Day 87 - Free
Scripture focus: I will heal their waywardness and love them freely. Hosea 14:4 NIV
God fully expects us to be wayward. This morning in my quiet time I listened to an interview with Eugene Peterson (he wrote The Message, an awesome modern translation of the Bible). Among other really good stuff, Peterson said, "Most of what we know about life is wrong, and especially [what we think we know] about God. We're ill-formed when we are born. Our imaginations are unsanctified. Christ is so central to inform our unsanctified imaginations." (You can check his thirty minute interview out on our website - www.northstarcommunity.com.)
God makes provision for our waywardness. Knowing that waywardness is a function of humanity, can we all just relax? We're going to find ourselves in a wayward state. Calm down. God will heal us and love us in the process. With this foundational truth in place, let's return to the topic of ambition.
"It was Niccolo Machiavelli who observed, 'Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach, we are never satisfied.' You can conclude ambition is a bad thing but the problem isn't ambition; it is what we are ambitious for. To lack ambition is to become complacent. To lose our passion is to become apathetic. If this is our only option, now that's pathetic! Have you noticed, by the way, that those with great ambitions have a disproportionate effect on the future? The future is not simply entered into; it is created. To create we must first dream, then act. The future doesn't happen by accident; it happens through engagement. We were created to strive for progress and to pursue it with passion. It is God who designed us this way. He made us creative, and he makes us responsible. Somehow there are many of us who have missed this point. We have allowed human history to be shaped by those who are distant from God and hostile toward people. Evil never looks for permission...too many of those who long for a better world have sat passively by, watching and wishing the world could be different. God created us to engage, solve problems, meet needs, do something with our lives. He made us to get involved and expects us to act." Soul Cravings, Erwin McManus, entry 6, Destiny.
Do you remember the other yukky thing that happens to a stressed out mid-brain? It goes into survival mode. Survival mode kicks in and we get kicking. This is natural and normal, but it is motivated solely by the passionate desire for SELF preservation. A stressed out brain is a problem because big dreams can't inhabit a brain that is in full-blown survival mode.
So let's put these two seemingly random points together: We need maturity and healing so that we can prepare to passionately pursue our dreams. Don't mistake obsessive cravings with a big dream. Calm down. God is here; He is with us. He loves us. He has promised to hear our cries, respond and rescue us. Faith and trust allow us to calm down and wait. This isn't the kind of passive waiting that thinks that good things come to those who sit around waiting for God to hand deliver our destiny to us like the UPS guy/gal!
It's a God thing to pursue our dreams passionately; but it is a bad thing when our passionate pursuits are fueled by fear.
Recommended reading: Deuteronomy 6 and 7 in the morning; Luke 8 and Psalm 69 in the evening
No comments:
Post a Comment