Rising to the Call: Audience of One

“A life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before one audience that trumps all others—the Audience of One.”

 ~Os Guinness, Rising to the Call (p. 69)

‘We who live before the Audience of One can say to the world: “I have only one audience. Before you I have nothing to prove, nothing to gain, nothing to lose.”’

 ~Os Guinness, Rising to the Call (p. 71)

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Anastasia rolled out of bed to the incessant noise of her alarm clock. It’s time to begin another day. Before she leaves the room she must pick out the just the right clothes, check (and double-check) her hair, and get her make-up just right.  Her costume is now complete.

She grabs her backpack, ready to head off to her 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., and 2:45 p.m. performances. Does she know lines? Did she practice enough? What will her professors, fellow students and that cute freshman guy who notices her across the quad think?

She comes back to the room after her classes exhausted. Time to check Facebook, Blackboard, and email. Does anyone care enough to tell her something personally, or is it just her friends’ self-absorbed picture posts and institutional announcements today? Have any of her professors posted grades? Are they good enough?

After frantically working on homework for a few hours, she calls her family. She’s worked so hard this week on school. Will they be proud of her? Do they miss her as much as she misses them? Has anyone asked about her this week back home?

That night she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to go to sleep. She’s worked so hard and done so much today. Will it be good enough?

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Many of us will recognize ourselves in Anastasia’s story. We try so hard to do our best and please everyone. It is impossible…but we try anyway.

Ok, I might not feel like every class and every assignment is a performance. I may not completely rely solely on grades and professor comments to increase my personal confidence and affirmation level, but they help, right?!?!? And no matter how much I love them, I can’t always rely on my family for my daily dose of approval and acceptance. My friends are awesome, but they certainly can’t love me unconditionally love me.

So, if I can’t rely on my audience members—my peers, professors, family, and friends—to unconditionally accept me and help me feel successful, what can I do?

It all comes down to the most important Man in the audience. In fact, He should be the only one in the audience we really care about. The rest of the people are just spectators. He is the Designer, Manager, Artist, Director, the Author and the Perfector. He is the only one we should care about, and He cares unconditionally about us. He is the Audience of One.

I don’t have all the answers.  But I know it starts with asking some difficult questions: Am I willing to seek to please and only to please my Audience of One? Can I let the spectators sink into the background and let it be just Him and me in the spotlight of my life? What is it going to take to trust God so much that I can completely rely on Him, to say to the world that I have nothing to prove, nothing to gain, and nothing to lose?

Rising to the Call: Service, Devotion, Calling, and the Life of a Christian College Student

“The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him.” ~Oswald Chambers

Ouch! Convicted. How often do I find myself doing, doing, doing, and doing some more, only to realize I have lost sight of what truly matters? It is as Jim Elliot once said: “For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and loose his own soul?”

Well, I’m a Christian college student. If there is one thing that I am guilty of doing it is being busy, or “trying to gain the whole world.” Classes, projects, homework, meals, homework, service projects, small groups, chapel, mentor groups, and homework constantly consume my mental, emotional, and physical energies. In all of this busy-ness, it can be so easy to forget what I am doing this all for. I am doing “Christian” things so much that I am apt to neglect building my relationship with God. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.

After all, it is God who made me, gifted me with specific talents, brought me to JBU and is guiding me every day. Who am I to forget my Maker?  Who am I to allow my desire for service, accomplishment or activity to compete with my priceless relationship to my Savior?

Readers, many of you are fellow students. You know the challenges of not allowing service and action to consume your every moment. Especially extra-curricular activities, such as working with a youth group, going to Passion (JBU student discipleship) group, and campus or community service projects can so often become more about doing and less about devotion.

I am taking this as a challenge to look carefully at my days. The rest of this week, I am going to choose to spend some more time each day devoted to worshiping and fellowshipping with my Savior. I will have to make a conscious effort not to allow my devotion time to become yet another activity, another act of service, another busy-ness. Devotion to my Savior is not something to check off my daily list. It is something to live in throughout my days, expressing my love to Him by what I do.

Questions:

Os Guinness, in his book Rising to the Call says, “first and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something[…]or to somewhere” (pp. 24-25). How does this concept of calling intertwine with service and devotion to shape how we live our Christian lives? If we aren’t doing something, are we living up to the potential, or calling, that God has given us? If we don’t have the relationship and the focus on our primary calling, is anything worth doing? How do we strike this balance? Is it really possible? Or is it a constant tension in our lives as Christians?

Take 2: Story Time and 'A Million Miles in a Thousand Years'

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller comes to the realization that “a story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it” (pg. 48). If you or I look deeply, my hope is that we would both realize that we are in the middle of a huge story.

Personally, I want to belong. To succeed. To glorify God. To love and be loved. To learn something new. To sleep sometimes. To do something that matters. To get good grades. To know others more deeply. To share joy and pain. To graduate. I could go on, but I think you understand. I have all these desires, but unless I start overcoming some conflict, I am never going to get what I desire.

