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Seek...

             "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 6:33) 

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ (Matthew 22:37)

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13) 

I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. (Psalm 119:10) 

          So begins my first day of getting my life back. There’s lots of reading, meditation, work, exercise, and writing to be done, and as usual, I’m both looking forward to it and dreading it. I’m hoping for big, positive changes, and resisting them. One of my brilliant ideas of yesterday is to begin to work through some exercises in a study guide to Renovation of the Heart and the first one has to do with the idea that Christian spiritual formation is a two-party task. It requires both God’s grace and work on my behalf and my work and grace on my behalf.

The passages I’ve chosen for today either reflect this two-fold concept or they focus on my side of the equation. I don’t tend to like teamwork. There have been too many times when I have ended up doing all the work, while the team took the credit, or that the team has been there as little more than witnesses to rubberstamp the desires of the leader. Or, at least, that’s been what I’ve noticed and remembered.

Neither of these is the sort of team talked about when one teams up with God but teaming up with God doesn’t let one hide and let Him do all the work while we anesthetize ourselves in our own way. It also doesn’t mean our getting to dictate in the relationship. That’s what the verse from Psalm 119 comes in. We have to seek. As we seek, God protects us from straying.

And instantly, a red alert (or at least a yellow alert) is going off in my heart. Am I expected to seek God’s input on every question? Do I have to ask His permission or advice about taking the dog for her morning walk? Do I have to spend the next 18 hours praying, or praising, or studying Scripture? Of course, I know the answers to these. I don’t have to do any of them. I can, and probably should, do all of them. But that’s the problem. I don’t want to take responsibility either for the decisions or for any less-than-perfect outcomes. I want to be able to blame without being blamable. Like Adam, I want at least two degrees of separation. “The wife…that You gave me…”

But, that’s not the goal today. Today, whether I want to or not, I choose to try to figure out how to do the seek…and find, and the seek…and be kept even as I at least consider stepping out and pressing onward, at least a little, somehow.

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