Destination & Journey

When we let our Father, He will stir our hearts to burn with a lost passion that we may have forgotten was ever there in the first place

It’s almost like we live for where we are destined to be . . .

And we tend to find great purpose in that. But that’s where we are led truly far off course from why we live.

We don’t just live for our destiny. 

Although where we are destined to be in terms of destination, it drives us, sure. But we aren’t limited to living solely for where we are headed... where the journey leads, for where does that leave the journey itself?

No, we are meant to live for both our destination and the journey that gets us there. 

We are meant to embrace both how we get there and why we are fighting so hard to get somewhere at all.

It wells up within us through all we desire and where we want to end up. 

Whether we think we do or not, we crave and passionately long for both the place we want to go and the sometimes long and challenging road to get there.

We are all on a road and that road will always lead somewhere.

So this is not a matter of whether or not we have both in our life.

We always have both

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What is on the table here is are we embracing both?

Right now, in our lives, are we embracing the journey even though it may seem like it is leading us farther and farther away from a destination we believe we are destined for?

Or have we become comfortable in living for the moment and lost sight of the bigger picture in the vision of what God would want us to be led towards?

I know it’s almost like clockwork with me or a “cycle” through clinging on to one or the other rather than both.

Lately I feel like I have become comfortable in the journey seeming as if it is leading nowhere fast rather than embracing what I know deep in my heart God has for me as a destination.

I can also feel the danger setting up a “comfort-camp“ where I was meant to continue through, almost like pushing your luck while lingering in bear country longer than you need to.

It’s easy to do that, throw in the towel because we haven’t gotten to where we thought we were supposed to be when we thought we were supposed to be there.

That is a dangerous place because we’ve become passive and complacent and our steps forward may look like small little shuffles here and there.

It is easy for me to just want to stay where I am because of a destination that seems unreachable.

Who in fact would want to continue on a journey that seems to lead nowhere?

If I was really honest though, another way of putting it is I basically become discouraged and lose heart.

We begin to embrace the journey as the destination itself.

This is normal for every human being to face this . . . 

And thankfully God does not leave us there in that place.

When we let our Father, He will stir our hearts to burn with a lost passion that we may have forgotten was ever there in the first place.

It’s actually pretty amazing when He does that because like children we’re almost throwing a fit because we didn’t get what we want, but He may leave us there in that place for a season before humbling us and teaching us that life must be about more than just the destination alone.

 

In order to find a passion that seems to wander off from me, I have to let God into that place.

I must not only admit the once burning reason to keep trudging forward is lost but also honestly express to our Father the extent the loss has caused me to betray the journey.

I have to seek Him out and listen for him to speak . . . to remind me of not only who I am but why I was created and where I am intended to go.

It brings about, to say the least, an incredible sense of purpose which seems to catapult me forward beyond the shuffling I may have wasted precious time fiddling around with.

There is nothing in vein that God cannot remake, or make reborn, or have restored in my life . . . in your life. 

So where would you say you are right now in your life?

Are you embracing both the destination and the journey to get there?

Are you embracing both regardless of what it feels like now or what it seems like or looks like?

Take some time alone with God your Father to let Him either remind you of what the destinations you were intended for are or to remind you that where you are right now is only a part and a piece of the journey and a small portion of a much bigger picture.

Embracing Both

It is the every-day things that lead to the once-in-a-life-time things

I don’t know where to start really.

I have come to this place in my life where I am content with where I am in terms of trusting where I am going and knowing I won’t stay in one place at least for too long.

That alone gives me some form of reassurance that my life won’t become stagnate or boring.

Yet, I also still have some of the same desires burning within me that have not faded away but have grown into more of a hopeful imagining to basically dream bigger than I ever have before.

How do we live with those two factors coursing through our thoughts all day long?

Some people may be content where they are but maybe have had their dreams fade into the “reality” of more practical reaches.

Some people may dream bigger than life itself, yet lack the satisfaction of living in the simple moments they find where they currently are.

But to live with both, to hold on to the big dreams and yet still have room left over to breathe in sweet simplicities seems like an impossible feat.

