I am a results-oriented individual.  Around most New Year’s I put a lot of thought and time into the things that I will be resolute in accomplishing in the coming year.  Many times this takes the form of lists of stepped-out smaller goals for reaching larger goals that are best organized in categories on spreadsheets.

Some years there is a little less fire in the furnace and my resolutions fit on a simple piece of paper.

This year as the New Year drew nearer and I took a lot of walks with God to think and pray about the coming year.  I sensed God doing something different in me – a call to let my being self sit in the driver’s seat this year and put my doing/accomplishing self in the passenger seat.

I know plenty of people live this way anyway, and for them this might sound like no big deal – “this is the way we should all live and be anyway, right?”  Understand though, that for driven people making this shift can feel like giving up, selling out, or accepting failure or mediocrity.  Driven people often get a sense of worthiness and control out of accomplishing.

Overlay the spiritual world onto a driven personality and drive can feel a lot like faithfulness to God and to the purposes of God.  Even the idea of holding back then to a driven Jesus-follower can feel like unfaithfulness, selling out, and giving up on the Christian life (we’re supposed to be “pressing on” to the goal right?*).

Getting the idea of what a hot mess this was for God to suggest that I need to slide my driven-self over to the passenger seat for a while?  It seemed so wrong!

We’ve had these conversations before, but this time the God who is slowly crafting me into the person God wants me to be got through – and I began to get excited by the possibilities and the challenge.

While my driven-self isn’t dead and still has lists, goals, and strategies, I haven’t written them down and I’m working on letting that part of me just sit in the passenger seat – the non-controlling advisory role – and opening the door for the being part of me to sit behind the wheel.  I don’t have lists and spreadsheets this year, just a simple purpose statement that can easily fit on a 3×5 card.

Purpose: To receive God’s blessings and be a blessing to the people and world around me.

It is a purpose statement full of openness to God, to the world, and to others.  It is full of open-handed gratitude, joy, and humility for all that comes from God and an open-eyed benevolence towards every person and situation I come in contact with.  It offers peace and a path towards becoming a more non-anxious presence because it is a purpose that isn’t anchored in my ability to accomplish and affect change, but in who God is.  It is a purpose that I can live out and hold onto whatever comes in life.  I can live it out regardless of whether I am standing on top of the world or lying in a hospital bed.  It is a purpose that is wonderfully and completely immersed in a life with God – and perhaps best of all, it is a purpose completely grounded in God’s own stated purpose in the world!

In Genesis twelve God made a promise to Abraham and to all faithful people** that God would bless him so that he/they could be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.  Then again in Genesis twenty-two God made the same promise again to Abraham and swore by God’s own self to make it so.  God bound God’s very self to this purpose.

If you want to know what God is up to, what the mission of God is, what the Bible is about, or what Jesus came, lived, and died for – this is it.  God’s purpose is to bless faithful and obedient people so that they can be a blessing to all the other people of the world.  Or, as we often say at Edgewood Church, God is on a mission to heal and rescue broken people living in a broken world – and we’re invited to join it.

God isn’t through working on me yet, and I’m excited about what God might make of me through this challenging and exciting new purpose.

May you hear God’s voice and feel God’s presence,

Happy New Year!

*God uses all sorts of people.  “Pressing on” is a phrase written by another driven Jesus-follower, the Apostle Paul.  One of the many, many modern examples would be Willow Creek Community Church’s founder and pastor Bill Hybels – I’ve learned a lot from him.  Some people God has to motivate and give them drive and passion to get them where they need to be.  For driven people God often just redirects the direction they’re running in (they’re going to be running after something one way or another) and breaks them of their self-reliance to teach them to trust and rely on God.

**Being a child of Abraham and an heir of the great promise God made to him has never been based on race or genetics, but faithfulness and obedience to God.  It was Abraham’s trust and obedience along with God’s unmerited favor that made Abraham special and not anything about his race or genetics.  See: Genesis 15:6, Genesis 17:3-7, Genesis 18:19, Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8, John 8:39, Romans 4, Romans 9:6-25, Galatians 3:7, 28-29, Hebrews 11, James 2:21. Also, there are numerous examples in the Old Testament of people who are not racial decedents of Abraham becoming “Children of Abraham” through faith – Rahab, Ruth, etc.