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| Photo by Kaki Sky |
There's something about it. It's kind of funny. You're not sure whether you should be sad or frustrated that you aren't good enough to start, or whether you should be proud you're good enough to be on the team in the first place (I'm speaking from my experience with the elementary school track team).
I'd always imagine what it would be like to be the best guy on the team. I'd think about how many people would love me for it, and how my life would have so much more meaning. And then I'd snap out of it and go back to being frustrated that I was just the alternate.
What about you? Do you know what I'm talking about?
What about in regards to Christianity?
Do you ever feel like you're the alternate in Christianity? Like there's five other people God would rather speak to, ten other people He'd rather send to do his work, and 20 people He'd rather give extraordinary worship experiences to?
Have you ever felt like God decided to make someone else cry or raise their hands during worship and not you, and therefore you're not as important?
Because I have.
It really makes you feel like you're living a crappy story, doesn't it? It makes you feel like God's got better things, and better people, to worry about besides you. It makes you feel like the alternate at the elementary school city track meet, watching as your classmates run by and win the gold. It was almost you, but you just weren't fast enough to be a part of something better, something greater.
We want to be heroes in a story. It's deeply set within us. We want to feel like what we do matters, like there's a pathway that leads up, like God really cares whether we get to it, like we could have something special of deep meaning to give the world and our friends if we were just able to find it.
Instead, we too often imagine ourselves as one of the extras in Lost, the random survivors who you've never seen before, who have apparently been there the whole time. You can always tell these guys are going down before the episode is over. Any survivor that you have never seen before ends up getting shot in the back with a flaming arrow, or something of that nature. Somebody's gotta get dominated or it wouldn't be interesting, right? Too often, though, that's how we perceive our part in the grand scheme of things.
It causes us to live our lives like worthless expendables.
We resign ourselves to unimportance just because we think we are unimportant, unneeded, and largely unwanted.
I know people who have really passionate encounters with God in church and in life. I know other people who see that, see the lack of those things in their own lives, and believe they're not worth anything to God because they don't experience those things. I used to be the latter. I felt like a second rate Christian, so I lived my life like a second rate Christian.
In high school, I looked longingly into the lives of many of my friends who were having really meaningful encounters with God in the same way an alternate watches as his team wins the gold. I was happy for them, but I sure did wish I could be a part of it.
I've learned something important, though.
I don't think it's about how important or unimportant someone is, and I don't think it's about how much someone "feels God."
What I've found is simple: the ones who find their place in the story, and their intimacy with God, are just the ones who really want to, enough to give up self glory and comfort... enough to embrace conflict and suffering and vulnerability, the things that open someone up to love and adventure (qualities of God).
We don't feel like a main character, so we don't act like a main character. But what if our role in the story is directly proportional to how much of a role we want in the story?
Maybe you don't have to put your hands up when you worship. Maybe you don't have to "pray well" in front of other people. Maybe you just have to want more than what you're experiencing; to be empty and not be okay with it.
Desire leads to motivation. Motivation leads to action. Action leads to result.
It's time we stopped treating relationship with God like talent.
Here's my bottom line. The more God you want, the more God you're going to get. Maybe it will take a while. Maybe it already has. But don't let that make you forget God's promises that he connects with those who want to connect with him.
God's message is clear: we are important to him. And we each have an important story to live out. God's love for us has made us main characters in his story. So let's start living like it.
Matthew 7:7-8 - "Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks will receive, and anyone who seeks will find, and the door will be opened to those who knock."
Matthew 9:37-38 - When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Psalm 37:4 - "Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart."
(When you delight yourself in the Lord, then he will be the desires of your heart)
Song of Solomon 4:9 - "You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes..."
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