Yesterday I turned 65. I don’t believe I’m that old, but neither the calendar nor my 97 year old mother lie. Here’s another statistic. I have been in Christian leadership now for 44 of those years. I started leading a student group at the University of Toronto at the age of 21, and never managed to escape leadership in one form or another. I have at long last laid down local church leadership, but have exchanged it for something that in the end will probably prove more demanding yet.
I have been struggling for some time with what I call the limits of love.
I think a couple of things set me off on this thought. I have several friends in different countries fighting very serious health battles. Others are going through various awful challenges that life has thrown at them. How about someone with an aged father wrongfully accused of a crime and who has to sit through a lengthy court battle to clear his name? That was just last week.
I came across a sad story the other day. It involved another Christian leader who had got himself into a major mess.
Why does this happen?
No doubt there are lots of different causes. Love of money, sexual immorality, false teaching and so on. But I think the downfall of many leaders is caused by something else. And that something else is ambition.
Archippus was commanded to complete what he had begun. The Greek verb means to “discharge fully.” A job half-discharged is of no more use than a gun half-discharged.
It’s important to finish if only because that’s what God does. We are to carry his character. It’s also important to finish because it shows we are people of our word. We will do what we have promised, no matter what the cost. And it’s important to finish because God gave us a full destiny, not a half one.
We long for miracles. But there is a price to be paid. Let me try to explain.
We sold our house last week, but only after a battle.
This has been a consistent theme for us. On our first home, the private financing was deliberately pulled by a disgruntled church member after we had signed the papers to buy it. We were saved by a miracle. We had to place an unconditional offer in order to secure our second house, and had only weeks to sell our first home (or face bankruptcy - again). We had another miracle.
