“Serving Your Generation”

A verse that has always challenged me is Acts 13:36: “For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell asleep, was buried with his fathers, and saw corruption.” NKJ The New American Standard Version puts it this way, “For David, after he had served the purposes of God in his own generation, fell asleep . . .” What an intriguing concept: to know what God’s purposes are for you in your particular generation and to accomplish them! Sadly, my experience has been that many Christians are never challenged to find what God’s purposes are for them. We buy in to the same values and mindsets of the secular world and assume our life purpose is to accumulate possessions and to build an existence that is as comfortable and pleasurable as possible. If you asked the average Christian today what God’s particular purposes were for their lives, I suspect you would receive a lot of blank stares! Having three young adult children, I am constantly urging them to never settle for less than all God has intended for their lives.

I have been particularly intrigued by this since just returning from a trip to Oxford, London and Paris. I had the privilege of teaching a Ph.D. seminar on leadership to a cohort of Ph.D. students from Dallas Baptist University who were meeting in Oxford. Over the two weeks my family and I were there, we did a lot of touring. We saw the homes and graves of many famous people including: John Bunyan, John Newton, C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien, Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Napoleon, William Carey, the Duke of Marlboro etc. Everywhere there are monuments dedicated to people who impacted their generation. At times it can be extremely poignant to consider that you are standing in line for an hour just so you can visit where Louis XIV lived, or to see the room where Winston Churchill was born or the place where Napoleon is buried. As Christians there is much we could critique about how these people lived, yet it is undeniable that centuries later people still want to visit the tombs and homes of those who changed the world.

Many of the famous characters in history were driven by greed and a desire to achieve personal fame. At times their passion and drive resulted in the suffering of thousands of people. But Christians ought to be just as driven and passionate about accomplishing every purpose God intended for them from eternity. To live our lives oblivious to what God wants to accomplish through our lives is tragic. You see a lot of tombstones in Europe. One I saw in the graveyard where Tolkien is buried said something to the effect of: “When you were born, you cried and people rejoiced. Live so when you die, people cry and you rejoice.”

Reading

I have read quite a bit lately, as I have had a lot of time on airplanes. A couple of books I enjoyed were:

Kevin G. Harney, Seismic Shifts: The Little Changes that Make a BIG Difference in Your Life. Zondervan, 2005. This is helpful for Christians seeking to develop healthy spiritual lifestyles.

Tim Irwin, Run with the Bulls without Getting Trampled: The Qualities You Need to Stay Out of Harm’s Way and Thrive at Work. Nelson, 2006. This is a good book for those who work in the marketplace.

Joseph L. Badaracco, Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature. Harvard Business School Press, 2006. This is a secular book written primarily for business leaders. Badaracco is a scholarly writer on leadership and has written two other thought provoking books on leadership as well: Defining Moments and Leading Quietly.

Wes Cantrell and James R. Lucas, High Performance Ethics: 10 Timeless Principles for Next-Generation Leadership. Tyndale House Publishers, 2007. This is a great book for business people, written by two Christian business leaders. A helpful insight I gleaned from this book was:

“We don’t need balance; we need symmetry, ‘a correct proportion of the parts of a thing . . . harmony.’ We need a symmetrical life, with no component larger or smaller than it should be.”

I also liked the quote I read recently that went something like this: ““When an organization or person has more memories than dreams, they are approaching the end.”

Prayer

I’d appreciate your prayers for this month. I will be speaking to the Canadian national meeting of the Gideons next week. These are great people and I want to have a word from the Lord that will encourage them. I’ll also be teaching a D.Min seminar on spiritual leadership for the doctoral track on spiritual leadership my father and I designed. There is a great group of students coming from across North America as well as England, Germany and Mexico.

I also pray that you are experiencing the joy that comes from knowing you are accomplishing God’s purposes for your life with His power.

Posted by Richard Blackaby at 3:32 pm