If you have ever seen a hamster in a running wheel, it’s really amazing how fast those teeny tiny legs can move. The hamster jumps into the wheel, runs and runs and runs so very fast, that the wheel just keeps the pace of the hamster. But … when the hamster decides that it’s time to stop running, the wheel comes to a halt. The wheel of constant movement stops. The little creature jumps off the wheel, walks around its cage … only to get right back on for more. But he gets no where. It’s not a real run, because there is no distance. Just energy spent.
This is what I need to understand concerning my own life here on earth, and I can’t help but wonder how many other women need to be encouraged in this way, too.
Dear wheel-worn friends of mine … we weren’t made for a wheel.
We weren’t made to run and run and run, only to spend our physical, emotional and mental energies to the point of sheer exhaustion. If we live our life in a spinning wheel of constant activity, constant doing, constant movement, then we will one day look up to enormous fatigue … fatigue that hinders our life of joy, peace, affects us physically, and plays havoc with our happiness.
Wheel-living stops us from making any distance in “pursuing the goal of the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.” Now, God does have a “will” for my life and your life, but His will does not require either of us to live in a spinning wheel of constant activity.
Around 6:30 this morning, I jumped off.
I try so hard to be “there” for so many people. I love what I do during the day – my work for my boss has value to me, because I know God placed me there. I love what I do with my husband – our businesses and the ministry that God has brought to us to do together is all we long to do…day after day. I love being there for our children and studying each week for Sunday morning small group, keeping up with the class and praying for all the prayer needs. Being there when friends need to talk, counsel or just need to be heard. I thoroughly enjoy PEOPLE and being there for them, and being able to work hard and serve others…I love it! I absolutely love it all!
But I realized this morning that I can’t be all to all.
My relationship with Christ is my life. Nothing is to come before it.
My relationship with my husband is my world! Being there for him, dating him, working side by side…it’s all I long for!
My relationship with my children is my privilege and honor. I want to be there for them…always.
My relationship with my family and friends is my fuel. Doing life with people is why I’m here.
If I may be totally honest with you…God is helping me find the “balance” of being the woman HE is calling me to be. Because y’all….I can’t keep this up. This wheel-worn woman has a tendency to run and run in making sure the people in my life are loved, cared for, helped and encouraged. But this morning He helped me to see that His will for my life will mean serving Him with my husband. It means “us” being able to give Him “our” best, and to make plans from that goal – our goal to know Him and make Him known. Rip and I both feel that “new days” are ahead.
I sat on our front porch swing, looked out across our property, lifted my eyes to the sunrise, and I released it all. (You know how a woman releases….through tears.) And they came flooding out of my heart and onto the pages of His Word.
But as I jumped, He caught me because He said to me,
“I, Yahweh, have called You, {Lisa}
for a righteous purpose,
and I will hold You by Your hand.” Is. 42:6
I heard Him to say:
You weren’t made for a wheel, but only My will.
As I sat there with Him in His Word, two deer walked right in front of me and brought another verse to mind: “As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for You, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God?” Psalm 42:1-2…
As I thought of everything the Lord is teaching me while creating the, “This Is My Life Plan”, He enabled me this morning to get off a wheel of unrealistic expectations and join Him in His “will” for my life. He took me to Philippians 3:10-21 and showed me clearly His “will” {my goal}:
My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature should think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you. In any case, we should live up to whatever truth we have attained. Join in imitating me, brothers, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame. They are focused on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of His glorious body, by the power that enables Him to subject everything to Himself. ~ Philippians 3:10-21
I hope you’ll join me in the, “This is My Life” plan…because as it’s unfolding in my own life, it’s my prayer that it will be a blessing in yours! I love y’all…and love being able to walk with you day after day!
lisa
