I’m a doer. I DO things. I get things done. Anyone relate?
In a premarital counseling session with my not-yet-husband over a decade ago, our pastor prayed a metaphor over me.
“Courtney is a thoroughbred, Jesus,” he said. (Pastor Kevin has buckets of wisdom and uses lots of metaphors, so I didn’t take the fact that he was comparing me to a horse personally.)
“She likes to go fast and she likes to accomplish things. God, I pray for strength for her as you use her great speed and strength for your glory. And I pray for lots of grace as you teach her to slow down.”
Prophetic words, as God continues to bring that lesson up for me. The lesson to stop doing. The lesson to slow down. The lesson to be his and be loved and be still.
It’s such a hard lesson! Anyone with me on this?
I’ve written before about my love for Eugene Peterson. He’s written dozens of books and I’ve yet to encounter a single clunker. Besides his books, his paraphrase translation of Scripture, The Message, often strikes me directly in the heart.
I grew up in church, and I’m deeply grateful for the way those formative early years helped knit Scripture into my soul. Yet sometimes hearing the same passage over and over again for over three decades makes it so familiar I don’t really hear it at all anymore.
(Kind of like a song lyric I’ve been singing forever and haven’t thought about until I sung it in front of my preschooler and he said, “Mommy? What does ‘hips don’t lie’ mean?” Oops. But I digress…)
This week I came across Romans 12 in The Message, and this particular verse gut-punched me with goodness:
Embracing what God does for us is the best thing we can do for him. –Romans 12:1
As I learn and relearn what it is to be a human being, not a human doing, Paul’s words are a balm for my soul. Maybe they are a balm for yours as well.
Do you need to stop running around the track and park your thoroughbred self in the barn in order to remember Jesus, your first love?
Do you dare stop sprinting long enough to embrace what he does for you?
Join me.
Even thoroughbreds need to stop running now and then.
Courtney Ellis 