For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (2 Tim. 1:7)
MY WIFE AND I RENTED A CAR in England a few years ago, and I tackled the challenge of driving in a foreign land. I was shifting with my left hand, driving on the left side, and going through a roundabout every five minutes. We had printed our directions while in the States, and they were not entirely accurate. To top it off, we had to hustle to make it to Heather’s speaking engagement on time.
If you thrive on control, you would hate driving in England. If you like to have the map in front of you and all the directions plotted out and see the road ahead clearly, I could not advise you to drive in the land where left is right, streets are narrow, and stop signs don’t exist. I hated it.
After a while, we decided to switch drivers. I navigated while Heather drove. It went a lot better, and England suddenly wasn’t such a stressful place after all. Let’s just say that one of us is much more comfortable thriving on chaos than the other!
The apostle Paul compared our Christian life to a race. Let me warn you: It’s not a clearly marked path. We’re in a big world full of chaos, sin, destruction, evil. There is no foolproof plan. All we have is a great message—Jesus is alive, there is hope, there is peace, there is new life for everybody. No matter how daunting it seems, we need to get busy.
—Lawrence W. Wilson
Think about how your temperament helps or hinders you in doing the mission.
Lawrence W. Wilson is a pastor, author, and blogger from Fishers, Indiana. He is the author of A Different Kind of Crazy: Living the Way Jesus Lived (WPH).
