The Hsu’s Views

I’ve been thumbing through Bobby Clinton’s book again recently. When I saw this post at OnMovements.com the power of his observations stuck me anew. It was powerful when I read it, but it seems even more true as I view it in light of the challenges that are before the church today.

This work is the fruit of a comparative study of over 1200 leaders and the various stages that people go through as the Lord shapes them. Pages 44-46 are worth the price of the book alone. This understanding was powerful in itself when I read it as a (very) young Campus Director at the University of Connecticut.

Unlike many of the books that now sit in my library, Clinton’s book seems even more timely and relevant. I like to think it is because I’m growing in wisdom. In any case, the onmovements blog entry is a great summary of the Seven Major Lessons on leadership. You can also head to Bobby Clinton’s website and download his paper entitled Leadership Lessons. (Straight from the horse’s mouth.)

While you are at it, I’ll just point out that the articles link at Clinton’s sight looks like it is packed with awesome stuff.

Our Staff team is working through a book called, “We Would See Jesus” by Roy and Revel Hession. In the preface we are introduced to the question, “What is the purpose of life?” to which we are introduced to the author’s thesis. Our purpose “is to know, and to love, and to walk with God; that is, to see God.” P. 14. To the Hessions, to see God, is the chief end of man as captured in the Westminster Confession; namely, to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.

The section of chapter one that is most piecing to me is when the authors make the observation that our ministry for God can too often serve as a substitute for seeing God. In other words, we tend to believe that our meaning and satisfaction in life will come as we work to sacrificially serve God, when in fact, the most important thing is to see and know God himself.

“To concentrate on service and activity for God may often actively thwart our attaining the true goal, God himself. At first sight it seems heroic to fling our lives away in the service of God and of our fellows. We feel it is bound to mean more to Him than our experience of Him. Service seems so unselfish, whereas concentrating on our walk with God seems selfish and self-centered. But it is the very reverse. The things that God is most concerned about are our coldness of heart towards Him and our proud, unbroken natures. Christian service of itself can, and often does, leave our self-centered nature untouched.”

The authors go on to suggest that this misdirection is whey there are so many unresolved problems of personal relationships in churches, parachurches, and committees. Christian service gives us opportunities for leadership and position where we can quickly “fall into pride, self-seeking and ambition.

“With those things hidden in our hearts, we have only to work alongside others to find resentment, hardness, criticism, jealousy and frustration issuing from our hearts. We think we are working for God, but how little of our service is for Him is revealed by our resentment or self-pity when the actions of others or circumstances or ill-health take that ministry from us!”

In the language of Tim Keller, we are talking about the idol of doing ministry. It is the doing of ministry that really gives us meaning and satisfaction and a sense of purpose in life. We can tend to measure our sense of well-being with God by the quality and impact of our work. The size and fruitfulness of our ministry becomes the source of psychic and soulish peace, instead of the work of Christ on the cross.

“Alas! In this condition, we are trying to give to others an answer, which we have not truly and deeply found for ourselves. The tragedy is that much of the vast network of Christian activity and service today is bent on propagating an answer for people’s needs and problems which few of those propagating it are finding adequate in their own lives. We direly need to leave our lusting for ever-larger spheres of Christian service and concentrate on seeing God for ourselves and finding the deep answer for life in Him. Then, even if we are located in the most obscure corner of the globe, the world will make a road to our door to get that answer. Our service of help to our fellows then becomes incidental to our vision of God and, ideally, the direct consequence of it.”

So, if the chief end of man is to know God and to glorify him forever. Seeing God, really knowing God is “both the blessing and the way to that blessing – the means and the end.” The very thing I really seek is God, but rather than “being” in relationship, I’d rather be “doing” to earn my place with God. I think I’m in submission to God by doing His work, but I’m actually in rebellion, choosing to worship at the altar of my ministry and service for God.

“This then is the purpose of life: to see God, and to allow Him to bring us back to the old relationships of submission to Himself.”

“Deliver me, Jesus from the desire to be praised, honored, glorified, preferred, consulted, or approved. Deliver me, Jesus, from the fear of being humiliated, criticized, forgotten, ridiculed, maltreated, and from the fear of what others will think. O Jesus, give me the grace to desire: that others would be loved and esteemed ahead of me, that in the eyes of the world they would increase while I decrease, and praised while I pass by unnoticed; that others would be preferred in all situations; that others would become more than myself — in order that I would be as holy as You want me to be.”
— Charles de Foucauld