The other day I had to renew my driver’s licence.

A new bad photo, a few clicks, and the privilege of paying the government for another ten years of driving around.

But something struck me. The last time I renewed my licence was ten years ago.

Ten. Whole. Years.

A decade. That’s a long time. (Am I old now?)

I started thinking about everything that’s happened since the last time I sat in front of that camera, awkwardly trying to look like a normal human being.

In ten years, Taren and I have welcomed two beautiful kids into the world. We’ve started Thunder & Son. I’ve started a tonne of micro-communities reaching young people, joined a new church, started another business, and even found myself sitting in a therapist’s office.

And that’s just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

How many holidays have we taken? How many times have I escaped to the mountains? How many meals have we shared with friends? How many people have come in and out of our lives?

How many mornings have I spent reading the Scriptures? How many prayers have I prayed? How many times have I met with God in the quiet, hidden places where nobody else was watching?

An entire decade of living. And I could have missed it.

There’s a saying from Morgan Snyder that I’ve carried with me for years:

“Live in the moment, but measure by the decade.”

I love that. Because if you’re anything like me, you’re probably tempted to measure your life far more frequently.

We measure our days by how productive we’ve been. Our businesses by how much money they’ve made. Our relationships by how connected we feel. Our faith by how close we feel to God. And depending on the day, the results can be wildly different.

One day you’re absolutely flying. Life is good. God’s moving. You’re making progress. You’re practically an Apostle, maybe one of the forgettable ones like Nathaniel.

The next day you forgot what patience even is, mumbled some prayer, and you’re wondering whether you’ve made any progress at all.

Up. Down. In. Out.

It’s exhausting.

And here’s the biggest trap.

The more we try to measure every moment, the less present we become in the moments we’re actually living.

We’re so busy evaluating our lives that we forget to enjoy them. We want to know whether we’re growing, succeeding, improving, becoming. And we want to know now.

But some things simply can’t be measured in a moment. Some things take a decade. Some things take a lifetime.

Nothing worth becoming can happen quickly. 

We live in a world obsessed with immediate results. Faster growth. Faster success. Faster transformation.

We want the shortcut, the hack, the five-step process that gets us where we want to go without having to endure the uncomfortable bits along the way.

And if we’re not careful, we bring that same mentality into our relationship with God. We want to pray about something on Monday and be a completely different person by Friday.

We want patience without ever being tested. Wisdom without making mistakes. Courage without experiencing fear. A deep relationship with God without spending years learning to recognise his voice.

But the pursuit of holiness doesn’t work that way.

James writes:

“Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:4

Let perseverance finish its work.

Not hurry up. Not find a shortcut. Not skip the difficult parts. Finish.

I’ve been following Jesus long enough now to realise that becoming like him is not nearly as straightforward as I once imagined.

In fact, I think in some ways it gets harder.

When you’re young in your faith, everything can feel exciting and full of possibility. You have this wonderful enthusiasm about who God is and what he might do.

And that’s beautiful.

But give it ten years. Even 20. Then come talk to me about hardship.

You experience disappointment. You pray prayers that seem to go unanswered. You watch people you love make decisions that break your heart. You see things you believed in fall apart. You get betrayed and hurt by the people you admired most.

You discover that life is considerably more complicated than you thought it was.

And perhaps most confronting of all, you discover that you are considerably more complicated than you thought you were.

I’ve learned things about myself over the last decade that, quite frankly, I would rather not have known.

I’ve discovered weaknesses, insecurities and patterns of thinking that I didn’t even realise were there.

And the strange thing is, the closer I’ve grown to God, the more clearly I’ve begun to see them.

But maybe that’s the point.

The more we know God, the more we uncover about ourselves. And the more we uncover about ourselves, the more we find ourselves leaning back into him.

Ten years ago, I probably thought spiritual maturity meant eventually needing Jesus a little less. Silly aye.

Having more answers. Making fewer mistakes. Getting my act together.

But now I’m beginning to wonder whether maturity looks almost exactly the opposite.

Maybe growing in holiness isn’t becoming less dependent on Jesus. Maybe it’s becoming increasingly aware of how much I actually need him.

And learning to trust him more because of it.

There’s a beautiful reflection in Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow that I’ve been thinking about lately.

Jayber looks back over his life and realises that what once felt like wandering through a dark forest of mistakes and confusion was, in fact, a life in which he had been led.

I love that image. Because I think so much of life feels like wandering when you’re in the middle of it. But the shepherd is leading in the valley, in the green pastures. We are led.

