Yesterday afternoon I checked in with a friend to find out how their travels had been. You see, they came by yesterday morning before they left on their trip and we asked how far they had planned to go on the first day, they said “we’ll stop in Albuquerque”.
Well, they made it. She said that there destination is still 650 miles away and they would be breaking that portion into two days. Sounded like a wise decision, no point in wearing yourself out the first few days.
Move forward, step by step or mile by mile.
Why do we get discouraged, frustrated or exhausted as we make forward progress in life? Often times, we set unreasonable goals and burn out before we reach them.
Dave and I used to travel a lot. We would drive from Montana to Arizona, it was an 1100 mile trip and we’d drive it in two days. Almost 700 miles the first and a little over 400 the second. Why not? Afterall, if we didn’t push that hard we were “burning daylight”.
Now that we are older and wiser, we take our time and we arrive in a better frame of mind, having rested along the way.
“Jesus has the power of God. And his power has given us everything we need to live a life devoted to God. We have these things because we know him. Jesus chose us by his glory and goodness, 4 through which he also gave us the very great and rich gifts that he promised us. With these gifts you can share in being like God. And so you will escape the ruin that comes to people in the world because of the evil things they want.
5 Because you have these blessings, do all you can to add to your life these things: to your faith add goodness; to your goodness add knowledge; 6 to your knowledge add self-control; to your self-control add patience; to your patience add devotion to God; 7 to your devotion add kindness toward your brothers and sisters in Christ, and to this kindness add love. 8 If all these things are in you and growing, you will never fail to be useful to God. You will produce the kind of fruit that should come from your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” II Peter 1:3-8 ERV
We have been given a spiritual road map which leads to our victory in Christ. Our first stop is where we come to understand that God has given us everything we need, great and precious gifts, for living successfully in this world.
Because these blessings put us on the right path, our next stop lands us in a place where our faith grows. As we travel a little farther, we increase in goodness and then knowledge. We now have knowledge that God has given us all we need, we stop to gain self-control and patience. We head out from patience, knowing we can trust God with our circumstances, arriving at a place of deep devotion to God.
Our devotion to the Father takes us to a place of kindness towards those around us and that kindness brings us to our destination of love.
As we move forward on the road map that God has designed for us, we will arrive successfully at our destination of being Christ-like in our words and actions.