Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Desire (01/17/05)
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TITLE: DESIRE IS NOT ENOUGH | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Gandy
01/24/05 -
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For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a writer. Having been a pastor for years, I thought that writing would be a very simple thing. “It will be just like preaching, only on paper,” I thought. And so I set out to be a writer. I have read books on writing, spent hours surfing the internet for articles on writing, listened to writers in order to be instructed and encouraged by them. In fact, there is only one thing that has kept me from becoming what I desire so greatly to become: I have yet to write.
I remember taking a correspondence course on freelance writing. One of the assignments was to write an article for critiquing and a grade. Up until that time I had been breezing quite swiftly through the material. But when the time came that I had to actually write, I froze. And I remained frozen for over a year. It was not that I did not want to write, or did not know that I needed to write this article if I wanted a grade. It’s just that I could not think of anything worthy of an article. I suffered from acute writer’s block even before I started writing!
What finally freed me from my dilemma was a passage in Luke 19: 11-28. To paraphrase, Jesus tells a parable of how there was a nobleman who went into a distant country to claim a kingdom. While he was gone, he took ten of his servants and entrusted them with approximately three months wages, to do with as they saw fit. Then he left. When he returned, he called the servants in and had them give account for what he had left them. One showed him how he had taken the money, and reaped a ten-fold return; another reported a five-fold increase. For each of them, the master commended them, and advanced them in proportion to their accomplishments. But there was one who had done nothing with that which had been given to him. He had wrapped in a cloth, buried it in the ground, and waited on the master’s return. And the master, to put it mildly, was not impressed. And Jesus said that the little he did have was taken from him.
As I studied the implications of this passage, the thought hit me: what am I doing with the gifts and talents that the Lord has given to me? Am I making investments in the work of the kingdom, or am I hiding my resources for fear that I might lost what I have? Now, the desire to write has always been there, relentless hounding me to do it. I have never doubted that this is a gift given to me of the Lord. Yet what I have discovered is that desire, even though it is a powerful tool of motivation, is not enough. Desire alone will only leave one frustrated. Desire is the starting point, and not the destination, of a project.
I do not know about you, but I do not want to have to stand before my Lord and have him call me a wicked, unprofitable servant. I want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And I know that the way this is going to happen is by my taking what He has given to me and investing it in Kingdom. For me, it is writing. But it could be anything. Anything that is given to us by the Lord is for the purpose of our sharing it with others. The degree to which we are willing to do that is the degree to which we shall succeed in this life.
Desire is awesome. Without it we would never attempt many noble things in life. Yet desire must be joined with discipline if we are going to know the dividends God desires for us. For me, it means to write even when I feel that there is nothing to write. For you, it may be something totally unrelated. Whatever it is, however, if the desire has been placed there by the Lord, then it is something worth doing, and is something that has to be done, if we are going to fulfill the purpose of the Lord for our life.
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