Entering In

I’ve been reading in Galatians since the beginning of November. I just can’t seem to stop myself. Everyday I need to hear the same freeing message again, and some days certain phrases and words pop out of the verses, as if the lettering is in bold print, as if they are written there exclusively for me. Yesterday morning this happened to me again.

I am, self-admittedly a pretty driven person. I’m an achiever. I like to make goals and go hard after them. I can’t remember the last time I was bored. That being said, I’ve sensed an emptiness in some of my achieving as of late. I’m trying so hard to get somewhere and make something spectacular of my life that I’m paralyzing myself in the process. There are far too many options, and I am trying to find the one magic bullet among the lot. To feel a burning passion inside of me and to think it all hinges on one right choice is, well, maddening.

I don’t feel as though I can pick, and so instead I sit and spin my wheels, my thinking goes in circles and I’m right back to where I started. How can it be that I want to do something big for God and yet I feel that my hands are tied?

As I read Galatians 3, the sense of urgency began to fall away. Suddenly the scope of my future wasn’t resting on my shoulders. It doesn’t begin with me, it doesn’t end with me and it certainly isn’t going to be hindered by me…if I just have faith in a God that lavishly provides His presence to me (through the Holy Spirit) so He can work things in my life that I could never do for myself. (Gal 3:5).

I just have to embrace what God is arranging for me. (Gal 3:11) How cool that He is doing the arranging, so I don’t have to. He is putting the puzzles pieces in the right order. It is not even about what I do for Him. He is so much bigger than that. He is already working on my behalf, and I just have to enter in. He beckons me to enter in to what He’s orchestrating for me.

If I could do it myself, if I could piece together enough goals, enough rules, enough achievements to create life and fulfillment in me, certainly I would have done so by this time. After-all, I told you, I’m driven. But I haven’t. I still fight with emptiness, with wondering what I’m missing, with that instinct that if I could find the exact right thing to do for God, then I could be at peace.

Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do…It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! Gal 6:15

How much more pleasant to go about my day knowing that all my dreams and goals and hopes are in the hands of the one who not only put them in me in the first place, but who will also make them come to fruition in ways I could never orchestrate or imagine. He is right now working on my behalf. He is right now working on your behalf. The you He wants to make is not like anything you’ve ever dreamed up, it’s something totally new and it starts with faith. Enter in to your free life!