by John Knight
I love the theme of our National Conference this year — Finish the Mission: For the Joy of All Peoples. It begins this Friday and I can hardly wait.
You would probably say my exicitement is obvious. This is an amazing subject and at the heart of Christ’s supremacy. But there is another reason why I’m glad. This conference evidences God’s kindness in changing my heart.
Here’s what I mean: Because disability is so close to me, I struggled with anger when others did not embrace this issue as passionately as I did. At times I couldn’t appreciate (let alone get excited about) the other good things that God had called people to do for the sake of his name.
I Thought I Cared More
I would justify my anger and disappointment in various ways but it really all centered on one thing: I didn’t trust God.
I was treasuring my cause more than I was treasuring the one who gave me the cause. Foolishly, I thought I cared more about disability than God did.
I know I’m not the only one with a cause, so I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has had this problem. We all tend to think that whatever we are most passionate about is surely God’s greatest cause. We think if people are not as excited as we are then they are wrong and need to wake up.
For the Glory of Jesus
But regardless of your cause, Jesus is the answer. Love for him and his glory is the thread that binds all of our causes together.
Treasuring Jesus doesn’t make my cause (or yours) smaller. It makes it bigger. Jesus calls us from death to life. We are his workmanship, created in him for good works that God prepared beforehand so that we’d walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).
It’s not easy to embrace God’s plan and timing when we feel so strongly about something, when things don’t go as we wish they would, when one really good cause seems to advance more than our really good cause. But God helps even there! Trust him. He has an unswerving commitment to uphold the glory of his name and he cares infinitely more than we do about any cause that wants the same.
Whatever cause we are passionate about, if it makes much of Jesus, we celebrate it together. I thank God for this freedom.
