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Ambition’s Confidence
GOD-CENTERED FAITH SPARKS
GOD-GLORIFYING AMBITION
Did you ever come across a story that walloped you right between the eyes? This one, reported by Tim Stafford in Christianity Today, did it for me.
Lalani Jayasinghe lived in the southernmost part of Sri Lanka. Widowed twelve years after her wedding day and living in a simple home with no plumbing, Lalani had few earthly reasons to be joyful and content. But she was a Christian and an active member of her local church.
A few years ago, Lalani was chosen to represent her church for a meeting in the capital city of Colombo to discuss the current challenges Sri Lankan Christians were facing with persecution. Lalani had personal experience with persecution. While at home with her son one day, her husband was brutally killed by local monks hostile to followers of Jesus.
Lalani took the all-day trip to Colombo for the meeting where many churches were gathering for updates, prayer, and support. They wanted to strategize on how to respond to the violence they were facing.
Stafford tells her response:
When asked how things were with her church, she replied, “Wonderful! Praise the Lord!” Later she gave a more detailed report, telling how the local opposition had that week organized a protest march against her church, and then burned the thatch roof.
Stunned by this news, someone in the meeting asked why she said that everything was wonderful. “Obviously,” she answered enthusiastically, “since the thatch is gone, God must intend to give us a metal roof!”1
So let me see if I have this straight: Lalani is a victim of violent persecution. She’s already experienced tremendous personal loss, then local mobs burn the roof off her church. Yet her response is praise. Honestly, I don’t think I would have come within a mental mile of her interpretation of that event. If a tornado rips the roof off my house tonight, I’ll be thinking of insurance, not roof upgrades. But Lalani had her eyes set on something higher. In fact, I have a friend who knows Lalani, and he says that seeing metal roofs when thatched roofs burn is typical of her approach to life.
Why don’t I see life that way? What’s the big difference between Lalani and me? I think it comes down to one ambition-shaping, risktaking, life-transforming word.
Faith.
There’s a verse in Scripture that hijacked my brain a few years ago and stays there, stubbornly arguing with me anytime a roof catches fire in my life. It’s a persistent sentence that defines the difference between Lalani’s perspective and the way I so often respond to far less ominous obstacles in my life. Here it is:
And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (Heb. 11:6)
You probably noticed this passage is from Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter of the Bible. When I was a kid in Sunday school, they called Hebrews 11 “The Hall of Faith.” That was cool, you know, God mixing together baseball and Bible. But Babe Ruth has nothing on the folks in this chapter. Hebrews 11 is filled with regular people displaying aspirations greater than anything you’ll see in any hall of fame.
We have the patriarch Abraham, who left everything to obey God; Sarah, a senior citizen who believed God for a child; Moses, who refused the riches of Pharaoh in order to identify with his people; the Israelites, who crossed the Red Sea on dry land—this is wild-crazy-ambitious stuff. Folks just like Lalani. Folks not like me.
People like me need to be rescued from shortsightedness. We need the God-sightedness Lalani has—seeing a life beyond the fire. If our ambitions for God’s glory are going to take shape, we need to be rescued from our lack of God-sightings. To help in the rescue, God positions us to extend our hand of faith to lay hold of what we prize. Faith, fully displayed, will lead to a life fully lived.
People like me need to be rescued from
shortsightedness.
But there’s a kicker. “Whoever would draw near to God must believe.” Whoa, those are some no-nonsense words—“whoever . . . must . . .” Does that mean me?
You bet. With the introduction of “whoever,” we’re all invited to take our place in the Hall of Faith. And with “must,” we’re buckled in and locked down with no exit options.
Just in case you think there’s an escape hatch out of Hebrews 11, consider the verses that guard the front and back of the Hall of Faith:
Hebrews 10:38: “But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”
Hebrews 12:1: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”
It appears there’s no emergency exit from the Hall of Faith. A life of faith isn’t optional. But Hebrews 11:6 doesn’t throw us an impossible task and leave us unable to achieve it. This amazing verse actually tells us how faith works in us and through us. Understood rightly, this is a doorway for every believer into the place set aside for us in the Hall of Faith. And that’s an ambition worth pursuing.
