Stones of Remembrance: Ali Llewellyn’s Story

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Ali Llewellyn’s life looks like most people’s: normal and ordinary. On any given day, she remains busy managing two teams at NASA and co-running a consulting company doing strategy for missional organizations. She even recently co-published a book entitled What Comes Next? about Christian leadership with her friend and business partner.

It was in the middle of the ordinary, in August 2023, that Ali received a major shock: her doctor diagnosed her with cancer. Ali’s response, however, was anything but ordinary. She became determined to not let cancer slow her down.

“I wanted to put cancer in its proper place,” Ali said. “I wasn’t willing for it to be my whole story, nor even a detour. I wanted it to be just a chapter. I’m not going to let it take away the things I care about, and it doesn’t define the terms of my life.”

Despite loved ones and co-workers encouraging her to consider slowing down to let her body rest, Ali persisted in her work and in the callings God had placed in her life. Knowing deep in her soul the love, strength, and wisdom of God, she chose to continue following Him despite her life changing dramatically.

“Growing up in church, I was a dedicated over-achieving little girl who knew all the answers and did all the things,” Ali said. “Doing church is not the same as being saved, though. I ended up at a summer camp where the gospel was shared with me, and it was there that I knew that I knew that He loves me.”

Standing on the lakeshore at Camp Allen, Ali sobbed profusely as she felt the love of God wrap strongly around her. Standing there was a new daughter of God who knew she was secure in a relationship with Him. In return, she wanted to know Him, too. Upon returning home, she began to ravenously read God’s word with the knowledge of how deeply God loves her fresh in her heart.

Ali hasn’t stopped yearning to grow closer to her Father since then; nor has she returned to the “church kid” performance she embraced as a child. When she began attending Clear Creek Community Church in 2022, she dug roots into a community of friends and family. These were the very people who told her “You belong to us” and would prove pivotal in Ali’s life throughout the next few years.

One of these pivotal moments arrived one night in early 2024, the night before Ali was to start chemotherapy. “A friend brought over a giant pink shopping bag stuffed with items and gifts. It was a message of ‘Hey, sorry you’re in the club that nobody wants to be in but we’re here with you,’” Ali said.

One of the most significant items in that bag for her was a quilt with a prayer tag sewn in it, noting that it had been stitched by someone with stage 4 cancer. “I had never met her because it was just left on my porch,” Ali explained. “But it was so humbling that someone with even more advanced cancer turned around and made this for me.” For Ali, this was a gift truly needed the most the night before chemo: the reminder that God was with her and so was her church community.

Two weeks later at church, Ali was at worship – and having difficulty standing up in the service – when someone sat next to her. Miraculously, that person happened to be the anonymous quilter. They started a conversation about how that quilt served them both and prayed for each other.

“God plants those seeds of hope that will help you process and move forward in the journey,” Ali shared.

Later in the spring, another pivotal moment of community happened during an annual girls’ trip, which would involve hiking through a river gorge. Exhausted and weak from surgery, and with her short hair barely coming in, Ali wasn’t sure how the trip would go. She looked at the climb ahead and felt major doubts at being able to travel to the other side. Her friends, however, rallied around her and declared, “We’re going to do it together. No one fights alone.”

“I have a desk job, and I’m not athletic,” Ali said. “I wasn’t honestly sure if I could make it, but my friends wanted to make the climb with me and were there the whole time. At the end, I was so energized. They asked me why that was, and I just replied, ‘It was easy because we did it together.’ Things I couldn’t do before cancer, I could now do in the middle of it.”

Since her diagnosis, chemo, and surgery, Ali’s life has not radically changed like she thought it would (besides climbing a literal mountain). Her life did not stop, either, because of cancer. Her work and general life still remains the same as it was before.

“The gospel goes deeper in my own heart than I even knew,” Ali shared. “Cancer demonstrated the things I thought would end the world but didn’t. We all have a thing in our heart that says, ‘If I had to do that I’d fall apart.’ For me, it was chemo. When chemo was my only option, then it was losing my hair. When I lost my hair, I recognized God’s kindness in showing me that the things I thought would destroy me didn’t. With Him, I have everything that I need.”

Ali recognized that God used cancer to draw her closer to Him and to teach her new things. She doesn’t always understand or like the lesson itself, but she treasures it nonetheless.

