Joy and Rest for Those Who Serve

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His Kingdom.

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0:00:22.6 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Welcome to another episode of Grace at the Fray. Have you ever been a server at a restaurant? Like a waitress or a waiter? I think everyone should do this for at least a time. I never worked at a nice restaurant in college. I was a waiter at Loco Gringos, a name that butchers the Spanish language, by the way. The food was not good, but it did make me want to be a waiter at a really nice restaurant where I could take pride in what the chef was making. It would be such an honor to serve up that award winning chef’s food. Food that he was creating. Right? For example, shout out to the old waiter at Patsy’s Italian restaurant in Manhattan. Man, this guy is someone who takes great pride in his work. He loves the food and he’s proud to serve his customers because he knows that they’re in for a treat. I think Christian ministry is like being a waiter or a waitress. When I did local ministry, I thought of each Sunday service as a glorious meal that the chef was cooking up for the congregation. And I had the privilege of serving it up to them. This feast of the richest of fare, God’s grace for hungry people. But this feast expands from the Sunday worship service so that everywhere we go, we go to dish out grace and forgiveness and reconciliation and joy, all because of the God we serve. Compliments to the chef, right?

 

0:01:48.2 Jim Lovelady: There’s a simple but profound truth at the heart of the Christian life. We belong to God because of Jesus. And that belonging is not passive or sentimental. We’re not the frozen chosen. It’s a calling, a vocation, a job, a servant job, a priestly job. Revelation 1:4-6 reminds us that the one who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood has also made us what He’s made us, made us what? He’s made us a Kingdom and priests. To do what? To serve His God and Father. In other words, the gospel doesn’t just forgive us, it reorders our identity in Christ and sends us into the world to serve. To be priests in God’s Kingdom means that we’re invited to live in two directions at once. I think N.T. Wright says something like, “We’re called to reflect God’s glory onto all of creation. And we’re called to bring the praises of all of creation before the presence of God.” Do you see these two directions? There’s an outward direction where we’re bringing the reality of God’s love into the lives of our neighbors, cities and the corners of the world that are aching for restoration. And then there’s the upward direction, bringing our hearts, fears, wounds, sins, joys and hopes into the presence of the God who loves us.

 

0:03:10.0 Jim Lovelady: We get to do these things, these two things. But in a world full of exhaustion and division and sorrow, this calling can feel overwhelming. And many of us are tired. Tired of trying to hold everything together, tired of pretending to be strong, tired of the grief and trouble that never seem to go away. And yet, here is the mercy. Jesus meets us in that very place. The one who calls us to serve as priests is the same one who frees, sustains and accompanies us. He goes with us. We’re not sent out to build the Kingdom of God for Him. We’re invited to participate with Him. So in today’s episode, we hear from someone who has lived this reality deeply. My guest today is Joel Hylton. He spent many years serving overseas and now helps lead Serge serving on the executive leadership team. He understands what it means that we belong to God because of Jesus and to joyfully serve God in the liberating power of His Spirit. Joel reminds us that our identity as beloved children is what frees us to live as God’s priestly people. Not by striving, but by resting in the one who loves us and sends us. This is a conversation about hope, calling and the beautiful mystery of serving Jesus, the one who made Himself servant of all.

 

 0:04:38.2 Jim Lovelady: My friend, Joel Hylton, welcome to Grace at the Fray.

 

0:04:44.0 Joel Hylton: Well, thank you. It’s good to be here.

 

0:04:46.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. You are finally… You are the last of the executive leadership team to be guest on the podcast. We finally got you. So thanks for being here.

 

0:04:55.1 Joel Hylton: Yeah, I’m honored to be here.

 

0:04:57.6 Jim Lovelady: Well, it’s been fun to think about what having the last of the four executive, the ELT, last of the four ELT could be. Because I know that there are folks within the company, but also folks outside the company that are like, “What is it like to lead this company? What is it like to be one of the leaders of the company? What is it like to be casting, vision and seeking the welfare of this mission’s agency that the Lord has given you responsibility over? ” So I’m looking forward to hearing your heart. And you are someone who I’ve loved getting to hang out with you because I feel like when we sit down at breakfast at the diner that we’ve gone to a couple times. There’s a space on the table with like, here’s the bacon and eggs and whatever. And then there’s this space for your heart. It’s like it’s just always there. So I appreciate that. Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever told you that. I just really do. I appreciate that. So thank you for that. So you gotta tell me your story. I don’t know, start wherever you want, but who are you? What are you doing here?

 

0:06:01.8 Joel Hylton: Yeah. That’s a good question. Sometimes I ask myself fairly, fairly frequently, what am I doing here? But no, I come from a family from the mountains in Virginia. But we lived all around and somehow made my way to college. And it was after having come to faith really. I read a book by Billy Graham called (Freedom from the) Seven Deadly Sins when I was like 11 years old and nobody else in my family was a Christian, but my sister had left it lying around. And I’m reading that book and thinking, boy, I’ve done all those sins or I want to do them in the near future.

 

0:06:46.4 Jim Lovelady: I have plans for those sins.

 

0:06:48.4 Joel Hylton: So yeah, I felt very convicted. Actually prayed a prayer at the end and so the rest is history. I mean, God found me. But fast forwarding then through college, I went to med school, so I’m a pediatrician and so married Cindy, my wife, and who’s a co-worker, married her just before medical school. And so we went through that together.