Ambition Finds Its Focus through Faith
What’s the focus of faith? The answer to that question can reveal a lot about our theological journey.
I grew up with a traditional church background. For us the purpose of faith was to . . . well, that’s really what Sundays were for. Faith meant religiosity—going to church, obeying commandments (it seemed like there were way more than ten), and getting your morality from Bible stories. It didn’t take. Not for me anyway.
I experienced my conversion in college through the influence of some Christians with charismatic leanings. All of a sudden my hands went up whenever I was singing, and faith was a big deal to everybody all the time. Faith was power to do stuff for God, and the world was our laboratory. Sure, God was in there somewhere. But this thing called faith was truly awesome—and it was mine!
A friend of mine wrote a popular song that perfectly captured my grasp on faith in those early years of my Christian life. (I won’t mention his name because he now disavows any memory of writing it.)
I have a destiny I know I shall fulfill;
I have a destiny in that city on a hill;
I have a destiny, it’s not an empty wish;
For I know I was born for such a time as this.
I . . . I . . . I . . . I . . . You get the picture. This was my theme song. In my Dave-centered mind, faith was about me and what I was going to do for God.
If there’s any upside to that approach, it does kick-start expectations for God to use us. But I don’t think this is what Hebrews 11:6 has in view.
Faith isn’t some mysterious, detached,
force-like power.
Faith starts with God and fixes on God.
As I began to study God’s Word, I fell in love with the doctrines of grace. I discovered these God-centered, Christ-exalting truths in the writings of John Calvin, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Spurgeon. Those doctrines continue to shape me through the words of contemporaries like J. I. Packer, John Piper, D. A. Carson, and a host of others who inspire me with their words and lives.
In the doctrines of grace I discovered that faith isn’t some mysterious, detached, force-like power. Faith starts with God and fixes on God. That’s why Hebrews 6:1 calls it “faith toward God.” Faith comes from God and is quickened in us because of Christ’s death for us.
I know, there’s plenty of “faith” teaching going around that instructs people to believe that faith generates its own creative power. But that leads us inward and selfward, not upward and Godward. Our faith doesn’t create prosperity, healings, and breakthroughs. Our faith focuses fervently on God. Biblical faith confidently—even ambitiously—asks God to act according to his promises. True faith then accepts the answer. Our faith stands on the unchanging character of God.
Now if you, like me, love all things Reformational, can I have a word with you? I love the confidence and emphasis on God’s sovereignty that characterizes the heritage of Luther and the other Reformers and the Puritans and lots of other folks like them. May that never change! But I believe there can be a tendency in our systematic world to allow a theological emphasis on God’s sovereignty— which is good and necessary—to wrongly mute a conscious awareness of our need to actively grow in faith. If our understanding of doctrine creates passivity toward God’s empowering presence or cools the hot embers of our ambition, we’ve misunderstood God’s sovereignty. When we rightly understand God’s caring control over all things, that knowledge should ignite robust faith toward him and bold desire to act in our hearts. We see God more clearly so our ambition can reach further.
So what’s the focus of faith in Hebrews 11:6? The writer states it this way: “Whoever would draw near to God . . .” The focus of true faith is not hills to be taken, battles to be won, or trials to be endured. The focus of true faith is God—and not just God in the abstract, theological sense. It’s the God who’s made known in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus announced, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). God has given us the desire to draw close to him through the regenerating power of the cross (Titus 3:5). He has revealed himself as our Father through the reconciling mercy of the cross (Gal. 1:3–4). And he has made a way for us to enjoy unhindered access and standing with him in the privileges that come from our justification and adoption as children and co-heirs in Christ (Rom. 5:1–2).
