Great Delight

FINDING WHY

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog -Caspar David Friedrich

Finding a ‘why’ in a world looking for a ‘what’

Synopsis: Choosing to focus on ‘what’ can lead you to comparison in your life which will never fulfill you. Looking to God as the ‘why’ for your life can lead to a dramatically transformed perspective on things that are hard in our lives and lead to a more fulfilling and gratitude-filled life.

“Comparison is the death of true self-contentment”

– John Powell, Happiness is an Inside Job (1989)

How many times has any of us looked at others around us and thought, “man, if only I could do that” or “how can I do/become that?” It’s an idea that is ingrained in us from a very young age: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A harmless exercise in assessing what we may be called to, but it quickly becomes one of comparison when we think of what someone else wants to be and, in our heart and mind, assess that ours is greater than or less than another’s.

Many parts but one body

All parts are needed for us to be the body of Christ. Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians 12. Let’s take a look at this passage for a moment. (I will be using the NASB for this section)

We are all given callings and, in order to fully be the body of Christ, we have to be the different parts of the body or else we would end up with twelve eyes and no feet. As we continue through the passage, Paul outlines the two aspects of comparison which either make us feel worthless or everyone else feel worthless.

15Suppose the foot says, “I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.” By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body.

The foot, in this case, seems like it ‘looks’ at the hand and sees all it can do and feels like it is unworthy of the body since it is not what the hand is. It thinks of itself as useless, but still, it cannot stop being a part of the body. God will not ostracize or, to play with the analogy, amputate us because we cease our desire to be a pinky toe. Instead, we continue to be a pinky toe that God awaits–like anyone who has lost feeling in their toe–to come back from being asleep. Returning to the core of the topic… what good is a hand if it cannot get to where it needs to? We cannot trivialize our worth to the workings of God’s plan by looking to others. Instead, we should assess our worth by looking to God–who sees the whole picture–and focus, instead, on God’s role as Creator.

18God has placed each part in the body just as he wanted it to be. 19If all the parts were the same, how could there be a body?  20As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body. 

This idea of worthlessness turns in verse 21 to one of prideful conceitedness as we see the parts of the body assess that their value is so much that the others are inconsequential. How can any one of these parts be a full body without the others? Short answer: They can’t. God has placed them all together for the purpose of being the whole body. Again, seeing something would be useless if we could do nothing about getting away; smelling a pie would be horrible if we had no mouth with which to eat it.

21 The eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 In fact, it is just the opposite. The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are the ones we can’t do without. 23 The parts that we think are less important we treat with special honor. The private parts aren’t shown. But they are treated with special care. 24 The parts that can be shown don’t need special care. But God has put together all the parts of the body. And he has given more honor to the parts that didn’t have any. 

So, here we see that our perception may not be the ultimate truth in the grand scheme of things. Even though a part may seem to be weaker, that does not mean that it is. God has ordained each part according to its purpose and honors them all in their own way. None can be seen as the lesser because all are necessary in the service of God. But how can I really search out this ‘why’ if I am not ‘what’ I need to be?

What happens when we become so focused with ‘what’ that we forget ‘why’?

The former of these questions is, at times, important to knowing our direction, but the latter really is what dictates what happens when our direction is seemingly opposite of the ‘what’ we are pursuing. If we focus too much on the ‘what’ of our lives–what or where we want to be–we will consistently be disappointed. ‘What’ is simultaneously already past and completely unapproachable. The instant we reach it, ‘what’ is now gone for another ‘what’ objective which is just as unsatisfactory as the last one. Yet, we–you and I both–still place what we are going to do in this life at the forefront of our worries; at least those of us at the beginning of our career paths anyway. So, we look to the others around us and compare their status to ours.

We are prone to place people we view as successful or important on a pedestal–Just look at how celebrities affect us. The interesting part of all of this social media culture is that we, as never before in history, can see all of the who’s who in the world just by following and scrolling. So, we can, after getting off a brutal shift at work, instantly see how much better someone else has it than us. Especially now, in the influencer era where seemingly normal people live lives of luxury, we wonder: “what can I do to get enough likes, follows, and subscribers to get to that level of luxury living?” We could all become influencers–technically–but at what cost? Is it really worth it to gain the whole world and yet lose our soul in the process? What would you then be influencing people to do?

I have struggled lately with wanting to get to a ‘what’ in my life–and oh, does it pull a sheet over your eyes. As someone who really does feel called to full-time ministry, it is difficult to not see what I had envisioned the call looking like come to fruition. At times, it has made current circumstances seem lackluster because they just cannot compare to being able to fulfill my calling to its fullest degree right. now. It feels like how I would imagine someone in a waiting room waiting for their turn to skydive would feel. A big window looking at those out there “doing the thing” and me just here in a chair twiddling my thumbs wondering if I will go on waiting forever. That thought lacks biblical perspective. Maybe we are less in a waiting room and more in a holding pattern waiting to land the plane, a place of preparation for the fulfillment of the calling. Moses was a shepherd for about forty years before coming to lead his people out of Egypt (Acts 7). How would he have been able to shepherd his people well without first shepherding sheep?

No matter where we’re at, becoming too focused on the ‘what’ of a job or position can eliminate the ‘why’ that keeps us going forward.

How a ‘Why’ can radically transform your worldview

‘Why,’ on the contrary, provides motivation, a rationale for a path of life. With a motive, we can accomplish basically anything. Especially when that motive is to work for our Heavenly Master. On a basic level, how can I best serve God in this moment? Yes, we may feel like we will be in a waiting room for the foreseeable future, but when we look at it through the lens of having a God who will never fail us, the mundanity of the circumstance seems worthwhile rather than futile. A nice way to frame it is this:

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
-Matthew 7:19-21 (NASB)

If we infuse our message with this understanding, we can see that ‘what’ focuses on earthly treasures that will only decay whereas ‘why’ looks to God and His perfect and pleasing will and stores treasures in Heaven. With a mindset of serving God now, not later, and not with someone else’s circumstances, we can really find fulfillment. Ultimately, this is because our ‘why’ is Christ. We can find no better fulfillment in life than Him and His service. So perhaps this section is better titled: “How Christ can Radically Transform Your Worldview.” The book of James puts it well that we should “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” So, we not only

Your more fulfilled life doesn’t start when you get your dream job, it doesn’t start when you get your ideal circumstances, or when you get to step into your calling, it starts when you surrender your will to Christ. It starts when you take great delight in what He has in store for you.