A Word of Encouragement...
There are many things I am really not good at. Technology, for instance, is a friend of which I hesitate to trust - a deceptive friend at best. I can do many things with technology, and do so everyday as a point of necessity, but it doesn't take much to get me stumped. While staying at a place out of province once, I had to call a "techie" friend of mine to walk me through the fray of three remote controls, just to watch cable. He identified with ease the buttons and terms that were necessary to understand and navigate this intimidating maze. He was in his comfort zone - I was lost.
We tend to be inspired and enjoy working in ways and on things that we're good at. And yet, so much of our time is spent focused on our weaknesses and trying to improve in areas where really, we'll likely never be very good. At this time of year, we often become absorbed in some torturous forms of self-denial initiatives to bring an areas of weakness up from a scale of "2" to maybe a "4", not even dreaming of encroaching anywhere near a "10" in our lifetime.
What if this year was different? What if we viewed the aspirations of our individual and corporate (community) lives through the lens of Philippians 4:8-9 which is given by Paul to the church at Philippi as a concluding word of great encouragement. To continue to fix our thoughts on things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable. These immediately point us to Christ and the work of his kingdom, no doubt, but they are not abstract ideas disconnected from our everyday lives. We are, after all, image bearers of the King, created in the image of God and the pinnacle of all creation (Gen. 1). And corporately, as the church, we are the temple of the Living God (2 Cor. 6:16). Therefore, many of these very things are also in our lives.
Yet we so often focus on what is wrong in our lives and in the church. All the while there is so much that is good and true, honorable and admirable in both these areas. What would happen if our energy and focus went into these things? We tend to refer to these things as our strengths, even though this passage does point us beyond merely our strengths. But what if we did press into our right and good and admirable strengths?
So as you go into this year reflecting on your life and the church - find the things that you do well - that are right - and pour into them with more intensity than ever. Focus your thoughts and your discipline into the unique way that you have been created as a fingerprint of God (again, individually and corporately) - not your deficiencies. We might be surprised at the outcome!