My Utmost - Oct 21, 2009

Go here first...
http://www.myutmost.org/10/1021.html

Direction By Impulse

Jude 20
“Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.”

Key Passages

• There was nothing either of the nature of impulse or of cold-bloodedness about our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into panic.

• Impulse is a trait in natural life, but our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple.

• Impulse is alright in a child, but it is disastrous in a man or woman; an impulsive man is always a petted man.

• Impulse has to be trained into intuition by discipline.

• … it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours in every day as a saint, to go through the drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.

• It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.

My Own Thoughts

I am an impulsive guy. I live my life by feeling. I know this because I recently took a personality test that told me as much. I get an impulse I move on it... although sometimes its a blurry line whether that impulse should have been entertained or moved upon. I've been really wrestling with this idea of “living in the drudgery”. I feel that inbred desire or impulse to do something or to be a part of something exceptional for God. I don't think its a bad thing, other than I keep sitting on my hands and waiting for that exceptional thing to come along. I think to myself, when this thing happens, when things get rolling in this direction, then I can really serve God. Meanwhile I am not serving Him where He has me. What if the grand exceptional thing I am looking for never comes along? Will I never have served God? How will I look back on my life when I am 80 years old and I realize that I have wasted my whole life waiting for some grand calling that never came along, and all He really wanted from me was to live the life He described to live all the while....

Everyone should read this passage. We have this crazy idea in our culture that amazing things are going to happen to us in life. That we are all going to be celebrities and we're all going to be famous and doing amazing things, at least in the world's eyes. Well, that most likely just isn't going to happen to us (didn't I hear this speech in the movie “Fight Club”?)... It's so true though, Tyler Durton had it right. We all think we're going to make it, and we keep waiting for that and looking for it, and even trying things that would make us appear crazy in an attempt to make it happen. Forget it! Live your life now, where you are at, where God has placed you. Live the life he described for us to live where He has put you. I am screaming this at myself right now.

There's lots more to say on this subject, but I'd love to hear from anyone out there reading. If there is anyone...