The Stakes are High.

Who You are Becoming Matters.

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

In a meeting last week, one of my friends shared a quote, and the second half of the quote has been ringing in my ears:

“…the stakes are high.”

Whatever season of life you are in right now, the stakes are high.

If you’re a teenager or college student, you have the time, availability, and opportunity to pursue holiness, to read the Bible, to put faith into action by letting your minds be transformed and your loves tuned to God’s good design.

The stakes are high, because while this is your great opportunity, you can create loads of baggage, painful memories, hurts, and regrets that will haunt you for decades.

Ask any Christian over 35 - are there things you wish you did differently in your teens and twenties? What would you tell your younger self? What did you reap from not pursuing holiness in your life?

The stakes are high for your future self.

If you’re in mid-life, the stakes are high.

If you’re single and part of a church community, the church needs you to live within the body, pressing in and being known. If you’re prone to isolate or pull away, the path is toward a meaningful connection rooted in the family of God, not in the hope of a mate. The stakes are high for you and the Church.

If you’re married and parenting small children, the stakes are high.

Your spouse needs your heart to be alive and progressively be made whole. If you numb or medicate yourself through food, porn, sex, television, drugs, Instagram, alcohol instead of learning to deal with reality - you are becoming less human, not more. Your spouse needs you to live in reality, which is a fight at every turn. You have the most in-person influence in who your spouse becomes, and the fruit of your life overflows into theirs, shaping and impacting how they see the world and themselves. You matter to them because you influence them more than you know. The cost of your obedience to God is significant, and the cost of your failure is weighty too.

Your children need you to live in reality because the stakes are high. They need you to deal with your story, how you’ve rightly or wrongly interpreted your life, and how who you have been is impacting who you are because you are Mom or Dad now, and you are forming the life of another human being for better or worse. That’s you, now, making memories and creating beauty or pain with how you show up. The stakes are high for you and them because they need you, and if you are absent now, physically or emotionally, when you are eventually present, you might have mountains to work through because you missed them when they needed you.

If you’re an empty nester, the stakes are high. Your grown children need to see what the next season of life looks like with a life full of joy and meaning. Your grandchildren see a picture of decades from now, and they love you because you’re theirs - so be there. The stakes are high for you because you really can miss out here. You are needed and necessary in your family and the Church. The Church needs Church Mothers and Fathers, Uncles and Aunts, Grandfathers and Grandmothers. We need men and women of the faith who have persevered and are alive with hope. Without you, we are not complete.

The stakes are high because we’re not dealing in fairy tales. We’re dealing with life as God designed it and enemies that want to steal, kill, and destroy the quality of life that brings God glory. The quality of life that brings you joy because it’s how we are made to live and move. It resonates deep in our soul because we are overcome by the simplicity and beauty of being present to God, ourselves, and others.

You matter.

Your choices matter.

Who you are becoming matters.

The stakes are high because your time, choices, attention, and loves are not just about you. They never were in the first place.

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Thanks for reading.

If someone forwarded this to you, I write two kinds of emails: one on select Tuesdays about life with God and the other every Friday, where I share things I’ve found during the week. If you want to subscribe but can’t afford it, email me, and I’ll take care of it—no questions asked.

I pastor, teach, and lead at The Village Church, serving as an Elder and the Executive Director of Discipleship. In my spare time (ha!), I’m working on a Ph.D. in Church History, studying Jonathan Edwards and character formation. Also, I’ve written A Short Guide to Spiritual Disciplines: How to Become a Healthy Christian.

Thank you for reading and supporting my work as I seek to shepherd with compassion and wisdom, equipping people to embody God's truth for all of life.

Talk soon,
Mason