Doing Big Things for God (or maybe not)

How many times do you hear a child say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be the leader of a band that plays in the local pub’ or ‘I want to play cricket for the local cricket team’ or ‘I want to have a lead role in a local production’.

It doesn’t happen very often. Usually it’s ‘I want to have a number one album on the charts’ or ‘I want to play cricket for Australia’ or ‘I want to win an Oscar’.

Children dream big. Which may be a good thing. My son is convinced he’s going to win Wimbledon one day. Who knows? Maybe he will. But maybe he won’t. And does it really matter if he doesn’t?

My friend who just died, at the age of 82, used to play tennis. And that ‘used to’ was pretty recently. She played on a regular basis right up to last year. When they took her casket out at the funeral, the ladies from her tennis club did a salute with tennis rackets.

And to me, that’s a very successful tennis player. Not one who wins the major tournaments and gets interviewed for sports magazines. But one who plays tennis and enjoys tennis for her entire life.

A lot of people talk about God’s purpose for their life as if they just presume it’s going to be something big. They become a Christian and tell God they’re willing to do whatever He wants them to do. But what they’re thinking is ‘I’m willing to become a famous missionary or lead thousands of people to God or write a best-selling Christian book’.

A saying that is used a lot in the Pentecostal Church is ‘God has big things planned for your life.’ Maybe he does. But what if he just has little things? Are we still so eager to follow God’s plan for our lives if it involves nothing more than reading the bible, praying and living a very ordinary life?

I was listening to a podcast where somebody asked what she could do to reconcile the things God wants her to do with the things that she has to do (such as take the children to school and keep the house clean). The person answered her by saying ‘Maybe those things you have to do are the things God wants you to do’.

If God wants us to do big things for Him, that that would be difficult. Big things usually involve a lot of sacrifice. And it can be hard to be willing to make those sacrifices. Or to step out of comfort zone. Or to place ourselves in challenging situations.

But sometimes the biggest sacrifice we can make is to give up our dreams of being somebody important.

Comfort zones aren’t always such comfortable places to live in. They’re not the stuff that dreams are made of. Sometimes when we tell God we’re willing to step out of our comfort zone, it’s because that’s where we want to go.

And it’s where the world tells us we have to go. We are told to dream big, to reach for the stars, to fulfil our potential. Try telling someone that your only goal is just to stay at home and follow God in your own simple, ordinary way, and you get some very strange looks.

I was having this conversation with a friend once. And he was telling me that God has a plan for my life and that God has big things in store for me and that, whatever I’m hoping for, God can make it happen. So he asked me what I wanted. I said nothing really. I honestly couldn’t think of anything at the time. And he kept pushing and pushing, until eventually I thought of something. And then he said something along the lines of, ‘God will make that happen for you. Because God wants to give you your heart’s desire.’

The problem with the whole ‘God will give you your hearts desire’ approach is that most people want to be someone important. Someone who does big things for God. Someone who is recognised.

But we can’t all have that. The people who do stand out as doing great things for God stand out because they were different. If everyone did it, there wouldn’t be anything to recognise.

If every single child who wanted to record a number one song on the charts actually did it, there’d be a lot of number one songs. You’d be watching the top 30, and when they got to number one, they’d have to say and here are our 6,000 songs that are in equal position for the number one place. There’s only so many places in the Australian cricket team. If all the young boys who want to play for Australia actually got in, we’d need about 100 cricket teams. And then being in one wouldn’t be that big a deal.

And although I think dreaming big can be good, sometimes it can let us down. We dream so big that we’re disappointed when we receive anything less than the very best. Boys who wanted to play for the Australian cricket team no longer even play cricket. Girls who wanted to record a number one song don’t even sing in the shower. We give up completely because we didn’t get exactly what we wanted.

When I was younger, I wanted to write a novel that would win the Miles Franklin award. That was my lifelong goal. I know now that that is never going to happen. I’m not good enough. And I’ll be honest and say that sometimes that hurts. Sometimes I even feel like giving up writing altogether. Why bother, as I’m not going to do anything ‘big’ with it?

Sometimes (not quite so often thankfully) I feel the same about my faith. I’m never going to do anything ‘big’ for God. I’m never going to be an important person in his plans. I’m never even going to do an exceptional job of following Christ.

When I was in year nine at school, I got a B for English. And it really crushed me. And after that, I gave up a little bit. Who wants to get a B? I had been a straight A student until then. It almost felt like there was no point in trying if I couldn’t get all As.

Well if God was giving out grades for how well people followed Christ, I think I’d be getting mostly Ds, sometimes Cs and sometimes Es. And I’m never going to get an A, no matter how hard I try.

But that shouldn’t be a reason to just give up. Maybe I won’t ever do something ‘big’ for God. Maybe I’ll never be a straight A Christian. But maybe that was never God’s plan for me anyway. Maybe God’s plan for me is for me to just keeping on doing the little things. And to keep on trying my best.

But most of all, to just keep on. Like my friend with her tennis, to still be playing the game at the end of my life.

This didn’t start off as a post about perseverance. It just kind of ended up that way. But as it seems to have drifted off into that direction, I will end with these words that somebody else wrote to me just recently.

Maybe my goal in life should simply be to:

Keep the Faith.

And that sounds like as good an excuse as any for a Bon Jovi song: