I have friends who serve as missionaries overseas. Before they left, friends cautioned them: don’t go overseas until you’ve secured your financial future in Canada by buying a house.
They ignored the advice. It’s not wrong to prepare for the future, they reasoned, but they couldn’t justify delaying their ministry for the sake of a real estate investment.
The other day as I walked home through Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto. We’d just enjoyed a cookie from a French bakery near the top of the park, and then we’d walked to a coffee shop down the road — one of many — where I’d enjoyed a Vietnamese latte.
I reflected on friends who’d recently left our community to plant a church in a small town. I wouldn’t say they’re suffering, but let’s say the quality and variety of food options is diminished.
I praise God that they’re okay with that.
John Piper once wrote, “The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.”
I have a picture of my ideal life. It includes sacrifice for God. But it also includes easy access to good coffee shops, a walkable community, high-speed Internet. Ideally, it also includes a lake nearby. I wouldn’t mind if it included a little less winter.
I’m grateful that God allows me to enjoy most of those things, minus the perpetual summer. I try to remind myself every day that I’ve been blessed, and that I can’t take any of these things for granted.
But I don’t need them.
I think back to the time as a seminary student when my mother arrived with her car. We packed up my possessions — it only took about 15 minutes — and she drove me to the church where I was going to serve that summer. Almost all my worldly possessions could fit in the back of a small car. And I was fine.
Now, many years later, I have a lot more. My challenge is to make God my treasure, not the lifestyle to which I’ve grown accustomed.
My best example, though, isn’t the missionary couple who left without buying a house, or my friends who left my community for a small town with limited coffee and slow Internet. My best example is Jesus.
He left heaven for a manger, the worship of angels for humiliation. He made his home among the poor. “He is to wear through life a peasant’s garb; he is to associate with fishermen; the lowly are to be his disciples; the cold mountains are often to be his only bed,” preached Charles Spurgeon. “Nothing, therefore, could he more fitting than that in his season of humiliation, when he laid aside all his glory, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and condescended even to the meanest estate, he should be laid in a manger.”
Praise God that Jesus was willing to give up his privileges out of love for his Father. Let’s not be afraid of doing the same, pursuing a treasure that’s far more valuable, and that can never be taken away.
