Lately there has been a lesson that I've been learning. I will turn 29 on Wednesday and I sense that I'm finally realizing that what I choose to do in life is my choice. I understand that God leads us and directs and gives us freedom and yet we somehow end up going in a direction that He leads. In the middle of all of this, I see that our decisions still matter infinitely. Significance isn't found in a position, a title, credentials, your family, your wealth, your years of service, your education, the respect you receive or the people who give it to you. It is found in the decision. Your every decision tells you that you have significance. God gives that to you and in so doing teaches you to take yourself serious and His love and will for your life serious, but it seems that He doesn't lessen our ability to be decision makers. How does that all work within His providence for us. I'm not sure but as I've grown into manhood, I have seen more and more emphasis put on making decisions. It's not only an issue of making good decisions, it goes beyond that into the issue of realizing that every decision matters and they seem to matter more and more.
I heard someone say "After 25, everything matters!" I believe that with the right nuance, that is so true. I just have to look down at my gut to face that. I was always a skinny bean pole as a child and teenager and in the middle of my early twenties, I started to notice how one actually gains weight. I'd never understood it before, but there it was and it had directly to do with my eating habits and lack of exercise. My decision began to matter. I used to be able to eat anything, but not anymore. I see that in all areas of my life increasingly so. God gives grace and allows some things to be covered over but decisions, both good and bad, will bear their own consequences, both good and bad.
That being true, I have also seen that never before has it been more important for me to give grace to myself and increasingly more to others. It's a decision to even receive grace in the midst of my own ugliness, and at times it can be a very difficult to decision to truly receive.
I have the privilege of studying Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards on Mondays. As far as Luther is concerened, we are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. We aren't going to become shipwrecked, we are shipwrecked - that changes one's whole approach to life, but how? Good question - that's what life and sanctification is - answering that question.
Jonathan Edwards wrote, "I have affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness, very frequently to such a decree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping...so that I have been often obliged to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion... It is affecting to think how ignorant I was, when a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy, and deceit left in my heart."
This was written 20 years after his decision to follow Christ. He said that his heightened awareness of sin results in a "...heart [that] will grow in tenderness." Out of that tenderness flows a profound gratitude to God for His mercy, a thankfulness that can only be expressed through service to Him.
I see that the "choice" is still ours in how we respond. As I journey through this time in my life, I want to see the decisions that I make really reflect what I believe, because if I don't, then I really believe that my decisions don't matter or that it will "all come out in the wash." As much as grace is a reality in all of this, so are my decisions and the weight that they carry. I believe that the more influence I receive, the more stewardship that I'm called to and the more people I am able to lead, the more my decisions will matter and that so, until I die. Whoa! That's a lot to think about, but it's necessary. I guess it's what they call growing up. I think in ages past, a man my age would have been expected to be married, to have a family, a job and a lot more responsibilities. As long as that is put off, I have time to think about all of this and in our culture today, many have a lot more time to think about their major life decisions and daily decisions it seems.
just some musings of mine...
No comments:
Post a Comment