Changing the World

As a younger man I convinced myself that I could change the world; now my greatest struggle is against the world changing me. Early on my oil refinery worker father and church librarian mother convinced me that I could do anything God placed on my heart to attempt. They provided a safe place and secure environment from which to dare and dream outrageous things. When I wanted to go with the World Evangelism Foundation to South Korea at age seventeen and again at age nineteen, they encouraged me and did what they could to help. My choice to attend East Texas Baptist University in order to prepare for Christian missions rather than accept scholarship offers elsewhere or an appointment to Westpoint did not lead them to believe I'd been abducted by aliens and brainwashed into servitude. As a pastor in East Texas then Houston, and later as a missionary candidate, my mother was my biggest fan and quietly encouraged me to follow God largely. She was schooled by listening to Robert Schuller preach his possibility message while keeping her spiritual feet planted firmly grounded through Oswald Chambers' teaching on the crucified life, and she championed my own pursuit of surrender. When I stayed the course to leave for Africa just four months after my father's death, Mom never complained or asked me to reconsider. My missionary service was always more of a sacrifice for her than it was for me.

Life is for me, in many ways, easier now than it has ever been. Herein lies the crux of the dilemma. As Wordsworth warned:

        "The world is too much with us; 

late and soon,

         Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."

The challenge for many of us is to embrace crucified service in the midst of relative ease and comfort. I neither wear hardship as a badge of God's approval nor pray to be uncomfortable; I do petition the Father to stoke the embers of passionate devotion so that comfort never becomes my standard for appraising God's grace. If I've learned anything through the years, it is that abundant living is in no way connected to abundance, but is, instead, inseparable from surrender.

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2, ESV)