Kevin loves Ravi Zacharias. His dad and brothers do, too. For me, I feel I need just a little more smarts to fully comprehend some of his stuff! Heh. But I do enjoy listening to most of his messages along with Kevin. So. For Kevy's birthday a year or two ago, I got him Ravi's book Walking from East to West. It's his biography. When I came across it a couple weeks ago, I thought, I'm gonna read this! :) So spend a little time together with Ravi and me...God has an appointment with each of us, and it is critical that every man and woman know this. He will stop our steps when it is not our time, and He will lead us when it is. This is a reassuring truth to know for every believer, and a necessary trust for anyone who ministers in areas of great risk.
You have to learn that you cannot claim a path just because it is less intimidating. You must keep in mind that God does have an appointment with you, that there is a cost to serving him. At the same time, you have to be wise and not careless. To deny the reality that there are some places where you cannot go is to play the fool. More important, if you have not learned to pay the smaller prices of following Christ in your daily life, you will not be prepared to pay the ultimate price in God's calling.
I am asked... whether I've found greater fulfillment through the larger orginization of RZIM. On a very practical level, the answer is no. As the ministry has grown larger, so have the demands, and that has never suited my parsonality. Managing those things has always gone against the grain for me.
On personal level, the answer also is no. To me there has never been any greater fulfillment than being where God wants me to be. And that fulfillment isn't any greater now, because I was fullfilled from the beginning, knowing that God had me in the right place at all times. If anything, I had more of a comfort level in the early years-with a normal, day-to-day life with my wife and children-than I do now.
I wold prefer to rephrase the question: is there fulfillment in knowing you're where God wants you to be? Does that bring satisfaction? The answer is YES, absolutely!
One day, I was at the bedside fo a friend who was a Muslim convert to Jesus Christ... he said one sentence taht I will never forget: "Brother Ravi, the more I study other beliefs and religions, the more beautiful Jesus becomes to me."
He is right. Even in ministry, the same applies. Through all of the visitations of life - successes or failures - it is not how well you are known or not known. It is not how big your organization is or isn't. It is not even how many sermons one has preached or books one has written or millions of dollars one has accumulated. It is how well do you know Jesus? That's it. That is what shapes how you view everything else. Successes are hollow if you do not know the author of life and His purpose. To me, with each passing year, Jesus has only become more beautiful.
I feel more confident all the time that, outside of the gospel, there are no answers for humanity's most fundamental questions.
Ravi also says several times throughout his book things like, "I am so unfit for this. I am unsure of myself. Why do these people want to listen to me?" Which is interesting to me because, one of my very favorite teachers is Beth Moore and she says several times those exact same things. It's comforting to me because as we pursue missions, I'm finding myself thinking things like that. "Who am I?" I think that's just where God wants his servants to be so that He can be big!
Hope you had a good time with Ravi and I today!
Elijah's finally getting a handle on the whole potty training thing. We've said that a few times but this time, I think might be the real one! (I sure hope...) :) Anyway, when you have a potty trainer in the house, you talk a lot about poop and pee and private parts... it's just the way life is at this stage in life.
