Fix your eyes and run!

I've been thinking about criticism.  Of course there is good criticism that, as a mature adult, you learn to take and use it to push yourself to greater heights.  If you're not there yet, keep working on it.  It's a great step to allow someone wiser than you to speak into your life out of love and to take their guidance seriously.

Then there is the other kind of criticism.  You know the difference.  This criticism doesn't come from a place of love or respect but it comes from a person's jealousy or anger.  The truth is, we will always have "haters", as they say, in our life.  In fact, if you don't have it, you may not be impacting the world around you as much as you could.  Any time others sense you are headed for greatness or on the right track, especially if they have their own insecurities and baggage to deal with, you will have the jealous people, or the doubters, or let's face it, people who are just plain angry.

Following Jesus many times requires difficult decisions or bold moves from us.  We've been making some of these lately in our own house.  Our lives many times may look upside down to others around us.  What God is planning as promotion or increase may look like doom or self-destruction to others.  But we must stay the course.  We know that our trust and our future is in God and God only (like Kelly talked about yesterday) and when things don't make sense on the surface but we feel that intensifying God-energy bubbling up inside, we can put the doubters out of our mind, fix our eyes and turn and run toward our Father.

So, take heart today!  Fix your eyes where they belong and run!  Run, run, run!