 

0:07:12.4 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah?

 

0:07:13.4 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:07:14.1 Jim Lovelady: I didn’t realize that. So, like, study partners.

 

0:07:18.8 Joel Hylton: Study partners. Well, she didn’t… I studied and she enabled me, including working and putting me through.

 

0:07:28.3 Jim Lovelady: Nice.

 

0:07:29.4 Joel Hylton: So yeah, we both had an interest in missions, but for some reason it just didn’t feel like God was leading us. We tested out a couple of things and we ended up in Asheville, North Carolina where I joined a practice and joined a church plant that was being led by a guy who was a disciple of Jack Miller. So I kept on thinking, were there different ways that, you know, God, are you leading us to something different than just practicing pediatrics here? I had a counseling degree. I was doing some counseling through the church and I just started praying, Lord, if you want us to do this, then make Cindy passionate. Because she was always willing but not passionate.

 

0:08:09.8 Jim Lovelady: Oh, interesting.

 

0:08:10.8 Joel Hylton: And I knew enough about myself through years of marriage that I was very self-centered and that actually led me to kind of a crisis in our marriage before this led me to the understanding that I needed grace and that there’s no way I could change myself. And again, God rescued me. Yeah, rescued us. And it was, you know, that’s a continuing rescue, but it was a real change in our life. And so that was one reason for me is I just wanted her to be passionate. And I didn’t want to tell her I was praying about doing something different because she would try to make it happen.

 

0:08:53.6 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah. And you recognized that dynamic in you as well as the dynamic in the marriage.

 

0:08:58.7 Joel Hylton: Yes.

 

0:08:59.2 Jim Lovelady: And it kind of dawned on you. This is like a prodigal son kind of dawned on me. Oh, if I do that, this is kind of what’s going to happen.

 

0:09:08.3 Joel Hylton: Yeah, yeah. So I prayed for five years. God, make Cindy passionate. And so we did this trip to Ireland with the World Harvest team. We were mentoring during a sonship week for interns, summer interns, and I loved it, but she was coming alive. And so we were on a long walk by the Irish Sea, and it was a beautiful, misty Irish day. And she told me, she said, “I’ve not trusted God with our children. And I repent of that.” And I’m going, it’s great for you to be repenting of those things. It’s always good to repent. And then, and then she said, “You don’t understand. This means that I feel free and I want to come to Ireland and do this and spend the rest of my life here.”

 

0:09:55.8 Jim Lovelady: You don’t understand what I’m saying.

 

0:09:57.4 Joel Hylton: Yeah. And I was like, at first I didn’t remember that I’ve been praying that.

 

0:10:03.5 Jim Lovelady: For five years.

 

0:10:03.9 Joel Hylton: Right. So, I just gently pushed back. This is a mountaintop high, you know, we’ll pray about it.

 

0:10:10.9 Jim Lovelady: That it’s the mist talking.

 

0:10:11.8 Joel Hylton: It’s the mist talking. So then I realized on the way back from our walk, I feel like God was nudging me and say, “Hey, remember you’ve been praying about this.” So I told her. And so a couple years later, we were there in Ireland.

 

0:10:26.9 Jim Lovelady: I’ve been secretly praying that the Lord would make you passionate about cross-cultural overseas missions.

 

0:10:31.9 Joel Hylton: About some sort of, you know, more ministry focused, including missions.

 

0:10:38.1 Jim Lovelady: Okay.

 

0:10:39.0 Joel Hylton: Yeah. Some sort of mission, whether it’s overseas or not. And that’s how I left pediatrics, left my pediatric practice, brought our family to Ireland, and we served in Ireland for four years. We had immigration problems there, so we moved to London, served there for seven years, and then we moved to Prague because we were doing apprenticeships. And my boss then, Josiah, was saying, “You need to try to learn a new language if you’re helping to train people who are learning new languages.” I’m like, “The operative word was try.”

 

0:11:12.6 Jim Lovelady: Thank you for saying the word try.

 

0:11:14.3 Joel Hylton: Yeah. Because otherwise I would not have gone to the Czech Republic. So we went to the Czech Republic, and we were there for five years before we moved back here.

 

0:11:21.2 Jim Lovelady: How’s your Czech?

 

0:11:22.1 Joel Hylton: It is not great. I can still order a little bit.

 

0:11:25.4 Jim Lovelady: So then, how long have you been with the company total? Do the math for me.

 

0:11:28.8 Joel Hylton: 18 and a half years overseas. Three years here, now, and then support raising for a couple years before that.

 

0:11:37.0 Jim Lovelady: And how long have you been with the executive leadership team?

 

0:11:41.6 Joel Hylton: For a little over two years now.

 

0:11:43.8 Jim Lovelady: Okay. How’s it been?

 

0:11:44.6 Joel Hylton: It’s been like drinking out of a fire hose. It’s been a lot to take in but it’s been a privilege to do the work. So, yeah. You know, I oversee the ministries of Serge, both overseas and in the US. And Cindy and I had already known so many of the people who work with us and been to a lot of the different places in our roles, and we love them, and it’s a privilege to serve in that way. And it’s a great team. It’s been changing a bit in the last couple of years, but it’s a great team.

