The church's goal should never be to beat the world at its own game. That's what Satan tried to lure Jesus into doing, but He refused to play. We need to show the world a better way.
Kingdom success is not measured in terms of wealth, power or status, but in terms of obedience and faithfulness. Hanging on the cross, Jesus looked like a failure in the eyes of the world. In our service to the Lord, we must not fear to invite the same appraisal.
Jesus was not afraid to appear weak and foolish. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25).
Who is it we are trying to impress?
What Do We Do Now?
Mark 4:35-40 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
What do we do when we have lived a number of years, and feel that the evening of our lives is approaching? As the years mount up, the aches and pains and fatigue weigh us down. Our strongest, most energetic years are behind us. Shall we cut back and begin to wind down?
"Start for home maybe? Find a place to lie down and get some rest, sign off for the day, because God knows the day has been long and hard and nobody can keep going forever? But that is not what Jesus says though there can't have been any of them readier to call it a day than he was, the star of the show. He is standing at the water's edge with his tired fishermen friends, and what he says to them is, 'Let us go across to the other side.' His answer to the question of what to do next, what to do with the rest of their lives, is simply stated. What he says to them is Go.
"Go when for better or worse your work is mostly done and your life is mostly behind you? Go when you're young and with your life mostly ahead of you and you haven't decided yet what your life's work will be? Go when you're not sure where to go or why? Yes, precisely that, Jesus says. Go for God's sake, and for your own sake, too, and for the world's sake. Climb into your little tub of a boat and keep going.
"Keep going, Jesus says, because to keep going is to keep living and to stop going is to stop living in any way that much matters. 'Let us go across to the other side,' he says, though who knows how far the other side is or what awaits us when we get there, if anything awaits us at all. And go bravely because if we are the boat and the storm and the fishermen in their helplessness, we have in us also, the holy one asleep in the stern with a pillow under his head whose presence gives us hope and courage."
-- Frederick Buechner
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