The Story of my life and the stories of the lives of too many of us -- It happened to me, that my life has often been spinning in circles without going anywhere meaningful.
When did it begin, this trend of my life going in circles without heading somewhere meaningful? I would say, it happened after I graduated from college in 1981 and after I broke up with my fiancée in November of that same year.
After that, I could not I find job that is I educated myself for – because I was good enough to graduate from college but not skillful enough or able enough to get a job in that career.
Regarding personal living, the relationship was with the woman I was not particularly love with, and had been lonely – but you don't use a relationship with a woman to escape from your loneliness. Yet, those of the very mistakes I think guilty for.
And so, having failed to establish myself in both a career and personal life movement, I went around in circles. Big mistake.
What the culture blamed before and this is, where most people get it wrong, is that I failed to define what my life would be about based upon what I should have wanted to do. "Get your life together, get your act together, get your sh*@t together, define yourself, take a seminar or something,… Whatever it takes, do it!"
What is - that quotation and what that quotation was about - doing that is wrong? Where did that quotation go wrong and why do exhortations contained in that quotation and the mindset behind that quotation – all wrong?
They failed in most miserable way possible because they exhort, admonish, people to keep making the same mistakes over and over again – and behind that because is a bigger, more important, and critical Because.
The biggest of all becauses lies in the reference point, the authority to whom the confused person is admonished to look to as a source of solution.
When people of the popular culture seek to tell a disoriented person to get their act together they are pointing the disoriented person to seek a popular culture icon role model as the model to ape.
What they don't tell the disoriented person is that the role model that they should copy is really an airbrushed dummy that reflects the very misguided cannons of that popular society or another popular society, some culture.
The consequence of the disoriented person seeking model his or her life upon the accomplishments of this airbrushed dummy are that the disoriented person's life will not improve or may improve a little bit but not nearly enough to really have made it worthwhile.
And so, the disoriented person sinks deeper and deeper into more and more spinning without really igniting that life as it should be. Why more bad news for this poor, hapless, disoriented person?
You see, I have answers for this dilemma. Why do I have answers for this dilemma? Because this dilemma happened to me over and over and over again, countless times, year after year after year.
What makes me think that the solution is available to me? I wanted what others already had and enjoyed: the inner spiritual conviction that I was and am on the right path.
And how do I know that this spiritual conviction comes from Him and not something in myself that I just want to believe?
Okay, I can afford to let you in on this secret.
In the natural, there are things are are not going well for me. My finances are in an awkward state. My job is here and I'm going it well but I have no super duper career. I have no relationships with anyone special, no significant other. And yet, I have the peace that the Lord gives and not that which the world gives. The peace of God is here inside me.
Eventually things in the natural will start going well enough too but I can afford to wait. I am in a safe spiritual place. I have the internal peace similar to that which Joseph had when he was just a slave, long before he was made governor of Egypt, when that possibility was the furthermost thing from his mind. It was then most important to him that God was with him and that was enough for him to be a prosperous man.
So, the conviction inside me that tells me that God is with me is that conviction that tells me that I am on the right track. It is worth than all the money in the world. And you know it when the peace of God is with you and inside you.
Because I finally decided to turn to God in my frustration and the Holy Spirit has spoken to my spirit in His still, small voice and finally spelled out that I finally am on the right track. The same is available to each and all of you. If anything, I am only one more who got it right, finally.
I don't have the answer as to what God's will for my life is in a concrete manner that is fleshed out and spelled out. I wish I did but I don't and that is okay. God's timing is done his way not our way. In the final analysis, we are all in his hand, and his mercy.
I am nobody to God to hurry up and reveal to me what his will for my life is. God is a long-distance, long-term thinker and operator; He does things according to do time, his time and not our time. And he will make it worth our while to have waited on Him.
Eventually, and I have the spiritual conviction that this is so, my life will cease to spin around and around and around – in my life will be ignited – and be on track to wherever God will point it to.
This is a lot better than getting my hopes up high and then suffer having them get dashed again.
A good meal sometimes requires cooking it in a slow fire for that meal to get cooked right and taste right when you finally get to eat it. Life, the life of a human being for it to be put on a right journey and proceed in the correct path and that the right pace – is often synonymous with that meal getting cooked in that slow fire.
However, we human beings are impatient and live in an inpatient culture with inpatient values and inpatient agendas. And we are told by it in its gurus that to turn to God – will we be deprived of opportunities to have made the best of our time on this earth.
In a sense, even our minds, our very own minds, tell us that to set aside what we want to do with their lives in turn instead to guide is to deprive ourselves, to squander what our lives' mileage could have reached.
Here again, the voices of the culture and their worldviews got it wrong again. We do not create ourselves, culture did not create us. So culture is nothing tell us how we should live.
The truth is – God created us to glorify him and not ourselves for glory is not to be for us. God created us and crowned this with glory and honor, his glory in his honor, not ours. God used his glory to create and crown us but the glory is his and not ours.
Moreover, our lives are not our own – but belong to him instead. So then, our lives (we) are lived on his earth and not ours, with resources that belong to him and not to us, crowned with glory that belongs to him and not to us – and living lives that are not our own but that belong to Him, to God.
Most important of all, we are created by Him to glorify him and not ourselves, and least of all, the culture. So then, who should we turn to and what should we seek for our lives not keep spinning around and around and around?
God, of course. The mission of our lives if our lives are to be well lived and lived with significance worth living for – is that we are to seek and to wait upon the Lord God to reveal how our lives are to be lived in order that He be glorified.
