Planned Faith

Work and Life
Love living with Dawn, and work has been great as I've been working more night shifts. There are some 'kinks' that are coming to light with some people, so prayer for favor would be greatly appreciated. I'm learning new things every day, and this week I started a relationship, a love affair if you will, that I can already tell will be long term. It's name is Verona. It's dark sweetness blended in South America and Asia Pacific.It's a Bold, beautiful coffee.
Yes. I can now drink black coffee. I feel a little more legitimate as a starbucks employee now, lol.
Got a few things coming up that I'll update on next time...or the time after that.

Word and Church
So, it's been a while since I've written in this, and there is a reason. I've been formulating. Collecting thoughts and trying to organize them to some cohesive structured topic.
So here it is. There's this feeling I've had, and I've had it for a long long time. It's not really a nice feeling, and I find it within myself, and MANY of my peers.
It's a lack of planning.
No. This is not coming out of the OCD side of me, I am not telling you to get filing cabinets and organizers to make me feel better;-) I'll explain.

I have this inclination to type words into Microsoft Word and find all the synonyms that I can, just for kicks. Most of the time I don't even use them.
So. Having collected most of my thoughts by today, I typed in the word 'dedication' in Word and i got 8 words in return. Devotion. Commitment. Enthusiasm. Keenness. Perseverance. Allegiance. Ardor. Loyalty.
What I love most about all of these words is that none of them have a 'showing-up' connotation. All of them imply purpose, direction, and a level of thought applied to each action for the purpose it has chosen.

When I moved to Australia I had a lot of friends promise to call, promise to write, promise to keep in touch. I'd say 1 or 2 of the 20+ that said they would actually did. When I moved home something similar happened with my friends from school. Updates are periodical at best. And most people feel that they've been neglected because they haven't gotten many calls, instead of taking initiative and making calls themselves once in a while. And then I moved to Texas, and a few more people have been a little bit better, but it's not too far off.

Within our chosen careers this happens as well. We go to college and expect that someone will 'find' us, that our dream job will magically be handed to us on a platter. We start working at a church and subconsciously decide that if we show up most of the time, our ministry will expand and we will achieve that 'humble' brand of christian fame. We read our bible periodically, learn some key terms and verses, maybe attend a christian college or work for a christian-owned organization, and we expect our relationship with God to flourish.

I had a Biology teacher in 10th grade that would tell us at the start of every chapter: If we fail to plan, we have planned to fail.
Why don't we use our minds when it comes to our relationship with Christ? We don't interact most of the time, we REACT. I think what I'm trying to say is this: When was the last time that you actually decided to be mentally Keen(not in the excited sense, in the aware sense) and enthusiastic about the direction you want to go? Most of us can recognize those things in others that we want to become, but few of us do the work of emulating even if we can copy the correct verbage to look like we are.

Proverbs 14:22b, "Those who plan what is good find love and faithfulness."
Isaiah 1:24, "Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen."
Isaiah 46:11, What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that I will do."

As the church, we need to plan to succeed, and doing church is not something someone can dictate to us, that we can copy blindly and unthinking. Church, the body of christ, and our faith should be things that we are dedicated to, along with all of the synonyms.
I believe that if we lived our faith with that passion and that level of dedication, it would be infectious to those that we came into contact with. When was the last time you saw someone living out faith with ardor or allegiance?