So I feel like any of you more scatter-brained people (or as I’d like to call us “good at multi-tasking”) in the world will be able to really relate to what I’m about to throw down. Have you ever paced around your apartment or house looking for your keys? Getting really frustrated because you can’t find it right away? Jumping up and down.. letting out a few choice words in a fit of self-hateful rage. It escalates like that somedays no lie! One minute you’re just amped ready for the day, feeling good, looking good- then. Wait. Where are my keys? Where are my keys?? Where are my keys?! WHERE ARE MY KEYS? Where. Are. My. Keys. Slowly you realize you’re actually melodramatically taking your emotional rollercoaster through the 5 stages of grief. Oh come on, you know there are situations you do this too. It may not be when you lose something you need, but this moment of unexpected detour in your life was NOT invited to the celebration of your great day.
To keep this illustration alive, I was driving towards Red Cliff, AB from Medicine Hat so that I could find another good God filled nature area to spend some time being thankful for my life with Jesus. Of course. Socality. So hip, so real. Nature. Go outside #liveauthentic. Judge me. Go for it. I invite it. Anyways I was meandering down the highway and took a turn too early and realized I couldn’t get back to the highway without going around this loooooong, very unnecessary bend first. And immediately I could feel myself starting to get frustrated. At something so small as having to just spend some more time in the car. Really though, anyone one of us can admit that we tend towards frustration when we’re reared off the direct path to the destination that we planned for ourselves.
It’s not like you spent all that time dreaming up this perfect future for yourself to just
decide to have it all change drastically last minute and take you away from where you wanted to go. Guess what? If you’re a follower, God is probably going to make most of your life like this. We were never suppose to live in a state of security within the world. That security was meticulously created to be within the divine relational designs etched upon every tree trunk in the garden of Eden. Our lives were suppose to be a day-by-day love walk-a-bout with our Creator, with Him revealing to us the layers upon layers of our trees and the rings of character He made within our very being. Our original designs. Somewhere along the way we decided the world’s views/labels and cover-up would be good enough for us though.
Lately I’ve actually started submitting my off course daily doings to the Holy Spirit. I just walk around my apartment partnering with Him to help me find what I lost, or asking Him what His original intention for my day/path/drive/process was, and how He can work through it. I mean if you take the heart posture of seeing something that is “frustrating” you as something not as a finish line, but as an opportunity for God to show His glory, just imagine all the light-filled damage you can do on this broken planet. Your battles, your thoughts taken captive, your humanism will all be over-taken by the Creator of the universe. It’s going to get wrecked with gold. Wrecked with flowers. Wrecked with the master-planned beauty of living out God’s holiness on this earth. He knows all anyways, so why wouldn’t I ask him? Seems logical enough. And do you know what He does for me when I choose to ask Him into all of this mess? Because He’s so good, He responds! He shows me what I lost (in this case my keys) which are always in the most obvious of places (see I didn’t lose it in the first place), or He gives me a word of understanding in why I took off on the wrong path in the first place. He does it with such humble, gracious love, and shows me back to His doorway (mercy, me, oh my). When you invite the Spirit to fill you He replenishes/replaces/refills any lost part of you. You become your original design.
Detours lead us to asking for help and repentance, repentance to forgiveness, forgiveness to mercy. Mercy really just looks like love. True, pure love is always God.
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” Romans 8: 22-27
Did you know that you don’t actually have a finish line until Jesus comes? Or you die? Weird huh. Our lives are to be lived on this earth like we’re already in eternity. So with that in mind, why are you so frustrated when you make a mistake? When you go off the path of the righteous? Is it because you have to lay down your pride and repent in order to get rid of all that junk you just let into your life? Guys. The junk isn’t worth your time. The cross is. The overwhelming feeling of release from all of the shame and guilt you’ve placed on yourself by having one step in and one step out has no place in your life anymore. I declare that. Love has taken your place. Love has left little bread crumbs (each beautiful word written in the Good book) for you to follow back on the golden path to Jesus-dum. In reality those bread crumbs were blood drops, and your golden path was the dirt laid behind, engraved by the burden Jesus dragged to the cross for you. But He washed that all white as snow and left you with a golden path with baby bread crumbs to lead you along this narrow road, this incredible field of decisive vision to true beauty.
“It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.” Galatians 5:13
“My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?” Galatians 5:16-18
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