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"Making the Most of Swimming Upstream"
by Wayne Sommer
June 5, 2005
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
Making the Most of Swimming Upstream
For the last 14 years it's been the same. Up at 4-4:30. Go through the morning ritual. The car,
the bus, the train, a change downtown, a brief walk and the 90 minute trek to the office ends in
the seat at the desk. Meetings, phone calls, projects, more meetings then, 13 hours after rolling
out of bed, reverse the trek back home to dinner, the family, clean up, maybe the paper or some
TV, prep for the next day, and in bed by 10. Five days a week.
Recently I found myself living for the weekend.
Monday's prayer was "Lord, just get me through this week to Friday."
On Wednesday, "Praise God only two more days!"
Friday afternoon, "Hallelujah! I made it!"
Sunday night was grumpy night because Monday was coming too fast.
A fellow rat racer might say "So what's the big deal?"
Another 40-something guy might say "Mid life crisis; happens to us all."
A psychologist might say "Sounds like borderline depression."
A sensitive spiritually minded person might ask "Is God trying to tell you something?"
Clancy defined the state perfectly for me: swimming upstream. It was a simple phrase that
bulls-eyed the target.
Swimming upstream.
Going against the flow.
Like a salmon.
For a salmon trying to swim upstream, it's an extremely hard and difficult journey. Every year
there are hundreds of miles of hurdles, rapids, and waterfalls to be overcome. It needs to escape
the grip of underwater plants and to avoid the odd starving bear looking for its lunch, not to
mention the veritable army of anglers along the banks of the river. Then once it arrives at its
destination, exhausted, it spawns, rests, and then coasts downstream to start all over again next
year.
Of course, this is what the salmon was created to do. It swims upstream for an express purpose:
to spawn.
I am not a salmon. When you are swimming upstream every day with no apparent purpose in
sight it can seem like a fairly dreadful existence. It was becoming more evident to me that
something had to give.
Through a series of books: The Purpose Driven Life, Wild at Heart, and Now Discover Your
Strengths several things became clear to me.
1. God created me for a specific purpose
2. God crafted me with particular interests, passions, strengths, skills, and desires for a
reason
3. I was not yet living the life for which I had been created
4. I needed to do something about it
Back in 1991, about a year after I had become a Christian I was driving to work in my truck on
that particular morning, riding up Georgetown Pike and listening to Chuck Swindoll, a pastor
and radio preacher. Chuck was relating a story about a professional man he knew and how this
guy was always up to snuff on the latest issues in his profession reading all the latest journals and
pronouncements. I am an accountant by training and as I listened I was thinking "Ugh, I hate
that stuff. I can't stand reading all the professional literature."
Just then I heard a voice in my head say, "So what would you like to do?"
My response was "I don't know."
Then, as clear as a bell, this voice said to me, "I have made you a teacher. I have given you a
Sunday school class and a bible study. Let's see what you do with them."
That encounter with the Lord certainly changed my ministry focus but I had no idea at that time
and no clear idea up to now as to what that encounter meant for my entire life.
You see, when I was a child I wanted to become a teacher. My older brother was a teacher but
when I saw how poor he was I decided "No way; I want to make money." So I pursued the path
toward that end: making money. Essentially, it was at that point in life that I ignored the call in
my heart and chose to swim upstream to a pointless end. But teaching was the bent God created
in me and though I chose another path I could not get away from His intended purpose. That
encounter with the Lord in my truck was an episode intended to bring me back on track. The
holy agitation in my spirit that I am now feeling 13 years later is another in a series of episodes
intended to open my eyes up to God's particular call on for life.
Os Guinness has penned an exceptional book on the subject entitled The Call: Finding and
Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. Os makes this central point about calling:
Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are,
everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and
dynamism lived out as a response to His summons and service. Answering the call is the
way to find and fulfill the central purpose of your life.
