Hammer on Anvil '

Do you ever get impatient about progress in your spiritual life? I sure do. Just when God has me where He wants me, I hear a sermon or overhear a conversation about what someone ELSE is doing, and I think to myself, "Man, I am so lame! I need to be doing THAT!"

Wrong. God does not direct our lives based on what somebody else is doing for Him. In fact, many times those situations are temptations the enemy throws in our path to divert us from what God wants US to be doing.

Case in point: the past month or so, God has been tenderly bringing me back to the basics. He has to remind me frequently that I need to be simple like a child. This particular time, He used a well-worn book I have had for years -- Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God. Something happened in me spiritually as I read it again (for the zillionth time!). This paragraph really resonated with me:

I'd been brought up to be a regular church-goer, and for all my conscious life I'd believed in God and wanted to please Him. I'd assumed this was done by deliberate acts of worship, by prayer and study, by discipline and self-control. And I was discouraged because, instead of getting better as I got older, I found I was actually getting worse. The harder I tried, the more I failed.

As he walked one day, contemplating this conundrum, Brother Lawrence came to a beautiful tree he had passed many times. Its branches were weighed down with chestnuts. That's when God spoke to him.

It's hard to explain, but this is how it came to me. In the winter this old tree was bare, stripped of its leaves, apparently dead. In the spring, new life flowed up from the soil through its trunk and branches. Then later, the flowers and finally the chestnuts appeared.

I was like the tree in winter. Myself, I was nothing -- dead, barren, without fruit. And, like the tree, I couldn't change by struggling or sheer effort. I, too, must wait for the hand of my Maker to touch me with life and change my winter of barren unfruitfulness -- in His own time -- into first the spring of new life and then the summer and fall of flower and fruit.

As I read these words, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from me. Suddenly I realized my focus had been all wrong. Instead of striving to reach a certain state of spirituality [focus on self], I need to simply rest in my Maker's presence [focus on Him]. I can't do anything to speed up God's purposes for my life, or make anything happen that He knows I am not ready for. Rather than doing things out of obligation and duty, I can do everything as a labor of love for my Father. It is a freedom I have never known before. I get giddy just thinking about it!

Then came the temptation. I heard an amazing sermon, and the one who delivered it is a missionary to Muslims. He and his wife live in very dangerous places, and he has been imprisoned for his faith. He issued a challenge for Christians to stop being so content in their comfort zones, and be willing to do dangerous things for Jesus.

My response? I am so lame as a Christian. I need to go overseas and be martyred for my faith. There's just one problem with that line of thinking. It takes my focus off of God, and back to spinning my wheels, thinking I need to be doing what somebody ELSE has been called to do. I was experiencing condemnation instead of my new-found freedom. God graciously showed me the trap I had fallen into, and helped me crawl out of it. He reminded me of Brother Lawrence's words: "The One who patiently led the trees and the plants through their seasons would also lead me, if I would only submit to His loving and powerful hand."

It is fine to have ideals. It is fine (and highly recommended) to have your heart broken with the things that break God's heart. It is fine to be challenged by a call to action. But we all need to pray for discernment, and ultimately submit to God's will and His timetable.

Are you tired of spinning your wheels and trying to do things in your own strength? Do you play God, thinking you know what's best for yourself and others? I have been there and done that, and it is exhausting.

If you are there now, I encourage you to "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens" (Isaiah 40:26). Shed the weight of self-imposed "religious activity," and embrace the freedom of a child.