 

0:12:25.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. It’s really fun to see, I mean, to be…I’m not in the meetings, but just to see the dynamics here in the home office of the four of y’all and how it’s this, here we are doing this new thing. Let’s go?

 

0:12:42.7 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:12:43.3 Jim Lovelady: What was it that made you go, “Okay, I’ll do it”? Because you were asked, right?

 

0:12:48.0 Joel Hylton: Right. I was asked to do it. Yeah.

 

0:12:50.3 Jim Lovelady: Did you say no at first, or was it like, well…

 

0:12:52.4 Joel Hylton: I had been asked by Josiah to serve as an interim in case it was needed, and so I had said yes to that. And I think that was because I understood that I could, with the Lord’s help and other people’s help, fulfill that role and was glad to do it and glad to serve for a short period of time in that way. So I was surprised when the ask was to take it longer term.

 

0:13:20.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. I said yes to this, knowing how unlikely it would be for me to actually have to do this.

 

0:13:26.2 Joel Hylton: Exactly. Exactly. That’s right.

 

0:13:29.5 Jim Lovelady: Surprise.

 

0:13:29.7 Joel Hylton: Surprise.

 

0:13:30.4 Jim Lovelady: Someone has been praying for five years.

 

0:13:33.0 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:13:33.4 Jim Lovelady: I think that’s what that means.

 

0:13:34.7 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:13:35.1 Jim Lovelady: You are part of leading the company. I want to hear some of your hopes and dreams and some of the things that have been on your heart. Like, some of the burdens that have been on your heart. I know over the last couple years, you and Cindy have done, like, the royal tour where you have visited all of our field workers, and that’s been like, a chance for you to see those folks in their location. And it’s been kind of like, this is… I want to see what y’all are up to, and I want to pray for you, and I want to encourage you where you are. It hasn’t been this thing of like, the royal tour, where it’s like, well, let me go the royal tour of, like, the British Empire.

 

0:14:18.5 Joel Hylton: I gotcha. I used to live there.

 

0:14:20.3 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah, that’s right.

 

0:14:21.1 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:14:21.5 Jim Lovelady: It’s mostly for the people that didn’t see that…What’s the movie my wife made me watch? The Crown.

 

0:14:29.0 Joel Hylton: Right?

 

0:14:29.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s my whole reference to what I’m talking about right now is based on my wife making me watch The Crown.

 

0:14:35.1 Joel Hylton: Right.

 

0:14:35.5 Jim Lovelady: So the tour where they’re kind of like, “Hey, you belong to us. Hey, you belong to us. You belong to us.” That was not the posture. It was like, I want to encourage you and where you are and get to know you, and so you’ve kind of gotten to know everybody, but I don’t know how much folks have gotten to know you. And so part of why I’m glad to have you here in the studio is for you to share your heart. I mean, I feel like you’re eager to always just have your heart on the table. So, yeah, are some of your hopes and dreams? What have been some of the burdens that you’ve seen over the last couple years? What are you passionate about in terms of the past, present, and future of the company? So, I mean, ready, set, go.

 

0:15:20.2 Joel Hylton:  Okay. There are two things that I feel like that I try to hold, and I think that ELT does, too, and a large extent, the ADs as well. One is how to care for our workers, how to try to make sure they have rest and refreshment, and then how do they live a sustainable lifestyle that’s also just like giving their life away on mission, you know, following the call to pick up your cross. The other thing is that what are we aiming for? What is God leading us together to accomplish? That comes from the way the Spirit leads us on the field, like at each place, God is inviting us to join into something that He’s already doing.

 

0:16:04.2 Jim Lovelady: He’s already doing.

 

0:16:04.8 Joel Hylton: Yeah, he’s already doing. So He’s inviting us into that place. And then how collectively do we do that together? That’s a summary of what I think about all the time. And so this past summer, we were talking some as an ELT, and I was trying to think about what this next fiscal year, what’s that going to be? And thinking about, we had a company conference coming on this next May with a leadership conference as well. And so just thinking, well, in this world, that seems particularly out of control with threats worldwide to me, even more than with pandemic, because there’s so many different places those threats arise, you know, in this world, do we as a leadership team, the ELT and also the ADs.

 

0:16:54.0 Jim Lovelady: The area directors.

 

0:16:55.4 Joel Hylton: The area directors.

 

0:16:55.6 Jim Lovelady: In their own location around the world.

 

0:16:58.3 Joel Hylton: Yeah. And together as we come together, and we just got together in Spain for strategy meetings. And so how do we think about that as we come together? Do we spend our organizational focus and energy, really just trying to respond to the possible threats and repair some of our weaknesses, which we often talk about? Do we spend most of our energy doing that? Or is God calling us to think further about vision and where He’s calling us to, you know, what is at the near horizon that He wants us to be getting up to? And I was happening to be reading in Revelation, and so I was reading, I was like 20 chapters in, and there was something that kind of really challenged me, like about obedience and all this stuff. And so somehow I just flipped back to the first chapter and started reading the first chapter.

 

0:18:00.3 Jim Lovelady: Oh, really?

