Reinvent

I was pregnant with our fourth child. The water in the tiny rented cottage we called home smelled like sulfur (i.e., rotten eggs) and was loaded with so much iron it had the hair of our three ultra-blond-headed kids (and their toenails) turning orange. We were planting a church, raising toddlers, living on Barely-Get-Along Street, and living in an extremely difficult season of reinvention. I blamed my husband for our predicament—after all, it had to be someone's fault. (Smile.)

My husband slept in the "attic-like" loft, and the kids were in a makeshift closet-turned-bedroom. I had the one microscopic bedroom all to myself because I was pregnant and hormonal and huge—and we weren't in a "let's spoon" season.

Meanwhile, we were pioneering our beloved Valley Family Church and had put all of the money we had from our savings and retirement (it wasn't much) into planting the church. The church launched, but she didn't explode with growth overnight—no, she was on the "turtle plan" and grew ever so slowly.

The gap was real! Meaning, there was a huge gap between the ideal life we envisioned and the real life we were living.

In our ideal life, we were a happy couple, apparently having good sex and popping out a baby every two years! We envisioned our idyllic life—a loving family living in a four-bedroom house on a lake and driving around town in our customized conversion van while belting out VeggieTales praise songs with the kids. We loved pastoring a healthy church in Kalamazoo and wouldn't you know…just like the apostle Paul in Antioch, "the whole city came to hear the Word"—because, geez, we weren't building a monument. This was a movement!

In our ideal world, all of this was happening.

Plus, we lived a balanced life and Jesus was glorified, on earth as it is in heaven. Yes, amen!

In our real life, Jeff and I were in separate rooms and our kids had orange stinkin' toenails! We didn't have two nickels to rub together. Our Suzuki Sidekick didn't have enough seat belts for our entire family and our rented home (what we affectionately called the sulfur pit) was disgusting. Our first church leadership team might have been part of a witness protection program (sorta kidding).

We hadn't slept through the night for God knows how long and we were mainlining coffee. We weren't praying for Jesus to be glorified; we were praying for Jesus to come get us!

When "Thou shalt deliver my soul from hell" (Psalm 16:10) was our go-to comfort verse, we knew we had troubles in River City!

Yep, there was a gap!

It was a rough time, and it was going to take years of God's reinventing work to give us the wisdom, maturity, and sleep we needed to experience the good fruit we knew He wanted to grow in and through our lives.

There. Do you feel better? I hope so.

I know we all have our stories. And it's our stories—and the gaps—that remind us of our need to reinvent. Why reinvent? Because the gap is real!

THE GAP

There is a gap in our lives when our ideal self and our real self seem to be miles apart. The gap can exist in any area of our lives where we're dissatisfied or feel we're missing the mark. The gap is the difference between what we envisioned our life would look like by now and what it actually looks like.

In other words, have you ever thought, By this time in my life, I expected to be here or there…or By now I thought I would have accomplished this or done that…? The distance between your ideal self (who you thought you would be) and your real self (who you actually are) is the gap.

The good news is that with God's help we can reinvent our lives and close the gap. We're going to spend a few chapters talking about the gap and identifying where it shows up in our lives.

Being honest about our gaps is a critical first step in the reinvention process.

HOPE DEFERRED

The gap is when your hopes are deferred again and yet again. The gap between your ideal life and your real life can be very disheartening. The writer of Proverbs captured this perfectly:

Hope deferred is when your hopes, dreams, desires, goals, and vision seem to take forever!

In your ideal life you hope for it, you see it, and you've believed, prayed, fasted, confessed, pedaled, worked, served, and faithfully done all you know to do—for three years or maybe three decades—to see it realized.

Yet, in your real life, you're dismayed, disappointed, and heartsick, because these things have not yet materialized. When you're still waiting for your time, your mate, your baby, your open door, your opportunity, your success, your miracle, or your big break, it's easy to slip into self-pity, depression, anger, despair, and jealousy—especially as you watch everyone else soar to the heavens with their dreams.

And if you're honest, you're just a little perturbed with God and everybody else.

A dream fulfilled is when at last your goal is reached! Your vision has come to pass. God has opened doors. Your time has come. Business is booming. Your mate has arrived. The baby is on the way. Divine connections are happening. You've got favor. You are at the right place at the right time. This is a tree of life and the fruit—spirit, soul, and body—is delicious!

The gap between hope deferred and a dream fulfilled is a big deal. Whether it's in every area of your life or in the one area most important to you, when fruit is hard to come by, the delay can be crushing.

