This past summer we gave our kids a reading assignment while they were in the States. As a family we are now spending time each week talking about the book “Do Hard Things” by Alex and Brett Harris. Today as we were having our weekly family discussion, the importance of that Biblical call to do the difficult thing for the name of Christ and the Gospel and the Glory of God, really came home to me.

By the estimation of most, we have done the “hard thing”. We left home and family and country. We studied language. We live with inconvenience and difficulty and frustration all the time. Yet, it is possible to completely waste my life in Mongolia. Maybe as much, if not more that it is possible to waste my life in America. Crossing the ocean doesn’t guarentee that I won’t live a wasted life. In fact, it is frightening for me to think about the fact that I could waste my life while giving the unholy pretense of not wasting it because I live outside of the US comfort zone. There is a sense in which that is is worse because it’s not just a wasted life, it’s a hypocritical wasted life. That is perhaps the greatest misspending of all.

One morning this past week, I was walking and praying - and thinking about some of these things. I was thinking about all the times during this past week when I was grumpy with my family (even though it wasn’t their fault that I was tired) and had hateful thoughts (and a few words) about rude and selfish and bad drivers and harsh words that had been directed at my daughter (who is just trying to wade through being 13). I realized that what came out of me at those times was grotesque, offense, self-indulgent flesh. That’s when I remembered a simple illustration that I’ve known for much of my Christian life. Amy Carmichael uses it in her devastating little book “If”.

“If a sudden jar can cause me to speak an impatient, unloving word, then I know nothing of Calvary love. (For a cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water however suddenly jolted).”

Here is what I’ve determined. I am going to seek every day to be full of Christ. He is sweet water. I am not going to battle unsweetness, and impatience and unlove by taking battling them directly. I will daily ‘be filled’. In the end, I just want people to see Jesus. Not me. Just him. I am pretty confident that it will only be at that point that life is not wasted. The hard thing is daily fellowship, surrender, emptying and filling.

So while we talk to Jonathan and Cori about what it means for them to “do hard things”, the Holy Spirit is challenging me to “do hard things”, as well.

In the end, I pray that Jesus will be seen in all of us.