fulfillment in following
Read Time: 13 mins, 30 secs
Then Jesus explained: “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work.
John 4:34 NLT
I figured it out! I know why church is often so boring! I know why we don't like going. I know why we sometimes feel more drained than filled after going to a service and why getting up for church feels more like a chore than an opportunity. I know why we often feel so unfulfilled and pointless. I know why it often feels directionless and purposeless. I know why it feels like there are so many other, better, and more exciting things to do with your time than be a part of a church community. I know why it seems like the grass is greener in so many other places and why so many other groups or organizations feel like they add more value to your life than the church does. Are you ready for my answer? Are you sure you want it? Here it goes.
We've lost our mission. We’ve lost our focus. It feels pointless because it often is. Many of our institutions and the individuals who make them up have forgotten their reason for existing.
Missional Drift
Missional drift is one of the scariest concepts in organizational leadership. It's the idea of slowly deviating from, diluting, and abandoning the mission, values, and goals on which an organization was founded. It's sometimes seen when people and organizations get distracted and spend the majority of their time and effort not on the mission but on auxiliary functions to the detriment of the mission. It's the slow drift of behavior and operations away from stated intent. It is when you set out to do one thing, but often unknowingly get distracted by another task. Could it be that that is what has happened to the church? Maybe we aren't seeing exciting miracles, lavishing love, and abundant lives because we've taken our eyes off the mission God mandated? We often have good intentions, but a loss of focus paired with time can lead to something unrecognizable when compared to the original goal.
James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, argues that a plane with the intention of going from Los Angeles to New York City would end up in Washington, D.C. instead of N.Y.C. if the pilot were only 3.5 degrees off course. That's a few feet. It seems barely noticeable, but it would leave you 225 miles off course. Imagine how far off course many of our churches have gone in two thousand years with just minor distractions and deviations from the mission God gave us?
I bring this up because I believe what Colossians says when it argues that we find completion in Christ. Everything we are looking for is found in Christ. That sense of identity, peace, purpose, passion, and excitement so many of us are searching for is fulfilled with a Christ-sized key. Everything we need for a taste of heaven on earth and the life of abundance He promises is found in following Him. Some of you may be saying, I've tried Christ, and I still don't know who I am. I've tried, and I still don't feel rest or peace, and without being insensitive, I want to argue that if you haven't experienced the fruit of following, you haven't really followed. It may take a few studies for me to truly unpack this and show you how you can walk into the abundance Jesus promised, but follow me to John chapter 4, and we can see some of what I mean.
Faithfulness Should Fulfil You
I love what Jesus says in John chapter 4. The disciples ask him to eat some food, but He responds that He has a fuel they know not of. There's something else powering Him in a deeper spiritual sense as food fuels us in the physical. Now this isn’t saying that you will never need physical food again. Don't take it to a crazy literal extreme and miss the point. Jesus, as He often does, is taking the opportunity to use something physical to point us to something spiritual. Jesus goes on to say that His food, fulfilment, or nourishment comes from doing the will of His Father. The thing that fuels Him is faithfulness to what His Father has called Him to. The same is true for you. But some of us have been trying the wrong fuel sources for decades, and instead of trying something else, we’ve given up the search for more. The Bible says that we are complete in Christ Jesus. The inner void, longing for identity and significance, you feel is an internal homing beacon calling you back to your Father.
When you feel like something is missing, it could be that you have been starved of the fulfillment Christ has been trying to offer you. The feeling that your church is missing something is likely coming from the fact that the people who make it up lack the missional fuel that Jesus told us would bring fulfillment. This is why we must come back to the message and mission that makes unity with the body of Christ something to long for.
God gave us the ingredients to see an increase. If we believe that God is a good God who gives good gifts to His children and good commands for the purpose of blessing and benefiting them, we must believe that the church He called us to carry out should liberate more than it leeches. This mission should bring fulfillment. Faithfulness to it should fill us! The issue is that we've lost sight of the mission and are wondering why we aren't seeing something we can be proud of. That, or we've given up our search because we tried a broken model of church or counterfeited idea of Christ, and because that didn't work, we've thrown out everything that reminds us of it. I want to remind you of how God defines things, not your crazy family members or the hurtful people online.
Church Should Charge, Not Starve
The Bible says that God is love. I could talk about how it goes on to say love casts out all fear, meaning that if fear is the prominent driver of any action, interpretation, or motive seen in your church or your view of God, it's not God. But I want to just stick with God being love in its simplest sense for now.
That means that anything that isn’t oozing, dripping, and depositing love at its full dosage isn’t of God. If the church is Jesus’ body continuing to function on earth, it should be nothing less than a loving, love-carrying, love-dispensary. Jesus even said that the mark of being His disciple, the logo that proves your authenticity, is your love! That love is what covers a multitude of sins. A passionate, courageous, and contagious love that never fails should be our mark! That's what church is about!
