A Year of Labor

It was a year ago today that I moved to Moorhead, Minnesota, driving my packed-full Oldsmobile Alero the 2 ½ hours from home and moving most of my things into a dorm room in Ballard Hall where I would spend the following school year. Now I sit on the grass in the shade of a tree in front of Ballard, where I so often sat as I began my day in the Word or relaxed between classes last year, talking with the people who stopped to sit and chat.

Now, as new and returning students flow past at the outset of a new year of school, my heart burns with the same passion that it did then. I want my generation to be awakened to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ – to taste and see the sweetness of the Gospel that alone can satisfy a people who are desperate for fulfillment. I want my life to become a catalyst for a revival that creates a wave of disciples who boldly proclaim Christ in both word and deed. I want these young adults who walk past me, blind to the reality of their deadness and futility, to have their eyes opened to behold the massive truth that God has made a way for them to be restored.

After a year of labor I am reminded all the more of the urgency of the task before every one of us who call ourselves followers of Christ. A few minutes ago two guys that I know vaguely from last school year sat down with me. I paused my writing to talk with them about their summers and the start of a new school year. They talked of their excitement to have new freshmen girls to “connect” with (my word, not theirs…their words weren’t particularly appropriate) and invited me to a party that’s taking place tonight at their house. They left after several minutes of talking, stopping to talk to every good-looking woman that they passed and practicing their “connecting” skills.

Brother and sisters, if two young men can be so full of evangelistic zeal for fulfilling their sexual desires and getting people to attend a party that lasts one night, how much more ought we to be full of zeal for the cause of a God at whose right hand are pleasures that last forever? Our silence is costing us the souls of tens of thousands of people every hour, including those freshmen who are being evangelized by the partiers, druggies, sports fanatics, academic elites, fashion queens, and social activists who walk the campus spreading their beliefs.

God did not place me in the Fargo-Moorhead area to attend college and succeed in my classes. He didn’t send me here to have fun and enjoy my college experience. He didn’t place you at your school, your job, or in your town so that you could have a nice life. He didn’t give you the skills, personality, or passions that you have so that you would be a unique person with an ability to do neat things. No! He has given each of us a mandate to imitate our elder brother and King, Jesus Christ, in laying down our lives for the sake of making disciples of all nations. He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and placed us in the kingdom of light, sending us back to the darkness full of his Spirit as blazing ambassadors of his rule. How is it that we can be satisfied with living lives that are so ordinary? We should be a people who do things that are impossible, because the one who is in us is the one who has overcome the world.

It has been a year of labor for me. A year of long hours and late nights and much prayer and exhaustion; a year of movement and unexpected blessings and overflowing praise. I have talked with people about the gospel at 2AM when I had to get up at 7 the following morning and be at a meeting. I have felt the frustration of people being blind to the Gospel’s power and tasted the sting of people’s anger towards a God that they think doesn’t exist. I have balanced school, work, friendships, ministry, and numerous other things, at times wondering if it was all going to collapse. I have seen people who swore they would never set foot in a church until they had kids come join in worship. I have seen young women who knew next to nothing of the gospel become enthralled as they were shown the truth of the scriptures. I have seen God miraculously save people from homosexuality and open sin, transforming them into people who fill every sentence with Christ. I have seen myself be changed, inspired, and become all the more in love with the one whom I serve.

This year is ending and another is beginning. This too will be a year of labor, more than likely harder that the last. But I would not trade it for anything in this world! Nothing can compare to the joy and satisfaction that comes from knowing that you are doing the work the Lord has set before you. He provides in the most amazing ways for those who are walking in his path, giving their lives to take up their cross, follow him, and make disciples. Today I can honestly say with the apostle Paul that my greatest desire is that I would press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of Christ Jesus.   Won’t you join me, my friends? It will cost you your life, but you will gain something far greater.

O Zion, shake thyself from the dust! O Christian, raise thyself from thy slumbers! Warrior, put on thy armor! Soldier, grasp thy sword! The captain sounds the alarm of war. O sluggard! Why sleepest thou? O heir of heaven, has not Jesus done so much for thee that thou shouldst live to him? O beloved brethren, purchased with redeeming mercies, girt about with loving kindness and with tenderness, ‘now for a shout of sacred joy,’ and after that, to the battle! The little seed has grown to this: who knoweth what it shall be? Only let us together strive without variance. Let us labor for Jesus. Never did men have so fair an opportunity, for the last hundred years. ‘There is a tide that, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.’ Shall you take it at the flood? Over the bar, at the harbor’s mouth! O ship of heaven, let the sails be out; let not thy canvas be furled; and the wind will blow us across the seas of difficulty that lie before us.  O! That the latter day might have its dawning even in this despised habitation! O my God! From this place cause the first wave to spring, which shall move another, and then another, till the last great wave shall sweep over the sands of time and dash against the rocks of eternity, echoing as it falls, ‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent reighneth!”

–          Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Sermons, sermon VII