Do or do not...

How can a young person live a pure life?  By obeying your word. I try with all my heart to serve you.  Help me obey your commands. I study your teachings very carefully so that I will not sin against you. Lord, you are worthy of praise!  Teach me your laws. I will repeat the laws we have heard from you. I enjoy following your rules as much as others enjoy great riches. I will study your instructions.  I will give thought to your way of life. I enjoy your laws. I will not forget your word. 

 (Psalm 119:9-16 ERV)

"Do, or do not. There is no try." (Yoda - Star Wars) "I'll try" is one of the most overused phrases in the English vocabulary! We "try" to make it to some event that we really don't want to go to anyway. We "try" to learn how something is done, but there is no real joy in our effort and we'd rather just avoid it anyway. We "try" something new, but we know we won't see it very far because it isn't "our cup of tea" in the first place. We "try" to be consistent with exercise, but it is just plain hard and there are lots of other conflicts demanding time out of our schedules. You get the point - we "try" way too much and lack the follow-through to actually "do" very much!

There is just one thing we cannot compromise on in this lifetime - putting forth the effort to get as close to God as possible. It isn't a thing we "try" for a while and then just think it will be okay to ignore it. It is a consistent spending of time getting to know him and letting him show us just how much of ourselves he knows, but maybe we weren't aware of ourselves! Obedience isn't about "trying", it is about "doing" and this with consistency! In all our "trying", one of the most common things we don't realize is that if we'd simply ask God's help with our consistency, we might actually find it comes more naturally and with even more "tenacity" than we might ever dreamed possible.

Do - or do not. There is really no middle ground there - either you are on the side of the fence "doing" or on the one of "not doing". It is pretty much impossible to ride the fence on this one. Consistency isn't really "taught" as much as it is "caught". When we begin to see new things, we want to explore other things that we might discover. As we start to find enjoyment in something, we make a mental (and heart) determination that there might be more we'd enjoy about whatever it is we are finding enjoyment in at that moment. So, we put forth effort to pursue whatever it is that brings us into newness or gives us that sense of enjoyment.

Obedience isn't difficult - it is consistency in that obedience that gives us the challenge. We know what we are "supposed to do", but we don't always have the "drive" to do it. It is the age-old issue of having our cake and eating it, too! We want to "do", but we start with "try" and before long we find ourselves "having tried", but not really "doing". God's greatest gift to us that can help us in our "doing" is this person resident within each of us - the Holy Spirit. His urging and prompting can often be the difference between us having "tried" and us actually finding ourselves "doing"! We just need to learn to listen a little closer to his prompting and we'd probably find ourselves realizing we are "doing" much more than we ever did when it was us "trying" alone! Just sayin!