Being vs. doing: Sustained joy for the journey
By Kevin Blackwell
Interim Pastor, FBC Pleasant Grove
Being a follower of Christ is a journey, and too many followers sit as abandoned cars on the side of the road to heaven simply because they either lost faith or the joy of the journey.
Our heavenly inheritance is wonderful, but the journey of our Christian faith after our conversion is just as amazing, just as beautiful and just as fulfilling. I sense that too many Christians have forgotten the joy of the journey. Not to suggest everything will be wonderful and beautiful, but the one who walks with us on the journey is always wonderful and perpetually beautiful.
There are many whose Christian journey becomes what I call the death march of “doing.”
These people become stuck in a constant state of guilt and shame, trying to measure up to the ideal Christian motif. They measure their journey by the number of holy, religious or spiritual things they have accomplished.
Some feel as though God is only happy with them when they are doing something spiritual; therefore their life becomes a task-driven list.
This type of mindset leads to spiritual burnout because the joy of the journey becomes diminished. True joy, real spiritual growth and sustained faith are never based on what you have done for Him. Rather these are grounded in a relationship with Christ and what He has done for you.
Being with Him, learning of Him and placing your spiritual roots deep into what He has done for you catapults you into a greater passion to do more for Him.
The Christian journey is not a sprint, it is not a laborious list of tasks. In its simplest form it is a beautiful walk with Jesus Christ.
The road to heaven would be much less littered with spiritual refugees if we would spend more time being with Him and less time trying to please Him through our endless spiritual tasks.
When we spend time BEING with Him, we are reminded of all we have in Christ, therefore our DOING has greater purpose.
I ask you to reflect on the current BEING/DOING balance in your life. Will you be counted among the many Christians who have simply stopped walking the journey? I urge you to hold tightly to the hand that saved you and see your journey not as a task-driven sprint, but rather a joy-filled walk with a friend. Sustaining joy for the journey is found in the one who journeys with you.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Kevin Blackwell is executive director of the Ministry Training Institute at Samford University. This is an excerpt from a blog post found at www.DrKevinBlackwell.com.
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‘Through all your lifetime’
The Alabama Baptist Retirement Centers (ABRC) ministers to senior adults through affordable independent housing in a safe Christian environment, for as Isaiah 46:4 says, “I will be your God through all your lifetime, yes, even when your hair is white with age.”
Recently an elderly mother and son, displaced by Hurricane Michael, showed up at one of our centers with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Manager LaJuana Holloway not only quickly provided them with shelter, she and several residents gathered food and household items to furnish an apartment.
Upon leaving Panama City this mother and son encountered an elderly barefoot woman on the side of road who had also lost everything. She was disoriented with no place to go so they brought her with them. LaJuana helped her reunite with friends in Nashville.
The mother and son now both have apartments and are so grateful to ABRC for the loving provision they have been shown.
This is one example of the many ways we demonstrate God’s love to the elderly in our state.
—Ray Burdeshaw
Interim Executive Director of the Alabama Baptist Retirement Centers.
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Daily life and ministry demands can quickly turn our passions into frustrations. To combat this, we need solitude and silence with Abba Father.
Russell Klinner
Executive director, Shocco Springs Conference Center
The world does not need Christians to be regular people. It needs us to be irregular, unusual — out of sync with this world because we have seen God.
John Piper
DesiringGod.org
If you can get people to fall in love with Jesus, then everything else will take care of itself.
Billy Harris
Retired Alabama Baptist pastor
My dad always told me, “If you put God first, others second and yourself last, you’ll make it.”
Gale Hutchens
Business owner and church member
Inaction is not an option.
Ed Stetzer
Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College
Five Considerations for Pastor/Deacon Ordinations
- Include a background check for your candidates.
- Incorporate other church leaders from your denomination.
- Involve your associational leadership.
- Investigate theological beliefs by developing a written questionnaire.
- Interview the candidate and spouse together. Do this in advance of the ordination service, before the service is scheduled.
Chris Crain
Executive Director, Birmingham Metro Baptist Association
Scripture is our starting point, not desire or tradition. Rather than thinking of what we would enjoy or asking others what they would like, we ask the simple question, what would please God most?
Francis Chan
“Letters to the Church”
Pew reports that an unbelievable 30 percent of self-identified Southern Baptists think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. For the conservative Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, it’s 46 percent. And Pew reports that a majority — 54 percent — of those who belong to the Presbyterian Church in America say they support legal abortion. … Even if the numbers are as much as 15 points off, they still represent a catastrophic failure of discipleship in our churches. For a third to half of Christians in officially pro-life denominations to support legal child-killing means that there is a massive disconnect between pulpit and pew.
John Stonestreet
Breakpoint.org
We must sacrifice ourselves to live for Jesus Christ even in our parenting. This means that we are to raise our children in the ways of the Lord. We must sacrifice our lives to God, and teach our children that a life of dying to self for the glory of God is more satisfying than success or materialism.
Intersectproject.org
A project of Southeastern Seminary’s Center for Faith and Culture
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From the Twitterverse
@Jeff_Noblit
There are wonderful teachers and theologians that we all benefit from, however they are not as beneficial as your local pastor who exegetes the scripture with application for your specific local chuch. His teaching is essential while all others are helpful.
@MichaelCatt
The legislative branch of the federal government has voted to kill babies in or out of the womb. Let that sink in! Read Romans 1–3 — God has given this nation over to reprobate minds.
@BeesonDivinity
“The church’s life is a great conversation, and this conversation is none other than our hope-filled participation in the communion of the Father, and the Son and the Spirit.” Dr. Michael Pasquarello preaching [2/26/19] in #HodgesChapel on John 3:1-17. https://youtu.be/t3OHufSYmxc
@FredShelton3
I praise the United Methodist Church yesterday for voting to reject homosexuality and gay staff members.
@JoWiKi
I was skeptical at first about preaching through the@ExploreTheBible plan. But I really, really like it and knowing that the entire church is discussing the same text I am preaching with robust resources for them, the Small Group Leaders is empowering. @LifeWay
@EdLitton
WARNING to my fellow SBC family: Passivity is a powerful negative activity. Passivity is deceptive because it looks like we are doing nothing. In fact we are doing something. We are stepping over the wounded, looking away and going on our way.
@macbrunson
God told Jeremiah (3:3) that Judah had the forehead of a prostitute — meaning the nation could not blush at sin because she was too familiar with it. See also America 2019.
@BethMooreLPM
None of us can see the future & we’re Christ’s to lead wherever He pleases in whatever crisis surrounds us. For some of us, it’s go. Others, it’s stay. But either way, let it be because He led & not because we fled. We are not cowards. Legacies of shame can be broken in His name.
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Letters to the Editor
On the most basic level what distinguishes one individual from another? Most would agree that biologically each of us is defined by our genetic code — our DNA. So perhaps the question should be when does an individual’s DNA first appear? The answer is each person’s DNA is formed when the egg is fertilized at conception.
If life is defined as self-generated action then it’s clear the embryo represents an individual life. There are no little fingers in the mother’s womb sculpting a being out of an undifferentiated mass of cells. The mother provides the environment and materials (oxygen, food) from which the embryo creates itself.
It makes no sense to argue that since the embryo is not physically apart it is a separate entity.
Women have the right to do what they wish to their own bodies, but that right does not extend to destroying the life of another except in self-defense. Only the individual possesses rights — common to all — the most basic of these being the right to life.
Michele Alice
Williamstown, Mass.
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