Drawing near to God, then, is not like climbing an endless spiral of steps toward some unknown destination. Drawing near to God is a life of intimate fellowship with a Person, a life of overwhelming wonder that puts everything else into perspective.
If you’re wondering what to read during your times with God, I suggest studying the lives of the people profiled in this Hall of Faith. Hebrews 11 gives you the executive summary; go back and read their stories, and you’ll get the full drama of people in relationship with God.
Paradoxically, when faith focuses on its main objective—drawing near to God—we don’t become religiously obsessed or “too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.” We actually get perspective, and we can deal with the complexities and curveballs of life in a balanced way. Consider Charlotte’s story.
Charlotte was a single Christian woman who faithfully worked her way up the management ladder of a prominent publishing company. Like many women, she had a constant struggle between two godly but competing ambitions. She had a lifetime desire to be married and raise a family, but it’s not as if she could snap her fingers genie-like and make that happen. Charlotte also recognized that God had gifted and promoted her at work and that there were both personal and evangelistic opportunities in her career that marriage and family might change.
Had Charlotte focused on her unfulfilled desire to be married, she might have begun to see her vocation as God’s default plan, where second best was as good as it gets, or even a daily reminder of God’s lesser care and love for her. At the same time, she never felt able to jettison dreams of marriage and throw herself fully into the corporate world.
Here’s how she describes walking the tightrope between the different poles of those ambitions:
I never wanted to be the president of the company. But I did want to be able to use my gifts in the workplace to be able to support myself and to be generous to others. I always thought that as long as I was single and responsible for supporting myself, I should do my best to serve the people and corporation God had set me in. I think that attitude led to my career advancement more than any strategic planning for professional advancement.
Still, almost every day was a battle to see God’s goodness. I battled serious envy when roommates got married, when coworkers went home to their families, and even when my coworkers’ live-in boyfriends and girlfriends stopped by to chat. There were temptations to enter into ungodly relationships with people I met at work. By God’s grace, I resisted that kind of relationship, but I sometimes was tempted to think that the price for purity was awfully high!
In my mid to late thirties, I began to envy even the child-care and school problems my coworkers had with their children. As a single woman with no children, who often had to cover for those with sick spouses and kids, I was tempted to wonder what people thought of me. I wondered if they thought about “why” I was single. Did they think no one wanted me or that I was selfishly pursuing some big career? I often felt “different.”
The source of much of my envy and discontent was sinful comparison. I hadn’t yet learned that God leads each person on his own path, and that to demand to know “Why me?” or “Why not me?” is really questioning God’s loving-kindness and faithfulness.
I began to see that money, prestige, charm, and power could be deceitful traps, and that they could disappear in a moment. With God’s help, I realized that the only thing I could count on was God himself. I grew (I think) wisely fearful of settling for anything other than a singularly focused, sold-out, proven commitment to God and his purposes.
Though it wasn’t easy, Charlotte learned that the answer wasn’t putting faith in either marriage or career. It was drawing near to God with a confidence that he would work out his purposes perfectly for her.
I know a number of godly single women who can identify with Charlotte, women who bounce between ambitions for marriage and ambitions for the ministry field of their jobs. For Charlotte, God resolved that tension just before her fortieth birthday, bringing her the husband who was truly the answer to her prayers. How do I know? I work with him, and you won’t find a godlier man than my friend Pat.
But Charlotte’s need to draw near to God didn’t end when her desire for marriage was fulfilled. Charlotte will tell you that drawing near to God by faith is not the way we fulfill our ambitions; it’s the only focus worthy of true ambition.
Ambition Battles Unbelief with Faith
The good news in Hebrews 11:6 is that with faith we can please God.
But this verse gets us there through a double negative: “without faith it is impossible” to please him.
Why does the author put it this way? He’s driving home the point that the normal song of the human heart isn’t the song of faith. Although it works out in different ways, Christians and non-Christians share a similar struggle. We both struggle with unbelief.
