Follow the Leader

Before smart phones, movies-on-command and video games, we entertained ourselves outside.  We played games like Kick-the-Can, Hide and Seek, Simon Says, Red Rover and Follow-the-Leader. Those games were simple but fun.  They required cooperation by the entire neighborhood gang and they required that we played by the same rules.  In Follow-the-Leader, the steps of the follower had to exactly match the leader.  We looked down at our feet a lot to make sure we were stepping in the right places.  There wasn't too much talk or chatter about where we were going.  The chatter and giggling was about where to step...one step at a time.

Ray and I were on the beach recently.  We go to the sugar sands of 30A in Florida as often as possible.  It's our refuge.  And as much as we relax and read, we also walk.  Walk for exercise and walk to think and explore.  And last week as we walked along the shore, where one creation meets another, the prints in the sand were evident.  People walking in the wake amble along without too much thought of their destination.  The goal is to walk and enjoy and experience this unbelievable creation of ocean and beach.

People walking in the wake amble along without too much thought of their destination.  Sure, this is vacation-time so ambling is fine.  But what about real life?  What about day-to-day?  It seems the pressure we live in and experience every day is more purpose-filled.  To our new graduates, we ask, what is your next step?  What's your plan?  To new students entering high school and college, we ask, what do you want to do?  What is your major?  To those older types, we ask, what will you do in retirement?  What is your purpose?

People are searching for their purpose.  Christ-followers are ardently praying and seeking for God to reveal their purpose.  What did He place me on the earth to do, we exclaim!  We somehow have come to believe that our real purpose is still out there just beyond our reach.

Before you gasp and think I'm bashing 'purpose', I'm not! I believe and know we were each created for a specific purpose!  We are a beautifully created people in which God has a special plan for each of us.  However, as I've gotten older I've realized that maybe...His purpose for us isn't the final destination but that His ultimate purpose is in the steps it takes to get there.

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. Ephesians 1:10-12 The Message

Oswald Chambers spoke these words in a recent devotional from My Utmost for His Highest:
"We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success. We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us. In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or a desired goal, but He is not. The question of whether or not we arrive at a particular goal is of little importance, and reaching it becomes merely an episode along the way. What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself."

Remember when Jesus first began his ministry, he went up to a few men and simply said, "Follow Me".  I've always found it interesting and powerful that no one asked, Where?  Ok, Jesus, I'll follow you but where are we going?  With Jesus and God, it seems it's always been about the process of following and not the destination.  It's in the following, that we change.  It's in the following that we look at our steps, one at a time.  It's in our following of the Leader that we reach our purpose.

"What is my vision of God’s purpose for me? Whatever it may be, His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me. God is not working toward a particular finish— His purpose is the process itself." Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for HIs Highest

Let's focus on the process today.  Let's keep our eyes on the Leader and watch our single steps today. We can trust that the Leader will make the path exciting, difficult, fun, fulfilling and ultimately finished.