I think I went through stages of my life where I was on opposite sides of that spectrum.

I was either stuck in my dreams and not okay with where I was, or embraced where I was and figured my crazy dreams were just me trying to be something I wasn’t meant to be.

Over the years, especially towards the end of my twenties, God taught me how to have both.

He taught me to embrace both, whole heartedly I might add.

He showed me that feeling the riskiness that seems to be so real is just a part of moving forward through a journey that has so many unknowns to it.

Most of all He would always give me more and more hope that He was leading me.

It still is a strange place to be to embrace both the dreams not yet reached and the place I am in now that may seem directionless.

I sometimes fight both the feelings and thoughts that I am not there yet and I am always going to stay where I am.

Both are somehow true and relevant, yet both are existent with the other and not without.

I am both where I am suppose to be now yet not where I am going to end up.

I guess one of the biggest truths God has taught me though is this:

It is the little things right now that lead to the bigger things later on.

It is the every-day things that lead to the once-in-a-life-time things.

Me being content or even satisfied where I am now allows me to embrace where I am, even though where I am may seem “little” compared to the biggerdreams I have.

But who says that these “little” moments aren’t accumulating and building up momentum towards something much much bigger than even the “big” dreams I have for later?

You Just Have To Be There

It's all about timing with God . . . but just as importantly, it's all about placement

    I was at the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago with a buddy of mine who both share a passion for photography and videography. 

So needless to say we were like little kids running around dodging the crowds and looking for those perfect locations to snap some shots of the epic landscape. 

The thing with photography is being at the right place at the right time. 

To be honest, the camera, especially now and days, does all the work. 

So I am finding the artistry is actually in the most purest form in expressing what you want to capture . . . what certain angles and lighting and parts of the moment you want to connect with a still shot of what it is to you.

You have to move with the moment to find that place frozen place in time to capture it. 

I am sort of dancing with time as it rushes by and I almost have to be distanced from others reality to be the outsider looking in. 

But when you've captured that perfect moment, there's such a feeling of achievement as if you've conquered time itself. 

God is always outside of our time, although He can clearly see us in time.

He sees theses moments pass us by like a bird letting the wind take it to where it wants to go.

It's all about timing with God . . . but just as importantly, it's all about placement. 

They work together. 

    We don't have to do the work of working all of that out just like I don't have to move the sun across the sky to capture a beautiful sunset. The moment does that all on its own. 

It's simply up to me to be there to take the picture . . . or not.

It's like that with God. It's up to us to listen to His voice leading us and be sensitive to where He directs us through our day, even in the little things. 

We never know where He is leading us but we can be sure if we stay close to Him, it will be to the right place and the right time.

    Me and my buddy met an older man at the Grand Canyon who had his camera on a tripod set up right off the edge of the cliff side. 

As we talked to him we found out that people stay for the sunset so it begins to actually get crowded the closer the sun comes to setting. 

That man had been there for 3 hours I think just waiting with his spot secured as the sun fell slowly down the sky into the Grand Canyon like it was melting right into it. 

The man smiled as he told us how crazy it is for us photographers to want so badly the perfect shot and the length it takes to get it.

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"You just have to be there," he said. 

"The camera does all the work. For a 60th of a second . . . you just have to be there."

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    Whatever God has for you and wherever He is leading you, it is to the right place at the right time.

He does this because He loves us. He takes care of arranging all of that.

We just have to be there.

One More Small Step

It is here where we find all along we were holding ourselves back from a life that we could have only dreamt of before giving ourselves over to trusting Him with it

    That’s all God ever asks of us.

Just one more small step.

He handles the heavy lifting. He handles the bigger picture and all the small pieces coming and fitting together masterfully and wonderfully in His timing. He takes care of us as a gardener would tend to and take after their beautiful garden. He does not delay, nor does He reluctantly become bored and neglect us. From the surface, it seems too good to be true, that we would only have to take a small step at a time.

But do we?

Do we always?

