Lessons Along the Journey: Accomplishment

Lesson #4: Let go of accomplishment.

But God, you've been teaching me about diligence! I don't understand! I was just starting to get a little momentum with this diligence thing, and now you're telling me I don't have to accomplish any of it to be loved by you? That nothing I'm striving toward really matters?

Without my striving, without my criticizing, what is left? Emptiness. But why?

Because if day by day, I chip away at my goals, and I accomplish a few - then there will be more goals to accomplish. So, does success mean that I accomplish all of my goals? Does not accomplishing my goals mean that I have failed?

I was created for a relationship with God. My success, really, will be in how near to Him I am. The problem is, even though I can learn spiritual disciplines that will help me to draw near to Him, it is so easy to make "success" into accomplishing a set of disciplines. Because following God is not a matter of getting the set of instructions and going off to spend the next 40 years accomplishing them.

God's instructions for me change. Oh, sure, the basic ones don't. The principles that God spoke in His Word do not change. Praise God of the stability of His Word and His promises and His character! Yet I never know what He will want me to do in this moment until I ask Him. You see, He knows His purposes and where each person is along their journey. So, I might walk past the same man on my way to work every day, and God may give me different instructions each time.

One day, God may say, "Don't worry about that guy, listen to ME..let Me fill your heart." Another day, He may give me an encouraging word to give that man. Another, day, He may tell me to steer clear of this man, because God is protecting me from something I don't know about. Another day, He may tell me to give this man all of my money. How will I know what the right thing to do is if I don't ask God? God knows what is happening inside of me and what is happening inside of the man I pass on the street. He knows my future and He knows that man's future. So He knows what He wants to happen in this moment, on this day, as I walk past this man on the way to work.

So what if I get it wrong? What if I don't ask God what He wants me to do in that moment? What if I make an assumption and I breeze past Him when God wanted me to give him an encouraging word? Or I try to encourage him when I should have avoided him? What happens if I screw this up?

God uses it for good.

If God uses it for good if I get it right, and He uses it for good if I get wrong, then why bother asking what I should do?

Because I was created for relationship with Him.

I was created to be in His presence.

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