Luke 12:13-21 Amplified Bible
Covetousness Denounced
13 Someone from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But He said to him, “Man, who appointed Me a judge or an arbitrator over [the two of] you?” 15 Then He said to them, “Watch out and guard yourselves against every form of greed; for not even when one has an overflowing abundance does his life consist of nor is it derived from his possessions.”
Parable of the Wealthy Fool
16 Then He told them a parable, saying, “There was a rich man whose land was very fertile and productive. 17 And he began thinking to himself, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place [large enough in which] to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my storehouses and build larger ones, and I will store all my grain and my goods there. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many good things stored up, [enough] for many years; rest and relax, eat, drink and be merry (celebrate continually).”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; now who will own all the things you have prepared?’ 21 So it is for the one who continues to store up and hoard possessions for himself, and is not rich [in his relationship] toward God.”
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
“You Fool!” Ambition is both a blessing and a curse
Luke 12:18-21 Amplified Bible
18 Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my storehouses and build larger ones, and I will store all my grain and my goods there. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many good things stored up, [enough] for many years; rest and relax, eat, drink and be merry (celebrate continually).”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own all the things you have prepared?’ 21 So it is for the one who continues to store up and hoard possessions for himself, and is not rich [in his relationship] toward God.”
Ambition is both a blessing and a curse. When it is God-directed and also Holy Spirit-managed, it can bear tremendous fruit. When it is restrained by humility, ambition can be a powerful motivator and also a Kingdom Builder. But when it is hijacked by self and ego, it can leave a wide wake of destruction in its path.
I have wrestled with this issue for most of my life. If you have leadership gifts, you know what it is to be captivated and held captive by vision. You know what it is to have dreams of what is possible and what “possible” could truthfully be. You know what it is to pray, to want to do something significant with your life.
Here’s where it gets too sticky. Is whether of not this drive and desire and this motivation about me or about God? If we’re honest, we would have to admit our hearts are entangled with true God-directed motives and self-directed motives.
Sorting them out is complex. A debate, discussion, of motives and ambition takes us to an inner place hidden from everyone except God. Part of what makes ambition so dangerous is that it resides in the deep, unseen, world of our souls.
God hot wired into every one of us a creative tension. On the one hand, we have what the ancients referred to as a “fire in the belly.” This is our inner source of vision, our longing to make a difference, our will to achieve. In recent years in the ministry world we have been pouring not enough gasoline on these fires.
At the same time, God also has hardwired into us the need for quiet, solitude, rest, and reflection (a healthy soul). This is one reason God established the Sabbath: to teach us there is covenanted a healthy rhythm of life. I like to refer to this part of us as a “spiritual recliner.” It’s a place of rest and peace. It’s more about being a soul intentionally refreshing itself than grasping, catching, wind.
God covenanted this when He took a Sabbath day (Genesis 2:3). You and I need both a fire in the belly and a spiritual recliner to be healthy. In fact, you must have both. The problem is that these two realities create strain in our lives.
2 And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested (ceased) on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it [as His own, that is, set it apart as holy from other days], because in it He rested from all His work which He had created and done.
Think of it like this.
Imagine that the fire in your belly (ambition) is as raw unharnessed electricity.
It’s alive, energetic, powerful, exciting and full of potential, but it can also be dangerous and potentially fatal. Then think of a healthy soul as a transformer.
A transformer serves to regulate, channel, and direct, and control electricity.
A transformer takes what’s potentially harmful and deadly and turns it into something safe useful and helpful when handled with the respect it deserves.
It seems to me we are reaping the results of a generation in the church where it has been all about raw and unchanneled electricity. We need to be just as serious about building and installing transformers, as about generating raw electricity.
My first pastorate was in a suburban church in Baltimore. We were a small hospice, legacy church of less than ten in a bustling town that had been the steadily growing and developing in size and prestige for a generation or more.
I came out of my home church with lots of ambition and drive. Why couldn’t we be a church that could grow again by ministering to the many nearby colleges?
But all my ambition and hard work didn’t translate into any growth. I fully remember going to denominational meetings or occasionally running into a few clergy more experienced friends. I dreaded those conversations because I knew the drill. Sooner or later (usually sooner) we would get to the “How are things going at your church?” question. I would try to change the subject as soon as possible. I always walked away feeling inadequate and discouraged.
God’s Kingdom is supposed to be about growth, with God all we have to do is pray for growth and believe in that growth and all the possibilities of growth.
The emotion and the pressure were mostly self-imposed. The emotions I felt had to do with my own ambition. In my mind the only successful pastor was the pastor of a kingdom building-kingdom growing church. My own obsession with size and church growth had set up unmatched strongholds of sheer frustration.
Now, let me reveal the other side of my struggle with ambition. Fast forward a few years to a time when I was a member of a new church plant that was planted in a rural area community. All indicators were up and to the right. By everyone’s measuring stick, we were working, praying hard, were moving toward success.
Unlike before, I found myself anxious to talk to other friends and neighbors. I could not wait to get to the “How are things going at your church?” question.