God’s reminders for Ali are the reasons she hasn’t slowed down in her work or in God’s callings of her life, despite other’s pleas to do so. That’s how she climbed the mountain despite just having surgery.

“Cancer doesn’t define the terms of life. God does!” Ali said. “As long as I remember where faith belongs and don’t get freaked out along the way, there’s really nothing I can’t do. God says, ‘With Me, you can do anything.’”

To grow one’s faith, one’s perception of God must shift first. When she first received her diagnosis, and then later discovered that she has a genetic disorder that predisposes her to cancer, Ali had to change her perception of God in order to deepen her faith despite the events in her life that seemed to contrast her knowledge of God and faith.

“We live in a broken world where sin and cancer are consequences of the fall,” Ali stated. “God uses it for my good–to demonstrate to me that He is God, and I am not, and that He can be trusted. Do I believe God gave me a predisposed genetic condition for this? I don’t know. Again, God is God, and I am not. But I know this: more is within me than I knew. There’s more hope and faith in me than I knew.”

By sharing her story, Ali strives to provide comfort to those experiencing a major life change themselves or walking alongside someone experiencing a major life change, like cancer.

“If I could go back before all of this, I would tell anyone in a trial, ‘The more you can know God and know yourself is going to help you in that trial,’” Ali shared. “Read God’s word, be in a community, serve people, and worship. The more you can do that, the more you’re making a deposit in the inner man. Out of the overflow of our heart the mouth speaks. Deposit everything you can before the crisis.”

Ali also learned and valued the importance of leaning on other people in difficult times. She knows that there is no virtue in independence and that we were never made to be alone in our pain. She highlights the importance of the idea of community in the gospel itself.

“I was the first person to ask my doctor if I could drive myself to chemo,” Ali said. “I was always independent, so I didn’t like the feeling of needing help or being dependent. Whatever the crisis is, we need people. There’s something in a community response that is part of God’s intent. So, find your circle and let them help you even when you think you don’t need it.”

In an email update to her care circle, dated shortly after her diagnosis, Ali wrote: “We can’t choose our road, though; we can only choose how we walk it. So, I choose to have hope and pay attention to the lessons and the good things. I want to set up stones of remembrance so I don’t forget.”

“And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”   –Joshua 4:20-24 (ESV) 

As Ali finishes up her treatments, she continues to set up stones of remembrance. She tries not to set up stones of pain, suffering, hopeless nights, or questions of why cancer is happening. Instead, she sets up stones of remembrance of who God is, what He has done for her, and what He will continue to do.

“God is not a vending machine; I don’t get to make a wish and get what I want. But I do get to know Him. When I listen and conform, what I get is Him. So, I win.”

How Should We Fast?

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Why Should We Fast? listed several OT narrative situations when people responded by fasting. We observed that fasting serves as a means of intensifying our awareness of our dependence on God and intensifying our prayers.

Considering what we see in the experience of Israel when it comes to fasting, we can discern some things that can both encourage us to fast and guide us as we do so.

When and why should we fast? Generally, when we identify a specific need or situation that requires a season of intensity in prayer. For example:

  • Whenever you care deeply about a situation that is out of your control. If fasting serves to increase urgency and intensity, what is going on in your life or another person’s life that needs God’s intervention? Maybe a ruptured relationship, maybe the need for protection in the midst of conflict, may in a big decision that must be made when you can’t predict the outcome. We can fast and pray on behalf of someone who gets a bad diagnosis, who has a big job interview or a big test. We could fast and seek God to move in the life of the people on our Top 5 list.
  • When you need to go to God in grief, in a season when tragedy has occurred – in your life or someone else’s. In these seasons fasting acknowledges our utter dependence on God for life and acknowledges his will is sovereign and good.
  • When you need to confess sin and commit to a life of repenting from sinful actions.
  • Whenever you want to intensify the focus of your prayer.

