Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Change: Your Faith Journey

Now, before I get started here, let me clarify for a minute. By "changing your faith journey", I do not mean that you need to do a 180 and become an atheist. So not my goal here. We want to make our relationship with God better, not worse. By changing our faith journey, I mean, maybe it's a time to take a step back and look at our relationship with our Creator. Where is it going? Where do we want it to go? Let's take a minute and, as I like to say, DTR (that means define the relationship, Mom and Dad).
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Wrong things bring us farther away from the place we want to be. C.S Lewis writes in Mere Christianity that “if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer…progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road.” If we continue down the wrong path, then we just get farther and farther away from our intended destination. Trying to pretend we are going the right direction and refusing to turn around will not get you to your intended destination. If you are trying to drive from Michigan to Alabama driving on an Interstate going north, you are not going to get there. You must go south. No matter how much you think you can go that way- you can't. Another biblical scholar I admire, Andy Stanley, says “Your direction, not your intention determines your destination”. Turning around and going back towards the end goal is the quickest way to get there. The sooner we turn back, the sooner we will reach the place we want to get. If our faith journey is headed away from God, we need to do a u-turn.

Reflections:
  • What parts of your journey do you need to do a u-turn on? 
  • Where do you need to stop before you go any further and make sure you are headed in the right direction?
  • Where do you wish you were at this point in your journey and how can you get there? Make a plan and write it out. Then, stick it somewhere (like your journal) so that you will see it. Set deadlines for reaching certain goals. Accountability is also a great idea. Find a trusted friend, show them your list, and ask them to how you accountable for it!

3 comments:

  1. Just letting you know... I have been stalking blogger for your next post today. :) I love that Andy Stanley quote. Something that hit me where it hurt when I first heard it. Direction is so key!

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  2. I LOVE THAT YOU SAID MICHIGAN TO ALABAMA!

    sorry. i just had to get that out.

    i love your reflection questions. this is hitting me hard, because there is a lot of restructuring i need to do for my relationship with God to thrive. it's about time i started moving to where i want to be, rather than just thinking about it. thanks for the kicker, Lauren.

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  3. It is times like this that I look back and wish blogs existed when I was your age. I could have used this post, oh, (cough) 30 years ago.

    And, we know what DTR means. Kyle Idleman explained that to us in our Sunday Evening Bible Study;)

    Love you!

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