This would be my note to new Theology Students, MCC Students, or future ministry people. But I would not be asked to speak this message.
Quest for Significance
Some of this stuff is a mixed bag..... it taught me to achieve and work hard, It wasn't all negative.
But in the fathers kingdom I think it has been a negative. I think that whole quest for significance, if you have that quest for significance you spend most of your life in frustration and disappointment. Because no matter how many numbers you drive it's never enough, because someone has more.
I remember hearing this back in the day when the Yonggi Cho's church in South Korea was a big big deal. It was the largest church in the world with a half million believers. And I heard some thing he did, in some place interview he did he talked about, he never says, always afraid it would go down the next day. So driven to keep that thing going. There is something in there that touched me. But, if you serve that desire it's never satisfied. You've got the largest church in the world, but, you could loose it tomorrow. Do something to disaffect people and they go away.
Or, as you approach retirement, or mortality death, then you are going,
"Is that enough? Did I do enough? Should I have done more?
"I Love David's question, I love what's processing.
Because here is a church planter, he's got his degree in Theology, and he did it for a number of years, and his experience doing it by his own language here is that, "I almost Killed Myself".
I almost killed myself doing 50-60 hours a week, ruined my health, neglected my family, and so we go back and say, now has that desire for significance served you well.
And I would say that I don't think it did. If it almost ruined your health, caused you to neglect your family, and if it took you down that that road which I think the quest for significance, when it becomes institutionalized, especially, there is no end for which the institution wont eat you alive. Because if you can do that well, you can do more well. And the constant opportunity and inability to say no to anything that might be the next crack in the door that makes you big, significant, moves you to the next level...
I mean I am saying all this because I lived it. I didn't neglect my family, I had enough core of the whole family thing that I valued it, I never risked my health. But I risked my mental health in being constantly frustrated and angry with God that my best efforts for him in doing something I thought he would deem significant was never enough ... that the fruit it yielded was never enough as I wanted....
All of that driving whether psychologically, physically, or you neglect your family.... Man it just eats it up.....
See I always look for whats not only true in my life I for “What’s going on around me?” ....
The big Mega Pastors that I had access to back in those days, this is what they joked about how about every eight or nine months they would just emotionally melt down and someone would have to give them the family cabin up in Alaska and they would go up there for four to six weeks on sabbatical. But just trying to get their emotions back under them again. Because they feel like this was what they needed to do, and they were actually the human sacrifices of the machine they were serving and they didn't realize it.
(Wayne Jacobsne. The God Journey Podcast. #521 "Am I doing enough for God)
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