How should we fast? In ways that make it possible for us to feel the physical longing that remind us of our mortality and dependence on God. We can fast privately about personal situations, and we can join in fasting seasons with the church or with other communities of faith (such as our small group). Fasts can be:

  • Private, about personal situations.
  • Corporate, in response to a call of the leadership of the church or to a group of faithful friends.
  • Spontaneous, for a short time, maybe just one meal, as we pray for God to work when we are surprised or overwhelmed.
  • Strategic, planned ahead of time and practiced for a specific duration or rhythmic periods. (i.e. One day a week for a month; one evening a week; every morning for 30 days.)
  • From food, to be reminded of our spirit need by our physical hunger.
  • From habits or cravings, a fast from media, exercise, or work can serve to break patterns of mindless indulgence and replace them with intentional devotion to God.
  • With urgency and intensity, utilizing the fasting season to focus our minds and hearts on being in God’s presence.

One thing Jesus makes clear us that fasting should be discrete, in the sense that the point is to intensify our interaction with God, not to make an impression on other people. (Matt. 6)

We can still fast in community, in response to the call of the church, but we need to always remember fasting is just a vehicle, a tool, it is not an objective.

It is important to understand that the practice of fasting does not make a person more “spiritual” or somehow more acceptable to God. The prophets point out that fasting (like any other religious action) in the absence of willing obedience and the pursuit of Godly character in other parts of our lives is a waste of time (Isaiah 58, Jeremiah 14; 36). Fasting can be a productive discipline when it is accompanied by true repentance or desire to turn to God in worship and obedience. When we have pure motives for why we fast we have great freedom to do it in a variety of situations and with different things.

After my survey of the Old Testament narratives about fasting I had a real sense of personal conviction. Partially because I hadn’t ever taken the time to consider what there is to learn from how and when the people of Israel fasted. But also because it made me wonder why I am not more often so broken, desperate, repentant to employ a season of fasting to intensify my prayers for the lost, the sick, the sinning.

But God is gracious, and I have learned, and I will use fasting as a gift God has given to draw me close.

Why Should We Fast?

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Why fast? What is the point? When should I fast and for how long? These are legitimate questions, because for many people the practice of fasting is unfamiliar and for some maybe even seemingly unnecessary. Depending on your faith tradition, fasting may not even part of your experience in church. So, when there is a call to fast you respond with some reluctance or even resistance, because we don’t understand the meaning and purpose of it.

This describes my personal experience. I have done seasons of fasting, sometimes in response to a call from the church and sometimes on my own initiative. But honestly my fasting in community was done more out of a desire to submit to the leadership of my church than a genuine commitment to intensely focus on my need for God’s intervention in my life or someone else’s. I have also fasted as a kind of muti purpose “I’ll do something spiritual and maybe lose a few pounds” effort. Unfortunately, both of those approaches miss the true motivation and objective of entering a season of fasting.

We shouldn’t let ourselves settle for an uneducated view of what a productive fast is and why we do it. The Bible speaks about fasting often enough that we should let it teach us how to engage in the practice in a meaningful way.

What does it mean to fast and why should we do it?

The Hebrew term used for fasting is part of the family of words that mean to weep, to morn, to deny oneself. In the Hebrew Bible people often fasted in response to a crisis or a tragedy. Fasting was both a personal and sometimes corporate expression of grief and often an expression of regret and repentance – (at least among the faithful.) Sometimes fasting was observed as part of seeking God’s favor and protection in the presence of a threat, so it was a response to fear.

The practice of fasting from food has its roots in the knowledge that we are both physical and spiritual creatures. The experience of being hungry connects our physical dimension to our spiritual need. Simply put, during a fast the gnawing sensation of hunger in our stomach serves as an unignorable reminder of our desperate need for God’s provision for all things in this life and for life beyond.

Our problems and failures and circumstances are not just physical or earthy in nature. They are reflections our mortality. They represent reminders that we are fragile and temporary creatures. The practice of fasting is intended to remind us of our humanity and physical limitations. Few things can connect us to our dependent nature than going hungry.

Through fasting we leverage a season of hunger to heighten our awareness and focus on the greater ways we need God’s grace and mercy. The need for food represents our need for God’s provision of forgiveness, healing, help, strength and faith.

You can see this almost universally in the narrative texts that describe situations in which fasting was employed by the people of Israel and the early church. The following sample texts are representative:

1 Samuel 7 – Because of Israel’s unfaithfulness God had allowed the Philistines to capture the Ark of the Lord. In the process of it’s potential return to Israel the prophet Samuel commanded Israel to rid themselves of idols and return to the Lord. Samuel gathered the people at Mizpah and they fasted and confessed their sin.

