This is a weighty statement. It is not one you can just blow past or check off. But when the question is: how can I live my life with more of You, more peace, more connection, and this is God’s answer…what do you do? What will you do?
It stopped me cold in my tracks.
If minutiae is a demonic distraction, if fretting is evil, if my busyness just avoids the rest and trust in the Almighty, if there is more and all I have to do is reorder my life — then how and where do I begin?
This blows new year’s resolutions right out of the water. This requires a surrender of supposed needs, desires, wants, isms, have-to’s and ought-to’s.
Think of Abraham. Think of Deborah. Think of Paul. Their lives were as loaded, strained, demanding, and draining as ours. And, God totally interrupted their lives for a holy calling. I don’t think the calling was the “outcome.” I think the calling was saying yes when God asked them: Will you do whatever I ask? This is before the outcome was known. Maybe we deceive ourselves and think we will respond to God when He calls us to “big” things. But it is the “yes” in the moment He is after. Will you lay aside whatever YOU think is important to follow Him?
Think of Jesus. He actually knew and understood the outcome of His calling. Yet he was not hurried. He was not distracted from the person in front of Him, though the masses pressed in. Nor was He distracted by the person in front of Him, though they wanted more and more from Him. He was utterly present, and completely surrendered to His Father to live and move according to His will. His surrendered intimacy changed and challenged the status quo. He lived a “reordered” life. We can too.
But it might kill us in the process. What I mean is, it might kill the whims and excuses, the fads and phones, the complaints and crammed calendars. How about just keeping up with all the “stuff”? I don’t know about you, but I am ready for some of this to die off, not to become monks or hermits and withdraw from life. But to shed the layers of lies that keep us from our God and each other.
He and I are still talking about exactly how to “reorder” when I have obligations and others depending on me. But the first step was my “yes.” Yes Jesus, I am willing to do whatever it takes to have more of You. I will gladly trade the American manic panic lifestyle if I can have more of His presence. How about you?