Understanding Where You Are Going! 11-2–25

Welcome to the word for the week. We’re officially reaching the closing of this year and getting ready to embrace for the next year, Lord willing. That brings both excitement and anxiety at the same time. You find yourself happy to hopefully see a new year, and yet somewhat anxious to know exactly what that will mean for you. If you are not careful that can be a distraction for where you are right now. I am a firm believer in looking at where you have been, where you are, and where you are trying to go. There are times when you must do all three. There are times when you must do just two, and sometimes only one of those. There is no one size fit all in this but it is important for you to understand how to navigate through these aspects of life as you grow in Christ.

To put this in better perspective just consider a few examples. There are times when you have to have learned the lessons of your past, see where you are in your present, and then be able to better understand where you are going in your future. Sometimes it is the failures of our past that we learn from and other times it is our success that we learn from. You can learn what does not work so you do not repeat those mistakes, but you can also learn what actually works so you can stay on track. Yes, there times when what does not work or does work will change in your life. There are also things that work the way they are supposed to and they do not change. The question is do you know the difference between the two for yourself? Can you look back over your life and be honest about what has set you back and what has pushed you forward? There are no shortcuts on this journey. Sometimes God puts you on the path that gets you there quickly and other times He puts you on the road that will take you a whole lot of time. You have to know the difference.

There are times when you have to look at where you are in order to better see where you are going. Some things in your past are so severe until they will cause you to not be able to move forward. You cannot always look at your past if your present and future are what gives you hope. Likewise, there are times when perhaps you have fallen backwards and you cannot look at where you are at the moment. You have to remind yourself that there were better times in your life before and reach back to what helped you before. Again, there is nothing constant in this. It changes based on our experiences in various things and moments in time. There is one thing that does not change in any of this and that is for you to learn the lessons of life as you go. This is where you discover that you cannot do this by yourself. You cannot fix you. Let me repeat that again. You cannot fix You! We are super capable of messing things up and God is super capable of fixing things. All you need to remind yourself of is that if you are capable of creating a mess then clearly you need God’s help in your life.

Here is some wisdom that God spoke to share with you. Most of the time you cannot put your shoes on until you put your pants on first. You cannot move your car until you put it in gear. You cannot skip steps is the point. You cannot move forward in your life if you do not pray for God’s forgiveness for yourself and then extend that to others. You cannot be delivered if you do not pray. You cannot be saved if you do not believe God’s plan for salvation. You cannot learn more about God if you spend no time with Him. You cannot expect growth in Christ if you do not change what is blocking that growth. You cannot expect to see the marvelous light of Christ if you insist on living a life in the dark. You cannot expect truth if you constantly live a lie. You cannot expect freedom if you live in bondage to sin. You cannot expect God’s glory if you insist on writing the story your way. You really cannot do nothing without Christ if you think about it. So the question is how long are you going to let things, circumstances, and your own mind stay in your way and block your promise from God?

May the Lord continue to bless and keep you in His grace,
Bishop Carlos J. Lennon