Growing up in America, I think most people tend to think a lot about the future.  As kids growing into adulthood, we spend a lot of time mapping our course, planning and coordinating.  Some of us go a little farther as we do contingency planning, role play scenarios in our heads and we map out details in one, three and five year plans.  These plans include our education, careers, benchmarks of success, planning vacations, creating bucket lists, saving for retirement and anything else you want to be part of your plan.  Concurrently, we also have our dreams of falling in love, getting married, having children, buying a home, seeing the world and the hope of just having the joy and comfort of sharing life with someone.  This is all good stuff, nothing wrong with having dreams and goals, in fact I believe that God wants us to have those things too.

I spent a lot of time pondering my hopes and dreams last year, but it wasn’t in planning or mapping out a strategy, it was pretty much the opposite.  Getting to a place of being okay with every detail of my life not sketched out in advance.  On my journey inward, the Lord shined a light on the chambers of my heart to convict me of things I was unaware of (1Cor.4:3-5).  As the Lord examined me, there was growing conviction about things I was holding on to, keeping for myself.  Through quiet prayer, the conversation would lead to what I can only describe as Abraham-Isaac moments.  This was significant in getting me where I am today, but bringing me to this place of sacrifice was an important part of the process to note.  In the years leading up to this time, pruning had begun though I did not recognize it.  My pride fueled my focus on myself, my hunger for success and the execution of my plan, in an effort to re-attach the things that God purged from my life.  To the world my life was very leafy, lots of green, providing shade, appearing strong, but no significant fruit to speak of.  As I consider the Providence of God in all things, I now have conviction that extended periods of pruning were necessary to get my attention as well as to draw my attention to the Vine to make me a fruitful branch.  Once God had my attention, it would take more severe pruning to break my pride.  Being a proud man, I always wanted to appear strong, especially in my circle of influence where I am generally viewed as unmoving. “Never let them see you sweat,” right, that was me.  So how do you deal with hard lumps of coal?  Big, giant hammers of course!  As life events unfolded, things in life seemed very surreal leaving me to ask, “did that really happen?” Like Josephs brothers, I was dismayed and speechless by design (Gen. 45:3), sometimes referred to as “submission to the sovereignty of God”.  The time had come to stop muddling around in the safe patterns of my routine faith where my comfort zones where well insulated. The Lord was about to bring me to a place to break through the walls that hindered me from a deeper faith, deeper communion with Him and putting to death parts of me that I relied on instead of God.

I have this against you, that you have left your first love.  Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.

Revelation 2:4 – 5

The first conviction was a call to repentance.  I had already identified that some things purged from my life had become idols.  What became apparent was that the intellectual recognition of God removing something from your life is only the “what”, truthfully answering the “why” is what breaks you down to repentance.  God was bringing me back to my first love by way of pruning and repentance.  The pruning of actual things was setting the stage for time at the altar to sacrifice the objects of misplaced hope, the idols of my heart!