Funmi has made her decision. After months of prayer, arguments with herself and long talks with her mother, she will register to practise as a nurse in the United Kingdom. Her English test is behind her. Ahead lies the computer-based test, and after that the practical examination, the OSCE, where she will be watched as she carries out real nursing tasks against a strict standard.
She bought the study materials in January. It is now May, and she has opened them perhaps nine times.
It is not that she does not care. She cares more than anyone. But her life is full of good reasons. Night shifts at the general hospital leave her drained. Tolu, her daughter, needs help with homework and needs her mother to simply be present. Her phone buzzes all day: the ward’s WhatsApp group, the family group, the church group, a cousin asking for school fees, an aunt asking for hospital bills, and a stream of videos that start as a rest and end an hour later. Every evening Funmi tells herself that tomorrow she will begin properly. Every tomorrow arrives already full.
Funmi does not have a passion problem. She has an engagement problem. She has set an expectation, but she has not yet engaged it.
What It Means to Engage
To engage means to occupy the attention and effort of a person. It means to attract and hold fast, to bind as by pledge and promise. When a couple gets engaged, they bind themselves to a future. When an army engages the enemy, it commits to the fight.
The phrase rules of engagement comes from the military. Before soldiers go into battle, their commanders set rules for what they will and will not do, and when. Those rules are not written in the heat of the fight. They are written beforehand, in the calm, so that when the noise and fear arrive, nobody has to decide from scratch.
To meet any expectation, you need rules of engagement too. In Jeremiah 30:21 the Lord asks a remarkable question: “who is this that engaged his heart to approach unto me?” God noticed the one who engaged his heart. Engagement is not a feeling of interest. It is the binding of your heart to a course of action.
Scripture gives us two men who did this well. When the rest of Israel’s spies came back afraid, Caleb and Joshua were different. God said they “have wholly followed the LORD” (Numbers 32:12). Wholly means with nothing held back. They had engaged.
And when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, hungry after forty days, He did not debate with the devil from scratch. He answered from rules already settled: “It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). His response had been decided long before the temptation came.
The Four D's
There are four D’s that help you engage passionately with an expectation.
Developmental capacity. Doctors use a developmental milestone chart to tell whether a child is growing normally. It shows when a child should sit, stand, speak and walk, and when something needs attention. Maturity has milestones too, and they have little to do with age. A forty-year-old can be immature and a twenty-year-old can be wise. The clearest sign of immaturity is a lack of responsibility. For any expectation to be met, someone responsible has to carry it. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Engagement begins when you stop waiting for someone else to make it happen.
What has changed since the first edition
When I wrote the first edition, the distractions I had in mind were mostly human. A neighbour who talked too long. A television left on. A friend with a crisis every week. Those are still with us, but this season has given distraction an engine.
The phone in your pocket was designed by some of the most talented people in the world to capture your attention and keep it. Every notification is a small tap on the shoulder. Every feed is built to have no bottom. Group chats, which are wonderful for staying connected, have turned many of us into people who are never fully anywhere. Funmi is not weak for struggling against this. She is outnumbered.
Funmi Writes Her Rules
One Sunday afternoon Funmi sat down with a notebook and wrote her rules of engagement for the next twelve weeks. She did not write a timetable full of hopes. She wrote rules for the specific battles she kept losing.
- If I come home from a night shift, then I sleep first and study for one hour before Tolu returns from school.
- If I am on a day shift, then I study for forty-five minutes after Tolu is in bed, before I open any chat.
- If the family group asks for money, then I reply within a day, but I give only from the amount I set aside at the start of the month.
- If I pick up my phone during study time, then I put it in the kitchen and set a timer for the rest of the hour.
- If I miss a study day, then I do not try to catch up by staying up all night; I simply do the next day’s session.
Dig this week
- Name the one distraction that has cost your expectation the most time in the last month. Write it down plainly.
- If that distraction shows up, then I will … Finish the sentence and write two more if-then rules for your hardest moments.
- Make room as if it is coming: tell one trusted person your rules and ask them to check on you in seven days.
Questions to ponder
- Where in your life are you still waiting for someone else to make your expectation happen?
- Which of the four D’s is strongest in you? Which is weakest?
- What legitimate, good things have been distracting you from your expectation?
- How much of your attention does your phone take in a typical day? Check its screen-time report and write down what you find.
- Can you recognize your obstacles before they arrive? Name one you can see coming this month.
More questions for small groups are in the book.
Lord, I engage my heart to approach You. Teach me to decide in the calm what I will do in the storm, and to follow You wholly, as Caleb and Joshua did.
How ready are you for what you are expecting?
Score yourself on all eleven elements in about two minutes. You will see where to dig first.