I’m ashamed to admit this, but I would find myself in a conversation looking for any way to turn, manipulate the dialogue so that I could talk about our church.
This was a whole different set of emotions than what I experienced in my small, hospice church in Baltimore, but, truly, it was nonetheless related to ambition.
Ultimately, God’s purpose for that hospice church far exceeded all my ambition.
Thanks be to God for His good and wondrous, wonderful gifts from His throne!
God’s vision of Kingdom building, Kingdom growth was far and away greater and more ambitious than my own – we deeded the property to a Korean Church which now ministers and serves the needs of their growing Asian Community.
As Scripture says “Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but a person is tested by being praised.” Proverbs 27:21
21
The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold [to separate the impurities of the metal],
And each is tested by the praise given to him [and his response to it, whether humble or proud].
Success with and without accolades can be just as challenging a test as failure.
I’m not quite sure when, but somewhere along the way, the measuring stick for what it means to be an effective pastor got switched. The target was no longer personal faithfulness, it became external fruitfulness. My concern is that the measuring stick of size alone can fuel a kind of ambition that is destructive.
If there is one thing I’ve learned in recent years, it’s this: numerical growth alone is no useful indicator of God’s grace and favor or from godly leadership.
In the introduction to Purpose-Driven Church, Rick Warren talks about catching spiritual waves. It is God who creates waves and movements of his Spirit. We don’t get to decide when the wave comes, where it comes, or how big it will be.
But it’s our privilege to ride a great wave and participate in what God is doing.
My fear is that Christian leaders will no longer quietly, boldly stand on the shore looking for and pray for, a wave of God’s Spirit. When ambition does not have a healthy soul attached to it, we can start trying to create waves ourselves.
Humble Ambitions, Humble Patterns, Humble Service
Philippians 2:1-4 Amplified Bible
Be Like Christ
2 Therefore if there is any encouragement and comfort in Christ [as there certainly is in abundance], if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship [that we share] in the Spirit, if [there is] any [great depth of] affection and compassion, 2 make my joy complete by being of the same mind, having the same [a]love [toward one another], knit together in spirit, intent on one purpose [and living a life that reflects your faith and spreads the gospel—the good news regarding salvation through faith in Christ]. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit [through factional motives, or strife], but with [an attitude of] humility [being neither arrogant nor self-righteous], regard others as more important than yourselves. 4 Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
Philippians is one of the warmest and friendliest of Paul’s letters in the Bible.
The church in Philippi seems to have been quite healthy, source of joy for Paul.
But it was not perfect. No church is.
As we read along in Philippians, we see hints and whispers that Paul knows a few unhappy and unhealthy things about people in this congregation. There are some cracks in their unity, some struggles with “whose right” ambition, pride.
In Philippians 2, Paul begins to address this. And he lays it on pretty thick.
“If you are even remotely Christian,” Paul says, in effect, “then make me even more joyful by being about “of one mind – Jesus’ and embracing his humility.”
Many theologians teach that ambitious humility is the core Christian virtue, the characteristic that makes us most like Jesus.
Ambitious Humility helps us realize that even though we all have gifts and talents to do many things, that does not make us any better than anyone else.
Instead, we try to see life as a level playing field on which each person does her or his part. At the end of the day, pay more attention to others than to ourselves.
Let someone else compliment us for our work while we are too busy focusing on building up others. We all need each other. Each of us needs to be thankful for the next person. This is, as Paul explains next (in verses 5-8), the true pattern of life established by a humbly ambitious Jesus—so this is the pattern to follow.
5 Have this same attitude in yourselves which was in Christ Jesus [look to Him as your example in selfless humility], 6 who, although He existed in the form and unchanging essence of God [as One with Him, possessing the fullness of all the divine attributes—the entire nature of deity], did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped or asserted [as if He did not already possess it, or was afraid of losing it]; 7 but emptied Himself [without renouncing or diminishing His deity, but only temporarily giving up the outward expression of divine equality and His rightful dignity] by assuming the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men [He became completely human but was without sin, being fully God and fully man]. 8 After He was found in [terms of His] outward appearance as a man [for a divinely-appointed time], He humbled Himself [still further] by becoming obedient [to the Father] to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Are we, as committed, covenanted Christians, more about Kingdom building for our building our self esteem through our own accolades or giving God the glory?
Pray, take a few moments to reflect on this serious issue of ambition. Are there any “signs” of unhealthy ambition. Ask God to purify your heart and motives!
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Psalm 15 Amplified Bible
Description of a Citizen of Zion.
A Psalm of David.
15 O Lord, who may lodge [as a guest] in Your tent?
Who may dwell [continually] on Your holy hill?
2
He who walks with integrity and strength of character, and works righteousness,
And speaks and holds truth in his heart.
3
He does not slander with his tongue,
Nor does evil to his neighbor,
Nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
4
In his eyes an evil person is despised,
But he honors those who fear the Lord [and obediently worship Him with awe-inspired reverence and submissive wonder].
He keeps his word even to his own disadvantage and does not change it [for his own benefit];
5
He does not put out his money at interest [to a fellow Israelite],
And does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things will never be shaken.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 