“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life”

One of the books that encouraged me the most this last year was reading Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor. It's the story of an ordinary pastor named Tom Carson, who devoted his life to ministry for 33 years (14 years in his first church, 19 years in his second church). In the end, he never reached any great acclaim or heights of renown. He was just a humble, faithful pastor.

Paul writes, "make it your ambition to lead a quiet life" (1 Thessalonians 4:11). It's seems like a paradox. Our highest ambition should be a quiet life. But through a gospel lens, it is the power of God. Weakness and lowliness are not failure and defeat. It is depending deeply on the sufficiency of God in all things. And when we do that, we experience the power of God in our lives.

D.A. Carson

We would have never heard of Tom Carson, except his son happened to be D.A. Carson, one of the most prolific Christian writers and theologians. When his father died, he inherited his journals and letters from ministry. As he was going through them, he was so moved, he decided to publish them as a book. When you read Tom’s journals, you see how much he struggled with discouragement and feelings of inadequacy. He chronicled all the tumultuous ups and downs of ministry, intractable conflicts and problems in his church. He labored in relative obscurity, but through it all, he remained faithful.

At the end of his life, D.A. Carson wrote this of his father:

Tom Carson never rose very far in denominational structures, he never pastored a church over 40 people, he never wrote a book. He was not wealthy or powerful. When he died, there were no crowds outside the hospital, no editorial comments in the papers, no announcements on television, no attention paid by the nation. In his hospital room, there was no one by his bedside. There was only the quiet hiss of oxygen, vainly venting because he had stopped breathing and would never need it again. But on the other side, all the trumpets sounded. Dad won entrance to the only throne room that mattered. And he heard the voice of Him whom he longed to hear, saying, “well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.”