Failed church planter

The best way in the universe to know whether you are complete in Christ is to fail as a church planter. You will feel alone and disqualified and discredited. And yet you can feel utterly complete, utterly satisfied, utter recognized, utterly loved. His love is that great.

You can go from impacting people's lives to impacting no one's life—overnight—and yet still command the blessing and the favour of God. You can feel more loved in your doing nothing than you did in your doing something.

It is a test: Can you fail and yet feel more, not less, complete? Can you go from being productive in the Kingdom to unproductive and yet feel your worth and value rise? Can you go from being important in other people's eyes to unimportant in those same people's eyes and yet watch your stock rise in God's eyes? Can you give your everything, discover that you did not give enough, but trump that with a discovery of the inelastic constancy of His love?

I have learned a deep irony: To realize that you don't need to achieve for God to attract His reward is an achievement that is rewarded. Just being a son, and being just content in being just a son, attracts the inheritance.

I gave it all, and it wasn't enough. And then I discovered that it was enough to attract His great love—simply because a zero sum is always enough to attract God's love. In becoming unusable I have strangely qualified myself to be entirely usable.