I Remembered How Small I Am

I recently was talking to a client that was being so totally honest with me and pouring out her heart, that I, too, began to identify with what she was saying. 

Ever have that happen?

This, in essence is what she said to me,

“I spend most of my regular time believing that God has a plan for my life, but then I take most of that time trying to figure out specifically what that is.  Knowing that I’m supposed to share my faith with friends and strangers, but usually feeling too exhausted or irritable to actually do it.

I agree that God wants to do great things in my life, but I feel like a failure because all that greatness seems so often submerged in mediocrity.  I am exhausted just trying to figure it all out.”

I thought, ”Wow, this is me sometimes.  I know He has a plan for me and I know it is big.  But today I want to just do nothing.  I want to take a nap from all this greatness!!”

Hmmmm…Maybe all of this striving, and guilt, and frustration, is actually not what God wants most.

Maybe, what Jesus desires for us, more than anything, is that we recover a pace that allows us to breathe and receive.

Could it be possible, that your most pressing personal mission, is not about you doing anything at all.

Here’s a thought!  What if God’s plan for your life right now, was not that you save souls or change worlds, but that you take a nap?

I gave myself permission one day to stop reading, and studying, and writing, and thinking, and doing God stuff, and I simply laid down in our backyard swing by my waterfall.

I purposefully didn’t wrestle with any great spiritual truths, or any nagging questions about the future, or death, or my personal, God-designed plan; I just rested and let my mind wonder.  I “considered the lilies of the field” as it were.  

I let myself become cocooned in the lightness of His presence without thinking I needed to be “doing” anything else.  I drifted in and out of a blissful sleep. 

I could hear birds chirping and I enjoyed the fragrance of my Angel Trumpets blooming nearby.  

And something really great, and quite spiritual, happened while I laid there.

I remembered how small I am.

I noticed the trees shifting in the wind, and the sounds of  birds, and the shade of blue above me.

As I did, I was struck with the thought that God doesn’t just a have a plan for me,

God HAS ME!

It could be true that God wants you to change the world and as a matter of fact, I am sure of it.  But more than that, God wants you to find peace in His presence…..

…to be able to rest in the questions and in the undone;

…To pause and realize that His greatest plan is not that you save anything.

You are the one being saved. 

If you never went any further than today, I am convinced His highest for you is to have a love relationship with Him that surpasses all else in your life, and to rest in that. 

He is not a driving task master. 

What Jesus wants to teach us is to live at home in Him.  This is not a theology to subscribe to, but a way to live all day, every day.

Living with Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with where you are on Sunday morning at 10:00 and everything to do with following Him through each day.  He made all of life sacred by coming to live in us and becoming a part of everything we do.

We sometimes over complicate things.  The reason people have trouble discovering this reality is because they don’t believe it is as simple as it really is.  Living in communion with Him is what He shapes in a willing heart as we learn to relax in His love.

Right where you are He can show you how to live at home in the Father, confident in His love, and at peace even in times of trouble

If you are not at rest in God’s love for you, no amount of human contact will fill that void; it can only mask it.  Let your loneliness draw you into a greater depth of relationship with Him and then a new way of relating to others emerges.

He is the Jesus who has given you freedom.  He paid the ultimate price so that you can be free to just love Him.  It is in that love that you find your place to just BE!  Any service for Him will flow out of that.

So, lighten up on yourself.  I give you permission to enjoy your life and to have fun, and enjoy simple trust. 

 Now go nap your way into that truth.