 

0:18:01.1 Joel Hylton: Yeah. And it was this beautiful. It’s this beautiful passage, John 1, I think it’s four through eight, something like that.

 

0:18:08.1 Jim Lovelady: Revelation.

 

0:18:09.0 Joel Hylton: Revelation. Yeah, it’s John. So John is saying, “Grace and peace to you.” And then he talks about “from Him who is and was and is to come.” And then he talks about the seven spirits before the throne, which turns out some people think is the Holy Spirit. Other people not so sure. And then from the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

0:18:35.7 Jim Lovelady: The faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

 

0:18:40.3 Joel Hylton: Exactly. The faithful witness. The faithful witness who is faithful to the end and is calling us to be faithful. Yeah. But then he shifts into this doxology John does, where he says this line to Him who loves us, to Him who loves us. And that hit me as his grace and peace is from the triune God to us right now. Because Revelation was written during a time when there was the threat of persecution and real persecution. So a time it sometimes feels like now in terms of just the threat, all kinds of threats, not just persecution. And so what is he saying? What is he saying to that church and what is he saying to the church ongoing? Because it’s a book for all time. And so here it is, “Grace and peace to you from the one who loves us.” So I’m just thinking He loves us. And what does that mean? What is he saying? And so the next couple of phrases just also popped out. So it was like the one who loves us, who freed us from our sins by His blood, I think it says. And also who made us a Kingdom, priests to his God and Father to Him be glory and dominion.

 

0:20:07.0 Joel Hylton: And yeah, so it was just like, okay. And if you look at that, it’s got both of the two hands that I was talking about. It’s that personal freed us from our sins by His blood. Personal to us and us as a group of people. So it’s very, yeah, the grace to us, I’d say. But then there’s also made us a Kingdom of priests to His God, and that’s the outward facing. That’s the, He has given us grace by giving us the privilege to join in His mission even in a broken and threatening world. And we can rely on that grace. So that just kind of blew me away.

 

0:20:55.6 Jim Lovelady: I was following along. You pretty much have it memorized, so I know that you’ve been sitting with it for a while.

 

0:21:01.4 Joel Hylton: Yeah. So I started, it really hit me in the, I think it was the end of June. And, you know, I just have kept kind of going back to it and thinking about it and praying it through and thinking about, what does that mean? So then we talked about it as an ELT. I thought, hey, guys, what do you think about this, even as a theme, maybe for the company conference? This is how I want to approach those September meetings. This is how I want us as a leadership to approach how we both care for our workers in a pastoral way, but care for our workers in a way that reminds them that the mission is ongoing. Jesus loves us, is with us, the Spirit of God is in us, pushing us or calling us, leading us forward.

 

0:21:54.2 Jim Lovelady: I want to talk about these two things backwards. I want to talk about the first one, the Kingdom priests serving our God. Like, what does that look like? You know, what does it mean to be Kingdom priests like has you been wrestling with Jesus? What does that look like?

 

0:22:09.9 Joel Hylton: Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah, we talk a lot about the Kingdom of God and that in our company, as you know, that the church carries a mission of God and that’s to represent in some way the Kingdom of God on Earth. And so we’re not building the Kingdom of God here in a way that is going to, at each place last as the peaceful Kingdom of God, because what God has done in history, has done these beautiful things and places, changed culture in a beautiful way for good. And had hospitals there and were treating the sick. And His name proclaimed the people coming to faith in great numbers. Lots of churches planted. If you look at that centuries later, it’s not there. So it’s us living out the values of the Kingdom of God in the holistic way that we talk about in our ministry, preaching and teaching and healing. It’s about us doing that and trusting that God will bring the eternal out of what we’re doing now.

 

0:23:36.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, I think about. Well, okay, so a couple of things came to my mind when you were talking. The first one was the interview that I did with Ian Duguid a while back recently. It was this idea that the minute, it seemed same kind of idea. The analogy he used was like that of a tree, that a tree grows up and it doesn’t just perpetually stay a tree. I mean, this isn’t Lothlórien, this is Earth that we live in where trees have this cycle, a life cycle where they bear much fruit and then they die, and so the life cycle of a tree to bear much fruit and then die, you know, bear much fruit and then now you’re done, you know. Well, we have these forests that are there because trees that have borne much fruit, and then they’re gone. And then the next, now it’s somebody else’s turn. And so it’s kind of… I love that you have this recognition that there are seasons, you know, and the other vision in my imagination was like, apparently from like a geological standpoint, the Sahara Desert used to be, like, thriving. I don’t know if it’s forest or whatever. It didn’t used to be a desert, you know, but that area of the world was a thriving it was green. And I’m no geologist, but it comes up on my TikTok feed and I’m like, well, that’s fascinating. And then five minutes later, I’m onto the next thing. I should really take notes when I’m watching TikTok.

 

0:25:19.0 Joel Hylton: It sounds like you’re doing all right to me.

 

0:25:20.9 Jim Lovelady: Well, it’ll be okay. Everything will be okay. But that’s the thing, it’s like while the Lord is moving in this place, we want to be participating in it and looking for the ways that while the Lord is working on in His Kingdom, in this way, we want to be people who are priests who bring people into the presence of God and bring the glory of God into the presence of people. You know, like that’s what priests do, this mediatorial kind of thing. And for the time that the Lord has given us, and we’re not going to worry about it after that, you know, And I love that Ian had this sober minded, trusting in the sovereignty of God perspective, and I love that you’re echoing that. I think a few episodes later you’re echoing that same idea.

