Moving Forward

My year of GO! has sputtered. I read an analogy the other day about filling a car with water instead of gasoline. It still looks the same sitting there in the driveway, but when you need to put the pedal to the metal, you aren't going to get anywhere.

GO! required more than a washed and waxed vehicle. On the outside, I looked plenty shiny. Good hair (I promise not to go on about that again), the right things on my calendar, the right friends, the right things to say...everything looked just right. But inside, I could feel something dying.

The fire I felt at the beginning of the year, only two months ago, was just a pile of slightly warm embers.

I'm not calling anything warfare, but I can see, almost at the exact day and time, when I took my eyes off God, which is ironic to me, considering that my first memory verse of the year was   1 Peter 1:13 "Therefore, prepare your minds for action. DISCIPLINE yourselves, Set all your hope on the grace that Christ will bring when He is revealed."

I got lax in my discipline, and like an addict, slowly drifted back to the things that used to capture my attention. Proverbs puts it pretty bluntly...like a dog to its vomit. Gross, and accurate.

I also got excited about the arena I think God might be leading me to, and started working on things of that vein, thinking any outcome is up to my abilities instead of God. When I decided, for the millionth time, that I have no business thinking I can write anything anyone would want to read, I stopped. "Oh Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief."

Yesterday I stood in front a bookcase, looking for anything that might stir up a little passion. Looking for the missing mojo. Nada.

Last night I was rummaging on my desk and found a copy of Beth Moore's Discovering God's Purpose for Your Life. I set it back down because I'd bought it intending to give it away. This sort of reading is way below my status as a mature rock star Christian. I turned off the light and headed back upstairs, but my feet walked back down the stairs and somehow my hand grabbed the book.

She works out of the Amplified Version of the Bible, Philippians 3:10 specifically: "My determinded purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His person."

I was hooked from the first chapter.

• We're so busy manipulating and controlling things that we haven't experienced a fresh work of God in our own lives in some time.
• When we accept the fact that God is determined about us, and we add to it our determination about Him, there will be no stopping us from fulfilling the absolutely God-ordained destiny He has for us.
• There is an emptiness in our lives even if we are in Christ if we have not discovered  that we have purpose in Him. And how great that emptiness if we have not figured out what on earth His purpose is for us.

Aaahh...like looking in a mirror.

I won't paraphrase the rest of the booklet for you (there's probably a law or two about that anyway), but suffice it to say that to find our purpose, to be ultimately fulfilled, we have to bury ourselves in Him. I'm seeing there is a difference between being a believer and being a surrendered believer. On the personality chart, I am plotted on the task-structured quadrant. My focus is on the task, not the relationship.

God says His focus, and therefore ours, is the relationship. It's the whole reason Christ came. No wonder I shorted out again.

This morning I woke up, eager to start my day with Him, and clicked open my favorite devo. Wouldn't you just know that the author was dissecting Philippians 3:10? Of course he was! God is a rewarder of those who seek Him, and I am in seeker mode. Again.

I'm thinking I got my next memory verse, especially since I could not get focused enough to pick one the last time around.

"My determined purpose is that I may know Him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His person. (Philippians 3:10)"

It's why I was created. Everything is just gravy. And we all know how much I love gravy...

This song says it all. Moving Forward, by Israel Houghton.