LOST?

We just finished our first Tuesday without LOST.  I made it through and looks like you did too.  6 years and now Jack is gone…  ugh!

One of the story lines on LOST, at least near the end, was determining what “Jacob” wanted the characters to do.  Sometimes he showed up but it usually wasn’t when Jack, Hurley and the gang was looking for him.  They always wanted to know what step they should take next.

Have you ever wished you could just pick up the phone, call God, and ask “Ok.  What do you want me to do with my life?”  Wouldn’t it be cool if He would just respond on the other end of the telephone with “Goeth to 129 Main Street and ask for a job” or “Thou Shalt break up with the one that thou datest.”  That would be cool.  We both know that it doesn’t work like that.

We want God to give us the BIG PICTURE but God usually works in small steps. In other words, most of the time He will tell us what to do, but it’s just the next step that we are to take in our life.  He doesn’t always show us the whole mapped out journey.  Until we take the last step that He’s told us to take, He won’t reveal the next one.

The step that He’s directed us to take may seem totally unrelated to what we’ve been asking Him too.  We may be asking Him about our vocation and His response, “You have to forgive your neighbor.”  We may think something is important and urgent but God knows what our next step needs to be and we would be wise to take the step that He puts in front of us.  If you feel like you’ve lost God’s will for your life, maybe you should go back to the place or step that you know for sure that you were in His will and go from there. That would be a good place to start.

The deal is, we can’t go to the place that God wants us to go to and stay where we are. We can’t be in two places at once.  Yes.  We get comfortable with our surroundings.  Comfortable with our life.  Should I say it…comfortable with our sin…  But if we are to go new places with God we have to leave the place where we are.  That may mean cutting relationships, telling someone about your sin, or literally moving to a new place.  Only you and God know what that means.

On LOST, the SMOKE MONSTER showed up at the most inopportune times.  I guess when you think about it, there really isn’t a good time for a visit by the SMOKE MONSTER.  The SMOKE MONSTER’S job was to destroy the island and the people on it.  In the same way, we have to keep our determination to complete the next step that God has told us to take.  We will get distracted, tempted, and wooed, but stay strong.  You’ll get there, but it’s not always about the destination.  It’s about the journey and how we did with the steps along the way. God wants to help you take the next step and He’ll always be there.  (That’s more than we can say about Jacob.  lol)