Ambition

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Gal 5:22-23

Recently, I listened to a message about the spirit of the Pioneer, needed for a time like the one we are living in. It was a good one. The speaker closed with definitive statements for the listeners to agree in -- "... we're going to leave a good name, freedom from debt, anointing for the generation that is coming after us."  

Whether or not you're a Christian, I have a great news. Ambition started with GOD. In this post, I am going on a journey to shed light on it.

It can likely be considered 'news' if you are a Christian because I don't think believers have really known or believed this about God in the way we live. I have steadily grown out of a holy-stagnant (lets spend up to 95 years just thinking about being somewhere else, i.e. Heaven) mindset, growing out of this with bright eyes as He walks alongside me. In this progression, I am learning GOD is the best contractor. Everything good comes from Him, and if you want it, He's got it and desires to give you what you can handle. That is, what will multiply in Him forever. 

As a Christian, there is the pleasure in knowing and growing in the knowledge that the root of the 'contract' is love. Like the bond extending from a father and his son, the mutual desire for accel-ence exists and rests in perfectly good intent and actions.  If you're a human being , you've experienced that what is good is better when shared. God created man after His own image to enjoy such an exchange. 

Incline your ear, and come to me;

hear, that your soul may live;

and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,

My steadfast, sure love for David.   Isa 55:3

If you're not a Christian, going on this journey with me may be a starting point to knowing for certain that you would not have to expunge ambition from your personal make-up if / when you decide you need God in your life.  Also, it can be a starting point into understanding that God has the BIGGEST ideas. If you like chasing after BIG things, God through JESUS Christ is your man. Of course, you should know that you may discover He is the biggest of it all -- He's the thing to chase after. 

                                                               

This post is inspired by experiences that have shaken me into the truth of just how unimaginably BIG God is. The answers we are in need of today require this revelation in all areas of life. It is also inspired from a general observation that ... it seems normalized for believers to have two different minds about them. One is that which allows them to function in and understand the language in the world about them, and the other is for God's ways. In actuality, God can and will use what people have disqualified Him from. 

Genius comes from and belongs to God. Wealth comes from and belongs to God. Enterprise, the taking on of ventures for profit, comes from and belongs to God.  His profit is His nature, Goodness multiplied. 

Jesus' Parable of the talents 

    Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.  

So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 

 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.   Matt 25:27-29

God's BIGNESS comes out in plan and strategy that's much too much for us to conceive the 'big' picture of as He peels back merely a corner of the blue print. If you need or are waiting on a miracle for a situation, just allow yourself to lean back on the one that was already achieved to enable all the rest, herein understanding the miracle is already underway. He came to the earth as us and finished the work, went to the end of it, said 'Yes' to everything God said about you so that we could see all the beauty of His plans actually unfold in our lifetimes. The ending is set in Stone, and now all we have to do is want to see it. (see Jer 29:11)

The dictionary explains ambition as --

a strong desire to do or achieve something; desire and determination to achieve success.

Let us start in Genesis. 

The first thing that comes to my mind along this journey and the dictionary definition of ambition is, 'God, desiring a thing?'  

There is the strong understanding as a believer that God's Word spoken is as good as done. We see this in action in the very first chapter of Genesis. 

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  Genesis 1:3 

In our human experience, we can comprehend desire as a part of ambition simply because in most instances the attainment of a goal is not instantaneous. The space between us an a goal is oft the determined desire to get there.  But, if God says a thing and it is so, does the idea of ambition fit? for even the first accounted insight into His character, in Genesis? I believe yes, if you read just a little further in Genesis 1. 

 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female He created them.

 And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."  Gen 1:26-28

The very first thing I see in this passage is revelation of the Godhead. "Let us make man in our image... "  

Because Jesus, The WORD came in the flesh and revealed The Father, we have better picture of what was going on in Genesis 1:26-28. The WORD, as a part of the Godhead carried out the desire of God. This passage in Genesis is like a slow motion scene, where with the first parts of the Creation we see God speak a thing and it becoming so, we get to see a little deeper in into the process when He creates man. 

The first time we see this articulated, in Genesis, we see God's desire becoming so through the Word and we see the desire of God that would unfold outside of an instantaneous manifestation - at least from our perspective. 

            Be fruitful and multiply. 

Essentially, God expressed the desire for a process, an unfolding. He did not create man with all the fruit that He commanded to come from them and set them in the garden together. He created in them the potenial for it, through His Word. The Word said 'Yes' to the fulfillment of this desire before the foundation of the world (John 17:24), and then came to fulfill it as the Word in the flesh.

So, then. Returning to the dictionary definition of ambition -

            a strong desire to do or achieve something  ...

The definition fits with being able to say that ambition started wtih God. He desires to see a goal and gives His only Son for it, first before time and then within time when Jesus is sent to the cross, that we would be fruitful and multiply as His sons and daughters. Jesus expresses The Father's original desire as the goal for His disciples before the cross. 