 

0:26:07.9 Joel Hylton: Yeah. And I do think it’s important what you added with the priests, bringing people, bringing situations into the presence of God and asking God to respond, because that’s a very peaceful thing to do. It’s inviting somebody into there. It’s not forcing anything. And so sometimes we think about the Kingdom of God just to know it’s the things of judgment, those things are in God’s hands and not ours that we’re just inviting.

 

0:26:39.5 Jim Lovelady: I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we here at the headquarters in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We gather on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray, and this week we’re praying for our teams in Ireland. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks, give them joy in their work in Your Kingdom and the pleasure of Your joy as they follow You. Give them wisdom and let Your grace abound in their relationships with one another with family members and children, and with the people they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness. Restore to them the joy of Your salvation and let Your Kingdom come and Your will be done in these places, just as it is in heaven. We pray in Your name. Amen.

 

0:27:32.6 Jim Lovelady: Now back to the conversation. I think that that’s another aspect of trusting in the sovereignty of God. When I find myself trying to be coercive, I know that it’s just kind of like yellow flags or maybe even sometimes red flags are flying where the Spirit’s like, “Hey, isn’t it what do you think? Do you think that’s my job or is that your job? ” And I’m like, “I think it’s my job, but it’s probably Yours, isn’t it?” And the Holy Spirit’s like, “Yeah, there, that one, it’s my job to be responsible for that you don’t have to be responsible for that you don’t need to judge. You don’t need to be the one who brings condemnation. You don’t need to be the one who’s threatening, don’t use fear, perfect love casts out all fear. Be discerning, absolutely. I’ve given you authority to be discerning. I’ve not given you the authority to be the arbiter of my vengeance or however my heart wants to be like, I got this. Hold my beer, Jesus,” kind of thing, you know? So it’s convicting and then. And then I repent, and then I back off. But I can also fall on the other side too, where I’m like, “Well, God will work it all out.” And God’s like, “Yeah, through you, so be brave and jump in.” And I’m like…

 

0:28:48.7 Joel Hylton: Speak the truth in love.

 

0:28:50.8 Jim Lovelady: Right. We’re working in God’s Kingdom as His priests who mediate, bringing God’s glory into the realm of darkness and reflecting His glory to places that are dark and then bringing those folks who have been trapped and bringing them into the realm of God, the realm of peace. I love that you use the word peace and you use it intentionally, and I want to know why.

 

0:29:20.7 Joel Hylton: Well, I think that the word peace, the Hebrew word shalom, carries with it this, it’s a lot bigger picture than just personal inner peace. It’s a lot bigger picture than just peace between individuals. I forgot who wrote the book. Somebody wrote the book on the way it’s supposed to be. And as a philosopher, anyway, he talked about shalom as being the way it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be where everything works together as it should. All of our relationships, everything we do works together as it should to reflect God’s love and His mercy. And so, yeah, peace is what we long for. Peace is what we need. It’s the opposite of what we have right now. What it feels like in the world. We’ve never really had true peace in the world, but I think it just stands out more.

 

0:30:24.3 Jim Lovelady: There’s an awareness. I’ve been feeling it lately. We were talking in the kitchen about sadness, fatigue or lament fatigue or tragedy fatigue. You know, I’m just like tired of all the… Just one thing after the other. And so the recognition of something that has always been lacking, like real, full, whole shalom. I just, sometimes I forget that it’s lacking. Sometimes things just feel okay. Sometimes things are, oh, it’s a good day. You know, in other days, it’s like I am tired of the world not being the way it is meant to be. So.

 

0:31:02.2 Joel Hylton: Yeah, and I think that’s another part of… So I’ve been reading in John pretty broadly the gospel as well. And that idea of the Spirit moving inside of us, inhabiting us, and then inhabiting the church, is longing for something that is far better than whatever we have. And that whole how do we stay so that we are sad, that we grieve, that we lament, but also how do we stay in the joy? How do those things work together? And I think that they do, but I think the Spirit is leading us in those ways to continue to desire change. And then He’s leading us into actually what can make change. So He’s leading us on mission. Yeah.

 

0:32:00.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Okay. So we talked about the first thing, this outward movement that is Kingdom oriented with this priestly vocation. And it’s like, well, that’s cool. In the vision is one of shalom and wholeness, which is a worthy endeavor. I love that you use that word. I love that you use that word intentionally. I love that you have… It’s like you have your eye on. This is where we’re going. We are moving toward the shalom of Christ, you know, but immediately I’m like, okay, well, how? Sure, but how can we have that? You know, and I think that your answer is going to be in this first one. That’s why I kind of flip them to do that second one first. And now this first one second of the first part of the passage. What does Revelation say? How does He who freed us, He who loves us and freed us, how does that really, actually genuinely, seriously motivate and empower this idea of Kingdom priests serving our God?

