Make It Your Ambition…
This is the fifth post in an eight-part series looking at the rhythm of going to ‘a quiet place.’ I hope and pray it’s a blessing for your life in Christ!
‘Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life’ - 1 Thessalonians 4:11
The idea of being ambitious about seeking a quiet life seems paradoxical.
We’re used to creating goals around our careers, savings, education and hopes for the future—so setting a benchmark to lead a quiet life feels like the antithesis of everything we’re encouraged to pursue.
And maybe that’s exactly the point Paul is trying to make. Here’s the broader context;
Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. - 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
Paul speaks into a culture of status, busyness, and hustle, by encouraging believers to orient their lives around three actions; loving one another, leading a quiet life, and working diligently—the kind of life we see Jesus living.
It sounds freeing, right?
In many ways, I think it’s the antidote to the stranglehold consumerism and achievement has on our culture.
To follow Jesus faithfully in our age means we need to rethink our ambitions. At the heart of the kingdom of God is not a desire to run ourselves ragged pursuing wealth, status and validation—but a life that is attentive to the ways we can love others and work within our limits.
My ambitions often look different to that. That vision of life scares me a little, if I’m honest. But I’m prayerfully and patiently hopeful that this is exactly where the kingdom of God will grow and do it’s greatest work in my life—away from the noise of my own ambitions.
Maybe that’s a prayer you want to pray too?
May the goals in our heads
match the ambition in our hearts,
and may the work of our hands
be that of love, quietness, and diligence.
p.s - I think it’s good, even godly, to have goals, ambitions, and dreams. I’ve got plenty! The struggle is to hold those ambitions alongside the vision of life we’re given in Christ—allowing his kingdom to shape our own, and not vice versa ✌🏻
