At 5:45 am I drove up the driveway in order to take a friend to work. I was running a few minutes behind schedule. I witnessed a gorgeous mist that had settled into the field that runs alongside our driveway. It was begging to be photographed. When the Lord sets up a beautiful masterpiece and I can’t do photograph it, it’s heartwrenching! “I’ll take a picture when I come back down…surely it won’t change much in ten minutes.” It was only wishful thinking because as any nature photographer knows, those are words you cannot live by. Nature changes in seconds. Sure enough, I came back 10 minutes later with the perfect foreground for the shot in mind and the mist was barely there. I missed it. Beauty had mostly dissipated.

My heart sunk. As quickly as the mist had vanished, more quickly a scripture came to mind.

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.  Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.  So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. James 4:13-17

Even more quickly a realization shot through me. Just two weeks after I wrote a blog post on the question, “Am I doing what matters most?” Over the course of two weeks, I had already veered down an overly ambitious course of business that I had not thoroughly prayed over or thought through.

I got out of the car and took the pictures anyway with the little mist that was left. All the while, I thought about this realization. There was just enough mist left to make a decent picture. In this, I was encouraged to remember that it’s never too late to change course.

After capturing the mist, I fed the chickens, cats, and dog. All the while, meditating on the scripture and marveling at the reality that I had already ventured away from the path I should be primarily pursuing right now.

Grace, Amy.

After homeschooling my boy for his entire life, I get this one last summer before he hits his high school years. We’re discussing the possibility of him attending the local public school. This would be a huge change for us. My daughter is starting vision therapy that I’m helping her with. These are huge changes and areas that my kids need support in. They need me more than ever. And here I was thinking I could take a jaunt down a path that would be full of way more obstacles than I have time for right now.

Why was I scrambling to do more?

I’m just a mist. What leads me to pursue the things I’m pursuing?

How do I know that I’m doing what matters most?

1. God’s Word tells us how he wants his people to live.
2. God calls us to pray.
3. God has designed us with special gifts, talents, personalities.
4. God has placed us in a certain set of circumstances – work, family, friends – with certain needs.
5. He reveals things to us through the above.
6. We can trust that as we are attentive in these things, he has given us the wisdom as his people to make wise decisions.

Thankfully, the Lord helped me to change course. Not because it was bad, but simply because there are other more weighty and important things going on right now. I choose not to scramble. I know that scrambling does not produce the life we desire here. I immediately stopped pursuing an idea I had and put it on the back burner until the end of the summer. By God’s grace and His timing, I intend to pick it back up when it makes more sense to do so. As James writes we should say, “If the Lord wills, I will live and do this.”

What if you, like me, find yourself doing something that might not be the best use of your time right now? Should we beat ourselves about it? Please don’t! We have been given the Holy Spirit, a Wonderful Counselor. He guides us and brings to mind the scriptures. We are given His grace to change course. He gives us new desires. He enables us to change. It’s a beautiful process that we should only be in awe of and amazed at, not angry about.

Will you ask yourself the hard question, “What’s lead me to pursue what I’m pursuing?”

We have many opportunities and tools to enable us to easily be overly-ambitious. Information is coming at us from all directions to do more. I pray that we will grow in wisdom and understanding about what God calls us to as His people first and foremost and then what He calls us to as individuals in our time and place using our skills, wiring, and gifts. That we will make wise choices and cease overly-ambitious, self-imposed plans.

Let’s begin to begin again…

I will remember who God is, who I am in Christ, and what I already have in Him. I don’t need to achieve more through overly ambitious agendas for myself (or my family!) that haven’t been thoroughly prayed over and thought through. I don’t need to strive for control in any one area of my life. I can step back and take a deep breath. Jesus has already achieved the most important thing I need in life. Life in Him and with Him. I can rest and yield to Him. I am His and He is mine and He has authority over my life for His glory and my good. I am increasingly satisfied in Christ!

Knowing our skills, gifts, personalities, and values is one way we are helped in making wise life choices. If you wonder what you were best created for and how to wisely use the time you’ve been given, you might be interested in knowing when my next course is available. The course is called:

Your Epic Journey: Discovering and Developing Your Life Purpose

If you sign up for my newsletter, you will be notified when it’s available at the end of this summer. You will also receive two freebies when you sign up: a free booklet I’ve put together called Asking Is Loving as well as a free course on being transformed by God’s Word called Empowered By Truth.

I’m linking up with these amazing bloggers this week:

Inspire Me Monday

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