What counts?

About 80 recent college grads like myself sat in a hotel meeting room for hours on end receiving practical training and a world vision for our role as stint team leaders this upcoming year. It was a super helpful, overwhelming, humbling experience. I realized how much fear I was carrying into this new position rather than living in my identity as a child of the Lord, filled with the power of his spirit.

With so many things to keep track of and make decisions about, it's incredibly easy to completely take God out of the equation. That is the danger this year brings- it is so easy for me to believe the lie that as long as I plan long enough and well enough I can do everything on my own. Instead of sharing the gospel with others because I myself am motivated by its power in my own life, I share because it's on the checklist. Instead of serving my team out of love and the desire to be Christ to them, I serve because I want them to admire my humility and sacrifice. With these ever so subtle tweaks, the power of the gospel and Christ's work on the cross is totally lost. I glorify myself in my own strength rather than glorifying my creator in my weakness.

This week I experienced a huge burden for the mission ahead of all of us. There are so many people who have yet to hear they are loved by the God who made them. So many people walking around every day without purpose or any sense of their worth in the Lord. I have the chance to bridge that gap in a small way. And yet no matter what I do there will always be more people. It leaves you feeling helpless and ever so small. Insecurities abound as you question why you got dragged into this and who possibly thought it was a good idea.

In these doubts and fears the truth of scripture speaks, "in his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade..." (1 Peter 1:3-4). I don't have to enter this year of leading alone. I can enter with a living hope in the power of the resurrection of Christ. I can enter confident that my identity, my inheritance, come from a place that will never perish, spoil or fade.

Knowing this allows me to live in freedom. That is why Christ set us free after-all. I'm still a long way from learning what it looks like to live in true freedom. It will be a life-long process with a lot of failing and a lot of grace. But in the end the struggle is worth it.

In thinking about this daily struggle to live in freedom, the question that struck me the most this week was thinking about what counts in our lives. What, at the end of our days when we stand before the Lord, will really count?

Paul has a few thoughts on that in Galatians that I am now clinging to. First, "the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." (Galatians 5:6). And secondly, "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what matters is a new creation." (6:15). Is my faith expressing itself through love towards others? Am I living life as a wholly new creation, set free from sin and living in the power of the Holy Spirit rather than my own? That is what counts. That is what I want to define this upcoming year of leadership and all the days of my life.