What Do I Want To Become?

Looking towards Deception Pass

Tom and I are heading off on one of our quarterly retreats this morning – taking the ferry across to Whidbey Island and then driving up through Coupeville and across Deception Pass to Anacortes. I am looking forward to a couple of days to rest and refresh my focus.

This is a season of transition for me and I am just starting to ask myself What do I want to become in the next couple of years? Hopefully in the next couple of years I will be able to hand over my role as Executive Director of MSA to someone else and focus more on the ministry that is my passion. But what should that look like?

Transitions are challenging times for all of us. Like the photo of Deception pass, taken on a previous trip, everything seems covered in mist, and the waters over which we need to pass are deceptive, sometimes treacherous.

As we go through transitions, there is a tendency to want to hang on to what is familiar, successful and secure. It gives us a sense of value. But that may not be what God wants for us. Even as I prepare for this retreat I am reminded that there came a point in Jesus life when he needed to turn towards Jerusalem and the cross, backing away from what was surely the most successful healing ministry in the history of the world. From the world’s perspective success to failure in one easy step. From God’s perspective the most successful thing he ever did.

Which direction should we take?

As I contemplate this I wonder What might God want me to turn my back on that seems successful but is not God’s intention for me for the future? Could it be this blog? writing books and prayers? holding retreats? photography? I don’t know and I suspect that this retreat will not tell me. Get ready for change is something that I already feel God is saying to me. And that means to learn to hold loosely to everything I am doing.

So what am I hoping for from this retreat? I want to focus on not: What do I want to become but What does God want me to become? hope for a stronger trust in God so that no matter what the future holds I am willing to walk the path God sets out for me and not try to hang onto what needs to be let go of. I pray for the a heart that wants to draw closer to God and to God’s purposes no matter what that means.

So as you look at your future what do you see? Are you caught up in your own dreams for a better future or are you allowing God to mold and shape your future? Do you trust that your life and future is in God’s hands no matter what that means?