You don’t always know whether you’re making the right decision. You don’t always understand why something didn’t work out. You can’t always see what God is doing.

Sometimes you’re just trying to make the next faithful decision with the little bit of light you’ve been given.

And it’s only when you look backwards that you begin to recognise the path.

I look back over the last ten years and see plenty of things I wouldn’t have chosen.

Disappointments. Mistakes. Closed doors. Difficult conversations. Seasons of uncertainty.

There are things I wish I’d handled differently. Things I wish I’d understood sooner. Prayers I wish had been answered differently.

But I can also see how God has walked with me in those places. Even to bring to the surface who he meant when he meant Ben.

How he’s used people to shape me. How he’s gently exposed things in my heart. How he’s opened doors I didn’t even know existed.

And how, even when I couldn’t see where I was going, he hadn’t abandoned me.

I don’t think that means every decision was right or every painful experience was somehow good.

But I do believe God has been intimately involved orchestrating my initiation through it all.

And sometimes it takes ten years to begin recognising that.

Perhaps that’s one of the gifts of measuring by the decade.

You begin to see things that were impossible to recognise in the moment.

Theodore Roosevelt famously spoke about the man in the arena. Not the critic who points out where everyone else has stumbled, but the person who’s actually in there. The one who risks failure, gets knocked around, makes mistakes and keeps showing up. It’s the man in the arena that matters.

I think there’s something deeply important about that.

Because the longer you live, the more reasons you accumulate to become cynical.

You’ve been hurt before. You’ve been disappointed. You’ve seen good ideas fail and good people make terrible decisions.

And eventually, it can become tempting to protect yourself by simply not trying anymore.

Don’t put yourself out there. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t risk looking foolish.

Just stand back, fold your arms, and point out everything that’s wrong with the people who are still having a go.

And the dangerous thing is, cynicism can start to look an awful lot like wisdom. But they’re not the same thing.

Wisdom learns from disappointment. Cynicism uses disappointment as permission to stop trying.

I don’t want that to be my story. I want to be the kind of person who still has a go. Who still believes God can do extraordinary things through ordinary people.

Who still takes risks, starts things, loves people, opens his home, prays big prayers and occasionally looks like an absolute fool in the process.

Because sometimes you will get hurt. Sometimes you’ll get it wrong. Sometimes the thing you poured your heart into won’t work out the way you hoped.

But I’d rather reach the end of another decade with a few hurts from having a go than discover I spent ten years safely watching everyone else live.

Following Jesus has never been an invitation to sit comfortably on the sidelines. It’s an invitation to follow. To trust as we are being led.

In another decade, I’ll need to renew my licence again.

I’ll be ten years older. Probably a little greyer. Hopefully the photo will be better, although history suggests otherwise.

My kids will be teenagers.

Thunder & Son might look completely different. Our businesses might have grown, changed, or become something I can’t even imagine yet.

There will be people I haven’t met. Places I haven’t visited. Prayers I haven’t prayed. New Friends to make.

There will be joy and disappointment. Unexpected opportunities and things I never saw coming.

But when I stand there again, looking back over another decade, I hope I won’t be measuring my life by how much I’ve accomplished.

I hope I’ll be asking better questions.

Have I loved my wife well? Do my children know how deeply they’re loved? Have I remained generous with my time, my home and my resources? Have I grown in wisdom without becoming cynical? Have I become more patient? More courageous? More willing to admit when I’m wrong?

Have I learned to recognise God’s voice in the ordinary moments of life?

And perhaps most importantly:

After another ten years of following Jesus, do I still love him?

Not just know more about him. Not just have more stories about what he’s done. But actually love him.

Am I still willing to follow him wherever he leads?

Because I think that’s the kind of life I want.

Not one where every day is a victory. Not one where I never make mistakes or experience disappointment.

But a life of ordinary, imperfect faithfulness.

A life where I keep showing up. Keep learning. Keep repenting. Keep trusting.

A life where, when I finally look back, I can see that God was doing something beautiful, even in the moments I thought I was wandering.

So here’s to the next ten years.

To taking risks. To making memories. To spending time in the mountains. To prayers whispered in quiet rooms. To long dinners with good friends. To loving our families and serving our communities.

To the moments that nobody will ever see, but that might just shape who we become.

And to trusting God with the things that take longer than we’d like.

Because nothing worth becoming can happen quickly.

Live in the moment. Measure by the decade.

See you out in the field,

Ben