Ambition and trusting God

Ambition is a good/bad thing. Strong desires to achieve motivate progress. Strong desires to achieve ruin contentment and a thankful heart.

When I was young, I wanted to be the best artist in the world. That ambition was challenged because no matter how much I thought I could do, I kept encountering someone who I thought was better. Being driven to keep going didn’t appeal to me, but giving up didn’t either. Ambition fluctuated between being my friend and not being my friend.

Without any doubt, spiritual ambition always falls on the “not my friend” side. I find that out as I realize no matter how much I want to grow, be like Christ, be effective in a ministry, or do any of the other good things that Christians can do or become, none of it is possible unless God does it in me.

Yes, being spiritual requires my effort, cooperation, spiritual disciplines, obeying God, and so on, but making it happen is beyond me. I can only put myself in those “places of grace” that give Him opportunity to get at me and do it in me.

The church at Corinth may have had its share of ambitious people. They definitely had problems with discontent and wanting what others had, either more “status” or different roles. They alo fought over who had the best gifts and those of prominence looked down on church members they considered less valuable. “Ambitious snobs” comes to mind.

When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, he was a little kinder, but he did scold them. He told them the church was like a human body, one body in which all the parts were important. He said, “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body?” and If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing.”

It is analogies like this that have brought balance to my thinking about ambition. In the realm of art, for instance, I can see that each artist has something to contribute. Being the “best” isn’t important, but doing my best is, and doing what I do the way I do it is important. My art can gladden a heart at times when the art of someone else might not, and vice versa. If everyone tried to do it exactly the same, many would miss the blessing of our differences, and most artists would be redundant.

In the church, “God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be?”

I guess it would be one big eye, or one big arm, or one big toe, and totally useless. The parts and variety are necessary. For one part to strongly desire to be another part is missing the point. We can all emulate someone’s virtues, all have a strong ambition to be like Jesus, but all must remember that God put His body, the church, together the way that it best functions. Spiritual ambition to be or do something else can simply mean I am failing to trust His wisdom and decisions.

Not only that, spiritual ambition can turn into covetousness. If I want what so-and-so has, then according to the body imagery of 1 Corinthians 12, I’m wanting them to not have it. This kind of ambition can lead to conscious on unconscious efforts to rip away from that person whatever it is that which I want for myself. No wonder James 3:16 says, “Where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.”

All this being noted, I’ve a place to fill and God has taught me that filling it requires faith and complete reliance on Him. That takes all my energy. At this stage of my spiritual life, I feel as if I’ve reached my capacity and cannot imagine wanting more than I already have. Besides, with the schedule the Holy Spirit has me on, where would it fit?