The Destitution of Service

     From My Utmost for His Highest
. . . though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved —2 Corinthians 12

At the risk of oversharing, I’ll say this: A man of my age and situation should not be tweeting as much as I do.

If that offends you, then you’re in a different place than I am. I feel pretty confident that I am waaay over the line. It’s uncomfortable, at times, and I probably look equally foolish to massive and tiny tweeters, alike.

But somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to stand in front of God and say, “I did everything I could do with what You gave me.”

If you’ve read A Rooster Once Crowed, you know that I’m talking about…

…this vision (small “V” so I use that term as lightly as possible) that I had about the Gospel Story as one continuous story from Genesis to Revelation. I saw it not quite like, but as clear as a painting. It connected small stories and thoughts together, some I knew by heart and others I’d never thought of before, into a renewed view of the Gospel.

I wrote things that were hard for me to write, personal things. I pushed some and pulled others. I put a video of myself on the internet. I took things I’d share with a small group of friends and put it up for the world to see. And then, I tweeted. Yes, I tweeted.

We’ve got a few non-Americans that are reading these, so this must seem pretty strange, but in a much smaller way, I understand what Paul is talking about. I didn’t spend all I had or quit my job or renounce a thousand year family tradition, but I did take something that I should have loved, this carefully curated persona of a successful, aloof, distinguished-or-dignified-enough-not-to-tweet businessman, and I killed it.

Friends ask me if I’m sharing too much. Others have talked about how others are talking. Are these things minor? Yea, they’re minor. Do they equate to Paul’s suffering? No, they don’t.

BUT GOD has a plan, doesn’t He? He planned to heal the uncurable, so He told Naaman to wash in the Jordan. He planned to let a nation drink, so He told Moses to speak to the rock. He planned to build a church, so He told Peter to fish foolishly. And He planned to redeem us all, so He asked you to believe (if you're looking for examples of this, Chapter 9-Tune Into Life's Belief has an extensive list of Scripture through Acts indicating the reasons to believe and ramifications for not believing).

As I look over this list, I notice two things:

1. They are always small, dumb things. They are things that if you gave yourself five minutes, you’d talk yourself out of them. They don’t make sense, and
2. Each is done in community, amongst others. Naaman washed himself in front of his whole entourage. God told Moses to assemble all the people first. Peter was there with his fellow fishermen because when he brought in the fish, they all came to help. 

So why do we think that these things God’s pressing on you should make sense? [Tweet-cha]

And why do we think that true belief is possible in private? [Twitter-me-this]

On this side of it, there’s something else. The obeying is never as bad as dreading. [Tweet-fer-sure] You can tell through his letters that Paul enjoyed his particular strife. Seeing the third heaven and residing so close to God that a thrice unanswered prayer was notable was 100% worth it.

I’ll wake up this morning and tweet too much. But the alternative, not sharing this or missing an opportunity to have this conversation with you, is a price too high. I love getting a review—even a bad one. I love getting a phone call from someone telling me that the Porch Video awakened the Gospel for them. It’s more than worth it.

This is the opposite of the prosperity gospel. It says that we must engineer opportunities to diminish ourselves for others, with no expectation of reciprocity, and when we do, Jesus bears you up.

I’m sure we’ll talk more about it here, and if you’re curious, Chapter 7–Step This Way is all about this. But be warned, it’s a slippery path to great joy and heaven.

I love you.

#stepthisway

Photo from Post Secret: Confessions on Life, Death and God