It's so easy to get caught up in the small stories in your life. It's so easy to focus on school, a career, health, social life, or relationships. But what good are any of those things if their foundation and the foundation of your entire life isn't God?
Don't get me wrong, all of those can be important parts of the story of your life and are not bad things at all. But ultimately, they don't fulfill you. They don't define you. And they don't last. They're small stories that can be part of the bigger story.
I've been realizing lately how radically different my life could be if I stopped focusing on the smaller stories and smaller goals and instead lived completely for God. How different my life would be if I let God's love consume me and flow through me into everything that I do. My life should not be compartmentalized into school, work, friends, and God. God should be my entire life. Everything else comes second to him.
If I truly trust God and believes that He loves me, then I can live my life completely unafraid and with absolute freedom. I don't have to focus on getting good grades in school so I can get a well-paying job so I can make lots of money so I can try to feel safe and happy and worth something, which is basically what America tells us we need to do. Instead of getting distracted by all of the smaller things, I can focus on God's will for my life. And that very well may mean becoming a millionaire or having a successful career, or it may mean moving to the slums of a third-world country to enter into the lives of suffering people, or it may mean raising three kids in quiet suburbia. What matters isn't what job I have or where I live. What matters is what drives me. If my goal in life is to be "successful" by the world's standards, or happy, or popular, or beautiful, or married, or smart, then I'm missing the bigger picture.
You don't put God in a box in a corner. He is the all-consuming, overflowing, overwhelming, defining center of everything. Imagine how overpowering love would be, how intense passion would be, how boundless joy would be, how beautiful pain and suffering would be, if we let God completely take over our lives.
It's so easy to get distracted by trying to be happy in this world before we die and forget that we're made for something more. Our stories are so much bigger. And I want to live a life that reflects that. I don't want to get caught up in the small things. I want to live with God at the center of everything I do. I want to live freely, unafraid, and unashamed. I want to live loudly, boldly, joyfully, passionately. I want to live openly, lovingly, compassionately. I want to live and die knowing that my life glorified God. Because ultimately, He's all that matters.
"To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." - Romans 8:6
Love,
Amanda
"Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" (Matthew 16:24-26)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder that our hope and our happiness is not found in this world. You are gaining in wisdom, my dear. You are discovering truths that will keep your feet on the path of righteousness.
Pursuing God is the most sensible and most satisfying pursuit anyone can engage in, yet it can also be the most terrifying as it challenges us to give up our entire lives to him and to live on his promise for us as his adopted children.
ReplyDeleteGrateful for the reminder.