Proverbs3:5-6.
One passage, why it will not leave me alone, and the daily rule of life I built on top of it.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6What it teaches
That my own read on a situation is not the last word on it. My understanding is about seventeen years deep, and anybody who has watched me make a decision at midnight can tell you exactly how deep that is.
Why it matters
Because most of the bad calls I have made were not evil. They were confident. I was sure, and I was wrong, and there was nobody in the room slowing me down. This is the verse that slows me down.
How it lands on a Tuesday
It changes what I do first. Bible before phone. Ask before assume. And when I genuinely do not know what to do, I stop performing like I do, which is harder than it sounds at school.
If God is far away, then Sunday is a box you tick and the other six days belong to you. If he is actually close, then how I talk to my sister at seven in the morning is a spiritual thing, and so is whether I bother to rack my weights. I believe the second one. I do not always live like I do, and the gap between those two sentences turned out to be most of what this project is about.
Understanding that I was loved before I earned any of it takes the pressure off in a way that is hard to explain to somebody who has not felt it. I am not lifting and studying and serving to get approval, because the approval was already there. That turns the whole thing from a performance into a response, and a response is a much lighter thing to carry around all week.
My Daily Rule of Life
Written to be kept, not admiredMorning
Before the phone. Five minutes, out loud, usually badly.
A chapter. If I am honest, some mornings half of one.
Five mornings a week. It counts as part of this, not as something separate.
Whatever my mother would otherwise do on her own before seven.
School
One, by name, out loud. It takes nine seconds and it changes the room.
Better to look slow for ten seconds than lost for a semester.
Once a day, for somebody who cannot do anything for me.
Evening
Three things, written down. Not typed.
What did I do today that the thirty year old version of me would thank me for.
Out of the room. This is the one that makes the other two possible.
On purpose, not passively.
Intentional living, for me, is doing everything to serve God instead of letting the day happen to me. Passive is not neutral. Passive still picks a direction, it just picks it while you are looking at your phone, and you find out where it went about four years later.
What does intentional living look like for me? Doing everything to serve God, and not living passively. That is it. Every time I have tried to make that sentence longer it has got worse.
Zack