From the start of a career or over time, a job and or role can begin to define our identity and sense of worth (I speak from personal experience with the job category!), shaping not only how we practice faith, but how we relate to everyone around us. A passion for ministry, service, spiritual direction or even proclaiming the gospel (in whatever form) is not the same as a lived devotion to Christ Himself. The former can be theologically performed; the latter requires individual surrender and personal transformation. Following Christ is less about inhabiting a role or vocation and more about being continually and relationally transformed into His likeness. And we are each addressed personally, within the details of our own lives, and shaped there. Which naturally leads me to ask - what is God up to in your life? How do people around us, particularly those nearest to us, experience us?
Back to Larry and our first meeting
Dr Larry Crabb was a psychologist, author and spiritual director. He served as Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Colorado Christian University, and spiritual director for the American Association of Christian Counselors. Larry was also an accomplished, and a hilarious, Elvis impersonator!
My first introduction to Crabb was in the closing years of the 90s. I read his book “Finding God”, which was part of a book syllabus on a relational formation course I was attending (although it wasn’t labelled as such). My initial thoughts on reading his book were, doesn’t this man Crabb know the good news of the gospel?! But there was something in Larry’s book that resonated beneath the surface which I couldn’t put my finger on. Curiosity is sometimes known by another name, hunger. I met Larry in 2002 when I had unknowingly confused my own job with who I was. From the first half hour, at our first conversation, he was gently uncompromising. Crabb was a man who attracted me to a God who was already forming me in life-changing ways. And I got to know Larry better over subsequent years (he was a serious man of faith but also a wonderfully humorous hilarious person). However, in that first conversation with Larry, I really didn’t receive his comments to me at all well; but they were divinely inspired, indeed life-changing, for which I am deeply grateful. And that is another story all together.
Shaping ourselves or being shaped?
As Christians, are we shaping ourselves into authors, pastors, leaders, writers, artists, and creatives, or are we allowing ourselves to be transformed? What’s the difference? A transformed life calls us into being fully alive and fully human, rather than collapsing our identity into our vocations and callings.
Pastors and Ministers, if you’d like an informal conversation over a coffee, around your life and your faith, get in touch.
-Andy.