Inertia – Pt. 3

If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!

Philippians 1:22 (NIV)

What gets you moving?  What stops you?  What kinds of things overcome the inertia in your life?  Don’t tell me that this is not, or has not been, a problem for you.  Perhaps you are saying to yourself, “You’ll have to prove it to me.  I’m satisfied with things as they are, thank you very much.”  Bingo.  Ipso facto.  Inertia.

Here is a basic human nature proposition for you to chew on: people who are comfortable and satisfied with the present, do not change.  They do not alter their trajectory in life until something happens that throws them off balance – that interrupts their inertia.  Inertia, as I have used it here, is the inclination of all human endeavor to resist change until something, some change agent, comes along to force it.  Something causes one to choose a new pathway.

Our choices are not usually as dramatic as those of the Apostle Paul, but he certainly suffered from inertia – he was a man on a mission and remained that way to the end of his days.  But, God frequently had to do something to get his attention before He could use Paul for His strategic plan of the ages.

In Paul’s case, he first had to stop.  You remember the story.  It is found in the Book of Acts, Chapter 9, where God interrupted Paul’s life by a flash of light and a direct revelation from Jesus.  What happened after that resulted from a sovereign act of God that halted Paul in his tracks.  It overcame his inertia by knocking him to the ground, and then setting him aside for learning and empowerment.

You will move or stop when you get so uncomfortable with who you are, and what you are, that you are virtually on the ground before God.  When you get melted, extruded, molded, infused, reformed, renovated, reclaimed, redesigned, recrafted, restored, inspired, and refired, you will change direction – you cannot, not.  And, it is at that point that God will begin to do a new thing in your life.

How does God get your attention?  How about through opposition, adversity, disappointment, illness, injury, and tragedy?  How else?  What about through success, triumph, and victory?  Or, the preaching of His Word?  Teaching on these topics is far beyond the scope of this short article.  Let’s just understand that God, in Christ, is your Redeemer.  He redeems all of you, body, soul, and spirit, as well as the events and circumstances of your life.  At every moment in time, He seeks to take your life, redeem it, and craft it anew for His own honor and glory, that His name might be magnified throughout the world through you.

How do you overcome inertia?  Simple answer: you do not, God does.  He does it for each of us as He inspires our delight in Him, which in turn allows Him to gift us with the desires of our hearts.[i]  Behavior, your pathway or trajectory, is grounded in what you believe about yourself, about the world around you, and about God.  So the most important question you might ask yourself is, “What do I believe?”

Answer that and you will begin to get a glimpse, a new vision, of all that God intends for your life.  That includes your business.  If you seek Him on this, He has promised to be found, and to reveal His plan for your life, one step at a time.