 

0:33:09.1 Joel Hylton: Yeah, it’s interesting that he uses the word there, freed. Yeah, freed us from our sins because that’s both taking the problem of guilt and freeing us from the condemnation that we deserve. But it also frees us from the chains of the enemy, the evil one who wants to bind us in our sin so that we are self concerned. We have no faith to complete the sort of the three different kind of cultures, the honor/shame, fear/power, guilt/innocence. Then this power of God to break those chains, to break those things in our lives to use us to make change. So we need all three of those things so that we’re left in awe of how God rescues us undeserving people from our sins in all of those ways, and especially then in a way that makes us a holy place in some ways so that the Spirit can come into our lives and then empower us in this way to move into mission. Give us eyes that see, help us recall the words of Jesus and be active in the world around us, convicting the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, as it says in John 17, I think it is, no, 16. Yeah. I mean, there’s so much more you could say about that.

 

0:34:51.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. You’re unpacking these huge, or you’re talking about these huge aspects of what it means to follow Jesus. And I’m like, oh, yeah, it is just the priestly nature of our vocation is bigger than I thought and oh, it is for freedom that Christ set us free. And it’s not by fear that he set us free, it’s by His love that He set us free. And where was His love most magnified? On the cross. And where was His victory? I don’t know about most inaugurated, but where was it inaugurated? In His resurrection and so there’s victory to Him who loves us and freed us from our sins by His blood.

 

0:35:36.7 Joel Hylton: Yeah. And it’s our model for dying. It’s dying.

 

0:35:41.2 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:35:41.6 Joel Hylton: Unless the seed falls to the ground and dies, there’s no fruit.

 

0:35:46.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:35:48.1 Joel Hylton: So but He doesn’t leave us without the power and He doesn’t leave us without relationship and without His ongoing love, which we experience and that makes us want to love in return and changes us. Like we’re looking with, you know, unveiled faces or open eyes at the unveiled face of Christ, and He’s changing us from because we see His glorious, beautiful love for us.

 

0:36:17.1 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:36:17.5 Joel Hylton: And He changes us.

 

0:36:18.7 Jim Lovelady: Well, I mean, that’s what happened when you were sitting with Revelation 1 for a bit.

 

0:36:22.6 Joel Hylton: You’re like, yeah.

 

0:36:23.5 Jim Lovelady: Wait, are you really like this? Are you really like, like I saw it in your face as you were describing it as you were describing your experience of sitting with Revelation 1 and like, that’s why I call you a bit of a mystic, because there’s something, some experience that you had that is mysterious that, how do you write about this? How do you use words to describe this thing that is kind of beyond words? And, well, thank God that you can just say, “Well, read Revelation 1.” And that’s kind of what I experienced.

 

0:36:55.3 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:36:55.6 Jim Lovelady: You know, I don’t know if it was on the day of the Lord that you read it. Like John, he was in, how does he put it? It was basically like one Sunday morning, I guess, is how I think about it. It’s in Revelation somewhere, it’s one of those…

 

0:37:08.8 Joel Hylton: I was in the Lord or something like that, yeah, yeah.

 

0:37:12.0 Jim Lovelady: So clearly that happened and has impacted you. And you had this mystical kind of experience where you met with the Lord. And it’s like, this is how I want you to lead or to be part of leading this organization. You said a lot of things that were, like, paradoxical. And I don’t remember all of them, but I could go back and review the tape, but there’s… It just seemed like, and you did this a lot, like, on this and then this. And it was like, paradox. How do you hold those things together? How do you hold all of these? You know, like the joy. Here’s one. The joy and the sorrow. You mentioned that one. How do you hold those things together? And how do you help lead an organization that is living out those paradoxes? Our field workers are very much living out those kinds of paradoxes.

 

0:38:05.7 Joel Hylton: My first thought, and that’s a great question, my first thought is that just thinking about how humans are and that we’re thinking beings and we’re also feeling beings, and that we’re meant to engage in scripture and in truth, with both of those sides, God is offering His heart and His thoughts to us. So we’re engaging with our heart and our thoughts. Then we’re talking to each other with our heart and our thoughts and our feelings aren’t always logical, but yet there’s something that’s true about them. And so we need to think about and think about our experience and what is really true, what is really God leading us to with those things together. And so I think that helps me hold together paradox. I think that’s part of my personality that is more and more comfortable with paradox. I think that lament and joy is a beautiful kind of picture of those two because they don’t seem to go together. But unless you’ve really grieved the harm that you’ve done or grieved the harm to other people. Unless you’ve brought those things to God, you don’t let go of the effect of those things. And so if you don’t let go the effect of those things, then you can’t, it’s harder to enter really into the full joy. And especially joy is that deep sense of blessing. And so, I think that’s how I hold the paradox together.

 

0:39:50.4 Jim Lovelady: We talk about the radicality of grace, how grace is just way more profound and shocking and mysterious than we realize, you know, and I love just even how as we’re talking about the paradoxes and the grace in that is, yet God can hold this. I can be full of joy and I can be full of sorrow. And I don’t have to understand it. It’s just going to be what it is. And the Lord is big enough in His grace to hold those things. There is space in the Kingdom, in his Kingdom of grace for that thing to be perplexed but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. All these paradoxes that are in the midst of, like, this is raw this is, like… I love Paul’s like, he lists off all of these things that had been happening to him. And in reference to perplexed and not abandoned, struck down and not destroyed. You know, he’s like shipwrecked and washed up at sea. And he goes to warm himself. He’s soaked. He warms himself by the fire and he gets bit by a snake. And it’s like, what is happening? You know, and it’s like perplexed but not abandoned.

