As you and I look toward the New Year, it is essential to look back over this year. If this is a regular practice for you invite a friend or two who is not into the whole “goal-setting-reflection-thing,” and I promise you they will be astonished to discover where their energy went over the past eleven months.
These days I’m up at 5:00 AM, trying out a new routine that involves deep morning reflection, meditation, and exercise. While pacing around my apartment thinking back over a section from A.W. Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God” a passage struck me as astoundingly true:
“Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk, stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.”
The word usurper is “a person [or thing] who takes a position of power or importance illegally or by force.” The chapter references the case that man has replaced God from the center of their hearts with everything from ambition to material objects.
Whoa! What a heart check.
Where has my heart wondered off this year? I’ve danced with success obsession, a desire for family, and setting my “impact goal” for the new year. I’ve considered all these things without considering God.
How can the creation consider a life without the creator?
In becoming ourselves may you and I stay in step with a God that set eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), knew us before we were conceived in our mother's womb (Jeremiah 1:5 ), and began a good work in us who will bring it to completion (Philippians 1:6).
Maybe you don’t have a faith or your belief in God took a backseat to life, ambition, and progress this year. The Bold Act of Becoming Yourself is not just a book about faith. It is about returning to the essence of what it means to be human and aligning ourselves and our goals with that meaning. I believe faith is the vehicle which makes the concept of becoming yourself sensible and accessible. The creation is not independent of the creator.
Thank You For Reading:
I am working on another book. Each week I will blog topics, inspiration, thoughts, concepts, and themes from my third title “The Bold Act of Becoming Yourself.” If an idea, concept, or comment comes to your mind — let me know in the comment section below. My goal is to release this work in 2019. #TheBoldSelf