1 Samuel 31 – After king Saul was killed the Philistines took his body and displayed it as a trophy to humiliate Israel. When some valiant men of Israel recovered his body, they buried it and fasted for seven days in grief and remorse, for Saul and for the situation in Israel.

2 Samuel 12 – King David fasted over the sickness and death of his son by Bathsheba. His fast was in grief and desperation for the life of his son, but also in knowing his sin was the cause. He fasted in repentance and hope that God would forgive him and spare his child.

Ezra 8 – Ezra proclaims a fast in seeking the Lord’s protection on the remnant of people returning from exile to Judah.

Ezra 9 – Ezra fasted in disappointment and broken heartedness over the unfaithfulness of people who had intermarried with foreign, idol worshipping people.

Esther 4 – Mordecai fasts, laments, and weeps upon learning of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jews. Esther asks that all Israel fast as she prepares to do the unlawful and enter the king’s presence to ask his favor.

Daniel 6 – King Darius fasted all night in anguish and guilt for unjustly having Daniel put in the lion pit.

Psalm 69 and Psalm 109 – David describes fasting in anguish, seeking God’s intervention and relief from the relentless torments of his enemies.

Acts 13 and 14 – Luke records church leaders fasting before sending out missionaries, and as part of committing men to the responsibility and burden of eldership in the local church.

If you read the referenced texts and the different situations that call for fasting, you see the motivation include seasons of grief, tragedy, remorse, desperation, fear. All things that should drive us into the presence of God in prayer and in his Scriptures. Fasting was a means of addressing the urgency and increasing the intensity of people’s declaration of dependence, trust, and petition of God’s response to significant moments in life and in the life of the church.

If we just use these texts as a general guide, we can identify many situations and seasons where we could practice fasting the same way they did – as a way to infuse our need for God’s help with urgency and intensity.

Community: The Heartbeat of Christians

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In C.S. Lewis’ allegorical story, The Great Divorce, Lewis depicts Hell as a place where the inhabitants are on a never-ending expansion away from God and each other. Early in the story we get to listen in on a conversation between two residents where this phenomenon is described:

The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbor. Before the week is over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move.

The conversation continues by describing people as eventually moving further and further apart until they are “astronomical distances” from each other, every now and then moving further still away from God and neighbor.

This is such an apt picture of the culture we live in.

Our society is so quick to separate people into cliques and tribes based on any number of socially constructed categories, and this is exacerbated by a runaway individualism which continues to sort and separate until each person becomes a tribe of one, having no sense of belonging anywhere or with anyone. We continue to move further and further away from each other until we are so far apart it seems there can be no return.

Christians must be different. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatian church that, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” (Gal. 3:28). To the Corinthian church he wrote, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and all were made to drink of one Spirit,” (1 Cor. 12:12-13). Christians of course are still individuals with various cultures and languages, but we are individuals unified, placed into communion with each other, through the work of Jesus.

You see, entering into community is a requirement of becoming a Christian. We are baptized into community, into the body of Christ. To fully participate in the call of faith, to become a fully devoted follower of Jesus, requires us to not only move towards Jesus, but also to move towards others as Jesus did.

The practices of regularly worshipping together, taking the Lord’s Supper together, serving together, participating in small group together, caring for our neighbors together – these communal activities will, through the Holy Spirit’s help, begin to move us outward towards God and neighbor, eventually culminating in what theologian Scot McKnight calls a “fellowship of differents.” Revelation 7 describes it this way, “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,” (Rev. 7:9).

Let’s pray that God ignites and fans the flame of community in our hearts, inspiring us to love God, his church, and our unchurched neighbors, building a stronger church because of this love. Amen.

210: Friends Forever – The Wesleys and Cardens Guide to Friendship

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Friendships can be difficult to maintain or even find as an adult, but how about a friendship that has lasted 30 years?

In this episode, Tiffany Ravedutti sits down with Bruce and Susan Wesley and Mark and Lisa Carden to celebrate and learn from their decades-long friendship.

208: BREAD — Experiencing Jesus in Scripture

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One of the primary ways God speaks to us is through Scripture, and yet, so often we leave our copy unopened on the coffee table.

In this episode, Rachel Chester talks with Ryan Lehtinen, Denise Ward, and Tanner Smith about Clear Creek’s plan to read through the New Testament in 2024 and how B.R.E.A.D. can help us to that together.

