Honestly

Honestly, I want to be that guy whose cell phone never stops ringing, whose email blows up all the time, that people are begging to write another book, give another talk, come share his wisdom with their group non-stop. I want to be the golden boy who rides in million-dollar airplanes and limousines from one meeting, engagement, talk, and book signing to the next. I want to be a world changer from sun up to sunset from Sunday to Sunday.

Is it prideful? YES! How do I know it’s pride and not just ambition? Because I’m disappointed and discouraged that I am not that guy. I’m the other guy.

The guy who looks and looks for opportunity but never finds it because he is always looking and never stopping to see it.  The guy who over exaggerates his failures to compensate for what he feels is laziness or ineptness. The guy who sees the other guy and is jealous of what he has without stopping to see how God could use him if he would only stop watching the other guy. The guy who is guilty of the other kind of pride, the pride that says God can’t do anything with me.

And so…rather than run ahead again for the hundredth time in my life and knock on, no kick down, the door, I will wait patiently on God, get to know Him and His Son better, learn to really listen to the Holy Spirit and not put words in his mouth, and pray for the small moments to add up to life change; my life first, and whoever else God puts in it to change along with me - not because of me.

But that’s not me; not who I am. So, it can’t come from the same old habits, sitting and struggling and then, in a moment of bravery, bounding out the door to save the world when no one has seen me care. No, it will have to come from one little step every day, closer to being conformed into His image, closer to thinking with His mind, closer to reacting out of the character He has birthed in me. It will have to come from a consistent and constant understanding that what He wants and needs from me is being not doing.

Anyone can do things, anyone can talk, write, give, declare, disseminate wisdom. Anyone can write a song, write a story, have whatever worldly success is. What He needs form me is not a golden boy to dominate the landscape with more Christian dogma. What He needs from me is humility. Humility that yields human will, emotions, and intellect to a spirit unleashed by conformity to the word of God, the two-edged sword, on people he has prepared for me to engage with his love; unconditional love. By allowing his word to “[cut] between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. [To] expose [my] innermost thoughts and desires. [So that n]othing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom [I am] accountable” (Heb 4-12-13 NLT) I will see life change.