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 
 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5

Intermission 

Why does it really matter if ambition started with God?  The same reason for which it matters that God created the rainbow. If you see a rainbow around someone's wrist or flowing on a flag outside of someone's home today, do you think to where the optical grace first appeared, in God's promise to Noah? I have quite determined to do so. Where one is present in their thinking is also the direction they are heading.  

Diving into the meaning of, the value assigned to ambition carries the same importance for me. We are in a time when narratives are being set before us toward goals that are not in the best interest of future generations.   While this working has always been going on at some level in culture, I have not in my own lifetime seen the working of ambition so monopolized, the desires of a set and limited party forming the goal for the masses while moving toward it as resolutely seen in the past year. 

A drug dealer could choose to be a philanthropist somewhere in their activities. But, this would not make giving  a drug-dealer thing suddenly existing outside of the realm of virtue.  

Likewise, people cannot wait for the bold advances unfolding today around them, in many instances against the welfare of their interests, to make them forget that they have dreams and goals.  Even better, God is ambitious and blesses those with this character all through the Bible. 

Abraham 

had to be ambitious in order to receive what God promised to him. With his wife Sarah barren, Abraham would likely have been alright with just one son. God promised him innumerable sons and daughters. 

He likely had to adjust his desire capacity in order to actually want what God was promising him. From Abraham, we can learn that it actually takes effort, and especially in Abraham's case, time to want and see the right thing unfold.

Abraham had to form his mind to it. 

And God brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be."   Genesis 15:5  

Abraham believed God and not only is blessed according to the promise, but counted by God as righteous. (see Gen 15:6)

King David

There are so many instances where David's relationship with God unfolds in David what may have been considered obnoxious ambition for his day. David expresses to God on numerous occasions that he would like to escape death. When I read these passages, I do not see someone at the edge of a sword, asking God to save them . I see a man asking God Almighty for immortality. 

Such a request has become known in today's culture as yet another worldly ambition, vanity. 

Yet, God heard King David's cry for him and the generations to come after him. 

 What profit is there in my death,

if I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise you?

Will it tell of your faithfulness?

 Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!

O LORD, be my helper!

Psa 30:9-10

  O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; You restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit. Psa 30:3

  I will ponder the way that is blameless.

Oh when will you come to me?

I will walk with integrity of heart

within my house

Psa 101:2

  Then I said, “Behold, I have come;

in the scroll of the book it is written of me:

I delight to do Your will, O my God;

Your law is within my heart.”

Psa 40:7-8

Jabez

A short account of Jabez in the word describes him as more honorable than all of his brothers. Why? What follows in the passage, which is simply a genealogy of the descendants of Judah, is what Jabez did. 

 

  Jabez was more honorable than his brothers; and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.”
 Jabez called upon the God of Israel, saying, “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain!” And God granted what he asked. 1 Chr 4:9-10. 

The Pioneers 

I believe that the ambition of the New World pioneers (1620), articulated in the Mayflower Compact, is a sure steak in the rising and prospering of the American nation. The pilgrims draw out their ambitions in the compact --

    IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia ... 

"John Adams and many historians have referred to the Mayflower Compact as the foundation of the U.S. Constitution written more than 150 years later." - Bailey B., The Federalist Papers Project

Mayflower manuscript 

 hwww.mayflowercompact.org/

Instead of a new geographical plane to venture onto, the opportunity before the pioneer is new thought venture.  Terms like, 'new normal', 'mandate', 'restriction', 'isolate', 'safe', 'shut down', 'death toll' form a definitive border .. for the pioneer to make a clear distinction toward the direction of what to think OUTSIDE of.   

If you're a Christian, there's even greater news. 

The new land is guaranteed, delivered into your hands. 

Think of Queen Esther. God does his best work when the enemy is at play, securing pharaoh's chariots and chosen officers in the red sea, Haman hanging on the gallows he'd made for Mordecai, and satan stuck with the curse he meant for God. 

When I think of the times unfolding in front of me, I think of the mastery of the victory carried in Queen Esther's feasts for the king. In the beauty of relationship, recompense for Israel's enemies was not simply the wrath of the king against them. It was the request of their fate yielded by Queen Esther to the king.

As we are living in the New Covenant, recompense takes on a different color. It looks like loving our enemies, humility, grace. This was the saving declaration of Jesus hanging from the cross. 

Father, forgive them. 

Where does this meet with ambition? It is the border to a Promise Land. 

Jesus instructed his disciples, 

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 
 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 
 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 

 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you.  John 15:12-16

> > Famous post

Reference 

Genesis 1 | ESV.org

John 15 | ESV.org

Galatians 5 | ESV.org

William Bradford et al. Mayflower Compact (1620).  liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts

www.thefederalistpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-Mayflower-Compact1.pdf