Me Myself and I

The Desire to be Independent | “Trusting God is depending on Him, whereas trusting in ourselves is acting on our desire to be independent” – Patrick M. Morley The Man in the Mirror
 

scrip·ture | 1 Peter 2:16 ¹⁶ Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

de·vo·tion | That was it, I had it. All the rules, the chores, and don’t get me started on the suppression. I was in second grade, and every night that I came home from school, there would be a stool sitting in the entry way with a sticky note on top of it. The note would lay out the next three hours of my life. Two hours of me complaining about how I had to do everything around the house, and one hour of actually doing chores. One particular day after school, I opened the front door, saw the note, and made the decision that I had enough of it all. I had recently finished the abridged version of The Swiss Family Robinson, and if they could live in the wild on their own, I could live in the wild on my own. From now on it was going to be me, myself, and I.

Unlike the Swiss Family Robinson, I made the decision to strike out on my own and live by my own rules. I stomped up the stairs to my room one step at a time and grabbed my suitcase from underneath my bed. What does a kid need to survive on his own? I had a change of underwear, two pairs of socks, a couple of shirts, the pants I was wearing, and the blanket my grandma had given to me as a baby, I had to stay warm somehow, right? I went downstairs, got my coat, hat, gloves, and boots on and headed out the door. It was time to start living on by my own rules. Where sticky notes would never don my entry way, and I could live off the fruit of the land.

As I started my journey down our quarter mile driveway, I had four football fields to start thinking about what I was doing. Every step I took was filled with thunderbolts of reality. It was January and freezing. As I opened the front door and took my first step, I was hit with a biting wind that stopped my breathing for the briefest of seconds. One hundred yards into my new independent life, I asked myself, what am I going to eat tonight? Two hundred yards into my personal life statement, I asked myself, where am I going to stay tonight? Three hundred yards into my questionable situation, I asked myself, how am I going to get to school? Four hundred yards into the most miserable decision I had made so far in my life, I was an independently wandering wayward son that was freezing, hungry, and wondering how The Swiss Family Robinson made it look so easy. After four hundred yards of independence, I was ready to turn back and live under the structure and influence that had provided and protected me for the first 8 years of my life.

In your four-hundred-yard walk of life, do you feel like God has given you a bunch of sticky notes that have been acting as your fun police, or do you see them as things provided to us as guidance and structure from a god that loves us. In a time of solitude and prayer, ask God about the sticky notes that you are struggling with.

prayer | LORD, this life is hard, but I realize it is I that makes it hard. In my struggle to be the master of my own destiny, I have forgotten that the guidance and structure You have provided to us was given in love and mercy. I am reminded that it is in Your fatherly love for us, this structure and guidance is meant to diminish the burden that we feel by trying to live both in and of the world. I pray LORD that You work the Spirit in me and help me to lay down my obstinate soul and come back to the protection only You can provide.

Daily Alone Time with God |

Chapter of the Week | Proverbs 14

Mon·day | 1 Samuel 8:6-7 ⁶ But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. ⁷ And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

Tues·day | Philippians 4:19 ¹⁹ And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Wednes·day | Psalm 37:23–24 ²³ The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; ²⁴ though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand.

Thurs·day | Proverbs 3:5–6 ⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. ⁶ In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

 

Fri·day | Isaiah 41:13 ¹³ For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”