Rob Brendle - In the Meantime: The Practice of Proactive Waiting

I think highly of Rob Brendle. If Rob were not one of the associate pastors at New Life Church, he would be the senior pastor of a booming mega-church, or the chief engineer of a major architectural firm in Manhattan, or at the cusp of a brilliant military service career. While doing any one of these things, he would probably be preparing to run for local political office on his way to a career in national public service. He might even be advocating an end to age discrimination so that he could run for president before turning thirty-five.

Rob is a visionary, and he has the goods. Hes one of the most promising young Christian leaders I know. I say all this because I really want you to listen to Rob Brendle. Read this book carefully, and it will be a blessing to you. It will bring you comfort and wisdom. It will bring you hope. And it may even save you from despair and give you the keys to a life of success.

Rob wants you to know that God is using you for his purposes. And he is using you right now.

This book highlights the difference between fulfilling your calling and establishing a career path while pursuing your calling. See the difference? God has called all of us to serve in his kingdom, and all of us have been called in specific and special ways that can be discovered right now. God is a masterful director, and the smallest details of our lives are pieces of his plan in ways that never occur to usat least not until we learn to see them.

I was raised in a Christian culture that emphasized our calling in Christ, which was good. The unintended consequence of this emphasis, though, was that our Christian living took on the appearance of a Christian career path: We were always headed somewhere else. As a result, we often missed the opportunities of day-to-day life.

Then it dawned on me: God calls us to be faithful in the little opportunities that present themselves every day. If we will take advantage of those opportunities, we will make the decisions that set us up for what God desires for us tomorrow. Put days well lived together, and you have a decade of divine direction. Put several such decades together, and you have a calling fulfilledall by living faithfully day by day.

When I was a youth pastor, I always had bright, articulate young people wanting to help me lead services. I never told them why, but I actually chose for leadership the ones who were servingthose who picked up trash, showed up to do the dirty work, loved and took care of others. I overlooked the ones who had worked out a career path to the platform. The one who helped the handicapped kid play baseball got the prize. I think God works something like that.

Rob also explains that God doesnt need to be convinced of our fitness or readiness to be used by him. Rob says we are hard-wired to serve God. The desire to love, know, and serve him is in the fiber of our being. The mystery is not whether he desires to have us work in his kingdom. The mystery is the variety of ways we prevent ourselves from simply doing so.

When Rob explained this idea, I realized that Id never seen it articulated so crisply or convincingly. It was one of those aha moments when we hear an idea and realize its something weve always believed but never heard put so perfectly. Then the full force of the notion hits us, and it becomes an idea that is permanently added to our lives. This happened to me over and over again while enjoying Robs bookI found myself laughing, nodding in agreement, underlining whole passages.

Heres how I know Rob Brendle is a wise man: He understands the difference between living and living into. Thats one of my favorite phrases in this book: living into the calling. Life is a journey, and even if we know what we want our destination to beeven if we know