The Sin of Unbelief

I am sitting on an airplane headed to San Luis Obispo to visit my mom. It is a trip that I have not been looking forward to…………..all of us at some point make these kinds of trips for our parents.

What I love the most is the quiet time I get on the plane. I feel that I get so little time to think and reflect. You all may be thinking …………….God help us if Bart is thinking!!!!! My thinking normally gets me in trouble. This time my thinking is getting me OUT of trouble, not bad trouble…………..just out of a rut that I feel like I have been in…………… a 60 day rut!!!!

I have realized our lives don’t pass us by a day at a time, but by a series of moments that we let pass us by………….small moments that become minutes, hours become days weeks and months. I can only break the cycle by conquering the moment. This is where Glenna would say something like "THE POWER OF CHOOSING THE MOMENT”!

SO HERE ON THIS PLANE I HAVE CHOSEN THIS MOMENT. HERE IS WHAT I HAVE LEARNED.....THE JOURNEY OF REMAKABILITY IS A PROCESS, HAS ITS OWN FLOW AND ITS OWN CLOCK SPEED.

My frustration is that most processes are too long, the flow is too slow and its timing is not my timing………………does this feel the same to you for anything you have ever tried to accomplish?
I hope I am not alone in this frustration……………please tell me someone has felt the same exact thing!!!

I realized this frustration for me comes from two things…………………the lack of DELIBERATE determination and SIN of unbelief.

If we are to achieve the practice of remarkability, if we are truly going to let our lives speak, if we are going to be more, give more and share more…………..WE MUST OVERCOME THESE TWO THINGS.

One………….. "Our choice must be deliberate determination, it is not something that we, us, you, me, will automatically drift toward or in”.

This falls into three major buckets:

1. Those who have not started the remarkability journey or those who have not answered their own call to follow their heart, those who are not being true to themselves.

2. Those in the process of creating a life of remarkability.

3. And finally those who have stopped, given up, got tired and flat out quit!!

No matter which of those buckets you fall into the consequence is the same. Here is the consequence……………… "Our lives will be held in temporary suspension until we make the deliberate decision………thus life passes us by!" See ………what we resist persists!! I know this first hand.

Sometimes I think we have made the deliberate decision, but we truly haven’t. I can tell in my life as I look back…………hind sight is great…you probably can too …………..because I doubt my direction, become unsure of each step and sometimes become frozen…………not taking the next step. If we believe we have stepped on the path of our purpose why would you ever stop following it? Runners would finish the race; a farmer would finish plowing the field. They may slow down, they may walk, they may rest……………but they finish.

So today…………..I ask all of us to finish the journey, carry it through, for however long it takes.

I ask all of us to again make the DELIBERATE DECISION TO FOLLOW THE PATH OF YOUR PURPOSE!!! The result is the practice of remarkability.

NOW THE SECOND REASON……………..THE SIN OF UNBELIEF. I choose these words because it creates a guttural reaction. Let me break this apart just a little.

The word SIN………..in many circles of faith, a common definition would be …………anything that separates us, you, me, from our higher power. It creates a gap, a hole, a gorge, a Grand Canyon between us and where we want to be, do, share, give and become! The sin of unbelief in ourselves must be huge. It is the killer of dreams, it is the king of regrets, it is truly what keeps us from taking even of smallest of steps. It is what keeps us form even trying. It is what lets us think that the pain of complacency is more comfortable than the fear of trying and failing. The sin of unbelief in ourselves is betrayal to who we are and who we will become. We do it every day. We do it without even realizing it!

The second part of “Unbelief”…………. A common definition again may be………… "a lack of faith” a lack of confidence, a lack of skills, a lack of education, a lack of talent. I am not so sure that unbelief shows up as pure unbelief, but more as a family of excuses. Our unbelief is what is sitting on our chairs. In my chair SITS 188 pounds of unbelief. The next time you give an excuse about why you can’t……………..replace your excuse with the word "belief". For example………I don’t have enough belief, I don’t have a degree in belief, my family would never approve of my belief. HOW is it even fathomable to not believe in yourself?

If we suffer from the sin of unbelief……………..it is almost impossible to make a deliberate decision. So we spend our lives hanging in suspension of nothingness. Can there be anything more painful, more distressing, and more hopeless than spending our lives in nothingness?

Today………….. Make the conscious DELIBERATE DECISION to BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!

I DARE YOU!