Responding To God's Pull Often Looks Like Letting Go Of The World's

​I have felt God's pull on my life for as long as I can remember. I have also come to know that what has most prevented me from fully responding to that pull has not been my resisting it, rather, it has been my responding to pulls that are not his.

The great challenge in responding to his pull is it gets very easy to convince ourselves that OUR pulls are HIS pulls. It can get very easy to convince ourselves that the many things I feel like I need to do today are the things he is calling me to do today.

Many of us will head off to busy jobs today. We need those jobs. We have obligations.

The question becomes, what is shaping those obligations? Am I working to support a quality of life that lives up to God's calling in my life, or am I working to support a quality of life that lives up to my neighbors' callings, or Facebook's calling, or comparison's calling.

Is it possible that God's pull on my life looks a lot more minimalistic than my neighbors' pull on my life?

Not all jobs are God's call for our life.

Or how many relationships are we battling to hang on to or chasing after or over and over again try to repair because they feel like relationships I am being pulled to have in my life. Maybe they are, but have the energies I am pouring into them become so intense that I am no longer sensitive to the relational pull God is trying to offer my life?

Not all relationships are God's call for our life.

As a father, am I being pulled to provide things and opportunities for my kids that look like things other dads have provided for their kids, and in doing so, unintentionally leading them to believe that God's pull on their life looks like straight As or a college scholarship or a well-paying job in the future. Because at this age, be sure, to them God's pull on their life feels exactly like the directions I am pulling them in life.

Or pushing.

Not all dads look to their kids like the dad God wants to look like to them.

It is a demanding world. That is not changing. And quite possibly that is not what needs to change.

Maybe in the moments of feeling overwhelmed - overburdened - unable to keep up with it all, maybe in those moments it's a great time to ask, how many of these demands are God's demands on my life, and how many of them are demands I myself have created for my life?

God's pull and the world's pull are often very different. Not knowing that difference can leave us feeling like we are being pulled in too many directions, being pulled apart.

Sometimes responding more intensely to God's pull simply requires letting go of the things that are not his pull.

How do we figure it out those things we need to let go of? It starts with spending a little more time talking to God and a little less time listening to the world.