Are we there yet?
Where are we even going?
One day, I decided to take a snowboarding trip out to the Rocky Mountains. Loaded up with my snow gear and bundled up in my snow clothes, I set out toward the Rockies with only a vague sense of how to get there. Many hours flew by and the sun set, and I decided to pull over into a nearby motel somewhere right of nowhere. The front desk person looked at me funny dressed in my snow gear, but I shuffled off to my room confident that I was close to my goal.
When I woke up, I found out I was encroaching the Grand Canyon. No wonder I was sweating while I walked to my room!
Where should I go?
I’ll confess that I made this story up, yet I act like this with most of my life!
Our third question in our series, “Where should I go?”, governs not just our goals but the route toward our goals. My vague conception of the Rockies’ location led me down the wrong road, delivering me unprepared to my new destination! How quickly do you zoom past the question of “Where should I go?” in your life? Let’s slow down, lest we lose ourselves!
Where ought Christians go?
In some ways, the answer to the Go? question is simple. All people are made in God’s image, and all people are designed to be in relationship with God. According to the Christian faith, the goal for those in Christ is eternal fellowship with Him (and those not in Christ will forever be separated from Him and all life itself). More specifically, the end goal of the Christian life is to be with God, face to face, in imperishable bodies that have no worry of sin or decay. Seeing as Christ is also the Way (and the only Way) to God, people ought to follow Christ to see God.
Along the way, God requires of us another simple task: faithfulness. God made all of us different, and He works through that diversity to display His resplendent, variegated glory. By the parables of the talents and sower, God gives different amounts of gifts to people and produces different amounts of fruit to them. Our goal is to obey what the Lord has given to us over the course of our lives, discerning through relationships and our own history how He is shaping us.
En route to our eternal fellowship with God, He wants us to aim for faithfulness according to His distribution of good gifts and purposes to His people. By His Word we learn the means by which we might chase those goals of faithfulness, knowing that our ultimate prize, Jesus, is holding us all the way along.
Where do I want to go?
Lastly, the related question of go? is “Where do I want to go?” Thankfully, the Lord shapes our desires to yearn for His good purposes, too. Our desires (properly aligned with His!) drive us toward holy goals. So this week, sit (or walk) with the Lord and ask Him, “Where should I go? Where are you leading me to want to go?” And with open arms wait for His answer to your request for wisdom, which He loves to give to those who love Him!