Your vision for your life may be too small
We all move daily toward an envisioned life. We are joy-, comfort-, fulfillment-, and pleasure-seekers. We are dream-chasers. Our small and big choices are bound by these. But too often, our vision and our pursuits, are too small, and temporal.
It’s just corn flakes
There was a striking scene in Adam Sandler’s movie, Click (2006), about the 80s-90s commercial of a certain cereal brand. It was the dialogue between Michael and Morty when Michael was contemplating skipping ahead to his promotion using his magic remote control that can pause and rewind every event in his life.
Morty: Consider the leprechaun
Michael Newman: What?
Morty: The one in the cereal commercials.
Michael Newman: ‘They’re magically delicious’? That guy?
Morty: He’s always chasing the pot of gold, but when he gets there, at the end of the day, it’s just corn flakes.
We are dream-chasers. The question is, are we after the real thing, the real pot of gold?
We run after our “pot of gold.” Our pot of gold is anything that will give us a sense of meaning, security, fulfillment, comfort, and pleasure. We run after the next dream, the next vision, the next high, the next rainbow, hoping that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is the real thing. Often, it turns out to be just corn flakes, nothing but empty pursuits (Ecclesiastes 1:14). We seek these things in vain leaving us restless from the inside out.
We are but weary souls through and through.
The yoke of Jesus
Matthew 11:28–29, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Jesus is saying that we should come to Him, let go of our baggage (yoke), and take His. All our lives we’ve been after our own agenda, pursuing our own dreams and desires. Sometimes even the good things we think we are doing for God are nothing but our own agenda and not His. That’s why we are weary. We seek things contrary to His will and desire for us, contrary to what will truly fulfill us. Our own plans, dreams, and desires can distract us from experiencing God’s best for our lives. God’s best, His yoke, the one that will truly satisfy.
Take His yoke. His yoke will give us rest.
What is His yoke?
His yoke is easy. To take His yoke, His agenda, we are to lose our lives.
Lose your dream life
Luke 9:23: Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
Deny yourself. This means we lose our lives, our dream lives. The lives we define for ourselves. So practically it could be surrendering or renouncing our sin and idols, forgiving ourselves and others, embracing the life we have right now with joy and thanksgiving. It may look like forgoing the pursuit of our own ambition so we pursue God’s call for us where we are right now or go where God is leading us to go. It is anchoring our identity on Jesus and not on our successes and performance. Even as simple as acknowledging that we need His grace daily.
This does not mean that we become martyrs or deprive ourselves of joy. It means we are looking away from ourselves to fix our eyes on Jesus — our Joy-giver. It means trusting Him fully that He will cause all things to work together for good (Romans 8:28); trusting that He alone can truly satisfy us because in Him there is fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11). We take up our cross daily and follow Him.
God’s bigger plan
The yoke Jesus wants us to take is to love Him and love others more. Become more like Him and less of ourselves, thereby, giving Him honor and glory, and pointing others to a life in Christ.
Christ is so enormously much better than anything we may lose or gain in this life. He is the best. Paul wrote on Philippians 3:8, “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” In comparison to Jesus everything is loss.
Losing our dream lives for the pursuit of Jesus will always be worth it because nothing in this world can truly satisfy. Everything is just corn flakes. But God’s plans for our lives is always beyond us. He does not want us to settle for less because He has already given us the best in Christ. Let us enlarge our vision, run to the real pot of gold, our greatest Treasure, Jesus.