Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

ambition

What’s Wrong With This Statement? “I want to do great things for God”

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“I want to make my life count. I want to do big things for the kingdom. I only want to do things that have an eternal significance.”

Have you ever prayed such prayers? I know I definitely have.

In fact, when I was getting serious about my relationship with Christ, this is what I regularly prayed for because I wanted my life to count. I wanted to make a difference in this world. I didn’t want to live for what was temporal—my fame and my glory—but for what was eternal.

I wanted to be like the great missionary, William Carey, who famously said, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

If I wanted to see great things from God, I figured that there was only one way to get there—by doing “great” things for God. Not small and insignificant things, but rather, big, significant, and influential things.

“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” – William Carey

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My intentions were right; the only problem was my heart—my prideful and self-centered heart.

I judged doing “great” things for God and kingdom significance according to size. Here’s what I thought:

  • Pastoring at a small church = Small impact
  • Speaking at a small conference = Not significant
  • Having a small platform = Lack of the right gifting

So to do “great” things for God, I had to do. I had to be the pastor. I had to be the speaker. I had to be the preacher. I had to be the hero.

I wonder what would’ve happened if I knew earlier that God wanted me to be a hero-maker, rather than the hero? I wonder if I would’ve gone through as much heart break and sorrow?

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Sanctifying Your Ambition and Faith

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If you missed my last two posts on ambition, you might want to start there:

  1. The Paradox of Ambition and Faith
  2. Ambition, Faith, and Timing

Oftentimes God has to bring you through the desert before he can use you.

In other words, he has to sanctify your ambition and faith in order to use you for his purposes.

If you haven’t yet gone through a desert experience where your world has been turned upside down, then expect to. God uses these desert experiences to accomplish things through you that you would never be able to accomplish apart from them.

Oftentimes God has to bring you through the desert before he can use you.

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In fact, spiritual leaders find their greatest insights and contributions in these desert experiences.

Moving back to Canada from from Korea was definitely a desert experience for me. I felt like my world was turned upside down.

I knew that God had called us to Korea, but if that was really true, then why did he allow us to leave Korea the way we did? The ministry was multiplying, people were being transformed, and we had just signed a lease for a new place and bought all new furniture, only then to turn around and leave it all?

My wife, Christina, and I didn’t understand why God was allowing us to go through this, but by his unbelievable grace we did sense his presence along the way.

When we moved back to Canada, we were jobless, hopeless, and our savings were running out fast.

I was disillusioned with ministry and knew I needed a break, but I also knew my family needed to be fed.

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Ambition, Faith, and Timing

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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.

It’s easy for spiritual leaders to mess up in this one area–timing.

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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.

God will often use your current circumstances to remind you about your calling.

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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.

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The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

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ambition mountain

A 7-Eleven Vision for Church Planting

“What’s your vision for the orphanage and for Thailand?” I asked the pastor of the orphanage.

“You know, whenever I think about you Koreans and South Korea, I get mixed feelings.”

I was starting to think that I shouldn’t have asked this question in the first place.

The pastor continued, “On the one hand, I’m astounded as to the spiritual transformation God can accomplish in a single country over a short period of time. But on the other hand, I’m upset because 100 years ago, Korea and Thailand were basically the same country—rural, economically challenged, and spiritually lost.”

After giving a sigh of relief, I paused, wondering whether I should interject, but then the pastor continued.

“Have you noticed that there are 7-Elevens pretty much on every street corner in Thailand?” asked the pastor.

I nodded.

“I have this dream that God would do such a transformational work in Thailand that, instead of 7-Elevens on every street corner, we had churches. And I want that work to start here in the orphanage with these children,” explained the pastor.

As I walked away from that conversation, I thought to myself, now that’s ambitious.

The Paradox of Ambition and Faith

What does an entrepreneur dreaming up a new solution for the next greatest app have in common with that pastor in Thailand dreaming about planting churches on every street corner?

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The Ambitious Spiritual Leader – A Paradox?

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I’ve been reflecting on the idea of ambition and if its okay for a spiritual leader to be ambitious. After all, in the secular world, ambition and leadership seem to be synonymous with success. However, if God is the one who truly chooses leaders, is ambition really that important for spiritual leadership? Is ambition even okay for the spiritual leader?

1 Timothy 3:1 – Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task.

Jeremiah 45:5 – Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the LORD, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life.

When contrasting 1 Timothy 3:1 with Jeremiah 45:5, one is presented with an interesting conundrum: It is an honorable ambition to aspire to leadership, but one should not seek great things for oneself. This seems to be a contradiction, but in light of the fact that God sees our hearts and our motives, it is not (Psalm 139:1-4). In spiritual leadership, one’s ambition needs to be for the glory of God, rather than the glory of oneself; for the Kingdom of God, rather than the Kingdom of Self. As a result, ambition can be redefined as humility within the context of spiritual leadership, since all of one’s success is credited to God, rather than to one’s self. For a spiritual leader, ambition is about striving to become the best servant, rather than striving to get the highest number of servants (Mark 10:42-45). Consequently, here is a great question to help discern one’s motives in desiring leadership: Is there any sense of prestige or privilege by having a leadership position in the church? If so, proceed with caution; if not, continue onward.

These reflections are based on my reading of Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders.