Are You Stuck In the Mud?

As you think about your life in its current state, do you see someone whose life has a clear destination? Or do you see someone uncertain about where their life is going? Or maybe, you see someone who's just stuck...stuck in the mud.

In the Bible, the prophet Jeremiah had a clear destination for his life. He was to lead God's chosen children, the Jews, back to a "path" God had prepared for them, but they wouldn't listen. In fact, on one occasion, they seized him and threw him into a cistern. As the scripture describes this scene, we find, "...so Jeremiah sank in the mire." (Jeremiah 38:6)

Here's a man on a mission but facing adversity at every turn. His faith and resolve was being tested. Would he just give up and get angry at God? Would he play the victim card and offer no resistance at all? Or would he keep his faith engaged, continue taking risks, and trust God to use this event in his life to grow him as a leader? What would you do?

When I think about the great men and women in the Bible, I see them taking risk. Just about everything they did presented an opportunity for something to end on a bad note. This is because they had to exercise faith. What is faith? It is the resource within us that we call upon when there is no certain outcome in sight. It is when we see the destination and beleive we'll get there eventually. We just aren't sure how.

Listen to the words of Sir Frances Drake:

"Disturb us, Lord, when we are well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrive safely because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst for the waters of Life;
Having fallen in love with life
We have ceased to dream of eternity.
And in our efforts to build a new Earth
We have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly
To venture on wider seas. where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future in strength, courage, hope and love."

How about you? Are you "sailing too close to the shore"? What risk do you need to take today?