This past Sunday night, Nate and I shared at our church in Winston our 15 year plan for tribal missions in Papua New Guinea. It was our very first official “will you support us and walk through this with us” presentation before a group of people.
We sat down in our seats. Our pastor said something. Our missions director prayed. And then people came over to talk, and give hugs and thank us and congratulate us and be encouraging that we’re doing such great things for God, and they’re so proud of us and could never do what we’re doing.
And I simultaneously felt very loved and cared about, yet very alone and guilty.
I suddenly wanted to talk about all the things I’m not. I felt like I needed a catharsis in that moment. I wanted to blurt out that I’m still afraid of going; that I still have fears. I wanted to say there are whole weeks that I’ve gone without reading my Bible. That sometimes I struggle to pray. That sometimes I’m short with Nate and unloving. That I’m often overly critical. That I am totally and completely an average Joe. I contemplated excusing myself to the bathroom to pop a xanax.
I wanted to say those things because I wanted to be loved for who I am and not an ideal. I didn’t want to be put on a pedestal. Not because of humility, but because I know myself, and I don’t belong there.
Right now we’re living with my parents until we can find a place of our own in Winston. We started talking about how the evening at church went, and I told my dad how I was feeling and asked him if he ever feels that way as a very loved and admired professor and author and theologian. And he knew exactly what it felt like – not because of humility – but because you know you.
I talked to a woman on Wednesday whom I greatly respect. She’s had an incredibly rough almost decade that’s finally starting to improve. She knew what I was talking about. When life hands you something, you just do it. It’s not that you’re an amazing person, you just don’t have any other option.
I bet most people feel like that, whatever “great” Christian thing they’re doing. I’ve heard a missionary call it the feeling of “not-enough-ness.” But it’s deeper than that.
Aside from the twelve apostles and some biblical characters, the kingdom will be so different than we expect. I don’t think any William Careys or Jim Elliotts will be leaders. No C.S. Lewis. There will be so many people we don’t recognize up at the top. It will be the quietly faithful, the neglected faithful, the overlooked faithful. And I’m looking forward to meeting all those people who were faithful in the least, who never graced the cover of any book or bumper sticker, but who will be given fantastic roles in the kingdom to be leaders of many and much.
And when we get to heaven and receive our allotment of crowns, I don’t think we’ll lay them down at His feet as an offering of humility or respect. I think we will fully realize that we didn’t actually earn them because there are no great people. It was simply God’s outworking of the plans he planned long ago, and we were simply foreordained players in that.
“There is no such thing as a great man of God, only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God.”
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