Play to win

I was driving to work yesterday and it occurred to me how easy it is to walk through life with a glaring lack of faith and not ever realize it. I think often times we lack faith because of wrong expectation. I wrote the other day about some things JFK said about responsibility. I referred to a statement in his inaugural speech, "to whom much is given, much is expected." That's a tricky statement because it's pretty easy to apply that statement to our current circumstances and use it as a justification for tremendous guilt.

Too many of us are walking around with tremendous weight on our shoulders because we never really heard anyone tell us what right expectation was. Too many times we look to the world for our sense of purpose and position. We end up comparing our worst to the world's best and we lose every time. God's expectation for our life has nothing to do with material trappings like careers, status, money, homes, or even the size of your church. God's expectation for our lives is entirely about our relationship with Him.

Let's look at a scenario and see if you can identify the right expectation.

You went to a top 25 school and graduated in the top 15% of your class. Now, 10 years out of school, you have switched jobs 5 times, the last two being in a completely different field than your degree. You work hard day in and day out, but don't feel like you've found your niche yet. Are you:

1. Ashamed at your nomadic tendencies and desperately seeking any opportunity to "catch a break" so you can really make a career out of your current job?
2. Expecting the axe to fall any time and praying to God that you can find a new job while there's still more money than month .
3. Applying to night school because you see how your successful friends - who all stayed in school, got their Masters' degree and drive nice cars - live.
4. Happy to have a job and comfortable that if you lose this one, something else will come along because you believe in yourself.
   

Which did you pick? I'd argue the latter two probably let you sleep better at night, but that none of them are based on a foundation of truth. We're not defined by our job or circumstances. It doesn't matter if you work one job for 50 years, or have 50 jobs in a single year. We are defined by who we are in Christ.



Think about it. God himself sent His only son to die for us, so we could spend eternity with Him in heaven. Along the way He gave to us all the power and authority of His son as well as equal ownership of this world and the next. When we accepted Jesus into our lives the life we lived up to that moment died away, and we were reborn as an inheriter of the Kingdom. Through Christ we are now the kid of a king. That is the truth. That is the reality of life.

With that in mind, let's look at what JFK said again. "To whom much is given,..." What is it exactly we've been given? Is it intelligence? A name? Physical talents? No. Everyone who accepts Jesus is given the same gift, it's the gift of life. Matthew 25:14-30 tells the parable of the talents. The point of the story isn't what he originally gave each servant, it's that each was responsible for doing something with the gift they were given.

As a culture, I think we get too caught up on talent. I'm not sure why. It starts when we're young. Coaches tell parents their kid can run or jump or throw better than the rest, so he's going to grow up and be "special." Teachers tell parents their kids are "gifted" and need to be put with other "gifted" kids so they can blossom to their full potential. Relatives, friends, members of the community all notice that one child who stands out from the crowd. "That kid is meant to do something great," they say.

Hogwash. Talent is no indicator of success. "Do you know where most of the seeds of greatness are planted? In graveyards." Most people will go to the grave never using the gifts God placed in them. We spend our lives praying for new or different gifts because again, we're comparing our worst to the world's best and making ourselves miserable.

Forget about talent. You've got enough. Trust me. There's not a single person on this earth who had a any input into the talent with which they were born. None of us stood around before creation negotiating with God what he would and would not put into us when we were born. No one sat down with God and said, "Listen, here's what I want..."

Whatever talent we have is a gift from God. There's nothing special about the ability to sing or dance or run or see. No one talent is more meaningful than another. Praise God He gave us any talent at all. The credit for anything we have goes to Him. It's all His doing, not ours. The only reason he gave us any gifts in the first place was so we could fulfill the second part of the quote, "...much is expected."

We were given our talents so that we would be able to fulfill His expectation of us which are:

"You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor as yourself."
-- Luke 10:27

Why? Because in doing that, we are most like Christ. In living as Christ, we can minister to those around us by example and in doing so, build His kingdom. That's the whole of the story.

Now back to where I started. Faith. Many times we get caught up in frustration, worry, anxiety, doubt, depression, and anger because we are not where we think we should be in life. We feel guilty because we have not lived up to our expectations and we begin manifesting all these emotions as a result.

Ask yourself where your expectations are coming from? There's only one expectation you have to meet and that's whether or not you're letting God use up every ounce of talent He put in you. On the day of judgement, He won't care about how fast we paid off the house or how quickly we were promoted at work. He'll ask two questions. "Jesus, did you two know each other?" and "How did you advance my kingdom?" He won't care that one was given more than the other to work with, He'll just want to know what we did with what we were given.

So, as we race our way up the corporate ladder we find ourselves questioning God and praying for help to change our situation, we should first ask, why are we unhappy? Perhaps our expectations aren't quite lining up with what he wills. We've got one shot at life. Let's make sure we're aiming at the right target.