I was driving my eldest daughter to our church this past month for her small group. Admittedly we arrive a few minutes late. I sometimes misplace my time-management genius genes, replacing them with the immediate needs around me. Feeding the kids dinner, coupled with my desire to come home to a clean house is sometimes a recipe for tardiness—I'm the first to admit.
By the time we arrived and I walked her in, there was roughly forty-five minutes before I had to drive back to pick her up. Instead of rushing home and back again, I decided to simply stay at the church and listen to a podcast.
I found my favorite comfy tufted sofa in the production room, laid down with a pad of sticky notes by my side, pressed play on my phone and just listened. It was an amazing interview with Bob Goff. Towards the end of the podcast he said something along the lines of this:
"We all have setbacks, just don't set up a campsite around it (Jamie paraphrase)."
Here's a man who is in his sixties, fully loving Jesus and others with all he has—and this statement is one of the last thoughts he wants to leave us with as listeners. He's allowed setbacks to roll effortlessly off him, I love him for it. I've thought about his statement all week, allowing it to marinate in my soul. Here's what it spoke to me:
I think it's time we all admitted that no one is perfect.
We all fall short. Period. Romans 3:23 tells us that. There's no way around it. We are human and no one is sinless, but God. It's time we start owning up to our shortcomings and release them.
Sometimes I think we walk around acting like we've got it all together while secretly hiding our failures and weakness in a giant cover-up backpack. It's like we've got fifty pound weights shoved in there, strapped to our backs all the while trying to run this race God has called us on. All it's doing is weighing us down.
At other times we simply can't let go of the setbacks caused by us and/or others. That mistake we made. That bad card we were dealt. That family member who wronged us. God wants us to ask for forgiveness, release it to Him and move on. To allow Him to transform us from the inside out, even through our perceived setbacks. Yet, how often do we hang onto that thing for dear life, building not just a campsite around that situation but an entire industrial complex!
We've camped around that thing so long that it starts to define us.
God tries to call us to better, greener pastures, but we tell Him that we can't move on because of this or that. Can I ask you something?
Who told you that God was no longer able to work the miraculous through you?
Who told you that God can't use your setbacks for setups?
Who told you that you need to use that situation as an excuse to halt your destiny?
Who told you that you can't release it to God?
Who told you that your best isn't ahead of you?
God has already paid the price for those things. Romans 3:24 says that He "freely" justified us by His grace. Ask for forgiveness, release it in your heart and move on.
Take off that overly large backpack, release the weights, get your butts off that campsite tree stump and start running freely with Him.
Allow God to use your setbacks as a setup for the miraculous things He wants to do through you. He has paid much too high a price for your freedom for you to let it go to waste.
"I'd rather build a campsite around the freedom found in Jesus than around the mistakes I've made."
(The podcast was the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast, Episode 480)
Photo Credit: Dominika Roseclay
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