 

0:41:09.6 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:41:10.0 Jim Lovelady: And the Lord in His grace looks at us and He goes, “I see all of you thinker, feeler, embodied human. I see all of you. And you belong because I have freed you by my blood, you belong, here you are. I love you.” He loves us and we sit with that paradox. And I don’t know, it feels like you’re just wanting to lean into that and take it seriously. You know, it’s not anything in you. It’s not like you’re… Maybe your temperament is more inclined to that. But I mean, your temperament’s going to come to an end somewhere. Joy and sorrow don’t match.

 

0:41:50.3 Joel Hylton: No, I’ve had to learn that over time.

 

0:41:52.6 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:41:53.1 Joel Hylton: I’ve had to learn that over time. And I think in terms of how do I lead out of paradox? How do I lead out of that? I think it’s just knowing that the life of an overseas worker in this business will always have some sort of suffering, always have some sort of grief and sadness, but will also taste the joy. Taste and see that the Lord is good in the ways that we see life, we see changes happen. We just approved someone who’s a physical therapist. And just as she talked about the joy of actually just touching people and helping them be healed and hoping that that would lead at some point to a conversation about Jesus, but not knowing which one it’s going to be. And there’s that beauty in that, you know, just in. In conversations with people and trying to understand where they are and what do they need and how, even if there’s some friction is how can I honor both of those things in them and speak the truth in love.

 

0:43:11.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:43:11.5 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:43:12.1 Jim Lovelady: I love that we can say physical therapists need to be missionaries, too, and mechanics and…

 

0:43:18.6 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:43:19.0 Jim Lovelady: I don’t know. Pick any vocation. It’s going to be a priestly vocation.

 

0:43:22.8 Joel Hylton: Yeah. Amen. You know, and you can do that in your home country.

 

0:43:27.9 Jim Lovelady: Right?

 

0:43:28.2 Joel Hylton: And it’s a priestly vocation, too, yeah.

 

0:43:30.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. If you were exposing people to the glorious, generous God and if you are reflecting His glory back to those people, that’s a priestly endeavor. And something beautiful is going to happen in the intricacy of being a physical therapist or a mechanic or, I don’t know, a trash man, an airplane pilot, you know, whatever, it doesn’t matter.

 

0:43:58.2 Joel Hylton: And a pediatrician or a podcaster.

 

0:44:00.1 Jim Lovelady: That’s right. That’s right. So all right, last question so you have this deep longing and hope for how the Kingdom of God will be made known, not just in the world, but in our company. What does that look like for you? As you set your longings before the Lord, as you give them to the Lord and go, “Okay, this is what I want. This is what I hope for our people.” What does that look like? How do you use words to describe… How does a mystic use words to describe hopes and longings for the company?

 

0:44:35.6 Joel Hylton: My first thought is just in prayer. My first thought is taking those longings in prayer.

 

0:44:42.7 Jim Lovelady: What are they?

 

0:44:44.1 Joel Hylton: The longings? Yeah. Well, I think you described them. I think it’s. Yeah. That our people would find themselves in Christ. They’d find themselves in the love of Christ, that would be able to rest. They would be able to put their work down at night, knowing that God is still at work and he gives to His beloved sleep. So to find rest and know that they’re not carrying the burden of the work that God is. But also sharing together, because we try to work on teams, we try to work on teams is sharing together what the gospel means for one another. One of the things that we talk about in our company, in leadership, is how do you help to create an atmosphere of grace on your teams so that you’re working together in grace? How do you, as a leader, even when you don’t feel like it, how do you repent inside so that you’re not responding out of anger or disappointment? That’s not your lead. You’re leading out of grace. And for you, sometimes that’s just internal brokenness as you try to offer some kindness. And sometimes it’s easier, more joyful and joyous.

 

0:45:57.8 Joel Hylton: But how do we do that together as a community of grace? And somebody told me actually of a podcast that he’d been listening to that talked about the book of, I think it was 1 Peter, maybe 2 Peter, but he was commentating on it, that we’re actually a community of suffering. The church is a community of suffering. So how do we hold that together? I feel like I’m repeating myself, but with a sense of joy, yeah. And celebration and fun. How do we be a community that people would actually look at and go… I think Tim Keller said at one point, be the person or be a community where somebody says, “That’s the kind of Christian that I could be.” I can be that kind of Christian, that I would like to be that kind…

 

0:46:48.3 Jim Lovelady: And you want to be.

 

0:46:48.9 Joel Hylton: You want to be in that community. But yet it’s, the next movement to me of learning Jesus’s love is what it’s like to not put yourself first. Like, that’s the school of life, that’s the school of marriage, the school of parenting. It’s the school of friendship. It’s like I really yearn to put myself first.

 

0:47:11.9 Jim Lovelady: And that’s where it all starts right it’s like, oh, these lofty and beautiful ideas are beautiful in and of themselves, except when I want to participate in them. It means I have to go, oh, I have to be kind to my wife and I have to be patient with my children.

 

0:47:27.4 Joel Hylton: Right. And I sure don’t. I don’t feel like it. And besides that, I just yelled.

