Staying IN Love

“If you are enjoying a season of favor and success, I challenge you not to lose sight of the discipline and faithfulness that placed you there.”

~Darlene Zschech, Extravagant Worship.

This is a strange topic—it’s relational, and certainly interpersonal, but it at its root is intrapersonal. It’s about the very drive that takes us where we’re headed in our dedication and keeps us there.

But this issue is interpersonal as well because the quote of Darlene Zschech’s above reveals how “affected” we can become with a modicum of success—success, mind you, based in the fact of appropriate worship.

God loves it when we’re hot on purpose, meeting him in our living on purpose. Is this not worship?

And worship in this way is about staying in love. We became enraptured about our purpose, found God’s primal call in this, invested deeply, sincerely, devotedly, and we began to reap some rich rewards from our sowing. This was because our hearts were swept away in love—for God, most certainly, but more specifically, for his purpose for us.

We tweaked and honed this thing and increasingly we became more and more blessed. But then a bad thing happened to sour the experience. We could only see it in retrospect.

We began to read our own press. We looked at our success and removed ‘the purpose’ from it. Our hunger died. The very discipline and unbending faithfulness we became known for—certainly in God’s sight—ebbed away.

Perhaps when we’re tempted in these positions to take our eye off the ball we could simply remember, he who gives so graciously can just as easily take away. God is impartial; play by virtue’s rules and certain good things happen. Play by the rules of pregnant laziness or brooding pride, however, and we “become” an indifferent reality.

We must be careful what our relationships are doing to us in the midst of God’s purposes. Do they built up or tear down?

But, even more than that we must continue to come back to this certain truth; hit the mark in life, don’t miss it as we’re apt to do when we’re less than diligent.

And this is done with unbridled aplomb when we’re in love with the good thing we do, even as others crowd in and enjoy it with us, as we learn to cope with success.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.