I was thinking long and hard about this sentence from, “Becoming More than a Good Bible Study” girl,“Remember life is not a sprint. If you need to park on some of these commands for a while, then do it. Ask Jesus to help you fully understand the joys of obedience. Also, ask Him how you can be a woman fully committed to obedience without slipping into a legalistic approach to life. We must always remember our goal is pursuing revelations of Him. Our focus can’t be just following rules but following Jesus Himself.”.
I’m a people pleaser as well as being introverted, shy and socially awkward.
Full list I know.
Long story.
Another post, one day.
As I read this, I reflected back on last week’s sermon about “Choices” that our pastor has been preaching on and just having that feeling of, I’m the “Road less taken” type of person.
I guess, because after spending a life of trying to conform and please and always falling short, eventually I got tired and realized too, that for me to be a more authentic and realistic person, I had to stop worrying about trying to fit in and start caring about our Heavenly Father more.
Seeing God isn't for the purpose of being wowed.Part of my Life Journal reading was the following:
25 Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. 27 And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— 29 lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’?
31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. 33 So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
34 “Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? 35 It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Luke 14:25-35, New King James Version)
What I seek is a personal relationship with our Heavenly Father that is real, authentic, not legalistic and bound on pleasing others or thinking if I do the same thing over and over it will save me, but a real, living, one on one, convicting, challenging, encouraging, praising, relationship that was back to being authentic.
I didn’t want a relationship with Him that is or was based on what I DEEMED to be a relationship with Him or boxed in or as Lysa wrote on page 178,“Am I overspiritualizing in my life? What if I don’t have those experiences, or what if an experience I attribute to God, isn’t from Him at all?”
There are times when I feel like God has placed “speed bumps” in my life as a way of slowing me down and/or getting my attention as if to say,”Are you really looking at Me or are you looking at what you think or attribute to be Me but really is about you, or about someone else or self-idolation or just plain looking in the wrong places”?
Humbling thoughts I know.
As Lysa shared, “God isn’t in the business of creating change to impress people. He is in the business of impressing on people of their need to be changed. There’s a big difference“.
Sometimes it is is so easy to get caught up in something that we are doing, whether we know it or not, we lose focus and it no longer really becomes about Him and may intentionally or unintentionally become either idolization of something, self-idolization or just completely really missing the point of something.
Be honest, there are many times I would like to feel like I’m a part of something, but then, in the process, I think I might end up missing out seeing the big picture. True the view from the back bleachers may seem not great, but then again, when you think about it, that’s probrably the best seats sometimes too.
It’s not always about being close to the action because in the process, its so easy to get lost and too focus that we can’t see the bigger, grander picture like the people on the top bleachers who can see everything that we who scrambled for the first seats, really can’t see from the people blocking our view.
As said earlier,”Seeing God isn’t for the purpose of being wowed“; Seeing our Father is and should be about having that deeper relationship that sometimes includes taking the least popular route but with more experiences and scenery.
What happens on Sunflower Faith?
