Will You?
There was a day last summer where I was sitting in a room with thousands of other pastors and leaders listening to master communicators share some of their wisdom with us so that we could communicate the Gospel in better and more effective ways.
As i sat there I began to evaluate who I was and what I was doing. About five years before that day Meri and I had packed up everyone and left our first home, first real jobs and tons of great friends behind and moved to Cleveland so that I could work as a community pastor for a large young adult ministry. Very quickly the course that I had set out on took some very dramatic left turns and in a little over a year I had become the leader of that young adult ministry.
The next couple of years were some of the hardest years of my life. There was heart ache, loss, break down, threats, doubt, pain, confusion, anger and along with that a little fun. I believe in all of that God was working things together for His (and by default) my good.
As I sat in that room last summer I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t living the life I was meant to live and I wasn’t the man I was called to be. Looking at the list of things that we had walked through you might guess that I had some pretty good excuses as to why that was – and over the years I had used all of them – but for some reason that day I came to the realization that most of that was my own fault.
In that moment – apart from everything else that was happening in that room – I understood why.
I was just letting life happen.
I was letting things happen to me.
I was acting in response to what was going on around me.
I was leading in the way that I assumed were required based on circumstances.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a good job and was doing good things at that job but I was just letting life happen and if I wanted to live the life I was made to live and be the man I was called to be I was going to have to take action.
It seems to me that most of us know life isn’t going how we had hoped or in the direction we thought it would many of us are disappointed in who we’ve become and how we are living but for whatever reason we just assume that’s how things have to be.
That’s a lie.
That’s a ploy of the enemy.
You don’t have to just let life happen. You can be who you were called to be. Jesus Christ rose from the dead and the same Spirit that did that is at work in you.
It’s a battle I have to fight every day – but I have already overcome.
I will live the life I was made to live and I will be the man I was called to be.
Will you?
————–
This post was inspired by this video and this website
