I had a goal in mind…a purpose to fulfill…deep inside myself…I wanted to fly.
I would have one of my parents tie an old towel around my small neck and then I would race around the house or outside. As I ran I would take quick glances back behind me to see if my make-shift cape was somehow magically floating in the air like Superman’s. A crooked grin would outline my face as I watched the towel bounce up and down…in my mind I was almost there…I was almost flying.
Now as a grown man I look back on this memory and wonder how a life can change so much in 20 plus years. It’s amazing how your heart can go from trying to fly as a child to trying to learn how to survive a day to day challenging life as an adult. Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair to me that the innocent visions of our youth get stripped away by the reality of the world we live in as we get older. At some point we realize that we will never fly…some of the thoughts, ideas, and goals we formulated as we grew up don’t come to fruition.
Our marriage didn’t last a life time like we thought it would…
We’ve never been able to land our dream job…
Somehow we compromised our goals and now we’re drowning in debt…
We have no control over anything in our lives…
Realizations like this can take us to a place where we start to think, “Wow, life didn’t turn out how I thought it would at all.”
Have you ever caught yourself thinking this way? I know I have.
It reminds me of the two men in Luke 24 walking a few miles outside of Jerusalem, three days after the crucifixion of Jesus. They were in a deep discussion about all that had happened in the last few days concerning Jesus and their hopes in Him. Soon a resurrected Jesus walks beside them but they don’t recognize that it’s Him.
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“He (Jesus) asked, “What’s this you’re discussing so intently as you walk along?”
They just stood there, long-faced, like they had lost their best friend. Then one of them, his name was Cleopas, said, “Are you the only one in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard what’s happened during the last few days?”
He (Jesus) said, “What has happened?”
They said, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene. He was a man of God, a prophet, dynamic in work and word, blessed by both God and all the people. Then our high priests and leaders betrayed him, got him sentenced to death, and crucified him. And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel.”
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So did you catch the two men using the same kind of despondent words we use sometimes? They said, “And we had our hopes up…” These men were hoping their lives would end up the way they dreamed…but that’s not what happened.
I’m not going to pretend to know what you (my reader) might be facing in your life today or even how you feel in the midst of it. But what I do need you to know is that there’s not a single person on this planet that hasn’t dealt with the disappointment of their lives not turning out how they thought it would. It’s a struggle for everyone. And sometimes our disappointment goes beyond ourselves or the situations in our lives. If we’re being honest sometimes we feel like God let us down.
Isn’t that what the two men were expressing to Jesus in Luke 24? “And we had our hopes up that He was the One, the One about to deliver Israel.” Sound familiar? Yeah, me too.
Fear, doubt, insecurities, the inability to understand why things are happening in our life the way they are…these are all things that Satan uses to distract us from living out purpose in our lives…we are all susceptible to these darkly chained emotions and tactics.
But know brothers and sisters, the power of love and faith in God are our strongest weapons to break free from these chains. And you might say, “Jeremy, I don’t feel like I have much of either in me right now.” That’s ok, friends…because my God says in Matthew 17, “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you…”
Everything we need to be able to stand up and live purpose-filled happy lives every day has been planted by God inside all of us. Because brothers and sisters, you are more than your circumstance…and you are loved unconditionally by an amazing God.
It would be awesome to be able to fly…but it would be even more amazing to truly live.
It starts inside…
“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