Then and only then – will we be satisfied from the inside out and know fully well that our lives were lived for a worthy enough purpose.
When did it begin, this trend of my life going in circles without heading somewhere meaningful? I would say, it happened after I graduated from college in 1981 and after I broke up with my fiancée in November of that same year.
After that, I could not I find job that is I educated myself for – because I was good enough to graduate from college but not skillful enough or able enough to get a job in that career.
Regarding personal living, the relationship was with the woman I was not particularly love with, and had been lonely – but you don't use a relationship with a woman to escape from your loneliness. Yet, those of the very mistakes I think guilty for.
And so, having failed to establish myself in both a career and personal life movement, I went around in circles. Big mistake.
What the culture blamed before and this is, where most people get it wrong, is that I failed to define what my life would be about based upon what I should have wanted to do. "Get your life together, get your act together, get your sh*@t together, define yourself, take a seminar or something,… Whatever it takes, do it!"
What is - that quotation and what that quotation was about - doing that is wrong? Where did that quotation go wrong and why do exhortations contained in that quotation and the mindset behind that quotation – all wrong?
They failed in most miserable way possible because they exhort, admonish, people to keep making the same mistakes over and over again – and behind that because is a bigger, more important, and critical Because.
The biggest of all becauses lies in the reference point, the authority to whom the confused person is admonished to look to as a source of solution.
When people of the popular culture seek to tell a disoriented person to get their act together they are pointing the disoriented person to seek a popular culture icon role model as the model to ape.
What they don't tell the disoriented person is that the role model that they should copy is really an airbrushed dummy that reflects the very misguided cannons of that popular society or another popular society, some culture.
The consequence of the disoriented person seeking model his or her life upon the accomplishments of this airbrushed dummy are that the disoriented person's life will not improve or may improve a little bit but not nearly enough to really have made it worthwhile.
And so, the disoriented person sinks deeper and deeper into more and more spinning without really igniting that life as it should be. Why more bad news for this poor, hapless, disoriented person?
You see, I have answers for this dilemma. Why do I have answers for this dilemma? Because this dilemma happened to me over and over and over again, countless times, year after year after year.
What makes me think that the solution is available to me? I wanted what others already had and enjoyed: the inner spiritual conviction that I was and am on the right path.
And how do I know that this spiritual conviction comes from Him and not something in myself that I just want to believe?
Okay, I can afford to let you in on this secret.
In the natural, there are things are are not going well for me. My finances are in an awkward state. My job is here and I'm going it well but I have no super duper career. I have no relationships with anyone special, no significant other. And yet, I have the peace that the Lord gives and not that which the world gives. The peace of God is here inside me.
Eventually things in the natural will start going well enough too but I can afford to wait. I am in a safe spiritual place. I have the internal peace similar to that which Joseph had when he was just a slave, long before he was made governor of Egypt, when that possibility was the furthermost thing from his mind. It was then most important to him that God was with him and that was enough for him to be a prosperous man.
So, the conviction inside me that tells me that God is with me is that conviction that tells me that I am on the right track. It is worth than all the money in the world. And you know it when the peace of God is with you and inside you.
Because I finally decided to turn to God in my frustration and the Holy Spirit has spoken to my spirit in His still, small voice and finally spelled out that I finally am on the right track. The same is available to each and all of you. If anything, I am only one more who got it right, finally.
I don't have the answer as to what God's will for my life is in a concrete manner that is fleshed out and spelled out. I wish I did but I don't and that is okay. God's timing is done his way not our way. In the final analysis, we are all in his hand, and his mercy.
I am nobody to God to hurry up and reveal to me what his will for my life is. God is a long-distance, long-term thinker and operator; He does things according to do time, his time and not our time. And he will make it worth our while to have waited on Him.
Eventually, and I have the spiritual conviction that this is so, my life will cease to spin around and around and around – in my life will be ignited – and be on track to wherever God will point it to.
This is a lot better than getting my hopes up high and then suffer having them get dashed again.
A good meal sometimes requires cooking it in a slow fire for that meal to get cooked right and taste right when you finally get to eat it. Life, the life of a human being for it to be put on a right journey and proceed in the correct path and that the right pace – is often synonymous with that meal getting cooked in that slow fire.
However, we human beings are impatient and live in an inpatient culture with inpatient values and inpatient agendas. And we are told by it in its gurus that to turn to God – will we be deprived of opportunities to have made the best of our time on this earth.
In a sense, even our minds, our very own minds, tell us that to set aside what we want to do with their lives in turn instead to guide is to deprive ourselves, to squander what our lives' mileage could have reached.
Here again, the voices of the culture and their worldviews got it wrong again. We do not create ourselves, culture did not create us. So culture is nothing tell us how we should live.
The truth is – God created us to glorify him and not ourselves for glory is not to be for us. God created us and crowned this with glory and honor, his glory in his honor, not ours. God used his glory to create and crown us but the glory is his and not ours.
Moreover, our lives are not our own – but belong to him instead. So then, our lives (we) are lived on his earth and not ours, with resources that belong to him and not to us, crowned with glory that belongs to him and not to us – and living lives that are not our own but that belong to Him, to God.
Most important of all, we are created by Him to glorify him and not ourselves, and least of all, the culture. So then, who should we turn to and what should we seek for our lives not keep spinning around and around and around?
God, of course. The mission of our lives if our lives are to be well lived and lived with significance worth living for – is that we are to seek and to wait upon the Lord God to reveal how our lives are to be lived in order that He be glorified.
Then and only then – will we be satisfied from the inside out and know fully well that our lives were lived for a worthy enough purpose.
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