Ambition Under Authority

  SOAP Method @ Ramah Sauna on 31Mar26

Scripture: What you ought to say is, "If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that."  Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil. ~ James 4:15-16

Observations:

• Context is a warning about self-confidence
• Ambition, brought under God's authority, seems the prescription
• To know what to do, and then not do, is sin. ~ Ja 4:17
• Life is like the morning fog: present briefly then gone ~ Ja 4:14
• A doing is still required: God first, then do

Applications:

• 12 Week Year is eligible for Ja 4:13 stumble
• Discern [again] Father's will regarding sabbatical goals
• example: Midwest Ministry replaced by silent retreat
• example: Puerto Rico and Maui replaced by Jamaica and Grand Canyon
• Review silent retreat entries for clues on Father's will
• Revisit qualifiers for3, "Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." ~ Romans 12:2
1. Give your bodies to God @ Romans 12:1
2. Let bodies be living and holy sacrifices @ Romans 12:1
3. What are indicators the Lord finds sacrifices acceptable?
4. Worship Him @ Romans 12:1
5. Avoid copying the world's behavior and customs @ Rom 12:2
6. For transformation, let Him change the way I think @ Rom 12:2
• Qualifiers for learning to know God's good, pleasing and perfect will for my life are giving corporally, worshipping sacrificially with body, avoiding worldly culture and letting Him [by study, prayer and community?] transform me by changing the way I think.

Prayer: Come Lord Jesus, come!

Takeaways:

Q: What are indicators the Lord finds sacrifices acceptable?

A: Post and pre-resurrection sacrifices differ.  Condition of the animal or item sacrificed mattered before the cross but the posture of the heart seems to matter after the cross.  OT buttresses move away from animal's condition @ Ps 51:16-17and Pr 21:3.  Ro 12:1, Ph 4:18 and I Pt 2:5 all mention acceptable sacrifices:

• @Ph4:18 Paul labels "sharing...in the matter of giving and receiving" (v15), "sent aid" (v16) and "gifts you sent" (v18) as "a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God."  Is Paul's approbation sufficient to label a sacrifice as acceptable?
• @I Pt 2:5, acceptable sacrifices are labeled spiritual rather than physical.  "Coming to Him...like living stones...being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
• Physical generosity and spiritual offerings seem to be eligible for acceptable sacrifices if they are offered through Jesus Christ.  Do we add "in Jesus' name" at the end of whatever we do and hope it's enough?
• When in doubt, start with letting Him transform thinking via study, prayer and community.  Thinking fuels action and action requires the body.  Move from a spirit surrendered to a mind transformed to a sacrificial / giving / serving physical body. 

Q: Where does the 12 Week Year and sabbatical plan of action fit?

A:  Mark 4:29 persuades that the 12 Week Year is a sickle.  A sower / planter interacts with seed and soil.  Jesus emphasizes the planter's ignorance in v27, "Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how."  As the planter is ignorant of exactly how the seed and soil work together, so am I ignorant of how better preachers, missionaries, husbands and fathers have never experienced a sabbatical.

  

If a sabbatical is a harvest, the 12 Week Year is a sickle.  Bringing grain in is a time sensitive process: too early and maximum increase is missed; too late and increase rots in the field.  Mark 4:29 speaks to timing, "As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."  

Preparations, discernment and outcomes of the sabbatical have been miraculous but swinging a sickle is about muscle memory.  Will you get up, handle business all day and lead the help to do the same before it's too late?  At harvest, all other preoccupations are put on back burners.  There's one thing to do: get'r done.

The 12 Week Year is a tool to get the harvest of the sabbatical into the storehouse.  Increase from the sabbatical can last another seven years if I'll be about my business.  Elsewhere, Jesus instructs, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." (Mt 9:37-38)

Ambition looks like a young buck with a sickle and daylight to burn.  Authority looks like a landowner with an abundant harvest ripening.  Ambition under authority looks like hard work, the way the Lord of the harvest dictates.  Together they'll do something amazing but one needs the Other more desperately than the Other needs the one.  

I've read a book and can implement tactics, but unless the Lord provides a harvest the unemployment rate is high.  Turning the 12 Week Year inside out may therefore be considered an act of worship.