941 One Degree Adjustment

If you were to look at the trajectory of your current patterns, where would you be in 5 years? Where are your choices and decisions leading you? Every single thing you do has an effect on your life. When you continue to repeat those things, they create your future reality. That reality may be your potential made possible, or it may be your potential paralyzed. Within you is all the potential in the world. Potential to, as Jesus said in John 14:12, “do the things he did, and even greater!” That’s what’s inside of you. That’s what is possible. I can’t wrap my mind around that really, but if Jesus said it, then I believe it’s true. As believers and follower of Jesus, our potential is the power to do even greater things than Jesus did. But has that potential been paralyzed? Paralyzed by choices that take you off course. Paralyzed by fear that tells you you’re not good enough. Paralyzed by a past that brings guilt and shame, and a future that drips with anxiety. This is what causes our trajectory to get out of alignment. Where we’re heading is not where God says we could go. What we’re doing is not what God empowered us to do. It’s just a little off. Off by a few degrees. And here’s the thing about being a little off today in our choices and decisions, when repeated, it takes us radically off course. We end up in a completely different destination than the one intended, and it happens little by little. It’s just like the nose of an airplane turned by a degree creates a completely different destination after thousands of miles. Experts in air navigation have a rule of thumb known as the 1 in 60 rule. It states that for every 1 degree a plane veers off course, it misses it’s target destination by 1 mile for every 60 miles it flies. Over thousands of miles, you can end up in a completely different state all because of a tiny, 1 degree difference. A 1 degree negative in your life, repeated every day for 60 days, takes you off course by a mile. Keep doing that for 5 years and you’re off by 30 miles. Oh dang, and it was such a tiny mis-direction that you never understood it’s impact. The enemy works in the misconception that these little things don’t matter. He swoops in with his crappy counterfeit dealings and tells us a little won’t hurt anything. One day doesn’t make a difference. This isn’t a big deal. No one will ever know. And before we know it we’re face deep in a carton of icecream, or smoking another dang cigarette, buying another pair of leggings when we already have 73, or wasting another hour on TikTok. And the trajectory is off. We’re off course. The devil is doing a celebration dance because girl if he can’t ruin your life, at least he can get you off track. It happens when we’re just so darn busy. It happens when boundaries get blurred and we give a little here and cheat a little there. It happens when we make excuses and accept less than our best effort. It happens when we ignore that still small voice that whispers “something isn’t right here”, and we move forward anyway. Does anyone else ignore that still small voice sometimes? That feeling in your spirit that gently serves to guide you, but you don’t listen. Looking back on every mess I’ve ever gotten myself in, I can remember the pivotal moment when I chose not to listen and do my own thing. So, the trajectory of our life goes off course and the distance from the life we’re living and the life we’re created for grows a little bigger. We don’t mean to be off course, but it just happens. And it happens 1 degree at a time. And here comes that still small voice. Are you ready to listen now? Are you willing to be open to God’s prompting within your spirit here? Listen and you will hear him say “You are m...