The more I read the more God allowed me to understand the essence of calling. He had created
me to be a teacher. It was in the whole process of teaching--the study, developing the
presentation, the delivery, and seeing the results--that I came alive. Family, friends and co-
workers would comment that I was never seemed as happy as when I was involved in some form
of teaching. And they were right. I love being in front of folks, either one-on-one or in a group,
and watching for that moment when something clicks, the lights go on and instantly they get it!
It's like that line from the movie Chariots of Fire when the actor portraying the famous
missionary track star Eric Liddell says, "God made me fast and when I run I feel His pleasure."
God made me a teacher and when I teach I feel His joy in my heart. And when I feel it I want to
do it more and more.
It's one thing though to teach an occasional class and another to devote your life to answering
the call to teach. What does it look like? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to be in a
classroom? If so, where? I began seeking out the specifics of the call, which in and of itself was
not a bad thing, but in the process I soon learned that I was starting in the wrong place. To
understand the specifics of my call I needed to begin with the proper orientation.
God is a god of order and purpose. He knew me and prepared me for good works before the
foundations of the universe. Everything that I am, every ability and desire I have comes from
Him. He provided for me the way of salvation. He provides all my needs for living. I could
have been born any time in history, but He deliberately inserted me into time in late 1957.
Recognizing God's sovereignty in and over every aspect of my life was the beginning of
understanding my call. I already knew Him as Savior, but before I could do anything else, I
needed to recommit myself to Him as my Lord.
A former pastor of mine put it this way. When you come to Christ it is as if He brings you a
blank piece of paper, a contract, if you will and asks you to sign it. "It's a blank piece of paper",
you say. "I know" He says. "We'll fill in the rest later." No one here would sign a blank
contract; we would want to know what the terms were first before we agreed to them. But with
God, in exchange for our salvation we "sign on" to go wherever He chooses for us to go and do
whatever He calls us to do. If we receive Him as Lord and Savior our service is non-negotiable
and our commitment must be 100% unconditional.
Jesus said,
"Anyone who loves his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me;
anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and
anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find
it." Matt 10: 37-39
Understanding the call begins with knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and
committing your life to follow Him completely. Until that point is settled in your heart, you
cannot go forward. As Guinness puts it, "To know the call, you have to know the Caller."
During the 15 years of my Christian walk I have performed various ministry functions. Some
were in my area of gifting; many more were not. All of these functions were intended to fulfill
some godly purpose, but, quite honestly, I can't say I enjoyed them all or felt particularly gifted
in performing them. Sometimes I even resented them. To me, this was more swimming
upstream. But the Lord put this in perspective for me through this scripture. (Hebrews 6: 9-12)
We are confident of better things in your case--things that accompany salvation.
God is not unjust; He will not forget your work and the love you have shown Him
as you have helped His people and continue to help them. We want each of you
to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure.
We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and
patience inherit what has been promised.
God reminded me that He had seen all the things that I had done and He had not nor would He
forget them. He had a plan for me that was better than anything I had experienced thus far and
He would bring it about. But what He had in store for me I would only realize through diligence
in faith and patience.
Regarding faith, we know from Hebrews 11: 1 that "faith is being sure of what we hope for
and certain of what we do not see." The Lord gently but soundly rebuked me one morning
in my quiet time about my level of faith. The specific context of the rebuke was my disregard
for many of the times my wife Susan tried to speak into my life, but the application was
simultaneously much broader. He specifically rebuked my "shallowness of faith and narrowness
of mind."
Let me explain through some examples.
Four months after I became a Christian I was laid off from my job in the savings and loan
industry. It was 1990 and savings and loans across the country were collapsing left and right.
As I considered looking for a new position I wondered, "How am I going to get a job? My
industry is dying?" My narrow mind and shallow faith did not consider that God could use me
elsewhere, which is exactly what He did by placing me in my current position with a not-for-
profit downtown.
