Selfless Ambition
Jun 18th, 2010 Posted in Books, Contentment, Sermons | no comment »
I have just listened to four really wonderful sermons—well three sermons and message on the life of David Brainerd, I guess. All four messages were given at a men’s retreat. Hmmm. I’m not usually looking for men’s retreat messages. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard any before. I stumbled upon these because I was looking at books in the Westminster bookstore, and I came across a book called, Rescuing Ambition, by Dave Harvey.
Now I am about the most unambitious person around. Really. I have not a competitive bone in my body. I’m the only person I know who would rather lose a game than win. I don’t mind winning, but when I am playing with people who really want to win, I really want them to win, too. It’s important to them, after all, and I don’t care about it in the least.
So my first reaction to the title Rescuing Ambition was to run the other way. That, of course, made me stop and consider. If I don’t like a thing, it sometimes mean I need to study it.
I thought a little about ambition, then. Ambition is not really the flip side of contentment. It’s the flip side of complacency. Having ambition is not the same as having a competitive spirit. Having ambition is not the same as having selfish ambition. Ambition for furthering God’s purposes is not the same thing as ambition to get ahead in life.
I’ve been thinking about the difference between contentment and complacency for a few years. I even wrote a novel where I tried to contrast the two. Contentment comes from knowing that you are God’s own dearly loved child. Contentment in all circumstances comes from knowing that everything you walk through is God’s gift to you for your good and his glory. (Whether you want to say he allows the trials and successes or ordains them, doesn’t matter for this argument—everything he allows, he allows because he loves you. When you know this, you can be content.) Contentment is not meant to do away with ambition, though. We should plan and strive and work. We should have big plans for serving our neighbors. We serve a big God and we should have a big vision. Contentment is not grounds for complacency.
So, I, being one to lean toward complacency, thought maybe I should buy this book on ambition. I haven’t gotten it yet—it should arrive tomorrow. In the meantime, though, I discovered four messages by the author of book. He’s a very good speaker, entertaining, passionate, logical, biblical, witty, and uses himself for negative illustrations. I just loved his messages.
They were well worth the time. Check them out:
