Day One: Ready to Go?

I woke up this morning to find the war of the worlds going on in my mind. On one side, I could hear the hopeful opening lines of Ryanhood's song, AROUND THE SUN ("Ready to go? Honey let's begin...we'll try to see by the light of the sun and tell it like it is...") playing on my mental soundtrack, while at the same time I felt this deep need to consider giving up on everything I planned on praying for during this 40 Days of Faith. You know that rational-sounding voice that says (so persuasively), "You'd be fine without that, now, wouldn't you? Maybe you should just move on..."

Not exactly the headspace I expected on Day One! But kind of typical, I'd guess. I bet if you could read the minds of runners at the start of any marathon, you'd find a fair number of them thinking, "What am I doing here? This is a terrible idea..." But then the gun fires and off they go.

So here we go :)

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Michael Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. He's been "tweeting" quotes from a new book on reaching for your dreams by John Maxwell, and if his stragegy is to get me to consider buying the book, it's working...I'm intrigued. Especially something he posted this morning:

"Every journey toward a dream is personal...so is the price that must be paid for it."

More and more lately, I'm struck by the failure of our socital insistance on lumping people together into catagories (diagnosis, personality types, etc...) I think God made us with an astonishing level of variation. So it makes sense that the roads we take to realize our dreams will be unique. So to whatever extent I'm comparing my progress to someone else (or EVERYONE else) I'd do well to cut that out and focus on my own stuff.

So today, as we start out, let's cut out the comparisons, and focus on our own stuff. And on God, to see what information he has for us about this journey.

To help with this, I thought it would be fun to read the Gospel of Luke together. It's the third book in the New Testament, an account of Jesus' life written by a doctor. If you were part of last year's 40 Days of Faith, you may remember Luke as the author of the book Acts (the story of the adventures of Jesus' apostles after His resurrection). Luke's Gospel is the prequel to Acts...which means we're going at this kind of like Star Wars :)

Here's a link to the first chapter...it's like reality TV, with miracles!

If you click on the video below to hear Ryanhood singing, you'll hear that the next lines to come along after the call to start out are exactly on point for me today:

"I wanna overcome pain, without feeling pain. Yeah, I guess I want what I want when I want it, yeah I want it both ways..."

Today, whether we feel ready or not, we're starting out. The gun has fired, it's time to pray. This is (most likely) gonna hurt. Let's do it anyway. Let's ask God for the things we want most in our lives, whether they seem reasonable or not. And then let's listen, to see what He has to say. Let's ask him to move us to someplace we can't get to on our own.