Unbelief is serious—the writer of Hebrews has already labeled it toxic when he warned us against “an evil heart of unbelief” (3:12, KJV). So we shouldn’t get to Hebrews 11 and find a lot of sympathy for unbelief.
The writer there tells us that without faith it’s “impossible to please” God. Not tricky, not difficult. No, it’s impossible!
I don’t think we tend to feel as strongly about unbelief as God does.
Unbelief is a decided distrust in the promises and character of God. Spurgeon describes unbelief as a “mistrust [of] the promises and faithfulness of God.”2 Unbelief denies God’s perfections and power and flings his mercies toward sinners back in his face. Unbelief is effectively calling God, if not an outright liar, at least a bait-and-switch artist.
Imagine you have a relationship with some folks to whom you always tell the truth and keep your promises. Your disposition—no matter what, without fail—is to be gracious to them. You’re always kind, merciful, helpful, and available at any time.
Now imagine how you’d feel if they frequently doubted you even existed or constantly shrank back from you as if you were about to smack them or were fearful you would repossess everything you’d ever given them, just for spite. Despite your track record, they kept insisting that you just couldn’t be trusted. Imagine the affront to your character, the insult to your benevolence, and the assault on your integrity.
Most Christians, beginning with me, rarely see themselves with that kind of bold-faced unbelief. But it happens. A lot.
Sadly, unbelief isn’t confined to the big moments of disease and downsizing. Unbelief starts in the little things. We get a bad report on the kids, our plans for the day are interrupted, the stock market drops unexpectedly, and without skipping a beat we’re wondering if God is a con artist.
My friends say I have a beautiful mind. I wish they meant I was real smart, like that crazy guy in the book and the movie. But what they really mean is that I sometimes see things that aren’t there—like that crazy guy in the book and the movie. Have you ever met anyone like that? Are you like that?
Take, for example, the time someone said to me, “You know what, we really need to talk.” My unbelieving mind sprang to life, manufacturing fear-filled scenarios. “Yep, it’s bad news, probably some kind of correction. No, he’s probably leading a split in the church, and he’s been appointed to tell me. No, they’ve put a contract out on me—he’s a hit man!”
Turns out he wanted to tell me how one of my sermons helped him.
Sometimes my mind needs a cage. In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Christian mystics in the past used to speak of “the dark night of the soul.” For me, it’s usually mornings. Most days, as soon as my alarm goes off, my problems magically appear clustered around my bed. They’re my Unbelief Ushers, welcoming me to a new day.
“Hey, Dave, we’ve been waiting for you. We have your day all planned. Let’s begin with a good worry workout, followed by a nice long shower of self-pity. We have a yummy breakfast of irresolvable problems all laid out. After that you go right to your past failures rehearsal. The afternoon is dedicated to futility training at your inbox. And we have a great evening of disappointment planned for you, if you make it that far. So let’s get up—rise and gloom!”
Oh, and did I mention they’re all wearing T-shirts that say “God doesn’t exist, or if he does, he doesn’t like Dave”? I think they arrive early because they know that’s when I’m most likely to agree with them.
Boom—first thing in the morning, before I’m even caffeinated, I have a choice: faith or unbelief.
First thing in the morning, before I’m even
caffeinated, I have a choice: faith or unbelief.
If unbelief can be that nearby and persistent, it’s easy to see how it can become a habit. In fact, as you read through the Bible you’ll see that unbelief isn’t often an event but a condition. It’s a paralysis of soul. When we stumble into unbelief, we tend to stay in the ditch of doubt. We’re never truly comfortable there but are unmotivated to do anything about it.
Unbelief chokes godly ambition. If we’re gripped by unbelief, life is about survival, and faith is a mirage. All we see is thatched roofs burning. God is nowhere to be found. And the ironic thing is that the only antidote to unbelief is faith.
