Think about this for a moment, J B Phillips renders 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 as “make it your ambition to have no ambition”
God has done the work of convincing me of this truth. There is rest and peace flowing from that place of trust. I am in Christ, led by the Holy Spirit to carry out his purpose and plan for me.
9-10 Next, as regards brotherly love, you don’t need any written instructions. God himself is teaching you to love each other, and you are already extending your love to all the Macedonians. Yet we urge you to have more and more of this love, and to make it your ambition to have no ambition!
1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 JB Phillips
I told a pastor I know one day of this that was on my heart… to have no ambition, at the time I put it this way, that my name is “nobody in particular”
…his response still saddens me, he said, “you can hold the ladder for the rest of us, Laurence.” Was he mocking me? Did he consider me to be delusional? I certainly confronted his own idea of what this Christian life is all about.
He certainly never did figure me out. I remember he would often offer me the ministry of setting up chairs for Sunday service. Strange eh?
It would usually occur right in the midst of a mutually encouraging conversation. I had felt called to encourage him. So I would make a point of going to fellowship with him now and then. In one or two of his sermons he spoke figuratively of being at the side of the road with his hood up. It seems to me as I have often considered this tangent thrust into the midst of our conversation that he thought I wanted to become a teacher or preacher in his church. But what he didn’t realize is that I was already fulfilling my calling by encouraging HIM.
Which brings me to the next point. Living a quiet life is one of simply being obedient, in each and every moment of time. Living to know and to please the Father.
5-6 It was because of his faith that Enoch was promoted to the eternal world without experiencing death. He disappeared from this world because God promoted him, and before that happened his reputation was that “he pleased God”. And without faith it is impossible to please him. The man who approaches God must have faith in two things, first that God exists and secondly that it is worth a man’s while to try to find God.
Hebrews 11:5-6
Ambition.
Quite a few years ago, I had a desire and drive to read… and I eventually found audiobooks and eBooks for free, at two sister websites.
Books that are out of copyright… all the folks who had the rights are passed away or disinterested.
They are very old books, you see.
Can I call it a generational difference? For it was there in a book that I first had the word ambitious used as a criticism. The idea seemed to go beyond merely not trying to rise above one’s social station.
India has the caste system. England has the classes.
But in the book “The Count of Monte Cristo” Alexander Dumas fathoms the depths of the sin of ambition. It’s the forsaking all for the ambition to rise to wealth and power, destroying everything and everyone in between ME and getting to where I am “meant to be”
This world we live in nowadays sees ambition as absolutely THE THING. Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest.
My brother, when we were young ones, would mock me? Was it? What did he mean when he use to say that I would one day be a garbage truck drive or a plumber… because the thing is, he was close, I became a bus driver.
I remember it was in obedience to some pastoral counsel from a pastor in Abbotsford. I’d gone into see him because I was frustrated trying to bring my life and calling into agreement with one another.
He’s still in the ministry now… but he pointed out that I had a wife and two kids, and that my ambition was already mapped out for me, that I ought to be out to get a job to support them. I figured out my need, got a figure of $18.oo per hr, then went looking for a job that paid it. That led me to apply for the job of bus driver. Up to then I’d been so frustrated like I said, but as it so often happens with God, the job was there for me. The head usher for this same church was a manager for one of the BC Transit depots, and he told me how to apply, and to call him when I’d done so. He would call HR and tell them to put my application on the top of the pile, the rest was up to me.
I had such anxiety throughout the training process! My eye twitched! I had to pray in the Spirit continuously.
We’ll, I drove for 32 years, and retired and now I’m a school bus driver LOL. I remember telling the interviewers whatever they wanted to hear, “selling” myself! And pledging to never let them regret it! Years later one of my operations supervisor showed genuine boredom handing me my latest commendation letter.
But… when I was a young lad at Bible Camp, God called me into the ministry. I tried for many years – even as a bus driver – to bring that goal into fruition. One day in my journal I found written there, “God is my only obstacle”
An aside: if you’ve ever journaled, you may have experienced this. You write all the time, and stop paying attention to what you’re writing, and just express yourself instead. You get lost in thought… then you go back and read what you wrote… I’ve written about this before…
So eventually I gave up trying. And focused more and more on just living a quiet life. That quote by Augustine comes to mind.
https://runningdownvimy.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/its-over
My first post of this blog is my coming face to face with the world’s bombardment against leading a quiet life… God rescued me in real time…. I began to write about my death, falling into a pit of despair… and he rescued me…
More to come… on the topic of “who am I”
As I write out the book of Luke for one of my grandchildren, there’s this aspect of folks facing who Jesus is… like when the disciples see that he commands the wind and the waves… and forgives sins!
They didn’t “get him” either LOL
But his Father did
Ambition’s fault is that it is yet another “anything” that can become more important than knowing God.
Running Down Vimy 