"Real"

When I was first getting to know my wife while we were dating (hard to believe that was 15 years ago), she would often tell me that she wanted to live a life that was "real." When our relationship started looking like it might be heading toward marriage, I would often reassure her that a life spent with me would be "real." We both longed for adventure, and getting married at such a young age allowed us to tie our dreams together as we launched into adult life. Right away, early on in our marriage, we adventured together. We moved to a part of California that neither of us had ever been to and where we did not know anybody. Luckily, we made some great friends quickly, we found an awesome church home, our jobs worked out, we bought the starter and the dream home within just a few years, we realized dreams like professional football and grad school, we served together through Young Life, we had our two beautiful daughters, and we explored just about every single part of California. Our life out West was an amazing adventure, and we still have fond memories and some great friendships even though we now live in Pittsburgh.

Even though we had experienced adventure in our twenties, I think that there was still something missing in our lives. We were incredibly successful by worldy standards... Dream home in the suburbs, check. Good jobs with benefits, check. Two kids and a dog, check. Good church and good friends, check. Nice Christian people, check. We were living the American Dream, and we were pretty far along. And then we decided to move from California back east to be closer to our families, and our whole American Dream that we had created for ourselves seemed to fall out from underneath us. Everything that could go wrong with our decision to move did go wrong. We could not find jobs, we lost our house and boat and other toys, we did not have medical insurance nor any income, and we ended up in a place of brokenness. However, I am so thankful for that painful experience of falling flat on our faces. It was the best thing that ever happened to us, because God really met us right there in the midst of those difficult life circumstances. It was at that point, six years ago, that I gave up the American Dream and trying to control life for myself and my family so that I could pursue God's mission to reach the lost in this world with complete abandon. We were stripped of everything so that we would not put our hopes and dreams in man's plans for success. We decided to simply be obedient to go where ever God would ask us to go. We were ready to live the "real" life.

What is "real?" That word is packed with a lot of meaning. Many people kind of wander through life, following the path to success generated by the world, and no matter how successful they become by wordly standards it is never enough to satisfy us or make us think that we are living a life that really matters by any eternal standards. Only relenteless pursuit of God's mission to redeem the world leads us to any level of fulfillment in this short life on Earth. The "real" path to meaning in life has eternal consequences. The "real" path to making an eternal difference with our lives, to reaching the lost for the sake of Christ, is a narrow path. The "real" life requires us to give up all control in exchange for embracing danger, risk, and suffering. The "real" life says that nothing is ours, and we are stewards of everything because it is all God's anyway. Every single material thing associated with the American Dream will eventually pass away over time, but God's eternal purposes last forever. There is no amount of money that we could possibly leave our kids, no house big enough, no job meaningful enough, no car nice enough, no idol significant enough, to exchange for a life of downward mobility for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Are we willing to give away everything for the sake of God's Kingdom?

Do you know that feeling that you get when you go on a mission trip to a third world country? It's that feeling that meaning in life, and God's purposes, can be found when we go all in to join God's mission to reach the lost and the people who are suffering in this world. There are billions of people who are far from God or experiencing tremendous suffering on this planet. We kind of dip our toes in the water on short term mission trips in order to experience something different from the idols of worldy success in America, the nation that has been blessed with four percent of the world's population yet we have over forty percent of the world's wealth and resources. We feel "real" when we go on mission trips. The thing is, that feeling of "real" can be experienced every single day of our lives in our own context in America. God is on a mission to redeem the world, and that happens in Pittsburgh just as much as it happens in Haiti. Some will be called to join that mission abroad, and that is indeed a wonderful calling. However, most of us in America will be called by God to live the "real" life right here in the land of prosperity where we were born. God wants to help us figure out how to do that, but we must first give up the American Dream generated by men in order to embrace the cross generated by Christ, who made himself low and paid the ultimate price in order for us to find life. Now that is "real."