That’s why it’s so important to see faith as a gift from God. If faith were from us, when it’s vanquished by unbelief, we would have lost it forever. But because faith is a gift coming to me as a benefit of the cross, we can access it by turning to Christ. I think we can all identify with the man who cried out to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
We battle unbelief with faith because faith’s goal is drawing near to God. The eyes of faith can focus only on the goal of God. There may be a lot of things distracting us, but biblical faith has a singular focus.
Did you ever climb to the top of an old bell tower or church steeple on a spiral staircase—you know, the kind where you look down the center and feel like you’re in a Hitchcock movie? If you have a problem with heights, you have a problem with those stairs. So the people who know about such things tell you to look at the steps in front of you or at the back of someone climbing ahead of you—but don’t look down the center. Why? Because there’s nothing to focus on. Just a great expanse of space with certain doom at the bottom.
What happens when you focus upward? You gain confidence to move ahead.
I know someone who learned a lot about faith. Siva grew up as a Brahman Hindu in southern India. After he moved to the United States to pursue higher education, the Lord kindly opened Siva’s heart to the gospel, and he was radically converted. Through a long journey filled with many fascinating stories of God’s sovereignty, Siva made his way to Philadelphia, married a godly Christian woman, and began to pursue a career in his field of expertise, corrosion engineering.
A few years ago Siva believed God was leading him to start his own engineering firm. This meant, among other things, leaving the comforts of a good job. Siva describes it as “a leap of faith.” He’d always wanted to start his own business, but it was a long road.
For six years Siva did everything he could to make the business work. Web site, graphics, cold calls, networking, attending conferences— if there was some way to make connections, Siva was there. But he just couldn’t turn the corner. Eventually it became obvious that he needed to close his business and return to work for someone else. If you’ve ever been in this situation, you can appreciate not only the test of faith but the test of humility that comes by admitting you simply can’t make your business work.
But closing his business didn’t end Siva’s trials. Finding a new job became a trial too. The Lord launched Siva on a faith journey requiring him to stand daily against unbelief. He had to fight doubts about God, doubts about the future, doubts about his ability to provide for his family.
One crucible that emerged was the question of whether to move to another part of the country. Siva believed he was called to raise his family in his local church. But after months of searching, there were simply no jobs in his specialty that would allow him to stay in the area. Siva’s options seemed reduced to a painful choice: should he leave the field he’d trained for or leave the church he loved? Siva was trying to do the right thing, but everything else seemed so wrong. Sometimes when he prayed he felt like God was distant and unavailable rather than poised to bless him and keep him.
What does a man do when he doubts whether he’s heard from God, whether his future is secure, and whether his ambitions have financially destroyed him?
But Siva had biblical faith—the kind that finds its focus in God, not in ourselves. Siva decided to trust God’s Word more than his feelings or his failings. Though there would be no sin in moving his family in order to support them, his biblical convictions caused him to see himself as a man in community more than a man in business. He decided to stay in his local church and take any job he could get.
What do we do when we doubt whether
we’ve heard from God and whether
our future is secure?
It won’t surprise you to discover that God provided a way. It wasn’t the greatest job, but it was local. It would also keep him in his field and keep his family in their local church. Siva was willing to sacrifice his own personal vision for the sake of things he valued more.
We’ll return to his story later, but let’s not miss the key point. Siva had God-centered faith. He didn’t run himself into debt trying to keep a dying dream afloat. He didn’t compromise his values to solve his problems. And he didn’t accuse God when his faith, for a time, seemed to be a fruitless leap. He stood on truth and sought wise counsel. And when doubt came, Siva believed that the God of his conversion and the God of his trial were the same—and could be trusted with both.
Do you find yourself caught in the trap of unbelief? Does God seem distant, preoccupied, unavailable? Have you followed what you thought was God’s leading only to find yourself on a difficult road?
Like Siva, refuse to see yourself as a victim of your circumstances. This will free you to take your eyes off your circumstances and fix them on God. Then seek help. But don’t ask others for sympathy; ask them for the truth of Scripture. Ask them to remind you who this God is and why he’s worthy of your faith. This will help align your thinking with objective truth, not subjective interpretations or emotional thinking. Then confess the sin of unbelief and receive mercy in time of need. This will help you receive the cleansing of forgiveness and fresh faith for a new walk.
