You Choose

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By:  Staci Stallings

I just watched “Facing the Giants.”  Two days ago and yesterday I watched “A Beautiful Mind.”  They both say the same thing.  You choose what to focus on, and by focusing on it, you make it real.

In “Facing the Giants,” there is a scene in which a young football player is challenged to carry a teammate on his back while down in a four-point stance.  The coach asks how far he thinks he can go.  “The twenty,” the kid answers.  “I think you can go to the 50,” the coach responds, “but do you give me your word you will give me everything you’ve got?”  “Yes, Coach.”  But you can tell he really doesn’t think he can ever make it to the 50….

We all write on the windows of our existence, mapping, calculating, trying to understand, trying to determine just how much we can really do or give.  As we write on those windows, we choose what is most real for us and to us in any given moment.  The windows are the 20 yard line.  What we see as possible, what we understand, how the world looks to us.  Beyond that is the 50—the ultimate that we think is possible.  That’s it.  No more.  Surely we could be asked to do no more than that, to go no farther than that.

But God’s world is beyond the windows, beyond our recognition or our belief of what is possible.  Too often we stay locked in our own rooms, writing on our windows because going outside the those windows scares us.  We are afraid of what might happen if we go beyond what the filters of our vision tells us we can.  We don’t go for 100 yards because we don’t think it’s possible.  We can’t even conceive of that.

We refuse to conceive of going 100 because we know that on our own strength, we can’t do it.  But God doesn’t ask us to do it on our own strength.  In fact, the moment we stop relying on our own strength and start relying on His—trusting Him, honoring Him in each and every task in our lives, miracles begin to happen, roadblocks are removed, weaknesses become strengths.  And those new strengths take us far beyond what we ever thought was possible.

But it is our choice where to live—at the 20, going for the 50, or letting God get us to the 100…. or beyond. 

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MY WRITING?

Blink goes the cursor.  What IS the purpose of my writing?

To honor Him.  That should be my answer.  Is it?  Is it really?  Or is it sales or making some list of highly acclaimed authors.  Is it recognition for me?  Or recognition of Him in me? 

To honor Him.  When I choose that as my purpose for my life as well as for my writing, win or lose, I am suddenly outside that 20 and maybe even the 50, headed out into “impossible.” 

To honor Him.  When it looks like it’s working out and when it doesn’t.

To love Him anyway.  To trust Him anyway.  To believe in Him anyway.

To learn to do those things more fully in every facet of my life at every moment.  Not to impress somebody but because when I let go of doing it myself and choose to let Him do it through me, one step, one moment at a time, I am happier, more at peace, and wherever I am feels like success.

To learn these things is not the purpose of only my writing but of my life.  What do I believe is possible?  What do I really believe is possible?  And who decides that for me?  Do I let Satan decide that for me?  Truthfully, yeah.  Sometimes.  I let fear decide for me what is possible.  I let fear block my way, stand in my path—my giant.  No, not “my.”  A giant.  To me. But compared to God….

Compared to God that giant is merely the 50.  Compared to God, that giant doesn’t stand a chance.

I think the point is to let God decide for me what is possible, where the 50 is and where the 100 is.

Let God decide…

And letting God decide for me is always my choice.