The French aviator, author, and mystic Antoine de Saint Exupery once said, ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea’.

Training is one thing. Motivation another altogether. It pays to begin with the end in mind, to have a clear vison of a preferred future. Otherwise all your planning, input and efforts will feel futile. In every pursuit, answering the ‘why’ question, and believing passionately in the answer, not only precedes, but enables the ‘how’ questions.

In church, we can occupy our time with a lot of ‘how’ activities. How do I share my faith? How do I grow as a Christian? How can I be trained in effective pastoral care? How can I make a tiramisu like the one Anna makes?

These are good questions and we need good answers to good questions. But they are not the primary questions. The primary questions are the why questions. Why should we bother at all?

As believers, we don’t set our hearts upon ‘the vast and endless sea’, instead we should yearn for the day when ‘the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’ (Hab 2:14). We pray, ‘Your kingdom come…’

Does the coming kingdom and the full revelation of the glory of our Lord Jesus inspire your soul? If it does, then it will shape your life, and then all your ‘hows’ will fall into place in God’s perfect timing.