BREAD: Experiencing Jesus Through Scripture

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My three-year-old daughter, Elliott, is the youngest of three. She is incredibly smart and fiercely independent. She often keeps our family laughing and occasionally makes us want to pull our hair out.

The other day our family was at the grandparent’s ranch together and we spotted some dear out by the feeder. Excited we all ran to the window with a pair of grandpa’s binoculars to take a closer look.

“Wow! I can see them!” My son proclaimed, and handed the binoculars to his younger sister. “Oh, they’re so beautiful!” declared my middle daughter as she handed them to my youngest daughter, Elliott.

Elliott, however, couldn’t see anything through the binoculars. Things were too close, too zoomed in, and too blurry. “No, this will never do” she stated with frustration as she turned the binoculars around. “Ahhhh, that’s better,” she said.

The problem was it was not better. She now had them backwards. Things were too far away to see the deer, and while she could see things more clearly because everything wasn’t so close and blurry, she wasn’t actually using the binoculars properly.

She never once caught a glimpse of the deer.

She completely missed the beauty of that moment because she didn’t know how to use the binoculars.

So let’s talk about the Bible for a second. When it comes to the Bible, have you ever felt like Elliott with the binoculars? Despite your best efforts, sometimes it feels like you’re missing the point. You feel like you’re just not seeing what everyone else is seeing.

In John 5:39-40 Jesus called out the Pharisees for having their binoculars backwards.

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. — John 5:39-40

What is Jesus saying here?

He’s saying that the Pharisees were missing the point of the Bible.

They found a way to use it that allowed them to justify living however they wanted as long as they followed a certain list of rules. They turned the binoculars backwards. Scripture seemed to be clearer, even to make more sense to them in the moment, but Jesus said to them, “You’re searching the scriptures for life, but you are completely missing the point.”

Now before we start throwing rocks at the Pharisees, aren’t we guilty of the same thing? We often approach the Bible as a self-help book or a manual for living.

The problem is that’s not the primary purpose of the Bible.

We believe the Bible is one unified story that leads to Jesus.

Every story, every rescue, every promise — they all point to him! And the main point of the Bible is to help reveal Jesus to us. Written on every page of the Bible, we see Jesus, the Kingdom he comes to bring, and the invitation for us to participate in his mission of the renewal of all things.

See, the Bible is not just some textbook of the Christian life, it’s an invitation for us to be with Jesus.

I think what Jesus was saying to the Pharisees, he would say to us as well. Don’t just read about me, come to me.

So, what does that look like?

Well, I want to introduce you to a practice for encountering Jesus through reading the scriptures.

It’s called B.R.E.A.D.

It’s an acronym that helps us not just read about Jesus but come to him through the Bible.

BE STILL — Find a quiet space where you can be still and silent. Pray and ask God to speak to you, ask his spirit to guide you as you read his word. Ask him to show you Jesus through the pages of the Bible.

READ — Read the passage for the day slowly. Write something down that you observe in the passage — a question you might have, something that stands out, things that are repeated, or simply what part of the text points you to Christ.

EXAMINE — After that you examine the text, ask yourself, What’s going on in the text? Who wrote it, and why were they writing it? This is where resources like the ESV study bible and BibleProject.com will be helpful for you. But you must also let the text examine you. How does God’s revealed word prompt you to respond? What tension do you feel as you read? What does it seem like God is saying to you specifically through his word? Write the answers to those questions down.

APPLY — Next you apply. Is there sin to confess? A promise to trust? An example to follow? Or a command to obey? Write down one way you intend on applying the written word to your life today.

DEVOTE TO PRAYER — Lastly devote yourself to prayer. Spend some time asking God to do what only he can do in transforming your life. Respond to his voice with your own and tell him what’s on your mind and heart.

I’d challenge you to do this daily with the intent of coming to Jesus and allowing him to introduce himself to you through the pages of Scripture.

Jesus said in Matthew 4:4, “…It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

We are committing to this practice together in the year 2024 as a way of experiencing Jesus, who said himself, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…” (John 6:35).

So, this year let’s turn the binoculars around and come to Jesus through the prayerful reading of his word.

That was God’s heart for the Pharisees, and that’s God’s heart for you. So don’t just read about Jesus, come to him.

