This book is not about setting you on fire for God or stirring you to great and noble deeds. It is not my intention to produce missionaries, media personalities, poets, preachers or standout people. I want to stir another ambition, something that is not usually associated with aspirational writing but is expressed by Paul as he wrote to the Thessalonian Christians: “But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; and indeed you do so toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, that you increase more and more; that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing (1 Thessalonians 4:9–12).
Compared to some of the life stories I read as a young man my life has been unremarkable and that sometimes troubles me as I begin to feel the shift of time. I am not a particularly contemplative person neither do I spend an inordinate amount of time gazing into the middle distance with moist eyes. I am quite content, most of the time, to be unremarkable and to have a life that is mundane and ordinary but some of the time I am not. There are moments when I wish for better, wish that I had done better; preached like Spurgeon, written like John Piper, even died like Jim Elliot. I feel I have fallen short by being unremarkable and ordinary. I haven’t changed the world for Jesus. I haven’t even changed my street for Jesus. I suppose I am one of the 99% of present day Christians who are more like the people who received Paul’s epistles than like the Apostle who wrote them.
