There is a cause that God has for you to give your life to. The more you give yourself away to this cause the more life you will find. It sits there at the back of your mind calling you to embrace it, but if you’re honest you have allowed too much stuff to get in the way of seeing it fulfilled. I’ve sat down to write more times than I have ever written. If not for minesweeper I would have written a book long ago.
Before the day ends there is a list you need to create. It isn’t a list of what needs to be done to see your cause come to life. It is a list of what you need to stop doing. This isn’t a list of all the “bad” things necessarily, but rather a list of all the things bad or good which just aren’t the great things.
It is easier for us to list the bad things, but this can be a trap. We think if we eliminate all the bad things then our cause will just happen. We forget there are many things in our life which might not be bad, but can still stand in the way of something greater.
I was speaking with a young man who had gone through a skills evaluation and consequently was told that he had the skills to do a number of things with his life and be successful. The evaluation was followed with a question, did he find himself getting bored after being in one job after awhile? He said yes, then he was told it was because he mastered his job quickly and was no longer being challenged. His dissatisfaction with his life was not centered around an inability to perform.
His repeated dissatisfaction and boredom arose from his fear. He kept putting himself in situations where he could be mildly challenged and find success. He had a string of good things he had accomplished, but he lacked the courage to pursue activities which provided too great a challenge. If what you are doing with your life doesn’t scare you at least a little then it’s time to ask yourself is there something bigger God has for me?
There are a lot of good things out there we can do with our lives, but we can not allow the good to become a barrier from the great. Faith in God is not simply about achieving an intellectual or experiential understanding, but it is about establishing and walking in a relational trust. This is why when we talk about giving ourselves to a cause we do not seek to find something to direct our lives, but someone.
Teaching Sunday School is a wonderful thing to do with your life, but if God has something else then you may have to let that go. Working 60 hours a week so you can have the finances to support the activities of some other cause is great, but it might also be getting in the way of something greater. The tough question we must ask is what good thing might I be holding onto which is really just a barrier of fear protecting me from trusting God more deeply and pursuing something more challenging?
Take the time to write down that really big thing in the back of your mind. That one thing you would really like to see yourself doing to contribute good into this world. Then sit down and put pen to paper and find out what you need to stop doing so you can start doing what you should be doing.
