As a 25 year old seminary student I sat at a Perkins with our 60-something Senior Pastor and excitedly spewed out a litany of great ideas that would change our church and then the world.\u00a0 We discussed a few things and then he took a very paternal voice and told me someday reality would catch up with me.\u00a0 I was disappointed by his response and vowed to never lose my optimistic zeal.<\/p>\n
Lately I fear I\u2019m breaking my promise to myself.\u00a0 The longer I\u2019m a pastor the more reality catches up with me and I start to wonder if I\u2019m headed toward pessimism and eternal discouragement.\u00a0 Things haven\u2019t broken the way I pictured them when I was 25.<\/p>\n
Was I wrong to have that optimistic zeal or am I wrong for letting it fade?\u00a0 I think the answer is yes to both.\u00a0 Let me explain\u2026.<\/p>\n
However, as the Spirit continues to do the good work of transformation in me I see more clearly when my thoughts and actions are borne of a godly optimistic zeal and when they are just my ego wearing a zeal mask.\u00a0 As the Spirit helps me to progressively put the ego to death I find some of the things God gives me passion for are different than the things I was thinking.\u00a0 Turns out God\u2019s not as passionate about people knowing what I do as I am\u2026.<\/p>\n
Her [Mary\u2019s] song is one of praise to God for the great things he has done for her.\u00a0 You mean like ruining her life?\u00a0 But Mary didn\u2019t see it that way.\u00a0 Whatever difficulty God\u2019s work would create in her life she understood that the story wasn\u2019t about her, it was God\u2019s story, and she had been given the chance to be the one woman in history who would carry the Son of God.\u00a0 She knew God had been at work since the beginning of humanity and that his work would not finish with her death.\u00a0 I never would have said it, but that day at Perkins I only thought about God\u2019s work in the context of my life.\u00a0 I\u2019m learning to celebrate the fact that it\u2019s his story, I just play whatever part he gives me.\u00a0 Success isn\u2019t me changing the world\u2014it\u2019s him changing it through all of his people\u2026.<\/p>\n
My optimistic zeal needed to be reshaped by God, but we need to spend more time giving reality a reality check.\u00a0 God is not done.\u00a0 God is not boring.\u00a0 God has given us his Spirit to work for redemption and reconciliation in our world until the return of Christ.\u00a0 We should be optimistic if we rely on him.\u00a0 We should have zeal\u2014for prayer, for the poor, for salvation, for hope, for healing, for chains of bondage being broken, for a fully-functioning body with Christ as its head.\u00a0 We have way too little optimistic zeal these days.\u00a0 I pray that God strips away our egos and our desire to star in our own stories, but I also pray that he preserves the optimistic zeal we once had.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a fine set of reflections by Trevor Lee on youthful idealism, reality, and faith in a God who still is at work. As a 25 year old seminary student I sat at a Perkins with our 60-something Senior Pastor and excitedly spewed out a litany of great ideas that would change our church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1731],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastoring-and-leading"],"yoast_head":"\n
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