Why Having a Title Is Overrated (Do What You Love)

Like every human, I guess, my husband, Zac, wanted a booming voice from the sky as it came time to choose his path. After years of waiting for the voice that wasn’t coming, he looked up and realized he was already doing what he loved, what came so easily. He loves God and gives Him away. Sometimes that looked like coaching, sometimes it looked like teaching, sometimes it looked like a bunch of kids on our couch, sometimes it looked like Bible studies at 6 a.m., sometimes it looked like tucking in our kids, and sometimes it looked like praying and praying and praying for young couples whose marriages were falling apart. He was possessed with love for people and compelled to give them God and hope. He didn’t need a title, he never needed a title. Right alongside of him, I was doing the same with young women, so he took a job as a youth pastor in just about the smallest town in Texas, and after a few years of some of the hardest years of ministry we could imagine … we were still utterly possessed and could do nothing else. So we went to seminary. Then we contained a lot of God and looked around for a spot on earth that didn’t. As we drove the streets of Austin—we both had lumps in our throats. We saw a city that seemed to love live music and tacos more than God. So we started a Bible study out of our home that grew into a church that grew into the greatest and most difficult decade of our lives. No voice from the sky. No calling. No five-year plan. We just walked forward and all of a sudden there were hundreds of people growing and worshipping Jesus and so deep into each other’s lives. It was real people confessing sin they had covered up all their lives, each person living on mission in their place, all of us surrendered and wanting more than anything else to spend our lives for eternity. That happened. Because my husband had a lot of Jesus and looked around and saw places that didn’t contain as much of Him. A decade later, with the church in great hands, Zac was given the opportunity to help build some new things. So with the blessing and sending of the church, he began investing time helping start some new companies. He lit up like he was a kid again with a new football. He is a starter. He needs things to start. Churches or companies. And his calling never changes. He loves God and gives Him away. Tower of Babel—all of humanity comes together and rather than spread out and fill the earth as God had clearly commanded them—they decide to build a tower—thinking they can reach God in this way. They say to themselves, “Come, let’s make a name for ourselves.” Oh friends, we complicate following God. We make wobbly towers trying to make a name for ourselves out of our careers and our roles and our titles, when we contain Jesus, and all we must do is spread out and fill the earth with Him. And what you do pales compared to how you love. Some will build God’s kingdom through building companies and some through building churches and some through leading kindergarten classrooms and some through leading nonprofits and some through loving families and some through loving coworkers. Go spread out and fill the earth. Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and amen. Psalm 72:19 Today if you sit across from my husband, he will tell you about companies he and his partners are building in Ethiopia that are changing the economy and creating jobs and companies in the United States full of potential to change the world in little and big ways. Then he will listen to you, as you talk about your son’s touchdown during Friday night’s game and how your marriage isn’t very easy right now and how you don’t feel as close to God as you wish you did. And he will listen and coach and study the Bible, if you want, and speak of Jesus and pray and pray and pray and encourage and issue hope and you will be pastored by the man who starts companies now instead of churches. He will pastor you because … he is possessed with love for people and compelled to give them God and hope. He didn’t need a title, he never needed a title. You don’t need a title.