know your yes

Opening Prayer: Yes, Father!  Yes!  And always yes! ~Francis de Sales

Scripture: Jeremiah 6:16

Journal: What is your yes?  How does that help you to say no?

Reflection: What’s your yes?  I know, I know, it’s a weird question, at least on the surface anyway.  But underneath it is profound.  In fact, it’s a question that forces you down to your core.  It is a question that begs you to discover who you were made to be and to define that thing, or those things, you were placed on this earth to do.  For if you don’t know your yes, how can you ever hope to become all you were dreamt to be?

One of the keys to the spiritual journey is to know your yes, and then to arrange your life around that one imperative.  To do those things that are important, rather than merely urgent.  To focus your life on what is central, rather than being constantly distracted by what is peripheral.  You must allow your yes to propel you to do only the things that help you to be all you were made to be.  And you must allow that yes to teach you what you are meant to do, as well as what you are not meant to do.  Knowing your yes is what allows you to also say no.  The problem is that most people have a hard time saying no simply because they have never really discovered their yes.

So we must stop and reflect and pray.  We must seek and listen and pay attention.  We must find our yes, so that we will not constantly be at the mercy of our circumstances.  So we can live proactive, rather than reactive lives. 

More and more, I find myself in conversations with people who feel like life is living them, rather than like they are living their lives.  Somehow, somewhere, it all spun out of control and they are having a hard time getting it back.  The truth is that so many of us tend to live at the mercy of our schedules, but I do not think this is how we were intended to live.

Let me ask you a question: Does your schedule control you, or do you control your schedule?  Are you schedule-driven, or God-led.  And no, the two do not have to be mutually exclusive, but most often they are.  It takes a good bit of thoughtful intention to achieve some sense of congruence between your daily schedule and the lives God wants you to live.  It all depends on where you start.  It all starts with knowing your yes.  It all starts by asking God who he made you to be and what he wants you to do.  That way your daily “to do” list will always flow from the more significant things in life rather than the trivial.  And you will begin to live the life that you most deeply want to live.  Or, more importantly, you will begin to live the life that God wants to live in and through you.   

Prayer

Closing Prayer: I have heard your call, my Lord, and respond with a yes from the depth of my being. ~A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God by Norman Shawchuck and Rueben Job