answer to a young man's question: should I find a better paying job to pay off my bills? or keep this one I love?
What a concept: doing work that we get paid enough so we can retire our debts in addition to paying our regular bills! I dreamed of that until I was in my 40s, with only a few years of achieving it in my 30s. The balance of time and attention spent doing that career-type work while still being kingdom-focused is one of the biggest challenges I've encountered. The wife-and-kids factor intensifies this by an order of magnitude. In fact, you asking these questions is evidence that you've entered this new level of conflict that is the normal christian living-in-the-world not wanting to lose sight of our kingdom calling. Welcome to the battle!
So now what? you're doing this as a child of God's. You bring this challenge before him, and it's been a topic you've asked others to pray for, too, I suspect, even as you have brought it to me. That's a good thing, and a critical component of what will become its successful resolution. The presentation/consideration of this request is essential, but not necessarily conclusive. What do I mean by that? you need to not bury it in your private, unspoken requests (and we all have those: things that can't or shouldn't be verbalized for a variety of reasons), but to frame your hopes and dreams so that others can offer some feedback, as I am doing now, or for the other transformational reason: that after verbalizing your requests, you begin to think differently about them. Note this. You're working with the issues as you frame, reframe, state, restate them. That's important, because you might discover that you started out with a bias in favor of a certain kind of result that leads you to expect a certain thing from God that he won't do because it wouldn't be in your or His best interest. Just like Joseph's ongoing hope and expectation that he would be in a place of administrative significance, but he kept get thrown into prison...! He was right, but it took a bit more character building for him to be able to handle the glorious significance he was to be assigned!
Where am I going with all of this? I pray the Lord will lead you to a place of perfectly designed work to achieve your goal of debt retirement. I don't know what that's going to look like, however: I don't have any lines on fixed-term projects that will let you charge $40/hr. I wish I did. But the Lord has something in mind. I claim Eph. 2:10 for you today:
I'm sorry that you didn't get anything more substantial than this from me, but I can't give you what I don't have. I believe the Lord will surprise you with answers. You may not be thrilled with the path he lays out for you to take, but that's what the Christian life is...
In the meantime, meditate on the riches of his glory. You're his precious son. He delights in you, too, as he delighted in Jesus. That's an amazing truth to enter into, and when you do (I think you already spend quite a bit of time there!), there's peace and direction that you can't get anywhere else, isn't there? even if you don't get the I-want-it-now answer you're asking for. He knows what you need, and when you need it. Lord, help us to enter into the agreement of your timing on all these things, so we don't content with you inappropriately.
However, we are invited to be persistent, as in Luke 11 and 18. Figure it out: patience and persistent annoyance! We're doing some of that right now as we struggle with what appears to be little fruitfulness here in the Mankato Prepare... please keep us in prayer!
So now what? you're doing this as a child of God's. You bring this challenge before him, and it's been a topic you've asked others to pray for, too, I suspect, even as you have brought it to me. That's a good thing, and a critical component of what will become its successful resolution. The presentation/consideration of this request is essential, but not necessarily conclusive. What do I mean by that? you need to not bury it in your private, unspoken requests (and we all have those: things that can't or shouldn't be verbalized for a variety of reasons), but to frame your hopes and dreams so that others can offer some feedback, as I am doing now, or for the other transformational reason: that after verbalizing your requests, you begin to think differently about them. Note this. You're working with the issues as you frame, reframe, state, restate them. That's important, because you might discover that you started out with a bias in favor of a certain kind of result that leads you to expect a certain thing from God that he won't do because it wouldn't be in your or His best interest. Just like Joseph's ongoing hope and expectation that he would be in a place of administrative significance, but he kept get thrown into prison...! He was right, but it took a bit more character building for him to be able to handle the glorious significance he was to be assigned!
Where am I going with all of this? I pray the Lord will lead you to a place of perfectly designed work to achieve your goal of debt retirement. I don't know what that's going to look like, however: I don't have any lines on fixed-term projects that will let you charge $40/hr. I wish I did. But the Lord has something in mind. I claim Eph. 2:10 for you today:
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (NIV)
I'm sorry that you didn't get anything more substantial than this from me, but I can't give you what I don't have. I believe the Lord will surprise you with answers. You may not be thrilled with the path he lays out for you to take, but that's what the Christian life is...
In the meantime, meditate on the riches of his glory. You're his precious son. He delights in you, too, as he delighted in Jesus. That's an amazing truth to enter into, and when you do (I think you already spend quite a bit of time there!), there's peace and direction that you can't get anywhere else, isn't there? even if you don't get the I-want-it-now answer you're asking for. He knows what you need, and when you need it. Lord, help us to enter into the agreement of your timing on all these things, so we don't content with you inappropriately.
However, we are invited to be persistent, as in Luke 11 and 18. Figure it out: patience and persistent annoyance! We're doing some of that right now as we struggle with what appears to be little fruitfulness here in the Mankato Prepare... please keep us in prayer!
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