 

0:47:32.5 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:47:32.9 Joel Hylton: You know.

 

0:47:33.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Now how am I going to get out of this?

 

0:47:35.3 Joel Hylton: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s that. But when we repent and God starts to change us and we live a little bit more self sacrificially, we start to understand a little bit more what Jesus’ love is really like. And if He can love sacrificially, then we can have a sense of, oh, I’m feeling that love that I never thought that I can’t conjure that up. Where did that come from?

 

0:48:07.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, that’s the grace and peace that John to the seven churches in Asia. Grace to you and peace from Him who is and was and is to come from the seven spirits who are before His throne, from Jesus Christ, the faithfulness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings, of all the kings of the Earth. You know, it’s like, that’s, okay, help me to remember that.

 

0:48:32.5 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:48:33.1 Jim Lovelady: The one who loves me and freed me.

 

0:48:36.1 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:48:37.1 Jim Lovelady: Okay, I’ll go, be kind.

 

0:48:38.1 Joel Hylton: Yeah.

 

0:48:38.7 Jim Lovelady: Are you going to go with me?

 

0:48:39.8 Joel Hylton: Yeah. Because I need it.

 

0:48:41.5 Jim Lovelady: I need you to be with me.

 

0:48:42.4 Joel Hylton: I need it. Yeah. Can’t do it myself.

 

0:48:45.2 Jim Lovelady: Right. That’s so good. Well, my friend, I’ve said it already. I’m repeating myself, but I think it’s worth repeating that. I just appreciate how when I sit down with you, it’s not hard for me to hear where your heart is. And, yeah, it’s just there. Here’s what it is: here’s the Savior that loves me. And I really appreciate that.

 

0:49:11.0 Joel Hylton: Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for having a conversation that easily draws those things out.

 

0:49:20.2 Jim Lovelady: Amen.

 

0:49:21.1 Joel Hylton: Amen.

 

0:49:22.1 Jim Lovelady: Go team.

 

0:49:22.6 Joel Hylton: Go Jesus.

 

0:49:25.1 Jim Lovelady: As Joel shared his heart, he held together the paradoxes that we Christians have to learn to live in. Like the ache of a hurting world and the joy of God’s presence, ah, that’s tension. The call to costly love and the freedom of being carried by grace. There’s tension there. And the longing for shalom and the promise that Christ will finish what he’s begun. There’s tension there. It takes a lot of humility to lead while holding these paradoxes in tension. And I really appreciate how Joel is seeking to lead out of his own weakness. I mean, that’s a paradox in itself, right? Leading from weakness well, we at Serge offer a course for leaders who want to learn how to lead like Jesus. It’s called Leadership Lab. If you’re asking questions like how is leadership supposed to make me more like Jesus instead of wearing me out?

 

0:50:25.8 Jim Lovelady: Or what does it look like to genuinely love the people I lead, even when I have to make tough decisions? Or how does the gospel help me have hard conversations with grace and compassion? Or how about this one? How can I lead others if I’m struggling with my own sin? If you’re asking these questions, this course is for you and registration is open now and I’ll leave a link in the show notes, or you can just go to serge.org and search leadership Lab to sign up. And as we’re moving toward the end of the year, I want to encourage you to give to the work of Serge. If you’re a regular donor to any of our missionaries, or if you’ve given toward specific projects or to our general fund, I want to say thank you for your generosity. You’re helping us serve a world that is in desperate need of God’s grace. So thank you. And I want you to know that there are many financial needs at Serge that our development team works tirelessly to meet. And every gift is crucial to our work. So please, please give.You can go to give.serge.org to start your gift today. And if you are in ministry and you’re tired, tired of holding the paradoxes, tired of leading, tired of struggling with your own brokenness, I want to thank you for serving. And my prayer for you is that you would experience the joyous freedom in the one who knows you are tired. This conversation with Joel reminds me of Psalm 84:10 “One day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere, and I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.” Why is it better to be a doorkeeper in the house of God? I guess for the same reason that it’s better to be a waiter or a waitress for the greatest chef in the world. And look, it’s not easy to serve in Christian ministry. There are many times where I felt like I’m running from the kitchen, back to the tables, back to the kitchen, back to the tables, serving up some amazing meals for some people, but all the while wondering, hey, what am I going to eat? What about me? And this is the grace of God, as I’m running back and forth from kitchen to table. And there’s a moment where Jesus grabs my attention and He says something like, “Hey, when your shift is over at 2:00 AM, meet me out back behind the restaurant because I made something special for you.” The mystery of the Christian life is that Jesus finds a way to minister to His servants in beautiful and glorious ways that words just can’t express. But I can tell you right now that the Lord has met me and ministered to me and brought me to tears in surprising and unexpected ways. So if you’re tired, listen for the voice of Jesus as He speaks directly to you and says, “Hey, beloved, I made something special for you.” And my prayer is that you will be able to serve Him out of His promise that He will serve you. You can empty yourself of everything that is in you because your Savior has emptied Himself in service to you. So go serve your Savior. Go dish out the endless supply of grace so that the world can taste and see that the Lord is good and go with His blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you, turn His bright eyes to you, and give you His peace in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God, life everlasting. Amen.

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