Hold on to your Ambition...

Falling asleep as fast as we can fall into bed seems to be a theme around the Ayars house lately, but in an effort to relish those rare quiet, childless minutes of the day, I flipped open Matt's most recent issue of Christianity Today tonight only to come across this article on why we must be ambitious.

To be honest, I've never had to work on being ambitious.  I have far more of an OVER ambitious problem, and those who know me well are always trying to reign me back in with helpful advice about lowered expectations and how that would help adjust the frequency and depth with which I am disappointed.

It's can be a problem.

But it is ambition--set out on what He alone can do--that gets me back out there every day...that has helped us persevere through so many trials, that continues to bring to every discouraging situation that element of hope.  He is not finished.  He is at work.  Let us focus and pray and continue on...not because Haiti might...not because next time might...

Because HE.

Here's a bit of what the author shared, and if you have a minute, read the whole article here...so good!

"The most ambitious person who ever walked the earth is Jesus.  Christ lived with a crystal-clear will and one orienting desire: "to do the will of him who sent me and to finish His work" (John 4:34).

There was nothing passive or happenstance about Jesus' life and ministry.  He had a pure and powerful inward zeal: to preach salvation, to heal the sick, to raise the dead, to be a stumbling block to the haughty , and to take up the cross to accomplish his most important work of atoning for the sins of the world.

This is the type of ambition that we are to have, no matter our stage of life or sphere of influence.  Oriented toward God, ambition is the setting of the will to accomplish the desire of the heart.  It is the motor that keeps us pressing for hints of the kingdom of God in our offices and schools and city halls and homes.  Ambition is the choice to continue pursing God's will when our energies and passions are sapped.

Our limitations need not kill our ambition or lull us to passively accept whatever happens in life.  Rather, our limitations an clarify the tasks we are to pursue with our limited time on earth and limited reserves of energy.  With Christ as our model, our limitations are the very foundation upon which true ambition rests.

Jesus knows our every limitation, weakness, and even temptation to worldly ambition from the inside out (Heb. 4:15).  It also means that He can use our limitations to accomplish his purposes.  If he can use the cross to accomplish his purpose for us on earth, he can certainly use our limitations to do the same.

The ambition God invites us to is a cross-shaped ambition: to embrace our inability to "have it all" so that he may BE our all.  

Likewise, the contentment to which God invites us is a cross-shaped contentment: to choose to say "thy will be done", to accept our constraints, because it is often through human weakness that God most clearly displays his power and glory.