Ambition Is Confident in Ultimate Reward
Faith seems like such a noble, almost royal thing, doesn’t it? For me, it calls to mind those guards with the tall fuzzy hats in front of the royal palace in England. (Does the queen look out her window and say, “I feel so safe; guys with funny hats are guarding my palace”?) These royal guards are known for absolute devotion to duty. Don’t you dare try to get them to smile for a picture, don’t try to ask them for directions, and don’t ask what’s inside their hat. All you get is that rigid-atattention, eyes-straight-forward, people-without-hats-are-really-odd, God-save-the-Queen kind of look. It’s really something to admire.
But Hebrews 11:6 tells us something about faith that goes beyond a single-minded devotion and risk-taking trust in God: He rewards those who seek him. John Piper emphasizes that inherent in who God reveals himself to be is what God promises to do: “God is real. God is a rewarder.”3 A significant part of faith is the confidence that God responds to faith.
How crazy is this? God gives us faith as a gift, arranges our circumstances to call it forth, gives us grace to act boldly in faith—then rewards us for it! Faith is a work of God for which we are rewarded.
Ambitious faith is always moving forward,
persevering, tackling obstacles as they come.
Godly ambition has reward in mind at all times. When our desire for glory is energized by the Hebrews 11 kind of true faith, bold things tend to happen. We do self-denying things the world could never imagine doing. We resist self-indulgence. We take risks for the sake of the gospel. Big risks like proclaiming the gospel in a country where to be a Christian is punishable by death. And little risks like proclaiming the gospel in an office or classroom where to be a Christian is punishable by snickering.
Most of all, ambitious faith is always moving forward, persevering, tackling obstacles as they come, knowing that somewhere out there is promised reward.
My friend Larry is a great example of this persevering ambition. Larry is a pastor who loves the local church. He loves to care for and help lead the congregation he’s a part of, and he loves to be with his family. But since Larry was about six, he dreamed of traveling. The dreams were nurtured by a lot of trips to the airport. “I’d watch my dad walk down the jetway,” Larry recalls, “and I thought it was a magic tunnel. I’d imagine all the adventure it held. I’d think, There’s so much adventure out there, and one day I want to do that.”
As Larry finished high school, his dreams for travel never disappeared, but he dropped out of college and didn’t have a lot of direction. He was managing mini-golf courses, did some landscaping on the side, and occasionally painted houses or built decks. It’s safe to say that ambition wasn’t on his radar screen.
Larry was converted at the age of twenty-one. He was led to the Lord by a friend whose life had been dramatically changed by the gospel. Then Larry met Marilyn, the woman who eventually became his wife. She encouraged Larry toward an active trust in God that brought risk-taking ambition into view. His first major step in ambition was finishing his degree in education. Then they found themselves helping to start a church in the Washington, D.C., area. Larry also found success as a coach of a high school sports team that was nationally ranked.
Larry’s dreams to travel hadn’t changed, but he increasingly felt the call to ministry, which was confirmed by others. Eventually he took a staff position at his new church and settled into a life of notravel local church ministry.
In a meeting one day, Larry heard about an upcoming mission trip to India. Because of his long-held dream of travel, he stepped out in faith and humbly expressed his interest in going on the trip. Six months later he found himself on a plane to northern India—his first-ever international trip.
What happened on that trip cemented a remarkable milepost in Larry’s life. Larry discovered he didn’t simply like to travel. He loved going to places the average American would work really hard to avoid.
