Pre-Occupation with Samuel Adams?

John 17:20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Last week on a plane ride home form Milwaukee, I sat next to a mid thirties, GQ type of guy, who was in the process of living life largely. He freely offered up much information about himself, his accomplishments, and his passion for his work. I have rarely met someone more in love with what they do. It was all he could talk about, and he pretty much did so from take off to landing. Turns out, he was a regional manager for Samuel Adams beer. He rambled on and on about the brilliant taste of the beer, and his incredibly lucky status as someone who gets paid so much to simply do what they love to do, drink beer. His entire job was entertaining people and getting them to drink more beer. He was actually in route to take a group of wholesalers on a "dream week" of golf and beer drinking on Kiawah Island. The guy was literally on fire for old Sam Adams, and it seemed if he was living a dream, at least in His eyes.

John 17 has had a dramatic impact on my life. The prayer that Jesus prays is one of power and investment into the original disciples, and then into the lives of anyone who follows Him based on their words. When you dive in to what Jesus is praying, it becomes clear that he has selected people that are preoccupied with Him and His glory, so that they can obnoxiously infect others with His love. Jesus prays that these disciples would abide in Him, and that the Father would pour His glory into their lives, and they in turn would make disciples as they went through their daily lives. It was the Father's plan form the beginning, disciple making.

After the flight, I caught myself wondering something. If we understand that God is in us and His glory is coursing through our veins, where is our obnoxious excitement about our dream job? I mean if a man can be so jazzed about selling beer which has no long term meaning or purpose, but rather short term joy, why is the Church so dull and programmatic in its efforts to spread the Gospel? Isn't Jesus offering life through His disciples, the Church?

If our faith was strong enough that we were truly intoxicated with Love and Praise for Christ who gives us birth and re-birth, I know that the impact the Church would make on the World would be larger. If we understood to a greater extent God's plan of disciple making is nothing more than a natural overflow of His love from us to other people, and not an institutionalized schematic then we could be unleashed. I pray that he would strengthen our hunger for Him and our desire to brag about our "dream job" of sharing life with others.

So where do you fit in? Are you so in love with the one who first loved you that you brag about Him? Are you more interested in other things?

It has been said that whatever holds our preoccupations has a good chance of becoming our idol. Only Christ is worthy of our preoccupations, and in turn our joyous occupation of disciple making.