My story has been rather complicated lately. I can’t explain exactly why God asked my family to move to Ohio, or define why He led me to choose a school 14 hours away from home. I do miss my family. It is hard being far from home. Sometimes I just want a hug from my mom or to listen to Dad read aloud at night. Welcome to my story.

Recently, my story has been focused on faith and trust in God. Hebrews 11:1 (NIV) describes faith as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” It is this confidence—which God supplies in my greatest times of need—that allows me to live my story. My desires, conflict, ambition, and results would be radically different without the involvement of the Ultimate Writer in my life.

God brings others into my story to support and encourage me. I need my family and my friends both here at school and at home, but ultimately my story is between me and God. He has ordained a path for me and promises to guide my journey, one step at a time. It is God who allows me to live a good story. He helps me dream big dreams, to overcome conflict, and to seek Him first for the assurance I need to live each day.

Questions:

1.       If we begin to recognize God as the Ultimate Writer of our stories, how does that influence our view of events like sickness, depression, hurting friends, death or other struggles? Can we trust that an all-knowing, good, loving God can use the things that hurt us to make our stories better in the long run?

2.       Miller writes that “the world needs us to have courage….the world needs us to write something better” (p.118). Is there something in your life that you need to have courage in? A struggle that you need to overcome? A new chapter of your story that you need to get off the couch and start living? Will you join me?

Take 1: Memories and 'A Million Miles in a Thousand Years'

Bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrringgggggggggggggggg!

Laura: Hello?

Ryan Terry: Hey Laura, it’s Ryan Terry. I have a question and some news for you about the CCCU Tuition Wavier spot.

Laura (excitedly nervous): Yeah, ok. What is it?

Ryan Terry: Well, can you tell me for sure that you’d like to come to JBU if you could, that JBU is your number one choice?

Laura: I think so. God has made it incredibly clear the last few weeks that He doesn’t want me to go to the other school on the top of my list. So yes, I can say with confidence that I would love to come to JBU.

Ryan Terry: That’s awesome. You’re in then! I will have a letter in the mail to you soon…….

That day I got off the phone more assured of God’s provision and power than I had been in a long time. You see, I had been worried sick over waiting to find out about this scholarship spot at 3 different schools, including JBU. At one point I was driving myself and my family crazy by checking the mail, my email, and the answering machine seemingly every waking moment. The supposed notification dates had passed by and I heard nothing. Absolutely nothing. No good news. No bad news. Nothing.

It took Mom and I sitting down and realizing that neither of us had been trusting God with this matter. By worrying we had done absolutely nothing other than make ourselves nearly sick. I had to choose to release it all to God, to put it into His hands, to let go! Only after I allowed God to take my worry off my hands did I begin to hear from the colleges; first disappointing news, then the call from JBU.

You may ask, why this moment? It was then that GOD showed himself powerful. My prayers were answered, my worries absolved and my future clear(er). That doesn’t mean more struggles weren’t on the way. But I was beginning to learn how to wait, trust, and rest in him.

Questions:

Perspective. Angle. Focus.....

I had a hard time coming up with an “exciting scene” from my life, and I am sure other students did, too. Why is it that when I look at my life I sometimes think of it as boring and mundane, while I see others’ lives as exciting and ever-changing? Can changing our perspective (or camera angle) give us a different view of our effectiveness as people, as well as seeing God’s work in our lives in a new light? How do we do that?

Human Flourishing: Too Busy to Grow?

Control. Like most humans, I desire to be in control. I want to be strong and do it all on my own. But Danielle Sallade’s article, Human Flourishing, reminds me that God is our provider. We were meant to live inside of his protection and control. Is our desire for control in a sense telling God that we don’t trust him? That he’s not powerful enough to control our lives? That we can do it better? Maybe we need to quit trying to be the CEO of our lives. As my fellow JBU student, Jordan Vaughan, says, “the best moments are when I give up the reigns [to God].”

Rest. I’m a college student, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to sleep. Why are you talking to me about rest? I understand. Sallade describes students who live lives without margins. I’ve only been at college for two weeks, and I am already feeling worn out and exhausted most of the time. There is always something happening. Join this! Do that! Help us out! Turn this in next class period! clamors the never-ending cacophony of demands for my time, my energy and my involvement. This pervasive busyness seems part of the fabric of college culture. I don’t want to be sucked in. Students around me seem to have lost the joy of learning and living. I don’t want to lose the wonder of discovery because I am buried in a seemingly never-ending pile of homework. I know I can’t go on like this forever, so why is it so difficult to rest?

 Questions:

Are the many and varied demands that higher education places on college students helping them flourish or simply leaving them with no choice but to remove the margins in their lives and subsist with very little rest?

In Mark 2:27-28 (NIV), Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” In our culture of incessant busyness, is it time to return to the age-old practice of Sabbath-keeping, and if so, how do we do that as overwhelmed college students?