As I begin this new year I am hoping that the idea of living my life solely to glorify Jesus Christ will be the center of my life. I could go in to how God has led me to this point, but it really doesn't matter where I have been, because it is gone and done... and Christ is inviting me into a new season of life and a beautiful adventure of falling more and more in love with Him.
So how does that play out in my life right now? I know so many people who last friday sat down to write out the hopes and dreams for this next year. I hate New Years resolutions! They mainly consist of things I wish I could improve on and make me think of the areas in my life where I have failed and hope to improve. The idea of a New Years resolution basically takes those areas and inspires in us the idea of coming up with a plan of action on how to deal with those areas of failure. Then the next year rolls around, each of us has barely completed 3 of those resolutions... and none of them are the ones that mattered most to us a majority of the time. Then we feel a sense of failure again that we weren't strong of disciplined enough to correct our behavior and make better choices and so we resolve to do it again the next year...
It ignites in me, and I am sure you would agree in yourself, a cycle of managing my own messiness and it gives me the impression that I am a loser and a failure because I can't correct myself.
WELL OF COURSE IT DOES, CAUSE YOU CAN'T!!!!!
I realized long ago that every New Years is one big pile of disappointments and looking back on a year of lost hopes and dreams and failures. How depressing. I am such a sad-sack on New Years... but this year is different. God has placed on my heart a whispered call to just follow Him... that's it! He didn't specify how, or what it looked like to follow Him... just follow Him. You want to know why he doesn't specify??
Because it looks different moment by moment...
That is what this life is... just one moment after another of the present... and that is all we can live in is this moment and this present time.
CS Lewis... who I have a deeper and deeper crush on the more I read his books, says in The Screwtape Letters:
"The humans live in time but [God] destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present... obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure."It means that in this present moment Jesus is calling you to trust Him, listen to His voice, hear what He is asking of you. It is not about a check list of reading my Bible, going to church, praying, being kind to others... all of those things are amazing, but they should be acted out in reaction to the glorious love of the Savior, NOT as a formula of what you think would be pleasing to Him and therefore what would get you blessed. This life is about glorifying Jesus Christ and when we sit in the majesty and glory of our Lord, what else could be do but long to read His word - the love story He wrote to us and about us, speak to Him and about Him, be around others who also love Jesus and fellowship together, and share with others the immense freedom and joy we have in God.
So in each moment I want to remind myself of that truth and step forward in faith that God is calling me to love Him and out of that I will get direction on where to go and what to do... and all the things I fall short in will be made clean and whole in His glory.
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