Entry Five: Windows
John Piper once said, "Your freedom is found in your purpose." I’ve come to believe this with my whole heart. If I don’t walk in faith, if I don’t take the risks required to align myself with what God is doing, I’ll always stuck in some form of regret or shame. God is a creator. He’s always moving, always working for the good of His people, through His people. If I want freedom, I have to get on board with His movement.
That is why stepping into the windows of opportunities He presents before us is so important.
At my first service at Good Gifts City Church, Ps. Pat was preaching. Ps. Derek Hong had visited me in the hospital a week prior, along with her and another pastor. When I arrived, she told me to listen up because her sermon was for me. She preached on time, and broke it down into two biblical categories. First, Chronos, which is time in sequence. The normal passing of time. Then, Kairos – the appointed time. Time-sensitive, divine moments. When missed, they don’t always come around again. That word wrecked me. I had written about Kairos years ago in a piece called Windows, and suddenly I knew it was time to revisit it.
Kairos is what I’m talking about in this blog post.
Have you ever felt like you missed out on something? Perhaps a window of opportunity? Maybe it was something that meant a lot to you, something you’ve been preparing for, waiting for; only to completely miss it when it came. It’s painful when this happens, especially after a season of hardship that you’ve learned and grown from.
There’s tragedy in not perceiving the new things He does (Isaiah 43:19). When we don’t step into the windows of opportunity God presents, we lose out on stepping into our destiny. We become spectators, not participants. We start echoing secondhand testimonies instead of living our own. We fill our conversations with small talk and safe commentary, while the fire in our belly grows cold. The enemy wants our creativity and courage to fall asleep. He wants us numb to purpose, comfortably stuck in mediocrity.
Martin Luther King Jr. fought for equality and knew this kind of urgency. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he wrote, “For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'” He adds, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
How often do we dress up fear as wisdom? We delay action, thinking there will be a better time. But Kairos moments demand courage. They don’t wait.
MLK Jr. also said, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
That line hit me. Lukewarm living – indifferent passion, diluted purpose – is a slow death. Have we become lukewarm in the passions, purpose and good God had set us out to fight for? Are we in an endless sleep, dooming our short time on earth to mediocrity?
It’s why Jesus says in Matthew 18:2-5 “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” When we lose our childlike wonder, we lose our lives.
In the book Culture Making, Andy Crouch talks about posture and gesture. Our posture is our default stance, our unconscious setting. Gestures are responsive, something that we consider and apply from to case. If our posture is criticism, we become people who resist every new thing God might be doing. But if critique is a gesture, we can still discern without shutting down possibility.
“Our posture is our learned but unconscious default position, our natural stance. It is the position our body assumes when we aren’t paying attention, the basic attitude we carry through life.” – Andy Crouch.
Too many believers stay on the sidelines, commentating, critiquing, dissecting – but never stepping into the arena themselves. They’ve settled for safe. But Erwin McManus said it best: “The past will be our future until we have the courage to create a new one.”
If you’re going to have a posture of something, let it be grace. Let it be courage.
Courage comes from the Greek word Cor, which means to express all that’s in your heart. Wear it on your sleeve, take courage and don’t hesitate. Take a posture of grace, not just for others, but for yourself too. Wrestle with yourself, your fear, your pride, your anxiety, your hurts. Don’t hide from it, look it in the eye and DARE to try. God’s plan may be opaque to us, but who would you rather trust? Yourself? Your fear-ridden leader? Or God… A posture of grace and courage waits in anticipation and hope. It is an action applied to faith.
“Fear is the shadow of creativity.” – Erwin McManus