If you are in this "hope deferred" season and feeling fruitless, it's easy to become very discouraged and tempted to quit everything! But don't…the Lord wants to encourage you!

This reminds me of Jesus's Parable of the Fruitless Tree.

While the Parable of the Fruitless Tree may have prophetic inferences, it definitely has practical implications and serves as a great metaphor for us.

Let's replay the story.

Jesus said the vineyard owner (God, the Father) came seeking fruit on his fig tree and found none! The Lord wants His trees (you and me) to be fruitful. This tree had all the potential in the world to produce fruit and yet, year after year, it did not.

Finally, after three years of fruitlessness, the vineyard owner said, "Cut it down!"

That's when the gardener (Jesus) piped up, "Wait! Let's give it one more year! Let me reinvent it by digging around the roots and fertilizing it—and if it doesn't produce fruit, then you can cut it down."

Jesus didn't give up on the tree. He wanted it to produce fruit and He was convinced a lot could happen in one year. That's encouraging for us!

Do you feel like the fruitless tree? Whether in your spiritual life and sense of destiny, your physical health, your business and financial welfare, or in your relationships? If you see a gap between the fruit of the ideal life you envisioned and the fruit in the real life you're living, Jesus wants to help you dig around the roots and fertilize to produce more fruit! (#reinvent!)

BE FRUITFUL

Let's talk about fruit. Fruit is an interesting thing. Think about it. The first words God ever spoke to mankind way back in Genesis were "Be fruitful and multiply."

Of all the words God could have chosen, of all the phrases He could have spoken, why this phrase? He could have said, "Welcome to earth!" Or, "Hey, humans, I love you." Or, "Be nice."

Instead, His command to "be fruitful and multiply" reminds us of the God-given drive for fruit, increase, reproduction, growth, and impact that He put on the inside of every person! He has created us to produce fruit—whether in producing more children, growing more crops, building a business, or multiplying our influence. We have a God-given desire to "be fruitful and multiply."

And, not just a little bit—God put big dreams within us!

That's why we dislike not being fruitful. That's why fruitlessness is a big deal.

The desire for temporal fruit, success, and influence compels us—but there is an eternal desire within us, too. We don't just want to make a dent in the universe; we want to produce fruit that will put a dent in eternity.

God wants that for us, too! He wants our lives to be fruitful—He wants us to enjoy fruit in this life and produce fruit that will last for eternity.

When there is a gap in the fruitfulness of our lives, we are not satisfied. So, what kind of fruit is the Lord interested in? Thankfully, He defined it for us.

First, there's the fruit of the Spirit: "But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!" (Galatians 5:22–23 NLT). As God reinvents our lives, we should see an increasing harvest of the fruit of the Spirit.

Second, there's the fruit of eternal influence. Jesus said, "You didn't choose me, but I've chosen and commissioned you to go into the world to bear fruit. And your fruit will last, because whatever you ask of my Father, for my sake, he will give it to you!" (John 15:16 TPT). Nothing is more fulfilling than reinventing our lives to close the gap and produce this kind of lasting fruit.

However, fruitfulness is not always an easy process.

Friends of ours who own a large commercial greenhouse business described it this way. In the perfect climate of the greenhouse where they can control the temperature, water, light, and nutrients, plants flourish! (If only life were that way.) In the greenhouse, they can plant, plan, and prepare for growth and fruitfulness, but they cannot force the process.

Well, sort of…

Our friends told us they could "force grow" a tomato plant with fertilizer—but, in doing so, it would never produce fruit! The plant would grow quickly and shoot straight up. It would look like a tomato plant and smell like a tomato plant, but it would never produce one tomato—the very purpose for which is was created! (That's a big gap!)

They explained it this way—when the plant is forced to grow too fast, the short little roots do not have time to develop, and as a result the plant appears to be mature but is unable to produce fruit.

Thankfully, the Lord won't "force grow" us to close the gaps in our life. (Ever noticed? God is not in a hurry.) He won't speed things up to our detriment and fruitlessness! The Lord won't cut corners for quick gains—He wants to produce real fruit in our lives. (We'll talk more about that in the next chapter.)

Why reinvent? Because we all have gaps between our ideal life and our real life. Because our hopes have been deferred for some time and we're ready to taste the tree of life. Because we want to see more fruit in our lives. Yep, there's one simple reason to reinvent: The gap is real!