However, it often feels like we’re just showing up to do nothing, be nothing, create nothing, and gain nothing, and to be honest, many of our church congregations are. But if our congregations are anti-love, they're really anti-Christ. Many of us are treating church like a punishment given by a judge that we must simply clock in and out of once a week. Because we view God as a bully we must appease, we see church attendance as a way to get Him off our back, not a movement He created to fulfill us and use us to fulfill others. And then we criticize others for not wasting their time and showing up like us when there’s nothing there for them anyway. The issue is that many of us have lost the plot. We lost focus. We lost the mission.
The issue is that these dead, boring, lifeless, stagnant, and draining organizations aren't what God designed the church to be. They're a fraud, pushed by the devil to make us believe that church and Christ don't work dont work for our good. Being a part of Christ’s body should be so invigorating and energizing that you wake up each morning throughout the week with excitement, boldness, purpose, and passion. Do you want to experience that in your life and community?
When we read of the early church, we see miracles, multiplication, and movement. Thousands see lives changed in a day. Sick people are healed when the apostles' shadows fall on them, and handkerchiefs touch them. People have a sense of confidence, community, and commitment that is consistent and contagious. They have a boldness that turns the world upside down, and if we believe that God hasn't changed, His mission, message, and movement shouldn't either. We should hear stories of life change and transformation. We should see miracles and experience them being performed through us! That's the church God has called us to be a part of!
Our church communities shouldn't be meetings but movements, stretching throughout our entire world and leaving a trail of revival, passion, liberation, and newness. Jesus Himself said that His mission was not just to give life but life abundant and overflowing. He came to bring sight to the blind and set the captives free. He came to an oppressed and forgotten people with an exciting and compelling wave of liberation, and if we are called to be a part of His body and mission, we’re called to the same thing. Addicts should be drawn to us and see their deliverance because of us. Sinners would feel safe with us, like they felt safe with Jesus. Passion should envelop you.
Being a part of this thing called church should be the best thing about your life, but it often isn’t because we've changed God’s definition of what it means to be the church. We've moved the goal post. Many of us have forgotten our divine directive and are therefore missing out on the fulfillment that comes from following God into this journey. We’ve drifted from the mission. But how do we get back?
The Missional Mandate
Follow me to Matthew 28. This is where we find our mission. Jesus, after living, dying, and resurrecting, comes to the disciples and gives them their marching orders before He ascends to heaven to prepare a place for them. And I believe it’s in this mission that we can find the fulfillment we’re looking for individually and collectively.
Jesus starts by saying that all authority has been given to Him. Some translations say “all power” has been given, but that doesn't depict the full depth of what Jesus is describing here. He doesn't use the Greek word for power, “dunamus” (from which we get words like dynamite or dynamic). He instead uses a word used to depict privilege, reign, capacity, or competency. He doesn’t just have ability, He has permission. He isn't talking about explosive power as much as He is talking about almost administrative access.
So when Jesus speaks up and reminds us that all authority has been given to Him, He is politely reminding us of His rank. This is the same voice that at the beginning said “let there be” and had everything that was not sitting at the edge of its seat and straining to become. This is the same voice that had every fish in the oceans of the world fighting to figure out how they could make it to the lake of Gennesaret so that they could find themselves in Peter’s net when He told him to let it down one more time. This is the same voice that had to call Lazarus by name so that every person, thing, and idea that had died in times past didn't take its opportunity to come out of the grave when he called him to come forth. Jesus is saying, in case you forgot, I am the one with the keys to death, hell, and the grave. In case you forgot, all administrative reign and access, in both heaven and hearth, are tied to my name. All authority? All access? All abilities? In Heaven and earth? We don't even have to touch that. Jesus is basically saying, "Remember who I am.”
Jesus is reminding them of the God they experienced. They saw Him as the man cancer had nightmares about. They recognized that demons pack up and flee when someone mentions His name. They knew that galaxies organize themselves at the sound of His voice. He is setting the stage by reminding us of His rank before calling us to our role.
He's saying, I’m in charge, therefore. This is an important conjunction. It's synonymous with “as a result of”, “because of that,” or “consequently.” Whatever comes next is the logical conclusion of His authority and power. If He is telling the truth, whatever He says next should be the result. If you believe He has the best intentions for you, whatever is next is for your good.
Ok, so the disciples are at the edges of their seats. Ok, what do you need? I’ll do anything. I trust you, I believe in you, I owe you. What’s up? And Jesus, before ascending to heaven and leaving His children with the keys of the house, says if there’s one thing I need you to do, I need you to make disciples.
