Doing the Master’s Work

“Bright Hope for Tomorrow” — Chapter 12 Reflection

“It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.”

Ecclesiastes 7:2

The House of Mourning 

When you serve vocationally in churches you end up being a part of and attending significantly more funerals than the average person would. Although funerals can be painful I’ve always been struck by how impactful it is to listen to people describe the life of another person. Eugene Peterson paraphrases that verse from Ecclesiastes, “You learn more at a funeral than at a feast—after all that’s where we’ll end up. We might discover something from it.”

I have been deeply affected by the funerals I have helped organize for people I don't even know. Reflecting on the description of a well-lived life of another person inspires me to live in such a way that people might use similar terms to describe my life someday.  I would love for people to stand up at my funeral and say, “He cared about me.” “He was patient and loving.” Or better yet say, “He loved Jesus!” Or even more wonderful, “He helped me love Jesus more!”

What Will We Say When We Meet Jesus?

Chris Davis is inviting us into a similar type of reflection with this chapter of Bright Hope For Tomorrow.  However, we are actually invited into a much deeper, less selfish, reflection to motivate our lifestyle.  Here we are not asking how others would describe our life when we’re gone. Here we are asking how we will be able to describe the impact of our life to Jesus when we meet him face to face. Davis summarizes the Apostle Paul’s teaching on this matter like this, “In the moment when we see Jesus at his coming, we will boast in the faith of those with whom we shared the gospel and our selves.” 

I appreciated Davis’ clarification about the word we translate as “boasting.” It is the same word that Paul uses when describing boasting as sin. Boasting is no longer sinful when we stop making much of ourselves. The boasting that Paul urges us to look forward to is when we make much of Christ, and furthermore, when we get to show Jesus the ways that our making much of him caused others to look right past us and adore him alone.

Making Disciples

I’m excited for our church to read through the sections of this chapter on “Faith” and “Sharing.”  I’m not sure I could come up with a better way to encourage us all to participate in two of our church’s main strategies for discipleship, Life Groups and One-to-One Bible Reading. These are two incredible ways to share the gospel and our selves with others, as we are encouraged to do in this chapter. The time we invest in these types of ministries pays massive dividends in how we grow closer in our relationship with Jesus through them, and in the way that we get to share in the joy of others growing closer with Jesus. 

If you have not participated in these disciple making strategies, you can get involved now! Click one of these buttons to learn more and sign-up to get involved in these amazing ministries.

We can all be honest and say participating in ministry that is so deeply relational is not always a joy. Anytime we do anything with other humans there will be conflict and frustration. That is precisely why we need the vision of heaven when we are all worshipping Jesus and being able to add to our worship, “I helped these people trust you more.” As Davis says,

“Such a long view can concentrate our mind wonderfully. That vision of boasting to Jesus in the faith of those we serve can help us see beyond the immediate frustrations of ministry to the final day of exuberantly saying, ‘Jesus, I did what you told me to do!’”