I’ve clocked a considerable amount of international travel hours myself, and I can attest, how exhausting it is to spend days on planes, stumble through time zones, eat unfamiliar food, acclimate to radically different cultures, bang up against impenetrable language barriers, and devote every waking hour to doing ministry. Travel leaves me wrung out for days. But Larry has an unusual grace on his life. Difficult travel and challenging cross-cultural ministry actually energize him. When he’s hauling his suitcase off the baggage claim, he’s mentally and emotionally ready to jump on another plane and head to the next remote gospel outpost. And Marilyn, who never wanted to marry a pastor or leave the D.C. suburbs, loves the work God has given Larry to do.
The call on Larry’s life to this “sent” ministry has been so pronounced that others in ministry thought it wise to position him in a larger church where his travel wouldn’t conflict with the needs of the local congregation. Today ambitionless Larry is ambassador Larry. But to get there, he faithfully served where he was, trusted God with his ambition . . . and patiently waited.
It was twenty-two years after Larry became a Christian before God finally allowed him to travel. During that time, Larry says, “God showed me my selfish ambition. For all those years, my ambition for travel was rooted in my own desires.” Now, Larry says, “Every time I get on a plane, I shake my head and think I can’t believe I get to do this.”
Selfish ambition would insist, “I have a right to do this. I need it. This fulfills me.” Ambition rooted in God says, “I don’t need it; instead I’ll serve wherever and however I can. This glorifies God.”
Larry has it right—his ambitions are Godward. They recognize that God is real and that God is a rewarder.
Larry also knows that life won’t always be like this. As with all of us, eventually a younger guy will come along and take his place. “Just let me know when you want me to step aside,” Larry says. “I’ll do it for as long as I’m needed, but not a minute more.” Here’s a man who has finally received the desire of his heart after years of patient and godly perseverance. And now he’s willing to let it go. Why? Is it no longer fulfilling for him? Is he looking for the next step up the ministry ladder? Is he burned out?
No! Larry received a reward for his faith, but he’s looking to a reward that’s well beyond what he does in this life. He’s finding his own little place in the Hall of Faith, like saints before him, assured of things hoped for, convinced of things not seen. Traveling around the world in the service of the gospel? Yes, that’s a reward. But it’s not the ultimate reward. That’s something we haven’t yet seen—but it’s unimaginably good.
Remember Siva? He faced failure and went back to work for somebody else. What Siva didn’t factor in was that God was going to use that job to create some significant avenues for him to begin to specialize in a field of his industry that was just about to explode.
In a remarkable “coincidence,” Siva’s employer made the business decision to move away from this specialty, requiring them to cut Siva loose from his employment and forcing him to restart his company— just when this area of his field was demanding his unique expertise. At a time of economic downturn, but with years of contracted work ahead of him, Siva is hard at work trying to keep up with the demands of his business. His business has quickly quadrupled. But he knows that none of this has come from his efforts. Success, after persevering through failure, is evidence of God rewarding those who seek him.
What about Charlotte? Well, she finds herself in her mid-forties and the mother to three small children. In the natural realm, that wasn’t supposed to happen. But it has, because God is a rewarder of those who seek him.
Not All Happy Endings—for Now
Hebrews 11 makes it clear that not every story of faith has a happy ending—at least not the earthly chapter of the story.
Even though Lalani believed, her husband died at the hands of persecutors, her son grew up without a father, and her church was set on fire. But her faith was set to see the Savior, and she looked back at God’s faithfulness and found joy because she believed that God is real and that he’s a rewarder of those who seek him.
There’s no way we’ll receive in this life all the reward for our faith. The truth is, our life on this side of heaven can’t hold all the reward. It’s stored up for us not because we need to be patient, but because it’s so magnificent we couldn’t handle it here.
That’s why you’ll find folks like Lalani in the part of the Hall of Faith with this plaque over the door:
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Heb. 11:13–16)
That’s the fitting inscription as well for most of the people who instruct us from church history down through the centuries. Meanwhile, folks like Larry, Siva, and Charlotte still have other ambitions and dreams that may or may not be rewarded in this life.
Godly ambition finds its focus through faith. It battles unbelief with faith. It leans on faith when circumstances scream otherwise. And ambition is confident in the ultimate reward.