Last night I celebrated New Years Eve with my family and some friends. It has always been interesting to me how so many people start out the New Year with so many goals and resolutions, but don’t always make it very far before going back to their old habits. I have experienced that myself. It’s really easy to set a goal and start out after it, but then when it gets hard, it becomes even easier to make up excuses and reasons why that goal wasn’t worth it anyway. What happens to the passion and excitement that we start out with? The beginning is so easy, then it seems like life catches up to us and we find ourselves too busy to put energy into the new habits or goals we started off to reach. There is so much potential in being who we picture ourselves becoming, but it’s the hard work in getting there that can surprise us and stop us in our tracks. We shouldn’t let the world strip us of our confidence in wanting to be the people God created us to become. So many people settle for less then who they were meant to be, but we were meant to live for so much more than this world offers. Have we lost ourselves? To quote one of my favorite Christian bands… “I want more then fine, more than just ok…”
“Don’t spend today away, because soon it will be gone…. We are not infinite, we are not permanent, nothing is immediate, we’re so confident in our accomplishments, look at how dark it is. Life if still worth living.”
- Switchfoot (“Gone”)
Life would be so much easier if we could go through it twice. The second time around we would actually know what we were doing and get a head start on being who we want to be. We would know what job we actually liked, we wouldn’t have to waste time going through different relationships because we know who we were going to marry, we wouldn’t have to worry about where to live or many other things that we often question. Life would be a LOT easier… but then again it sure wouldn’t be much of an adventure if we had to live it twice (Plus, life isn’t meant to be easy, it’s meant to be a journey). It’s hard not knowing everything about life. I’m only 17 and yet, I look back on experiences and situations wishing I was able to go back with the wisdom and knowledge I have now and do it differently. Every decision has an outcome and every path a destination. The decisions we make can only be made once. We can’t rewind time and make them over again, we have to live through the results of choices we make. Sometimes we ARE blessed and receive a second chance to make certain decisions again, but we can’t rely on that all the time. We have to be intentional about the decisions we make everyday so that we can use the results to their full potential.
“The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.”
- Proverbs 27:12
When we are confronted with decisions or situations we will often have a ‘good or bad choice’ scenario. Most of the time we receive many different signals about where we are going. Either things are going well and we are on the right path, or things are going not so well and we want to think we are on the right path. We have to be very mindful about the direction our life is going. It shouldn’t be in the world hands… and we shouldn’t even trust our own hands to hold it, our life needs to be in God’s hands. It is so silly to think that the worry, anxiety or questioning we busy ourselves with will actually help our future, because it really doesn’t. The only trustworthy and sure thing in this world is God and His plan for us. So why not put some confidence in that and experience a life filled with blessings and miracles that blow our mind, rather then the average life that everyone can live? The sensible people who take wisdom from those around them, and most of all GOD, see the dangers that come from ignorant decisions and avoid them by taking refuge in God’s law. The simple carefree people will experience many warnings about the road they are on, but don’t see them or disregard them. They find themselves suffering through all the consequences of their decisions. It doesn’t have to be something big like a pregnancy before marriage or addiction, it can be something simple like not caring enough about important people in your life and feeling lonely, being too proud and making a mistake and feeling humiliated or putting to much faith in yourself and feeling God’s discipline. It’s what we do that makes the difference not just what we see. Seeing a bad outcome and not avoiding it is only a set up for ruin. However, heading to warning signs of danger and finding refuge in God’s arms provides us with a good harvest.
“Live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
- Ephesians 5:2
When finding wisdom or coming to a realization, we have to be patient. The people around us may come to the same point too, but we all think differently and God works in our hearts at different times. We need to be vessels for God to use to change and we can’t set sail with out a heading! We have to be sure that God is leading us and wait for His guidence. When we are surrounded by simple people we need to remember that even when they make us feel foolish or make it out like we are overreacting, we need to patient in knowing that God works in our lives in different ways and we shouldn’t judge how other people do thins…. if we open up our eyes, God might show us something that we can apply to our own lives. Some people don’t always ‘get it’ and find confidence in what they can understand. We can be caught off guard by those people who question what we do or even disagree. If we are following God’s Spirit and sowing good fruit then we can’t second guess ourselves or God! That only leads to confusion and can harm us. It’s hard to go through life with out feeling 100% sure of where we are going, but we CAN have full assurance in knowing that God know’s where we are going and we need to just trust in Him! As we remove the bad things in our life and transition from season to season, we need to do so with a sigh of relief rather than a pain of regret. It’s the direction of our lives that determines the destination.
“About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one an, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable.” – Eleanor Roosevelt (1961)
You may not be a famous athlete with incredible talent, you might not be good at math, playing with play-do or you may only know how to play “Mary had a little lamb” on the piano, but the level of our talents and abilities doesn’t decide who we can become. It’s the confidence and trust that we put in God that determines who we are capable of being. Even if we seem simple to the world, we are all amazing creations in Christ. My prayer is that we can all really understand that all things are possible with God and not take for granted the possibilities that promise hold! I hope it’s sooner rather than later! As we begin 2010 let’s remember to strive not for who we want to be, but for who God will make us capable of being. Let’s strive for those goals with confidence and achieve more than just ok!