    Personally I battle every day with the idea of taking a small step and leaving the outcome to Him. I want so badly to take what I see around me and make assumptions and speculations to anticipate where each “point A” will lead to find exactly where each “point B” will end up being. 

Often times I wrestle with a small step being so seemingly insignificant that I can’t manage to pull myself to take it at all. 

I fight and grapple and find God standing strong, not budging in what He wants . . . and He does this because He loves me more than I love myself. I do have the choice I have found to not take the step at all. But all my begging for Him to somehow change His mind fails miserably as I sink into wanting things to go the way I am imagining them going in my head.

How sneaky the enemy of our hearts is, taking something that should be organic and tailored exactly to fit us, that is allowing God to lead, and turning our hearts to doubt Him rather than trust Him like a child would their loving parent.

How awful and tragic it is that we would war with God’s heart as we second guess Him constantly to know where we would be best going in our life’s journey.

I respond, maybe not out loud but in the quietness of my restless thoughts I struggle with, “I just don’t know what possible good thing could come of me doing what You want me to do, Father. How is this even going to get me anywhere?”

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the rock and strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  

“But as for me, it is good for me to draw near to God; I have made the Lord God my refuge and placed my trust in Him, that I may tell of all Your works.” 

-Psalms 73:25-26, 28

    I have been shocked at where each small step of obedience to His leadership has taken me in life . . . yet I still wrestle. I still fight. This is to be human, yes that is true. We fight and storm inside because there is no peace without our Creator’s touch to calm our fear and raging appetite for self-preservation.

This is to be human. 

Yet, something in our hearts longs desperately for a connection with the One whom has given Himself to have us. That is why it is indeed good to draw near to Him. To trust Him with even the smallest of steps that may seem as though they will lead and are leading us absolutely nowhere.

Have you felt stagnant or even stuck where you are?

Draw near to Him who wants you to be led onward.

    I have found over and over again without surprise that it is typically me and not my circumstances that have held me back from so much. It hit me the other day the weightiness of how much that is true in my life. Whether it is me thinking I am inadequate to do something specific or if it is just me doubting anything would come of me taking a small step towards a dream I have had for so long, I get caught in my head. My thoughts become the leader of my life rather than God’s voice. 

My own understanding of the embarrassingly small perspective I have sadly becomes the captain of my vessel, leading me to fall short of the decisions that were meant to be opportunities to take me somewhere I never thought possible. It is almost like God allows our lives to not make much sense sometimes and even keeps our eyes from seeing what He alone wants to show us. The thing is, we have to seek Him for it all.

He longingly desires for us to pursue a relationship with Him in the utter closeness that is the very definition of true intimacy with someone.

It is here where we find all along we were holding ourselves back from a life that we could have only dreamt of before giving ourselves over to trusting Him with it.

“It is God’s privilege (and glory) to conceal things and the king’s privilege (and glory) to discover them.”

- Proverbs 25:2

He has never let me down.

I can say He has not given in to when I wanted things and how I wanted them to be . . . but He has never even left me alone to deal with my own self-inflicted disappointment in my expectations not being met.

He is God and will not play our petty games, but He is also full of un-conditional love and will not leave us un-disciplined and taught to see what He sees if we allow Him to. And if we do, our hearts and souls are washed over to be made into something new.

    We are led to becoming someone we never would have thought we could be, perhaps even the man we had always wanted to be. Through His fathering we end up doing things we never would have thought we were able to do, and to be frank, we weren’t able to without Him. As a close friend mentioned to me recently, this is where the natural part of our abilities meets the supernatural of His. That is not the reason we love Him, for that is not the reason He first loved us. 

It was all for relationship.

We ought to carefully enforce that our eyes don’t become distracted by the mere things we can do with Him to lose what the whole point of it all is, that we would live to be with Him every day.

    It takes patience . . . not because God is slow moving but because we are so naturally inclined to wonder off-track from His will.

His will is perfect for our lives, yet ours for our own is not.

Therefore we must have patience, not with Him, but with our own hearts that are sometimes farther from His than we want to admit or acknowledge. He is so patient with us though, so we should be with ourselves just as well.

