I went on a leadership retreat for our church last month. We spent a lot of time talking about discipleship, being a disciple a Jesus. And exploring what that means, what it looks like for our church this next year.
We didn’t want to come up with another program, something to make us busier with religious activity.
One thing that I’m always concerned about how to encourage people to live out their faith without it only being motivated by a sense of duty. And what I realized today was letting go of doing something out of duty doesn’t mean giving up something that’s hard to just do what comes naturally or what is easy.
Sometimes letting go of doing things out of a sense of duty is extremely scary.
Doing things out duty is actually kind of easy, everything is spelled out for you.
Listening for what God is leading you in means defending something mystical. Something that seems foolish. Something you can’t quantify or put on paper.
You have to risk disapproval.When you stop and listen and replace the question “What should I do?” with “What do I sense God saying to me? What is God calling me to do?”, you have to wait on God.
You have to slow down.
You have to be patient.
You have to give up controlling others because the answer isn’t one size fits all.
You risk being different, stepping out of line.
You risk being seen for who you are, you risk exposing the passions and longings of your heart.
You will seem foolish, people will misunderstand and assume things about you.
They’ll think you are being judgmental and self-righteous and impractical.
They may even try to put you back in your place.
(All this and this isn’t even addressing your own negative self-talk or self-limiting beliefs!)
Sometimes we are so afraid to ask “What do I *want* to do?” or believe that what we should do is always different than what we want to do. I think the better question is “Who does God want me to be?” not “What does He want me to do?” but “What life does He want me to live?”
The cool thing is, there is a hard, lonely and scary way ahead that if you choose it, could lead to life instead of boredom and death.
