Where You At?

“When we dwell on the past, we tend to want to live there. When we dream of the future, we want to go there.”

I ran across this phrase in reading an article on the importance of faith in the time of grief. It is attributed to author Erwin Raphael McManus, a Pastor and leader of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles. While the author of the article originally used this quote to emphasize the importance of moving forward in times of grief, the second part of the quote is what struck me in particular – “when we dream of the future, we want to go there.”

Over the course of the last few years since I’ve gained a personal relationship with Christ, my mom and I have often compared and contrasted the advantages and disadvantages of the ways in which God deals with us differently. My mom is very much an implementer (that’s why I hired her as VP of Business Operations for J’Nointed). Once she is given an objective, she’s very good at implementing a strategy step-by-step until the job is done; but without the objective, she is rendered ineffective and unsure of exactly what direction to go in. So God tests her by simply leading her step-by-step to the end goal without telling her the objective in the beginning. Often times, she won’t know the objective until the very end of the mission.

I, on the other hand, am very much a visionary; so I am told the goal up front, before the mission even begins. And so, like the quote says, I dream of the future and want to go there. Most of the times, what I forget, though, is that God is showing me the future, not the present, and thus, what I see will only be accomplished in the future, not the present. So God, in turn, tests my faith by showing me the end goal, but hiding the step-by-step process to get to that goal from me. My test than comes in having to trust that somehow, someway, God will eventually bring that which He’s shown me to fruition.

Of the two, I’m not really sure which scenario is easier to handle. But I do know that God wants us to trust Him and has a way of bringing us to a place where we totally surrender will to His will. So, whether you’re like my mom and wondering where God is taking you, or like me, and wondering when God is going to do what He said he would, know that everything you go through is simply preparation for where you are headed.

God bless,
J.W.