less, not more.

"The God of Israel will be your reward."

-Isaiah 52:12

Tonight I was fortunate enough to enjoy one of the things I love more than anything on this earth - a room full of good people and the conversation that brings. Our Young Life group here in Warrenton is a pretty stellar community. Even after being removed from the "YL kid" side of things for several years, I still find myself blessed time and again by the ministry that is continually blooming in my hometown. I get to come home to a group of people who love me and know me, who have not ceased in challenging and encouraging my relationship with the Lord, and who still want to be in my life. It's pretty rare, I think, and I am (literally) eternally grateful for it. All that said, tonight we had a little alumni gathering and it was a gift - this time the gift of insight from some people I've known the longest about how to handle a new year that will be (I can only imagine) full of surprises from the Lord.

Have you thought about that yet? That we can make a million zillion resolutions, tons of plans, list our goals until our fingers cramp up and yet all of it might fall to pieces before our eyes. "Life" and "surprise" should be synonymous, I think. Actually, if I could foresee all the things the Lord has in store for my year, then I don't think I would be following a very creative God. So believing in the inevitability of His surprises is both exciting and utterly terrifying. Crazy, challenging, unexpected things are coming for me...and what's the response?

It is pretty normal to look ahead in your life and imagine yourself in that hazy-future space as someone who has accumulated more. More money, friends, clothes, patience, romance, wit, wisdom, beauty, furniture - you name it. They are not bad things most of the time. We just look ahead of ourselves and plan to be living a life that is constantly building itself up into bigger things. Our goals are set up that way during the New Year, and we vow these things to ourselves and to strangers at parties - this year I'm going to be more sincere around my friends, I'm going to read more books, I'm going to travel more. And yet, as I pray to commit this coming year to the Lord and seek Him in my goals and expectations, He is telling me not to pray for more, but to pray for less.

My ever wise (and consistently inappropriate) leader and friend Bob Wells said tonight that if we do anything in 2011, it should be to keep seeking new places to go where we will need the Lord -where we will need Him because we recognize our lack, and that this lack would lead us humbly to our God, where joy comes from. It's a scary prayer, to say "Lord, I don't want more of anything unless it is You. Don't give me a single thing but Yourself, because everything else is not made for me to have."

It is entirely possible that I will finish this year having accumulated a lot of things - more refined talents, more money, more clothes, more knowledge, more friends - but my prayer is that the "more" in my life will be merely the result of 365 days spent knowing more of who my God is. My prayer is that things I gain would become periphery blessings in my mindset, but that being shaped and shifted into a person who more closely trusts the Lord would be the sole hope for my year, my only resolution, the only thing I crave and seek. That is no easy wish. And, to be honest - it scares me and the "things" I want look pretty good and achievable sometimes in comparison.

But that little prayer - the more of You, God, less of me - that is the one I imagine is going to bring some pretty interesting surprises to 2011. I'll wait and see.