If we’re inwardly frustrated we potentially run cross-grain to our purpose. Our strength is not in popularity nor satisfaction nor gross introspection regarding our achievements. These are ways to weakness. This is why so:
1. Popularity is short-lived. Yet, we all fall for it. God wants to remind us our purpose is in the opposite direction.
2. Satisfaction keeps us happy for a while. Then we develop a habit for it. God will satisfy us if we seek our God-appointed and God-anointed purpose, without grappling for our own satisfaction. The best thing: there is no effort but obedience.
3. Gross introspection—not a healthy prayerful reflection—but particularly as it presents in reflection regarding achievements—generates pride, not humility. Our purpose is in the opposite direction.
Strength comes proportionate to our shunning the search for popularity and inner satisfaction, and gross introspection regarding our achievements. God’s purpose, and therefore blessing, is in the opposite direction.
Running toward the narrow gate, resplendent in God’s will, is something we need to continually remind ourselves of.
The more we look at our lives, the more we find, our purpose is in the opposite direction to that which we normally look. Blessed are we when we can see counter-intuitively.
Many times our purpose is closer than we think; yet, we’re probably not intuitively “popular,” or “satisfied,” or comfortable with our “achievements” there. But, this is where God’s placed us. Our purpose is to be happy where we are as we strive, simultaneously, to become the person God’s purposed us to be.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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