Futuristic

I've been thinking about my future a lot recently.

Isn't it funny how your mind creates pictures of the future. What it will look like, what it will bring and before long your convinced that's how it is going to be.

I have big dreams.

I have things I want to see. I have things I want to accomplish.

Of course it's healthy to have dreams and visions. They are ultimately important and sometimes spiritually essential.

Iv'e found myself in daydream overdrive recently.

But the thing is, in that state of overdrive they can become really distracting too.

They can distract you from the now.

And the now is really the fulcrum of life.

What we do now effects our future. The now becomes our past and shapes our future.

In our bathroom at home there is a little white porcelain picture frame. Written in the middle of it is this. Life is what happens when we are busy making plans.

I've kind of being doing a bit too much making of plans in my head lately, and the life that has been happening around me has kind of passed me by.

In leadership I have to dream big. I have to discover God in the future. Because one solid feature of following Jesus is that we have a future and others have a future because of our future if you know what I mean?

But!

I also have to deal with the now.

There are real people in the now. There are people who need me in the now.

Life is happening!

Now.

I can't spend my hours and days busy making plans for the future.

I know a guy who calls himself a church planter. Every time I see him he plans. He has plans to plant in this area of the UK. He has plans to move to such and such a place. He is always talking about plans. I've never heard him mention what's going on now! He is futuristic! A man who incessantly lives in the future.

I asked him a couple of weeks ago, "what's happening with you right now?" he answered excitedly, "God has said to me I am going to build a church and paint it gold, I don't know yet where it's going to be but I know I am to call it the golden Church!
I had asked him what's going on now?

But what was happening for him now was still futuristic!

Golden Church?

OK? (are you thinking the same as me?)

He still hasn't built the church of a thousand souls that he told me about last year, or the curry church he had dreamed up last year. (Curry Church? How original! That's one church I would love to go to! Can you imagine chicken Korma, pilau rice, a poppadum and God! mmmmmmm!

The problem I guess is that if he doesn't get himself into the now the future will never materialise.

And I guess that is teaching me that I need to get in to the now right now!

Life happens when we are busy making plans.

I guess it's best to leave the future in Gods hands.

He says, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.(Jeremiah 29:11)

So if God has plans for us why do we get so wrapped up and busy in making plans.

We love making plans for our lives and our churches. Hey we even set up planning committees, appoint organising people, we plan our strategies, our mission plans. And I guess they are valid? (I'll say that to be nice!)

But what's happening now?

No I reckon if God has plans for us, especially plans to prosper us, not to harm us and plans to give us a hope and a future. I think I'll get on with now and leave the plans to God.

Abundant showers of blessing on your amazing life today.