Sometimes you need to regroup.
Life has gotten out of your hands. You’re not as scheduled as you planned on being or you’re too scheduled. You’ve gone down a path that you’re now starting to see that might not have been the wisest choice. Whatever the case, remember, that sometimes we all have to regroup. We have to do that in our walk with the Lord, at times, too.
3 ways we can regroup are:
Reorient ourselves back to Jesus.
Are days and weeks and months going by where I’m not speaking to Jesus? It happens so fast friends - I’ve been there countless times. One of my favorite song verses comes from the old hymn “Come Thou Fount.”
“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” Ouch!!! Oh boy is this not the cry of the flesh. The truth is, sometimes we wander. “I love the Lord, yet…” can so easily be our banner, friends, if we do not reorient ourselves back to Jesus over and over and over and over again. We need to make sure that we are speaking to Jesus. That we are keeping Him first and remembering Him in our daily lives.
Remember to stay close. Stay close to Jesus. And you can do this in a lot of different ways, but talking to Him, considering Him in your thoughts and actions is HUGE. And one that we need to make daily practice.
Reorient ourselves back to His word.
In Luke 11:27-28 Jesus says something that completely WOWS me. Jesus was in the middle of teaching some people, and this woman from the crowd who is probably in awe of Jesus and what he is saying says to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the one who nursed you.” Which sounds like a really awesome compliment, doesn’t it? I mean she is giving him some high praise right here! But he answers her by saying, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”
WOW.
Here she is giving him praise for being so wise and she is fangirling all over the place saying bless your mom for having you and he is not one bit caught up in this. He doesn’t stop to say thank you and yes, I know how wise I am. He gets straight to the heart of the matter which is this - If you think what I’m saying is so wise…if you like what you’re hearing…if it resonates with you…then keep it.
In our day and time maybe the woman would’ve listened to what Jesus had to say and ran out and got a tattoo of it on her arm. Or maybe she would’ve found a scripture that he said and hung it on her wall. Or maybe she would’ve picked out a t-shirt that says “Just a girl that loves Jesus” or something like that. And what Jesus is saying is I don’t need this outward expression of praise as much as I need you to hear the word of God and keep it. Hang the canvas wall art, wear the t-shirt, but KEEP MY WORD. In your heart. On your lips. In the work of your hands.
Sometimes we need to regroup and check ourselves to make sure that we are living out his word. Are we keeping His word and how can I go about making sure that His word is at the forefront of my decision making and life living?
Keep it simple.
The Lord tells us that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. But so often I go about making things hard and heavy! LOL Sometimes I do this by over-busying myself. I put too much on my plate. Sometimes I do this by making my relationship with the Lord a chore. I make Bible reading and prayer a duty and suck the fun out of it by over complicating things. I’m neat like that.
But when I pull it all back and look at it through the eyes of Jesus, I remember that He said “love the Lord your God and love your neighbor.” He didn’t say read 3 chapters instead of 1 and never skip the weekends. He didn’t say pray for X amount of minutes and keep a prayer journal. He didn’t say commit to doing everything that comes your way. So often, we’re the ones who make things harder than God intended them to be. And these things can become chokeholds on our relationship with the Lord and they can keep us from moving forward because we’re being held down by our own self-imposed burdens.
Sometimes regrouping looks like doing something small consistently instead of doing a thousand different things irregularly. Sometimes we don’t allow the bricks to be laid, we just want to throw the whole thing up right away and it just isn’t sustainable.
A new year is coming! Let's regroup and make sure we're building (and rebuilding) on the foundation the Lord has laid.