Overview

I’m not normally much of a blogger. In fact, I think today is the first time I have ever written out my thoughts about something I’ve recently gone through for others to read. Yet as I stood on the gravel bar across from Big Rock this afternoon, calling out to God over the events of the day and the past ten days, I felt the need to jot down my thoughts. Whether for myself or others, I’m not certain. Possibly both.

At 12:19 PM I received the following text, “Brett has graduated to his eternal home. Just after noon he went to be with Jesus. He is more alive now than any of us. 😢.” This ended ten days of people from around the world crying out to God for a single dad who had been in one of my disciple-makers groups in the Spring of 2021. Although it ended a season of fervent prayers for my friend Brett, it began a series of thoughts I will do my best to detail below.

I didn’t know Brett well, but I did know him personally. I know that Brett left a son and a daughter who are 11 and 14. My guess is that Brett was in his early forties, most likely 15 years my junior. One can’t stare death in the face like this without becoming a bit introspective. Sayings like, “Don’t die with your dream still within you,” and “Live BIG and die empty,” flood my mind. What will be my legacy?

One of the stories I share in my Raising Disciple-Makers seminars is about the difference between Patty’s tomato plants and the plum trees in our front yard. I share about all the work involved in my enjoying one of Patty’s home-grown tomatoes and compare that to the way the plum trees bear their fruit in season with little to no effort by anyone. A prior owner planted and nurtured the plum trees years and years ago, and I get to eat the fruit of his labor. The punch line of the story is that I’m eating fruit from a tree planted by someone six feet under. That truth hit me harder today. When I am dead and gone, who will eat fruit from the trees that I planted? This question is the thing that drives me on.

I am determined to finish well. I long to say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Not so much for the prize being laid up for me, as for the stewardship of what I’ve been given. I have an inward compass that despises waste. I don’t like to waste time. I don’t like to waste money. I don’t like to waste opportunities, and I don’t like to waste potential. It is one of the reasons I go to great lengths to invest in others. I want to see them fulfill their full potential. It’s not just that I want people to be the good soil of the four soils in the parable of the Sower. I want them to be the soil that bears 100-fold. Or maybe it’s that I want to be the one who bears 100-fold.

Is that wrong? Is it for myself? I don’t think so. I believe I truly want to be fruitful and multiply for his glory. I believe God has put that desire in each one of the beings who are made in his image – the desire to be fruitful and multiply, the desire to make a difference, the desire to be significant. But it seems that in my case I got a double portion.

I have been given so much. I am so blessed. I have felt for many years that am one of those blessed ones who, for whatever reason, was given five talents. And having been given five, I feel compelled to gain five more. When the master returns and calls me to account, I want to hand him 10 (or more) talents. And I want the fruit of my trees—the trees that I have planted and the trees planted by the trees I have planted—to feed many for generations.

“Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die!” These words were spoken by a man without purpose, or at least without a purpose bigger than himself. I feel more like Uriah: “How can I enjoy time with my wife while the men that I lead are fighting the king’s battles?” Uriah was a man driven by purpose and a purpose bigger than himself.

This is my mantra: I want to live on purpose for a purpose. And I want my purpose to originate not with me, but with the author of my faith. For I am his workmanship, created in him for good works that he prepared beforehand that I should walk in them. He is the author of it, and I am the finisher of it. Is that even scriptural? “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” So let me say it more correctly: He is the author of my faith, and I, by God’s grace, am the finisher of it. And his grace toward me will not be in vain. So help me, God.

May it be so with you too, my friend.

Scott Roberts, friend of God