Same Question

And a month after my last "coherent" blogpost, I find myself still asking the same question:

What Matters Most?

As what I learned during today's Easter Sunday service this AM, storytelling is an art. And although I haven't quite mastered it yet, I plan to tell a whole lot of those in my lifetime, so allow me to start with the most recent (albeit, most important as-of-yet).

It's been roughly 38days since I resigned from my job of (almost) two years. Partly in due to my 'search of greener pastures', but eventually, thankfully to the feeling of 'I don't think I'm supposed to be here anymore'. Some time before the 'end of the beginning of the end', I had already (or at least thought) done my homework: prayed/semi-fasted, researched, asked around, consulted about what exactly should I be doing next. And I found myself armed with some sort of idea (at least) of what I would be doing in the nearest of the future a.k.a. the next chapter of my life (a prelude to quarter life).

And so I signed and submitted all the necessary paperwork, and by March 1, 2012, I found myself the newest addition to the national statistics of the unemployed.

For the first week or so, not having to wake up earlier than 7 am was such a blessing (well it still kind of is up until now, the waking up early part that is).

Aside from that, I didn't have to go out and commute as much, so I was able to spend so much time with my family, as I stayed most of the week just at home since I didn't need to be outside of the house. I also got my fair share of movie marathons, E-book hoarding, long gameplay hours, and uninterrupted 14hours-a-day of sleep.

But eventually, the movies ended, the E-books read, games were over, and I eventually had to wake up to reality.

After all, I kind of already knew that the sedentary-bum lifestyle was not really what God called me out of my previous work to do.

That and I guess the availablity of so much free time on my hands found me thinking a lot more (re-thinking actually) about just what exactly I should be doing.

And 9 days into my 'wilderness' experience, I come across this quotation supposedly by Francis Chan, but turns out upon actual reading of the book it was taken from (Crazy Love, free from Amazon Kindle yesterday!) that it's by Tim Kizziar, anyways here it is again:

Our greatest fear should not be of failure,

but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.

For awhile, I felt afirmed that I had made the right decision in quitting from my job. After all I was going to 'full-time church work'. But if I were to be completely honest, reading that quotation from someone 'famous' in the Christian world, I for the most part felt relieved, that somehow, the preacher guy was saying I was right in what I did, and in short, I was not mistaken. And that kids, is how you sift through motives and reasoning. Chalk it up to pride and selfishness and all the nasty things in between. When it came down to the crux of things, I was trying to find false affirmation from legit sources for my sorry excuse of a calling.

Don't get me wrong however, I know that resigning from my job was the right thing to do. I would be short-changing not only myself, but the institution that I worked for if I continued to work there. The bigger problem on hand is that I may have prematurely decided to jump ship onto another boat headed for one direction when I myself don't really know yet if I can not only pay for the trip but if I even wanted to go to the direction the ship is headed.

And 38 days into the journey to only-God-knows-where, I find myself trying to come up with a plan to either get myself out of this boat. But thankfully, God in His Awesome-ness came through and decided it's time for me to stop playing captain of the ship.

So just where exactly am I right now?

I guess you can say God put out the anchor and settled the ship for awhile.

I'm in the in-between. Definitely not yet where I want to be but God in His sovereignty knows exactly where I am. It's not exactly the easiest thing for someone prideful like me to admit.

But I know better than to run ahead of God, I know now from experience that I can never really go that far before I start messing things up.

And to answer the question I posted, What Matters Most?

What matters most is to keep the main thing the main thing.

Allow me to close with another quotation from Crazy Love, this time by Francis Chan (for reals), a set of questions just to close us full circle:

Has your relationship with God actually changed the way you live? Do you see evidence of God’s kingdom in your life? Or are you choking it out slowly by spending too much time, energy, money, and thought on the things of this world? Are you satisfied being “godly enough” to get yourself to heaven, or to look good in comparison to others?

Think about it.