206: Can Anyone Really Understand the Bible? (A Closer Look at 2 Peter 3:14-18)

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So many Christians have a deep desire to study the Bible, but find themselves confused or frustrated along the way.

In this episode, Tanner Smith, Aaron Chester, and Tiffany Ravedutti get practical about if its really possible to understand the Bible, and if so, how to do it.

The Michael Jeffrey Story

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“My small group is a safe place to ask my questions and I can honestly say it’s changed my life!”

Here is the full story of Michael Jeffrey’s small group experience.

Check out more information on small groups at clearcreek.org/smallgroups.

How Can I Do More for God?

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It’s a question so many well-intentioned Christians ask: “How can I do more for God?”

You experience the love of God and the goodness of the Gospel, and your natural, automatic response is, God did something significant for me, so I want to do something significant for Him! How can I pay him back?

The problem is nothing we could do for God could ever repay him for the grace he has shown us in the Gospel. In fact, God isn’t sitting around waiting for someone to offer their assistance so he can finally get something done around here. And there’s really nothing we can offer to God that he doesn’t already have.

So… what can we do for God, we wonder.

To find the answer, we start trying things like serving in the church, reaching out to neighbors, and being better stewards and employees and husbands and mothers and friends. But at some point, serving stops being convenient. It starts creating tension, conflicts with our goals, becomes overwhelming, and, little by little, we drop the plow we excitedly picked up in an effort to perform for the God who loves us unconditionally. The problem for many of us is we have the wrong idea of what it means to serve. It’s not about what we can do for God out of obligation or recompense, and more about how we can partner with him in love.

To help illustrate the difference, I want to give you two different pictures of Jesus and the way he served the Father during his earthly ministry. These are beautifully illustrated in the book The Burden is Light by Jon Tyson.

AMERICAN JESUS

If we were to write the Gospels today, they would be infused with this winner script. They would probably go something like this:

“Jesus was born of a virgin (a great start), and as a teenager, he was passionate about his Father’s house. He started his ministry with a prophetic declaration about the kingdom of God, fulfilling truth in a new and spectacular way. He then called disciples, gathered momentum, confronted hypocrisy, healed the sick, raised the dead, and challenged Herod. Then he voluntarily died to become the savior of the world. He rose again in victory, proving to everyone that he was alive, then ascended into heaven. Right before he arrived, the heavens opened and the Father announced, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ The angels stood to their feet, the disciples raised their hands in victory, and all of heaven rejoiced.”

For generations we have been trying to earn our Father’s applause by following this script. But of course, that’s not how Jesus’s life was ordered at all.

 

AUTHENTIC JESUS

The actual Gospels are not ordered like this. They show Jesus spending almost thirty years in relative obscurity. Before he healed a sick person, raised the dead, confronted hypocrisy, made disciples, preached to the crowds, and died and rose again, he was baptized. And at Jesus’s baptism, his Father declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”* Jesus hadn’t done anything public or important yet, so what could the Father have been pleased with? It’s simple. Relationship. Jesus spent thirty years abiding in his Father’s love, and that was enough. What pleased the Father was not Jesus’s accomplishments but his intimacy. This is the same thing that pleases him in our lives today.

Because Jesus was aware of his Father’s approval before starting his ministry, he didn’t have to compete with others during his ministry. The Father’s approval gave Jesus the security to avoid an addiction to success and scandalously give his life away in love. [1]

You see, Jesus lived a life of ministry out of love. He loved the Father and knew he was loved by the Father, regardless of his performance or success. There was no trying to pay the Father back for his love; his life was simply an expression of the love he had already received in his relationship with the Father.

When we go to serve God, whether it be in the local church, in the community, in our families or workplaces, we must adjust our motivation and remember this: God already loves you and accepts you because of Jesus. There is nothing that you can do to earn his love or repay him for it. So, when you serve, let it be out of an abundance of love and devotion.

Will it be difficult? Sometimes.

Will it be inconvenient? Often, yes.

But a life lived partnering with Jesus in love is a life lived as a son and daughter – not simply a servant.

If you’d like to find ways to get connected serving in this local expression of the church, click here. We’d love to help you find a place to serve that suits your gifts and talents and serves the body of Christ effectively.

[1] Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 2018), 52-53.