This sounds simple and surface to many of us because we don’t really grasp what a disciple is. A very important principle in Biblical interpretation is recognizing what the original audience would’ve heard when coming in contact with the teachings of the original author, and taking the principle found in that specific time, culture, and context and applying it to our own specific time, culture, and context. Jesus’ followers would’ve understood what He was saying differently from many of us because they had a definition for disciple that many of us don’t have.
Defining a Disciple
In their culture, discipleship was common. Every Jewish boy would have to learn the Torah or law at a young age. The best and brightest of those students would then continue their studies, while the average students would go back to be trained in their family trade. The best and brightest students would study and study as they prepared to ask a respected rabbi or teacher to allow them to be their disciple. Many would be turned away and have to go back to their family trade, but the best and brightest of the best and brightest would be accepted as a student, apprentice, or learner of a more respected rabbi.
Jesus already flipped this on its head when He asked fishermen and a tax collector, who likely already flunked out of Torah school, to follow Him. He went to them, the people everyone deemed as not good enough, instead of expecting them to come to Him. He accepted those who were used to being rejected. Good news, right? But it doesn’t stop there.
A disciple would be expected to not just go to class but to reorganize their life around the teacher. They’d follow them, emulate them, and live like them. They’d fully immerse themselves in what the master was teaching. It was more like an adoption and apprenticeship than what many of us see as modern students. It was hands-on, and this is why Jesus gave them authority to cast out demons and practice preaching. They were called to copy Him in every aspect of their lives. Are we doing the same? But discipleship doesn’t stop there.
The missing link about discipleship that many of us fail to realize is that this student wouldn’t just leave everything, learn from, and practice emulating the teacher; they were being trained for something bigger. These disciples would then be expected to become a rabbi and start their own school or practice, where other young disciples could be trained to at some point do the same thing. They were called to continue the cycle by training other disciples. By definition, a disciple makes disciples.
So Jesus already called them. He didn’t wait for them to come to Him, but instead went to them. They left everything to follow and emulate Him. He trained them in His law of love and liberty and ordained them to learn by doing, in spite of their mistakes and failures. And now, Jesus is saying it’s time to graduate and do this for someone else. It’s time to live out love by showing someone else how to show someone else. You aren’t just a student. You are a student teacher. Training under the master teacher to fulfill a similar role in someone else’s life. That’s discipleship.
I tell you this because it’s the missing key to the mission that is keeping our individual lives and churches dead and passionless. You aren’t really a disciple if you aren’t fully committed to helping others become fully committed. You aren’t a disciple if you aren’t prioritizing your part in the process of making more.
I want to make the bold argument based on the Bible and personal experience that the lack of fulfillment you feel in your life is because you aren't fully bought in to following Jesus. I want to argue that your church isn’t creating value because there aren't enough people actively embracing this mission as their primary mandate.
Jesus is saying that following His model and mandate is what will give us everything were searching for. He is giving you the cheat code to completeness, fulfilment, and abundance. It comes when you commit to His commission. The commission to be a disciple. A disciple, by definition, is a lifelong student who doesn't just let their teacher have a few hours a week but gives their life to them. This student doesn't just hoard what they've learned; they do all they can to help others receive the same thing.
Here's my appeal. If you are feeling empty, lifeless, lost, or burdened, it's because of one of two things. Either you aren't completely bought in to following and finding identity and rest in Christ, or you aren't completely committed to living your life to help others do the same. I know so many people who make more money, have more prestige, and have filled themselves with everything the world said would give them peace, but they don’t have fulfillment or joy. They aren’t excited about life. The difference is that they could be more bought into this mission.
I get it. The church and the idea of God associated with it have hurt you. You are apprehensive about jumping into the deep end and really trust Him. You don't really wanna give up trusting in your own ability, or you think God won't accept all of you. My plea is that you try again. Take a baby step and allow Him to carry you. Go on the journey with me to take baby steps closer and closer to our fulfillment. Remember, He calls you, you don't have to convince Him. Then commit to moving forward, slowly but surely. The disciples never got it perfect. That's not the goal. Progression is. Will you try? Maybe true discipleship is what you and your church are missing.
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Questions to Consider:
What holes do you feel in your heart? Do you wish you had more peace or a deeper sense of purpose? Do you wish you had a deeper sense of identity? How can letting God lead you a little deeper allow Him to fill the holes you can't fill on your own?
Is your church something you're excited about? Or do you go because you think you're supposed to? What problems could be alleviated if you focused on the mission instead of getting distracted by everything else?
When it comes to being a disciple, do you need to grow more in your ability to follow or your ability to help others do the same? Which area of discipleship needs more of your attention?
