February 9, 2010

To Live Boldly

My prayers lately have had a common theme.

I've been coming to grips over the past few months with a simple, yet complex, truth. That our God has orchestrated the events of ours lives, ordaining everything through His sovereign and perfect will. If you think about it, this fact is, or should be, the most liberating realization of all time. It's a blessed paradox, for we are bound to His will, yet it is freeing beyond understanding, for He knows our minds and souls, our actions and thoughts, and has incorporated them all into His sovereign plan.

As a Christian, this should impact every single area of my life. It should lend me peace as I make my way through this age. It should be my comfort and reassurance even in the darkest times of my indecision. Yet, all too often, it is not. I continually fall into the trap of believing that I am on my own, that my deeds are independent of His scheme. But that just isn't true. It's a lie that I all too often live.

We are His children. His chosen ones. His people. No matter what we do, no matter what we believe, we are already accounted for by Him. We are free! We can do anything, follow any course of action, and it will follow His will to the letter. Every thought we have and every thing we do is a sentence in the chapter of our lives, and the book is already written. We are free from indecision, from hesitancy, from uncertainty, for anything we do will be used by God to glorify Him. And that is our chief end upon this earth. Not to graduate from college, not to have the perfect spouse or children, not to make money or "succeed" by the world's standards, but to live for Him. And we do just that, even if we don't realize it.

This isn't to say we should all just be fatalists. Through some beautiful mystery, we still have choice, and should live thusly. But our choices are already accounted for, our every thought already heard and acknowledged. Never have I known of a more liberating truth.

Yet so many, if not all, of us live just the opposite. We live, for the lack of a better term, fearfully, when we should be living fearlessly. We should live with the relieving certainty that God has designed our past and future, and incorporated all of reality into His will.

As awkward as it may seem at times, this truth should cause us to live.

And to live boldly.

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