Titles are Redundant and Dreaming is Hard but Hard does not Always Infer Negativity

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           I have been overusing my mind of late. I am currently enrolled in Colorado Christian University’s College of Adult and Graduate Studies. That is all just some fancy verbiage for online courses. It is honestly a sweet gig, I get to take six week courses. Yes that is right, some crazy person drummed up the idea of six-week intense bimester in which they take everything in a traditional semester and whittle it down into a whirlwind of information blasting through your brain. Ouch. It is hard!

            Also I have gotten a new job at a sweet coffee house and roaster. The schedule is constant. I always work the same shift every day, and I love the atmosphere. I still don’t have a car these days but “The Factory” is only 1.7 miles from my house, so I bike to work. It is so great to wake up the tired muscles before I get to work. I really enjoy it most days, but if you live in Colorado or have ever visited here you know that the weather here is CRAZY. One day it will be 75 and the next it is barely able to conjure up 45.

It would seem that Mother Nature has something against early morning bike riders, as I have experienced every type of radical weather that starts five minutes after I leave my house and usually is over about five minutes after I get to work. Snowstorm, rainstorms, windstorms, bitter cold, and unusually warm and foggy mornings have all occurred in the last three weeks. Another whirlwind of extra information that has to compute through my brain. Even if you check the weather report before you leave the house, the likelihood it is wrong is about 95%. At least the meteorologists are consistent, eh?

All this information sits in my head and I have to get it out, so here at the blog there seems to be a theme of purging and squeezing out the proverbial sponge that is my mind. Something that has been a recurrent theme in my mind that needs to come out is the idea of home. What is home and how do I find it are two questions that beat heavily on my heart. The American Dream of a house with a white picket fence, a loyal dog and a family that loves, honors and respects me growing up to fulfill my legacy on this earth is so seductive. I must admit, I have dreamed along with its luring tones at times.

Are we not called to something better here on earth, though? I believe in taking the opportunities I am given. Take this new job, I was not looking for a new job, yet this one fell in my lap. The raise was significant enough to start paying down debts and save a bit of money, something I have never had the ability to accomplish. I saw that the opportunity provided was significant and it would have been stupid not to take the position. On this earth, as Christians we are granted the beautiful gift of the restoration. It begins on earth and the culmination of this process ends when we are met face to face by the Creator. Finally restored to do the very thing we were made from the beginning to be, reflections of His glory, image bearers of the Most High God, worshippers of the King of Kings. What a beautiful thought!

I crave that day. I crave the moment when the entire world is made right. When every longing of my soul brings me to Him, the One whose love has shifted my whole reality and being. The thing I must remember is that day is not here yet. I do not yet desire fully the things that draw me closer to God. I am a weak being with weak desires and vivid fantasy’s of how God should be enacting this out in my life. In reading about the Israelites in the Old Testament, I see how truly weak the heart of man actually is. The consistency of which they desert God, and fly after their own fantasies believing in fulfilling their own destiny makes for a redundant story. It also makes me ask: Is this my story? Am I seeking the desires of God’s own heart or mine?

I think that most times the desires I have within me are evil. At this point in my life I know that there are so many shiny things that capture my attention easily, and honestly I ride with them most times. I love God, but the truth is I cannot love Him rightly, without His help. I need God, to love God. It is such an out of the box line of thinking that my brain struggles with! I need God to love God! So today, as I awoke with dreams of a house of my own and kids that share my DNA, I realize that I have been called to such a time as THIS. The future is near, tomorrow will come, but as Mathew 6:25-34 reads:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

 

I read this and wonder: Am I consistently seeking the Kingdom of God and HIS righteousness, OR my own? All definitions of the word righteousness infer goodness. By definition as a Christian, I believe that all men are innately evil. So once again, if I am seeking my own righteousness through my own desires, I am trying to climb a mountain that doesn’t even exist! Dreams are good, if God inspires them. My dream is to love Him the best I can during my short stay on earth. If that means a husband, a house, a dog, and some crazy kid with mohawks, then so be it. If that means I get to worship God more specifically by myself, then so be it. Sufficient is today its own worries and if I am so consumed in the future, I will simply let the Glory of today slip right through my fingertips.

That is really what it comes down to, eh? What did you do with today? Not where are you going? But what are you doing today? The end goal is supremely bitter if all you did to get there was coast. If it cost you much and took more from you than you thought you had in you, then the reward of the endpoint is that much sweeter. After a jumbled bit of mumbling, I guess I will end here. If you believe the dream ahead of you is from God, then are you living honorably in today?           

Hebrews 3:12-19 seems a proper ending:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,

"Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."

 

For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

 

              What a fair warning. I think it is anyways. I earnestly seek the Heart of the King today and pray that my own rebellion will not hinder me from His heartbeat. I pray also for you that God will reveal what dreams that are awake in you, are His, and which are yours. What a great gift we have in the Holy Spirit, who can help us see the