The Slow Work of God

This summer I made a goal for myself: I would have two chapters completed by the start of school. Instead, I either stared at a blank page or had my face in a book I wished I would have written.

It is easy to fix my eyes on the things of this world. Influence, affirmation, productivity. Those things might not be altogether bad, but the heart behind them? Maybe. So often my tendencies, my desires can trick me into thinking there is a faster way to holiness than just taking up my cross, trusting, and resting in the slow work of God. If I get real still, in the quietest of places I can sometimes find the bravery to ask this question— Are these desires just a thinly veiled grasp for power? Are they? I need to sit with that. 
It’s easy to focus on outcomes only, to want a clear and obvious way, logical and efficient, for our desires to make the most sense. But this fast track, grasping and insisting, almost always runs counter to the cross. My fixation on outcomes exposes my shallow belief. And I sit with that. 
Jesus was tempted in the desert with GOOD things. And this makes sense because if the devil showed up red and holding a pitchfork, it wouldn’t have been a real temptation, just a cartoon. But we are told that Jesus REALLY was tempted. An enemy put good things before Him and said essentially there is a faster, easier way to get what you want. Here! But that way, that logical, worldly way, abandons the cross. 
So I turn my eyes from the ways of this world to the splendor of the cross with a radical commitment to the ways of Jesus, no one else, that, the primary standard for my witness. God is in charge. I am only a willing participant. 
I finish this summer with no more chapters than when I started it, but more speaking gigs this fall than I am used to, and a deep appreciation for the slow work of God.