    Whether the step seems small or even bigger than we can handle, timing is everything. All He asks from us is that we take that step. If we are wise, we will fight to exchange our own heart’s impatience and steadily take to His heart’s perfect rhythms. But as we are not meant to figure out the outcome of a small step, we also are not meant to carry the burden of it. We are meant to enjoy life, finding, every day, new aspects of who God is written in everything around us.

It is incredible to me just how much He is . . . well, everywhere.

He is in the atmosphere even when I am surrounded by those who have not chosen Him.

I am surrounded by His graceful care in the midst of challenges that seem to come completely out of nowhere.

I find His brush strokes in the delicate colors that seemed to have been painted unto the glimmering skin of a rainbow trout.

I have seen His favor time and time again assuredly gone before me as I have taken the small steps He led me to take, one step at a time.

That’s all He ever asks of us. That’s all He wants. That we should enjoy life more with Him truly is His passionate desire towards us.

It was like that in the beginning of time when man walked with his creator in the cool of the day.

    Although there is so much more to explore here in walking every day with our Father, why don't you take some time to now explore less of the knowledge and more of your own experience, for experience is the language of the heart.

What small thing have you thought of doing for sometime now?

Has it almost haunted you in the "back-burner" of your thoughts, constantly resending the same message of something you feel you ought to do?

It might be something you have called a far-fetched dream that you deemed too large to ever reach. Maybe the first step towards it is small enough to assume it won't get anywhere towards it . . . but that is not for us to decide. The measly perspectives we have towards our lives cannot be trusted any more than we can trust a young child to drive us into heavy traffic down town in a busy city for a meeting.

At least for this moment, be free of all your own thoughts on whatever it is and tell Him all the doubts and fears that are holding you hostage. Tell Him right now . . . and be free from them. Allow God to have a say in what to do by releasing all preconceived notions and imaginings of what you have speculated for the end results of your decisions. Let Him tell you to lay it down or to take the small step maybe He has been gently nudging you to take all along.

It actually may have been Him all along . . . whispering to you to take a small step.

    My mom has gotten into something called Dirty Pour painting. It is a form of painting that literally means you mix paint with an oil-based solution and pour it into whichever way you the artist would like. In moments back-to-back it can be both incredibly therapeutic and rather stressful in that the paint sort of goes and does what it wishes, regardless of how hard you may try to control it. Doesn't that sound familiar? Doesn't that sound just like life?

My Mom had been wanting me to try it out with her so we did over the weekend.

She also was basically letting me do it myself after teaching me the proper mixes and processes. Honestly I found myself getting frustrated because it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to. I really struggled with taking it one step at a time. I couldn't get passed how awful it seemed to look during the process and to be even more honest, I wanted to just quit. I didn't however because I knew it meant the world to my Mom to be doing something she loves to do and doing it together.

Here is why it appeared to look so awful to me.

It was not finished.

In my impatience and unrealistic expectations of something I couldn't wish to control, I took it as it was mid-process and not for what it was going to become after I was finished.

It looked terrible to me and I struggled with it ever looking better than it looked then. I didn't want to take the small steps partly because those small steps were messy . . . literally in the case of painting with my Mom.

How often do we do that with our own lives?

How often do we do that with those closest to us . . . with friends, family . . . our wives, children, and even parents?

Those small steps are rather difficult to take on. It isn't even because they are too difficult in and of themselves, but rather because they sometimes just don't seem to be leading anywhere. They can be messy. But they can also be apart of a bigger picture so beautiful we could not imagine it until we finished the process of where they are meant to lead us to.  

    About a week ago I took a long walk with God. I had become frustrated from taking small steps and them seeming to lead me absolutely nowhere. I desperately needed to get it all out from inside of me and into the open. After ranting and venting, He reminded me of something I had forgotten.

He didn't say much . . . but then again, He rarely needs to.

"Son, don't despise the start of something that seems small . . . the days of humble beginnings. Humility now will save you from pride later." 

"Just take one more small step."