Breakthrough in God’s Timing: What to Do While You’re Delayed
What’s on the other side of your waiting?
When your waiting season is over, what do you envision yourself stepping into? Odds are, to you, that next thing is great. Maybe it’s moving from your cur-rent position to having more of an executive role and a seat at the leadership table. Maybe it’s not being the teacher’s assistant but the actual teacher. Maybe it’s not being a youth pastor but leading the church God put in your heart. (I feel you bro—a person can only take the scent of Axe body spray mixed with Little Caesar’s pizza for so long.)
Everyone Wants to Be Great
Everyone wants to be great and to step into greatness. However, if we think only of that next season as great, it’s easy to see our current season as “less than”—less significant, less important, less relevant. I’m here to tell you: you’ll always waste the wait if you view your current season as a “less than” season.
There is nothing “less than” about being a teacher’s assistant. There is nothing “less than” about your job in the middle or at the bottom of the org chart. There is nothing “less than” about a youth pastor compared to the lead pastor.
I was a youth pastor for five years. I’d write some good sermons (if I may say so myself), and then I’d preach them to a couple j-hi kids picking their nose on the front row to keep themselves from falling asleep. Eventually, I’d settle for cutting the sermons short and just playing basketball in the gym. Let’s face it, I couldn’t be as entertaining as the Fortnite video game they played the night before showing up to service.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I’d get online and see other youth pastors preaching conferences in packed-out auditoriums. Sometimes, I would think, One day, maybe I can get there too. But until that day, I was just waiting. I didn’t always see what I was doing as being that great.
That’s when God started to deal with me about how I define greatness. And when I saw how Jesus defined greatness, I realized I was wasting a season where I was called to be great. Not popular. Not famous. Not at the top of the org chart. But great, nonetheless.
When you see the ways God’s inviting you to be great right now, you’ll pour yourself into this season instead of wasting the wait. You’re called to be great right now, too. So let’s do this together.
How We Define Greatness
Our problem is in the way we define greatness. I went to Wikipedia, where all great scholars go (after Chat GPT, of course). I asked Wikipedia to define greatness. Wikipedia defined greatness like this: “Greatness is a concept or a state of superiority affecting a person or object….”1 You see that? Culturally we define greatness as “a state of superiority.”
That makes sense right? When we think of people who are great we ask, “Who is at the top?” So when we think of the greatest 3-point shooter of all time, we think of someone such as Steph Curry. When we think of the greatest businessperson of all time, we may think of Elon Musk. When we think of the greatest evangelist of all time, we think Bob and Larry from Veggie Tales (Sorry, Billy Graham. Just kidding). But you get the point. We want to be great, but the way we define greatness in society is by asking,“Who’s at the top?”
Some of the reason we feel we’re in a waiting season is because we don’t feel like we are doing anything great yet. And some of the reason we don’t feel like we are doing anything great yet is because there are other people farther ahead, closer to the top, and they seem to be making a bigger impact.
In other words, we waste the wait because we think where we are isn’t great. However, the way we define greatness and the way Jesus defines greatness is drastically different. And if you can see your season like Jesus sees it, it will ignite a passion in you, not a passiveness in you. Passiveness wastes the wait. Passion doesn’t waste the wait.
So let’s look for a biblical definition of greatness. It was actually the subject of debate in Mark chapter 9. We’ll define it by looking at the four Ms:
The myth of greatness
The message of greatness
The motive of greatness
The miracle of greatness
The Myth of Greatness
In Mark chapter 9, Jesus’ own disciples were arguing about who was the greatest:
Then they came to Capernaum, and when he [Jesus] was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest (Mark 9:33-34 NRSVUE).
Jesus doesn’t rebuke the disciples for wanting to be great. We’re born to be great. But, like the disciples, we don’t just want to be great, we want to be greatest. Or at least, greater. The disciples wanted to know who was greatest, and Jesus didn’t like that.
He doesn’t like it when you and I do it either, by the way. Still, we want to be better. We want to be stronger. We want to be thinner. We want to be smarter. We want to be richer. We want to be greater. And we want people to notice.
Let me tell you how sin works. Sin takes something pure and good and subtly twists it. So, in the case of greatness, it’s good to want to be great! But sin twists it into not about being great—but about being greater or greatest.
Now, maybe you’re thinking like Syndrome, the villain from the Incredibles (shoutout to all my ’90s kids). Syndrome never felt special, so he wanted to make everyone special. Why? Because finally (cue Syndrome’s villainous voice), “If everyone’s special, nobody is.”2
Maybe that’s what you’re thinking. How can you even be great if you’re not greater? If everyone is great, doesn’t that mean nobody is? Doesn’t greatness depend on comparison? Like Syndrome said, if everyone’s great, nobody is. To be great you have to be above other people!
There, my friend, lies the myth of greatness. The myth of greatness says: “I have to go up!” We have to be better, smarter, thinner, richer. The disciples fell into this trap just like us. But to Jesus, greatness ≠ greatest.
Too many people are losing passion in their current season and wasting the wait. Why? Because they look around and other jobs seem better. Other opportunities seem greater. Since their season isn’t the greatest, they fail to see it still has greatness. Because of this, we can waste seasons that had so much potential for greatness.
The Message of Greatness
I’ve told you what greatness is not. But what does Jesus say that it is?
Glad you asked.
Jesus says to the disciples in Mark 9:35 (NRSVUE): “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Greatness is found in being…last? Jesus isn’t teaching us to be worse than everyone else. He’s teaching us to think about other people more and to think of ourselves less. In other words, we need less pride and more humility.
As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less.” The disciples wouldn’t have been arguing about who was greatest if they were thinking about how they could help each other out. So:
The Myth of Greatness: “I Have to Go Up!” The Message of Greatness: “Actually, Down.”
Humility literally means, “to lower oneself.” And you know who lowered Himself all the time? You guessed it. Jesus. Jesus washed feet. Jesus took punishment He didn’t deserve. Jesus loved enemies. He literally lowered Himself to help other people all the time.
Now, why do Christians worldwide—with different languages, customs, and cultures—all agree that Jesus is so great? Is it because He came in power and dominated us to show His strength? No! It’s because He came in humility as the suffering servant who took away the sins of the world when He died on the Cross for us. Jesus came down from heaven, humbled Himself, and served people. He redefined what greatness looks like to we humans.