The Pursuit of Happiness
While walking through my neighborhood yesterday, my thoughts quickly drifted from “ahh this breeze feels good,” to reflecting on my life and how most all of the truly good things have been those I have not pursued. My husband pursued me, my best friend pursued me, my last three job positions, my first leadership role in church, and my current technical duties at church all came to me completely out of the blue.
When the world emphasizes setting goals, planning out how to reach them, and then pursuing them with all your might, it’s really hard to wait on God. We’ve been programmed to get out there and make things happen. To pursue our dreams.
Now, I’m not saying waiting on God means you never plan or set goals. But ultimately God has plans for each of us, and many times we ignore or forget to take them into account. I have found that MY pursuit of MY “happiness” causes more stress than success.
I am a planner. That’s my personality. I like to be prepared. But I also only want to be where God wants me, so when something or someone falls into my lap I can’t ignore it even if it isn’t what I want.
And of course sometimes it takes God a lot longer to “drop something into our lap” than we’d like. But that’s usually where He wants us too – waiting, faithfully waiting. Knowing He is going to do something when the time is right or when we are ready. He doesn’t want us to worry and stress out over the situation. He doesn’t want us to sit down and wait for a hand out. What He wants is for us to faithfully do what we can where we are to the best of our ability until He changes the situation. No success in our lives should be credited to us and our ability, but to what we allow Him to do through us.
from my notebook 