I was corresponding with a young woman about how she might have impact on the Kingdom in a cross-cultural setting. Her degree was not along the “normal” paths followed by most missionary candidates. “If I had just been more strategic when I was picking a degree to pursue,” she lamented. I assured her that her training and education would have plenty of application in Kingdom work and would open doors for her that would never open for traditional missionary types.
Her lament has set me to thinking about the value of being strategic. The modern missionary movement (as opposed to the pre- and post-modern missionary movement) has certainly made being strategic a mantra for finishing the job, so much so that you can hardly go to a gathering of leaders where that term is not used again and again.
My concern is that God’s acts are anything but strategic from our human viewpoint. They always end up being the exact right act, of course, but most of the time we would not have picked that direction in our human evaluation. Let’s review just a couple…
God directed Israel to the absolute “worst” spot along the Red Sea with the Egyptians closing in…the end of a canyon with only water ahead of them. Samuel was pretty impressed with all of David’s brothers, but God chose the youngest and least experienced to be the king of Israel. God could have brought Jesus to the world as a king, but instead brought him as a baby, the child of nobody from nowhere. Jesus picked disciples who would not have been on anyone’s “who’s who” list…except maybe for Judas. And what about the paradoxes that Jesus threw out there. “The least will be the greatest.” The last will be first.” “To be great, you must be the servant of all.” “To live you must die.”
Being strategic affords us the opportunity to have greater impact. But I wonder just how great the impact would be if we allowed ourselves to do the non-strategic thing and give God the freedom to work? The spiritual reality is that God can and will use the least of these because then the glory can go only one place. Jesus told us we must become like children…but, wow, that is hard…no…impossible! We would never get anything done.
Exactly!!
Help us to humble ourselves and our ideas before you, God. Have mercy on us!
