Perhaps one of the hardest areas to clarify is the place of personal ambition – is it right to have ambition or not? We have our culture that tells us we need to do something great with our life – and the great western dream is that ordinary people can do something extraordinary with their lives –“rags to riches”; “the ordinary hero”, “anyone can do something great if they just believe”, “girls can do anything” “do something with your life,” etc. Whether you are aware of it or not, this drive to do something incredible for God is pervasive. This feeling will drive you – but it will drive you places you don’t want to go. People get bored with the ordinary life – it’s just not enough. So we attempt something “important” for God. Ordinary doesn’t feel like it is enough – so people do things like change church, change job, change city, change country, change spouse, etc

So we live in this culture that expects everyone to do something spectacular with their lives if they will just believe – and then we are confronted with scriptures like “Make it your ambition to live a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you… 1 Thess 4.11

So should we be ambitious or passive? Well, as so often is the case, the truth is held in tension. We are all very ordinary people, living ordinary lives, doing ordinary things that human beings do. And being ordinary is actually very good!

If we will live the ordinary life (loving & enjoying our spouse, family and friends, working diligently at our work, watching for and taking opportunities to love and bless people, growing in our relationship with God, eating good food, and having fun along the way, loving and serving God with our whole heart, watching for and acting on the invitations/nudges from God to do or speak for Him into a person’s life, etc, etc), God can use it to reach into the extraordinary, or invite us to do something extra-ordinary. If we will do the possible, He will do the impossible.

So often we want to reverse the relationship. For example as a church leader we may think “If You will love the people Jesus, I’ll focus on building the church.” But the Bible tells us we need to love people, and He will build His Church.

I want to invite you to step back from well-meaning personal ambition & simply do the possible and live the ordinary life to its fullness, and see what God will turn the possible and ordinary into.

So many Christians wear themselves out striving to do something significant. They are so caught up with wanting to do something great FOR God that they often end up doing nothing and missing out on the wonderful ordinariness of their lives.

I so appreciated hearing John Wimber  say “I am tired of hearing about  all the great men of God – I want to hear about the great God of men!”

Let’s give ourselves to fully living an ordinary life and see what the other member of our partnership, Jesus, will do with it! Let’s re-claim the ordinary!

If you would like to hear more check this link Download An ordinary life with an extra-ordinary God 4 July 2010

One significant area is how we tend to mix our western mindset with how we view the nature of our relationship with God. How many times have we heard (and heard ourselves say) genuine heartfelt expressions like “I want to live FOR God.” “I want to do something great FOR God” etc. It’s scary what power there is in a small word – a preposition. It makes a profound difference to how we experience life and relationship with God. But the right preposition to use is always “WITH” not ”FOR.”

The nature of our relationship with God is that of a true loving partnership. It is a tricky partnership to work out – how much is God responsible for and how much are we; how much does He do and how much do we do? We are invited to do life WITH God, do something great WITH God, etc. His revealed name is “Immanuel” meaning “God with us.” Mk 3.14 tells us Jesus chose the 12 ”that they might be WITH him and that He might send them out to preach.”

Our relationship with God is about doing life WITH Him not FOR Him. Otherwise it is a very easy step to find ourselves getting worn out (and ultimately bitter and burned out) trying to do all sorts of things for God, give up things for God, to sacrifice for God, and so on – when all the time He wants us to experience life with Him.

Col 1.27 tells us the mystery of all time is that Christ is in us! That is what generations looked forward to. That’s the reality we live our lives from. We are not to spend our lives trying to impress Him with what we will do, or do without, for Him.

The Kingdom of God is always an invitation to live an integrated life. We live with the temptation to create false divides in life. For example, sacred and secular, spiritual and unspiritual. So for example we can be led to think that when we are in church that we are doing something sacred and spiritual, and when we go to the movies or go to work we are doing something secular and unspiritual. But Jesus will have no such divide. When we are in partnership with Him, He makes everything sacred and everything is spiritual.

To enter in to the Kingdom of God is to abandon a fragmented life. Jesus loves our whole life – not just when we are worshipping, or witnessing or praying for the sick – He does love that for sure. But He equally loves it when we are hanging out with friends, working our job, watching TV, loving our family. He loves it all, and sees no divide. If we live fragmented lives and have a secret area that God is not involved in or welcomed in, we set ourselves up for a fall. I have come to  believe that having a secret area where God is not welcome is the reason Christians seem to suddenly fall into some area of sin. Safety & health are in having God welcome in every single part of our life. Christ is in us – and He loves that relationship.

