Ambition, Faith, and Timing

Last week I covered the paradox of ambition and faith. Today, I want to add a third variable to the mix: timing.

What relationship does ambition and faith have with timing?

Although spiritual leaders can have ambition and God-placed faith, there’s still one major area they can mess up in—timing.

Abraham had a significant calling on his life, and it was to be the father of a great nation, one that was intended to be a blessing to the entire world and one from which the Savior of the world would come. To even believe that this could be true, for him took a great measure of faith, and only a truly ambitious person would’ve even accepted this grand assignment.

The only problem was that Abraham was impatient.

I don’t blame the guy, though. After all, he was childless and seventy-five years old at the time God commissioned him (Gen 12:2–4). In the ensuing years Abraham moved, experienced a famine, lost his wife, then received her back, moved again, got into a fight with his nephew Lot, experienced war, experienced the destruction of a city, and moved again (did I already say that?), among many other things.

In and through these experiences, God reminded him multiple times about this calling that he had placed on his life.

Eleven years later Abraham and his wife Sarah (their names were Abram and Sarai at that time) got fed up about continually hearing this calling and not seeing it come to pass, so they ambitiously took their faith into their own hands.

“Sarai said to Abram, ‘Since the LORD has prevented me from bearing children, go to my slave; perhaps through her I can build a family.’ And Abram agreed to what Sarai said” (Gen 16:2).

Spiritual leaders understand that there are two different ways to understand time in the Scriptures.

There’s chronos time, on the one hand, which is linear time. Linear time tells us that today is Monday and tomorrow will be Tuesday, or that it’s 3:01 PM now and it will be 3:02 PM in one minute. This Greek word is used in passages like, “Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth” (Luke 1:57), or “they spent considerable time with the disciples” (Acts 14:28).

On the other hand, karios time refers to an occasion, season, or a set time that only God knows. Karios is used in passages like, “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—making the most of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15–16), or “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). It’s also used in other passages like, “Watch! Be alert! For you don’t know when the time is coming” (Mark 13:33), and “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time” (1 Pet 5:6).

Abraham and Sarah were tired of waiting, so they decided to take time (chronos) into their own hands and attempt to force the promise to come to pass.

Unfortunately, if they had only followed God’s timing (kairos), they would’ve only had to wait another thirteen years and God would’ve brought his promise to pass, without all of the heartache and pain that resulted and continues to result from their chronos decision. I say that as if waiting thirteen years is an easy thing to do.

For me, it’s hard enough to wait overnight to get something shipped, let alone wait one year!

For Abraham and Sarah, it took twenty-four years to see just a seedling of that God vision come to pass with the birth of Isaac!

So let me ask you a question, what has God placed on your heart?

Is it church planting? Is it revitalizing an established church? Is it to wait? Is it to mend broken fences? Is it to go back to school?

Whatever it might be, don’t give up. Persevere and push forward. Bring it before God and before the church. Trust in him.

Since this is an excerpt from Planting Missional Churches, let’s talk specifically about church planting.

If God has placed church planting on your heart, you need to seriously pray through the what and the when! This is because we all need to be about church planting, but we are not all called to church plant.

• It may be the case that he laid this burden on your heart so you can pray for the other church plants around you.
• It may be that he wants you to plant churches from your existing church.
• It may be that he is calling you to fund church planting or join a church planting team.
• Or it may be that he wants you to go and plant a church in six months, or maybe it’s six years from now.

Receiving a calling for church planting is not synonymous with a green light to do it right now.

It’s okay to be ambitious; just make sure your faith is not in your own ability to get it done but in our God who can get it done.

Next week, I’ll continue this series by addressing one of the most powerful ways God sanctifies our ambition and faith.

*This was a modified excerpt from my book, Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply (2nd ed).