www.IlluminateTheTruth.com

In this world there are doers and thinkers. Maybe there are other kinds of people too. Maybe there are some half-breeds out there, in which case, I want to know you. I want you to be my mentor.

I am not a doer by nature. It seems rash, reckless, and impatient. It’s too committal for me. Many of my past knee-jerk “doings” have stemmed from restlessness, control issues, and a now-long-gone savior complex. Even worse, the guilt or regret that threatens to follow me after a wrong-doing sends me running for my comfort zone of thinking.

Thinking is my life-giving offering—my niche and my gift to whatever I’m a part of. I know that thinking and contemplating and critiquing have a very important place. They reveal the voice of wisdom and conscience. It can help root out delusions. It exercises patience and refines the spiritual ear. It leads to enlightenment and truth. But this is my signature move: to take a thing too far.

I can think, until the smallest specs of dust blow up into impasses. I analyze until I’m paralyzed. I strive for clarity, perfection and blamelessness—as if they are my gods—instead of letting those things naturally occur as I am in God. I will think, until every option sounds right and wrong, which accounts for my less-than-stellar, multiple-choice test-taking skills in college. I have magnified my thought, until I believe that my mind possesses the only true perspective.

Thank goodness I married a doer. Together, we range from passively nuclear (on the rarer bad days), to effectively productive.

After a recent binge of over-thinking, withering away in a stymied state, searching for clear-cut directions, renouncing boundaries and creating my own suffering… the most freeing thing happened. As I was praying, I felt like I was given divine “permission to fail” and a thought that said “progress over perfection”.

I don’t discount that contemplation is an act in itself, and I’m not promoting proud, kamikaze, impulsive acts (though God has rescued me from all of those, too). Obviously, those two sound-bites have all kinds of potential to be wildly misconstrued and manipulated to suit any motive, but it was exactly what I needed to hear to help pry me out of my overwhelmed, gear-locked position.

For all you thinkers out there, consider the sanctity of doing:

Doing says that God is big enough to work for good, even in my mistakes.

Doing gives me the opportunity to experience that God is in this step, that step and everywhere in between.

Doing means I believe that God can handle the aftermath.

Doing says that ultimately, I trust God to save me, more than my own perfection.

Doing is often the act that reveals where to step next.

Doing cashes in on the boldness and courage of God, and dethrones the worries of this world.

Doing prizes the privilege we’ve been given of being the actual hands and feet of salvation.

What does my reluctance of doing say?

Faith begins as we say “I believe therefore I will do”. Doing allows us that priceless, maturing, experiential faith which also says “I have done, therefore I believe”.

Without the outflow of doing, a rank, toxic stagnancy begins to build up in me. Doing keeps me in the Living Current.

Respect the doing, appreciate the thinking. One is not useful, and is harmful, without the other. Whether thinking or doing, let it all stem from an earnest, honest, humble posture—one of acquiescence to Christ.

And on the days when I find myself crushed by indecision and critical assessing—held back by doubt and uncertainty because I have sat inactive for too long (and this is not God’s intended end for me!)—something must change. And I must consider this: fear of the consequences of doing is wrapped in my ego, not in the reality of grace.

And then I must DO whatever comes next.