Wanna ruin your life?

If you want to destroy your life believe that your best days are behind you.  This belief is guaranteed to destroy any chance of joy reigning in your life.

This realization came to me while I was watching TV the other day.  Napoleon Dynamite was on and I was watching the scene where Uncle Rico is sitting on the porch with Kip.  He’s lamenting about how great he was at football in high school saying boldly  “back in high school I could throw a pig skin a quarter mile!” He was so consumed with the past that he was robbed of his future.

This may be a silly example so let’s go to one much more real and much more important.  Moses.  When he was born the Pharaoh demanded the drowning of all Hebrew babies.  Moses’ Mom freaks and puts him into a basket and floats him down the river to be found by the daughter of Pharaoh himself.  She raised Moses as her own son; he was the adopted son of the king…ballin.  One day he saw an Egyptian overseer beating a Jewish slave and he lost his temper and wound up killing the Egyptian and burying him in the sand.  The next day he saw two Hebrews fighting and when he confronts them to tell them not to fight they say to him "Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?"

He did what we do every day…He ran.

Here’s where I GUARANTEE we can relate to Moses.  Moses ran to a town called Midian and for 40 years he lived life not in the halls of Pharaoh but in the fields with his sheep.  I can only imagine how many times he thought to himself “I’ve screwed my whole life up…I was SON OF PHARAOH and now I’m nothing but a shepherd.”  Imagine how deeply Moses believed that his best days were behind him.  Imagine him lamenting to his favorite sheep much like Uncle Rico to Kip about the good ol days.

Then God shows up.  God comes to Moses and tells him of the amazing things that He has in store for Moses and the world through him.

For years I wondered if I would ever have friends who knew me like my friends in high school.  I was a slave to the notion that 17-year-old Jeremy was the pinnacle of cool and that he was the best version of Jeremy.  In this thought process I was destined to live the chasing shadows of who I was.  If we’re honest, this is what happens to us.  We screw up and we run. Then when we’re settled firmly in our pastures something amazing happens…God shows up.  God begins by telling us that he has unreal plans for us and our lives; plans to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us hope and a future(Jeremiah 29:11).  God is constantly pointing forward to the amazing things to come because that is who he is…he is a redeemer. A redeemer on a mission to grow and cultivate us into men and women who act more like, think more like and live more like his son.

As trite as the phrase “Live, Laugh, Love” can sound, I think it is exactly what Jesus wants us to see.

John 10:10 says that “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” So that is my prayer; may you trust that God has life and life to the full for you and I pray that you would be brave enough to step out and live an adventure. 

God loves a story…live out a great one. I dare you.