The Kingdom of God is an invitation to a fully integrated life. We’ll take a look at a few key areas next week

A couple of weeks ago we brought together 120 of our key leaders from around NZ. They, along with others, are spending this year participating in a year long learning experience called GROW2010. We had such an effective two days together focussed on reaching people who don’t know Jesus & helping them become devoted followers of Jesus

We focussed on the key tasks for churches and leaders – “Being disciples and Making disciples.” It is incredible how hard we must work to keep these 2 activities at the top of both our personal agendas and at the top of our church’s agenda. All the other things that are important to us, like being worshippers of God, lovers of people, etc., flow from being a disciple and making disciples. However, the focus of our lives is to become devoted followers of Jesus (disciples) ourselves, and spend our time money and energy on helping others become the same.

It is helpful to think about what a fully devoted follower of Jesus would look like. What would they value? What would they be passionate about? What would they routinely practise?

So let’s look at a few important marks of a Kingdom disciple.

1. They have as their ultimate desire to become people who are like Jesus and are determined to fulfill that desire. Paul had this as his life purpose for people.
Gal. 4:19 “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” (TNIV)
Isn’ t it amazing that we have the incredible privilege/miracle of having Christ formed in us!

2. A disciple has the fruit of the Holy Spirit becoming more and more evident. Gal 5.22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.” Think how fruit is produced – a healthy plant with roots into fertile soil, moisture and free from pests and disease will inevitably produce fruit. You don’t see apple trees struggling and fighting to produce apples – they produce apples because they are living apple trees! In the same way as you stay “rooted and grounded” in Christ you simply WILL produce fruit. You are born of the Spirit and so will product the fruit of the Spirit.

3. A Kingdom disciple arranges their lives around the priorities and practices of the Kingdom of God. They seek to routinely do Kingdom activity – loving people so much that they ask why; listening to God when we are with people to see if God has something for us to give to that person, say to that person, or do for that person. Routinely looking for what God is doing, and then joining Him in His mission through the use of Spiritual gifts.

Let’s think more about this next week – and maybe you have some suggestions of key characteristics of a Kingdom disciple.

The Kingdom is a little like this – you very rarely get to have a season of joy and victory, and then you leave that and enter a season of sorrow and defeat! Instead we tend to have both joy and sadness simultaneously; we experience victory in one area and defeat in another.

I have found one of the most helpful metaphors for understanding this tension in life are parallel train tracks. Your life runs along these 2 tracks constantly – at any moment you are full of joy and contentment – and simultaneously you can equally feel pain and disappointment. We even experience this in God’s nature – He is at the same time a God of love AND a God who judges. He is full of mercy, yet jealous for purity.

In our understanding of the Kingdom we call this experience eschatological tension. The Kingdom is here – but it is yet to come! It is now – but not yet! We struggle to live with this tension and the temptation is to break the tension and to hold only 1 truth, especially when we are considering why some are healed and some aren’t, why sometimes good things happen to “bad” people and bad things happen to “good” people, and so on. The agony and ecstasy of life. So we are tempted to break the tension and believe only 1 of the truths- either the Kingdom is here right now and everyone should be healed and happy and prosperous. Or – the Kingdom is yet to come so right now no-one will get healed and suffering is all we should expect. But both of these truths become errors without the tension of holding them both to be true at the same time.

So may God meet you between the tracks, and may you know His Presence in you and around as you move forward in life, at one moment in joy and in other in sadness. He is there in the midst of you!

Picture a person standing upright – when they are in a balanced position they are in fact going nowhere – they are stationary. But to make progress – to walk – you must actually throw yourself off balance. So you push a leg forward – and then when you are off balance you need to bring your other leg forward or you will fall over!! (watching a baby take its first steps is a wonderful example of lack of balance leading to growth and progress). But the wonderful result of being off balance is that you are making progress – you are going somewhere! And when you stop – you are balanced!

So what is happening to you that feels like it is pushing you off balance? Maybe you need to take a step in that direction and then see where the next step will take you. Don’t strive for balance – go for growth.

Growth doesn’t happen in our lives simply by being alive. It seems to me Jesus was very deliberate about calling his disciples forward into growth. He exposed them to truth or demonstrations of Kingdom activity and then called them forward into that area of experience – demonstration and proclamation.

How does God expose us to new things that require us to grow? I would suggest there are 4 main ways He invites us to grow.

1. Through exposure to truth in the Bible – given for transformation not information! As you read the Bible,  ask yourself – is there something here for me to believe? to practice?; to turn from?

2. Through power encounters and Kingdom clashes – notice what you notice as you go through your day. Our days are full of “God moments” – but we can often miss them if we are rushing

3. Through the Holy Spirit speaking to us

4. Through other people discipling us – we need people who will call us forward in our following of Jesus; and we need to be deliberately calling other people forward – one hand forward and one hand back!

We need to invite pressure in our lives to push us into growing – stagnation and boredom are the only other alternatives!

More next week!