Response to a Big Question

About once a year, maybe twice if I'm lucky, I get together with what I call my "man friends." These are former coworkers whose paths no longer cross my own without some intentionality. Meeting with my man friends is nothing like meeting with my mom friends. Our conversation about our kids consists of this: "Your kids fine?" "Yep. How 'bout yours?" "Fine." And then we move on. Such a different world! These men are smarter, deeper, more informed, and better read than I am. They are thinkers and writers and storytellers. I'm so glad they keep me in their company.

As we sat around a Panera's table this summer, a rain storm raging outside the windows, we talked about the sad, scary state of the world. We all feel it. I don't know anyone who doesn't feel it, at least not anyone over the age of 12. After venting our concerns and frustrations, one friend asked, "So what is your response?" It was not a lofty question—"How should the church respond?"—but a practical one. A personal one.

That one question set off an avalanche of thoughts in my head. It drew together many threads from the past year. Thoughts I've had about my purpose and mission in this life. Things I've seen other people give their lives to but haven't quite latched onto myself. I don't know what clamor of words tumbled out of my mouth at the table that day, but I can succinctly give my answer now: I want to bring mature disciples to the throne of God. That is my offering, my worship. I want to be able to say, like the Apostle Paul, "We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me" (Colossians 1:28-29). Except instead of men, I want to be part of presenting "women and girls" complete in Christ. It's for them I want to labor.

Jean Fleming, commenting on this passage, wrote, "Paul desired to make a harvest offering to Christ, the fruit of his labors—mature followers of Christ. Paul was perplexed and pained. Why were they not living in the freedom and joy Christ offers? God intended more for them than just squeaking through the turnstile at heaven's gate."

I see followers of Christ living defeated, deceived lives, and I wonder the same thing. We were made for so much more.

That sounds like a very pie-in-the-sky answer to the practical question my friend asked. So here's the more down-to-earth answer: My response to the messy, scary chaos that we see on the news and feel in our souls is to point people toward the truth. Not one of a million ideas floated just today into the public forum posing as truth, but real truth. The kind that has always existed and will last through all eternity because it comes from the almighty maker of heaven and earth. In a topsy-turvy, anything-goes world, I want people to see that there is a true north. God's Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths. I want to teach young girls that God's Word is the only place to find truth about their identity. I want to teach teenage girls that what they believe about God and His Word really does affect the way they act and talk at school. The Bible is not old-fashioned or irrelevant to what they're facing in their junior high or high school halls. It is their compass.

I can't change the world. I've got too much laundry to do, and carpool starts in half an hour. But investing in 5 or 25 or even 55 (dream big, right?) girls and women and pointing them to truth? Helping them see the power of Christ that lives in them? Exhorting them to truth and hope? Trusting God to let me be a part of making them mature disciples? That's what I can do. That's my response.

Have you thought about yours?