The New Normal

My family and I have moved into a different house this month.  That has come with its own large set of challenges.  One of the things that has been on my heart and mind the most has been the question of how The Lord wants to use my family and I in this new setting.  I've prayed often that He would reveal to me the ways in which he would have us represent Him as His ambassadors in this new land.

Just the other day while on an hour long drive I was listening to a podcast from a church planting conference.  I remember feeling so inadequate that I wasn't doing more to advance the kingdom.  So I turned the volume off and told God about how I felt.  All of the sudden my memories filled with many of the ways I could discern myself being conformed to Christ.  Several of those memories included some of the ways I have interacted with our new neighbors in the last two weeks.  Then I experienced the strangest sort of running dialog in my mind such as I never had before:  

"can you see the work I am doing in you? 

Yes

Do you believe I am satisfied with you seeing as though I am changing you according to my own timing and will?

Yes

If I desire to make you into a faithful servant who lives a relatively quiet life without the game and fanfare can you be satisfied with that?

Yes, I can be satisfied with myself as long as you're satisfied with me.  But I thought you wanted us to do great things for you and step out with a radical sort of faith.  I want to be one of the servants who brings you a return of a hundred fold of what you've invested in me.

Just don't bury what I give you and I'll bring the increase I desire out of you.  As long as you remain a faithful servant you'll be rewarded as a faithful servant.

________________________

I'm wondering now just how much of my desires for greatness grew out of my American upbringing and the presuppositions I have carried to the scriptures because of that.

I know that God is satisfied with me on the grounds of what Christ has done.  In the measure He is satisfied with Jesus, that is the measure with which He is satisfied with me.  That means God is infinitely and joyfully satisfied with me.  Yet, I recognize that my responsibility to serve in space and time is of the utmost importance.  Not because it increases the measure of God's satisfaction with me but because He has made me a worthy vessel to convey His love and power to those who need Him.

We are made perfectly new and it is perfectly satisfactory to be perfectly normal in a renewed sense as we live and move and have our being.