About four years ago my family was sensing that they were misplaced in the church we were
attending. It happened to be the church in which we were all born again. It was all we had ever
known. It was our church home. I struggled with the concept that we might need to find a new
church. "Why would God do that?" I wondered. I refused to believe it and even considered the
thought fleshly and demonic. It took two years before I was able to comprehend that maybe, just
maybe, my family was on to something and that the Lord was telling us that it was time to
move. Not because of some problem in that church or even with us, but because He had
something new for us. So here we are at Church of the Holy Spirit. God is using Clancy Nixon
as a mentor to lead me through this process of discovering my call. Had I continued in my
narrowmindedness I might have never known the instrument God had chosen to move me
forward toward my destiny. Who knows how much time I could have wasted.
In the area of employment, I never, ever considered being self-employed or being on any type of
commission. "I like a steady paycheck" was my mantra. What did that say about the level of my
faith in God to provide for my needs?
Narrowness of mind and shallowness of faith.
Put them together and you have an obstacle that is difficult to move. God pointed out to me that
the fulfillment of the call He has for my life will require a mind open to the endless possibilities
that He can provide and a faith that is willing to trust Him to provide, even in strange ways. The
revelation of the scripture from Hebrews about faith and patience combined with the rebuke in
the context of pursuing my call has opened my heart to incredible new possibilities. The Lord
has even spoken to me about a radical change in direction for my life and about things that are to
come. I am excited and my wife Susan is excited with me. Together we have the faith to believe
God for these prospects.
The promises of God come through faith and patience. The word "patience" means literally
"long heart or mind"; it is endurance for the long haul. The writer of Hebrews offers the
examples of the Old Testament saints who lived lives marked by long-suffering all in hopes of
realizing God's promises.
Commentary writer Matthew Henry says this of Abraham:
"Abraham, in due time, obtained the promise. It was made good to him after he had
patiently endured. There is always an interval, and sometimes a long one, between the
promise and the performance. That interval is a trying time to believers, whether they
have patience to endure to the end. Those who patiently endure shall assuredly obtain the
blessedness promised, as sure as Abraham did."
Consider Joseph who received God's vision for his future in dreams, yet endured years of
hardship being sold into slavery by his brothers, falsely accused by his employer's wife and
thrown into prison, and spent several years in prison before being called out at the right time to
ultimately secure the survival of two nations, one being the chosen people of God.
Consider Moses, the destined deliverer of God's people from the slavery of Egypt. In his youth
he tried to deliver them in his own strength. He failed and ran away. After years of tending
sheep in the wasteland deserts of Midian God called Moses out to lead Israel from bondage to
freedom His way.
Consider David who received the anointing of king as a youth but did not immediately rise to the
throne. Instead, David was called to serve King Saul, the man whom he would ultimately
replace with both of them knowing that fate. He ran for much of his young life as Saul attempted
time after time to kill him, yet David in his faith and patience did not lift a finger to remove Saul,
though he had many opportunities. Instead David endured in faith, waiting for God to bring it
about in His timing.
These are examples of faithful and patient servants who swam upstream toward their destiny. It
took time, but the experiences during their swims upstream prepared them for their calling.
Jesus in Matthew 7: 7, 8 exhorts and encourages us in our perseverance, saying:
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be
opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him
who knocks, the door will be opened.
In the original language He is saying ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and
keep knocking. He tells us to press in and press on, and He promises us success. This is active
living, a purposeful pursuit of God and His purpose for each of us. The ultimate goal is to
realize that for which we hope--the fulfillment of God's purpose in and for our lives. The
fulfillment of His call.
The beautiful thing about the salmon's perennial swim upstream is that it is doing exactly what it
was created to do. Each time it swims with all its might, exhausting itself in the process, giving
all it has to accomplish God's intended purpose for it. And at some point, it dies in the process.
The Bible tells us that "David served the purposes of God in his generation and then he died."
(Acts 13: 36)
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