Elevate To The Next Level - "Living In The In-Between”

Elevate to the Next Level

“Living in the In-Between”

In our time together, we’ve been examining this whole idea of elevating discipleship to the next level, or “Leveling up.” To accomplish this, I want to talk about living our lives according to God’s purpose. And while we’ll be looking at this more in the weeks ahead, I’d like to explore this line of thinking by looking at how we go about living our lives in-between, that is, between conception and death or from inception to its completion.

I’ve looked at this concept in the past, but I believe it really fits well with this new trajectory the Lord has us on.

Living life as a Christian goes something like this: God gives us a vision, a calling, and a purpose, but He doesn’t give us all the details. This is disturbing to those who like things neat and orderly or at least having some kind of control. Instead, what happens is that we receive these details and instructions along the way as we continue to look to Jesus, the author and perfecter/or finisher of our faith.

That’s how God planned it because He knows how we don’t like calling home, that is, we don’t pray as we should, and like any good parent God wants to talk with us, so He withholds the details and gives them along the way as we travel on this journey of faith, this journey towards discipleship and spiritual transformation.

Far too often, however, we miss out on the life God gives because we mistakenly think that life happens when we reach our intended goal. But when we live our lives like that, we miss the life God has planned because we fail to realize that life happens in-between the start and the finish as we walk the path between now and then.

And so many people find themselves empty and disillusioned because when they finally do reach their goal, they’ve missed the whole point as to why God gave them that goal in the first place, which is so they can experience His abundant life in the process.

Now, I know those who may be thinking, “If what I am going through, that is, the pain and suffering, the mental anguish and emotional turmoil; if this is God’s abundant life for me, then give me less abundance.”

Yet, consider Paul, who went through hell and back, being stoned, whipped, beaten, imprisoned, just to name a few of life’s unpleasantries, and then he is struck with a physical disease which he prayed three times for God to remove it, yet through it all, Paul experienced God’s abundance, as the Lord said, “My grace is sufficient and My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9 NKJV)

It was God’s abundant grace through the trials, that saw Paul saying, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13 NKJV)

And so today we’ll be looking at how life happens in the in-between.

Now, I’m talking about those moments that once they’re gone, they’ll never come again. God’s purpose is what happens in the in-between, and if we miss it, we just might miss the life God has planned for us in the future. This is why we need to live our lives in such a way so that we’ll seize those God given opportunities. (Which is something we’ll be looking at several weeks from now.)

We often measure the wrong things as to what’s valuable and what’s not: like holding meetings verses holding our children or grandchildren, working for recognition verses spending more time with family and friends.

You could say, it’s the difference between being efficient and being effective.

Efficient vs. Effective

What’s the difference? Being efficient is doing things right. Being effective is doing the right things.

You see, we can do things right, but are they the right things to do?

As a society we’re extremely efficient. We have smart phones that connect us to the world, and laptops so we can take our computers wherever we go. We’ve become efficient, but are we effective? Even with all these efficiencies our families are falling apart, marriages are eroding, and our kids are running amuck.

A man came running into his doctor’s office saying, “Quick, give me what you’ve got for chronic hiccups.” The doctor said, “You want the best thing?” And the guy says, “Yeah.” The doctor said, “You want it now?” and the guy says, “Yeah.” So the doctor hauls off and hits the guy as hard as he can.

The guy staggers, coughs and gives the doctor and incredulous look. And the doctor said, “How’s that?” and the guy said, “What did you do that for?” And the doctor said, “You wanted the best thing for chronic hiccups. So, are you hiccupping anymore?” and the guy replied, “No, but my wife waiting in the car still is.”