When It’s Simply Me and You

Our youth pastor at our local church has named his youth group, “The Audience of One,” and a name like that, for a Christian group couldn’t be more apt. As I reflected on this name and a newly formed Facebook group and youth services planned I was caused to remember Os Guinness’s, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life.

The very thought of sacrificing and surrendering all hope of fame, ambition, achievement, and recognition is abhorrent for the human nature within us. We all seem to do things for the approval of someone.

Guinness observes a ‘vital feature’ of Christian calling:

“A life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before one audience that trumps all others--the Audience of One.”[1]

When it’s simply me and you, Lord, it means I have only you to impress, you to focus on... to sacrifice to, to worship, to work for, and to find and rediscover anew every day.
s

It’s tantamount to personal relationship; the Spirit of God within us (Luke 17:21). When we finally discover the radical truth that we’ve already achieved everything once we receive his call, we realise the freedom that 99 percent of the world’s population may never ever know, and more is the pity.

Suddenly our eyes are opened and, like Saul who became Paul, the scales fall from our eyes, and we determine to live a radically different life--the Spirit of God pulsing from within us. People can’t possibly understand. It has to be experienced, personally. We’re thrilled to sing:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” –Revelation 5:12 (NIV).

Life is like this when all’s boiled down. When the fancy frills of life, the transitory things, are all stripped away, it’s just me and him. That’s the way of eternity, now and to come!

If you’re like Bono singing I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, then I can say with complete assurance this thing of faith is for you. We find him and we find everything.

[1] Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nashville, Tennessee: W Publishing Group, 1998, 2003), p. 70.