14
Am I Accomplishing Anything?
Late at night on December 30, 2003, I was sitting on the couch in my living room thinking about the year wrapping up. The kids were already in bed, the Christmas tree was still glowing in the corner, and the gas fireplace was burning. I had been home from the Philippines for a little more than eighteen months. What had I accomplished in that length of time?
I started telling myself . . .
Gracia, you’re not spending enough time speaking to groups. You need to be out telling your story. Invitations to churches and other audiences were indeed plentiful.
Gracia, this foundation of yours [which was started to channel money toward mission aviation, tribal mission work, and ministry to Muslims] would really be going places if you’d just put some energy into it. The Christian Community Foundation in Kansas City had done all the legwork, but the public voice for my foundation had to be mine.
Gracia, you’re too busy. The kids really need you in these important years. Certainly. Jeff was already a junior in high school, while Mindy was in eighth grade, and Zach in seventh.
My thoughts wandered to a certain individual in my life. A month or two before, I had promised myself, Okay, I am definitely not going to have any more conflict with so-and-so. I will handle this smoothly from here on. But, in fact, tension had raised its head again.
Before long I was overwhelmed with the list of what I should be doing. If you are like me, it’s easy to get down on yourself for what you haven’t done. You look at your recent past, and you see one gaping hole after another. You should have taken care of this, and that, and the other . . . but you didn’t. You start to feel like a total waste. Life, once again, is out of control. You are spinning your wheels, going nowhere.
This makes you feel inferior. Your overall impression of yourself plunges. You are just taking up space, consuming food and money, but not making a contribution to your family, your church, your community, your world. A heaviness hangs over your spirit.
For most of us, achievement and the affirmation of others are linked to value. If we don’t feel we are accomplishing much, we assume we’re not worth much. A lot of women who are at home full-time accept this equation. In a different sense, so do a considerable number of men and women who look at their job performance and wince. Doing becomes a measure of being.
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What we forget is that God made us with innate value, before we ever did a single thing to prove it. The theologians call this positional truth. Once we have received entrance into God’s family, we are totally acceptable to him, even loved by him. We have the right to come boldly into his presence. We have been given eternal life. All of that makes us valuable.
Dozens of times in the New Testament letters we find this somewhat odd phrase: to be “in Christ.” It cannot mean a literal insertion into his physical body, of course, like you would say you’re living “in Pennsylvania” or swimming “in the lake.” It is a metaphor, but a very powerful one, for being enveloped in the essence of Christ and thereby endowed with his attributes. To be “in Christ” includes:
being alive to God (Romans 6:11)
being without condemnation (Romans 8:1)
being loved (Romans 8:39)
being eligible for resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:22)
being established (2 Corinthians 1:21)
being triumphant (2 Corinthians 2:14)
being a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)
being free (Galatians 2:4)
being reconciled with people who are not like you (Ephesians 2:13; 3:6)
being encouraged and consoled (Philippians 2:1)
being confident (1 Timothy 3:13)
in fact . . . having “every good thing” (Philemon 6, NIV)
These and many more blessings are ours as a result of our association with Christ. They are valuable in their own right. And they set us up to be high achievers in our world. From this base comes the strength to go out into life and be productive.
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I frequently get letters from those who read my first book, In the Presence of My Enemies. Not a few of these come from inmates. Having lots of time on their hands, they often write pages of information about themselves, how they are praying for me, when their release date is, and what they hope to do once they get out.
One letter that particularly touched my heart was from a man who had been convicted of molesting a child. He vigorously defended his innocence. I didn’t form any conclusion regarding that, but I did write back to him the following:
Your situation sounds very sad and hopeless. But that is exactly the kind of situation that God specializes in. Making good come out of hopelessness—it’s not even hard for him. So you can be encouraged.
Paul the apostle declared: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” [see Philippians 4:13, NKJV]. The amazing thing is that he wrote these words while he was in prison! He wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he was chained twenty-four hours a day. I know how disheartening that can be, because my husband, Martin, had that happen to him. It’s depressing and degrading.
What was Paul even talking about? He couldn’t do anything; he was a prisoner.
I believe the sentence is saying that he could do what he knew he should do, which was to rise above the situation . . . beat the depression . . . not lose heart . . . forgive the creeps who had put him behind bars . . . and stay faithful to the One who gave his life to ransom him from sin.
If Paul affirmed that he could “do all things” inside a prison cell because of the presence of Christ, our situations are not that impossible. We too can overcome the difficulties, the irritations, and even the inertia that try to immobilize us. We are sons and daughters of the King of kings.
Just because our value is already established in Christ doesn’t mean that we sit back and cease being productive. Instead, we recognize that the key to a Christian’s accomplishment is only partly a matter of diligence and initiative and hard work. It is also a matter of being grounded in Christ, of attempting each task “with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need” (Philippians 4:13). This is how we truly achieve.
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It was good on that New Year’s week that I reached for a nearby photo album. I began turning the pages, which reminded me of at least a few things I had accomplished during 2003. We’d been able to move into this house, for one. A year before, the house hadn’t even been finished.
We had made it through Jeff’s emergency appendectomy, and he was in good health again.
We had cleaned out our garage. (For some readers, that won’t sound like much, I know. But the rest of you will understand the magnitude of the challenge.) We had also begun sorting out the things that had been shipped back from the Philippines.
My correspondence was in better shape. A year before, I had college girls who were home on holiday break scribbling letters for me and running to the post office (as well as buying groceries when I was too swamped to do so). Now I had a regular part-time secretary working in a little downstairs room of my house that had become an office.
I certainly had not achieved everything during the year that I had wanted to do or that needed to be done. But at least some things got handled. It was good for me to be reminded of them.
Even as we rest in the inherent worth that God has given us, we know that someday we will all stand before the Lord for a review of our accomplishments. I think the review will probably be both quantitative (how many things we got done) and qualitative (how well we did them). The Lord will no doubt also ask whether those things were important or trivial. Did our accomplishments matter in the eternal sense?
I hope to give a good account of myself on that day. I certainly will not have achieved everything I hoped to or could have. I know there will be embarrassing gaps. But as I live these years with my feet firmly anchored in Christ, I will achieve more than I ever could otherwise. I can face him with confidence and peace.