Settle for More

Last updated on: August 27, 2012 at 12:03 pm by Janet Davis

Settle for More 2012-08-27T12:03:55-04:00 Janet Davis

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“Faith moves us toward that which we cannot see”

I will be on Midday Connection at noon today talking about chapter one of My Own Worst Enemy.

We will be exploring the story of Lot’s wife and how her hesitancy to imagine and move toward a life different from what she had known sabotaged her calling to live radiantly. This is a brief snippet from the book to whet your appetite. Turn in today or download the podcast at your convenience.

Her Only Escape Was Unknown Territory

The instructions of the angels were clear: flee, don’t look back, don’t stop in the plains, go all the way to the mountains. With travel limitations of that day and time, it is likely that Lot’s wife knew nothing of the life she was being called to in the mountains. At least the plains were familiar. She could see them from Sodom.

In his book Becoming Human, Brian Taylor describes how often we want restoration rather than transformation. We want God to tweak our lives, to make us into a new and improved version of the woman we already know, nothing too dramatic. Yet, we serve a God who is all about transformation: turning caterpillars into butterflies; making the new “us” pretty unrecognizable to the old “us.” God tells us to not stop in the plains but go all the way to the mountains, the land of the unknown. We are not to settle for simply living a good life, we are called to shine.[1]

The real irony for us as Christians is that this kind of leap into the unknown is the very nature of the life of faith we are called to live as our norm. Faith moves us toward that which we cannot see: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). “Not seeing” is both an uncomfortable and essential prerequisite. Considering the priority God places on personal transformation, often the thing that we cannot see is a yet to be known version of ourselves!

[1] Brian Taylor, Becoming Human (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 2005), 207.

What leap of faith are you facing?

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