Lost

A little while ago I was reading a book called “Soul Keeping” by John Ortberg. (It is a good book, you should read it.) He made a number of statements in it that have caused me to pause and reflect. Here is one of the statements:

“We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place. We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost.”

This may not seem like an Ahh! statement for you, but humor me for a moment as I unpack what it has caused me to think about.
We spend most of our lives worried about the destination, trying to figure out the end game. I don’t think that is a bad thing; actually I think it is important to have a goal and reach for it. The Apostle Paul expressed the same thought when He said “Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead…” So the struggle is not with having and reaching a goal. The struggle comes in the fact that we are lost before we start heading toward the goal, or we get lost in the journey to the goal.

For those of us who are Christ followers, the goal is to glorify, worship and live for God. But in our desire to do that we get lost in layers of spiritual terminology and religious events that we think will lead us to our goal. We run down each of these roads hoping they will take us were we want to go only to find we are further away. We get discouraged; we think about giving up or we give up.

So how do I keep from getting lost?

I don’t want to be simplistic, but for this one that’s all I can be. Not getting lost is directly related to the depth of my relationship with God. Allowing God the space and time He needs to speak into my life and then responding and yielding to Him.

Lost? Remember, I am not asking about your destination, I am asking about your journey.

-Pastor Tim