Because we all give way too much time to way too many things that have absolutely no meaning whatsoever in the grand scheme of eternity. Because all of us have claimed to be of Christ, but all of us have lived lives on this side of the cross that still make room for distractions.

Because we bear a Name that tells the world that we’re now living for a higher purpose, but if we don’t pour everything we are into this faith then we’ll have ultimately failed and fallen short and proven ourselves either unfit for service in the Kingdom of God or even detrimental to the Kingdom of God.

I guess it simply comes down to who or what we're living to serve and just how invested we are in that choice. What does it all mean? Where does it all line up? What's first on our lists? When we roll out of bed in the morning, what's the first thing we want to focus on? If we had but one hour left on this earth, how would we spend it?

Sounds kind of metaphorical, but it might not be. And one day, it will not be. One day, our time will be done. And when we look back over the lives we lived and the pursuits we prioritized, what do we want to see? A life of half-hearted interests spread a million directions? A life given in equal measure to worldly idols as to faithful service? A list of things incompletely accomplished and left undone?

Or do we want to stand before God with the ability to tell Him we gave it everything we had, and that even if we failed, fell short, found ourselves unable to achieve much in the way of results, that we didn’t hold anything back from trying to honor Him?

All of us have put our hand to the plow and accepted the task of helping harvest. To what end? To what extent? To what point?

Friends, this isn't some idle warning from some random person. This is a reminder from Christ Himself. Straight from the Savior's mouth. No one who undertakes this work and looks back, looks around, walks away, goes easy, tries half-heartedly is fit for service. And that's a very terrifying thing, because to serve is what we've been called to do in return for the service He's provided us upon the cross.

He died for us. What are we willing to lose for Him?

This world will never stop offering up shiny distractions and idols of false importance. But if we truly wish to serve the Kingdom of God, then this world can't be seen as our reward anymore. The earthly concerns cannot be given any further gravity. The laziness and fear and complacent dejection by which we’ve lived a large portion of our lives cannot continue. The worrying about all these billions of other things cannot be allowed to remain. Because we can't serve Him only half-invested. It's all or nothing.

And honestly, why should we want it to be anything other than that? Why should we want a faith that only asks for a little bit of us?

If it's not important enough to forge ahead and refuse to let up or look back, then it's not important enough. I know it seems like this world is all we have. But if it's still all we want, or even some of what we want, then we'll like never find what we truly need. We'll be too distracted to find it. We’ll remain too willing to quit to ever find it. We’ll slow down, stop, throw in the towel and be left to simply pray we did enough without ever coming anywhere close to giving it everything.

And friends, looking at that cross, how can we go easy or go half-hearted so as to look back or let up when our Savior so clearly didn’t?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold