Living Forward” A New Life, Not a New List of Resolutions
I’ve started my life over more times than most people would consider reasonable. Enough times, really, that I stopped considering it ‘starting over’ and started thinking that packing up and moving on, was normal. I guess you could call me a kind of a nomad. The thing is, I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that wherever I was it never seemed to be the final place. It began in New York State, leaving my family’s crowded apartment for my own small hole in the wall while working in a grocery store. Then on to college where I rubbed elbows with elites, then further still, across an ocean, to Africa as a teacher trainer. From there I moved into managing part of a rural development project in the African savanna bringing clean water to villages that had lived too long without it. Then on again to the desert, working with refugees seeking asylum in the USA, documenting their persecution histories. BTW, their stories of persecution still haunt my dreams.
I kept moving. New England came next, working in a mental hospital, followed by running a group home for disabled individuals, then, coordinating programs at a mental health agency. Somewhere along the way I taught myself computer programming, not because it was a calling, but because it was a door, and soon I was an IT manager, then a database programmer in the Midwest working for a large corporation. After that I started a nonprofit to help men and women returning home from prison, walking with them through the tenuous days of reentry. And finally, after all that, I was baptized in Jesus’ name. I am now an ordained minister using my experiences and my faith and help others find their way to Jesus.
Each move meant starting over; new locations, new friends, new communities, new expectations, always back on the bottom rung of some ladder. I’d rise a little, find my footing, and then feel the pull to move again. Looking back, it might seem to some as restless, even irresponsible, but it was honest. I wasn’t running from something; I was being drawn forward by something I couldn’t yet name.
After baptism, the wandering stopped. I’ve been in the same place now for over thirty years. My family has become constant. The geography hasn’t changed. For someone who had spent a lifetime moving from place to place, this kind of staying put might look like settling, but it wasn’t. It was an arrival. The forward motion didn’t end; it simply changed into a more certain direction.
For more than 50 years, I believed I had resisted God’s call. But that’s not the truth. Even when I didn’t know God, even when I wasn’t listening for Him, He was shaping me. Every place I lived, every role I stepped into, taught me something about people, about suffering, about systems, about dignity, and eventually about myself. None of it was wasted. If I’d found faith earlier, I might have mistaken impatience for obedience and settled down too soon, choosing comfort over calling. Instead, like a carrot on a stick, the call stayed just out of reach, just far enough away to keep me moving, patient enough to wait for me to catch up.
I didn’t understand what God wanted me to do until I was in my late fifties. That may sound late to some, but it wasn’t late for me. It was right on time. By then I had lived enough life to know my limits, failed often enough to be humble, and seen enough brokenness to recognize the value of hope when it finally shows up.
“Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them” (Psalm 139:16 NKJV)
So, what does it actually take to go forward? Not ambition, not enthusiasm, and not a well-organized plan. It takes patience and perseverance, the kind that stays when the excitement fades and the path feels ordinary. The years in between, the wandering years, aren’t detours; they’re classrooms. That’s where we learn how the world really works, where we see what people carry, where we discover how God’s purposes intersect with our own limitations.
Going forward as a Christian doesn’t mean forgetting where you’ve been, but it does mean refusing to live there. The past may explain you, but it doesn’t define you. God uses every experience, even the seemingly aimless ones, to prepare us for the work ahead, and when the time comes, He doesn’t rush us; He grounds us.
“Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)
I’ve started my life over many times, but I no longer measure progress by how often I move or how much changes on the outside. Going forward now means staying surrendered, listening closely, and walking faithfully into whatever God sets before me next. It depends on trust.
And trust, like God’s Call, unfolds forward, one faithful step at a time.
Reflection Questions
Looking back over your life, where do you see patterns of movement, change, or restlessness that you didn’t understand at the time but can recognize now as formative?
Are there “wandering years” in your own story that you’ve labeled as wasted or misguided, but that God may have been using as classrooms?
In what ways might impatience tempt you to confuse activity with obedience or comfort with calling?
How do you personally define “going forward” in your faith; is it more about change on the outside or surrender on the inside?
Are there areas of your past that still explain you but no longer need to define you? What would it look like to stop living there?
Where are you currently tempted to rely on willpower rather than trust and dependence on God?
What quiet, unremarkable acts of obedience might God be inviting you into right now, without applause or validation?
How does the idea of resurrection reshape the way you think about spiritual growth and change?
Prayer
Lord,
Thank You for being faithful through every season of our lives, even the ones we didn’t understand at the time. Thank You that nothing is wasted in Your hands; not the wandering, not the waiting, not the years that felt ordinary or unclear.
Teach us to stop measuring progress by movement and start measuring it by surrender. Help us trust You beyond motivation, beyond plans, beyond our own strength. Where we’ve tried to manage the old life instead of releasing it, give us the courage to let it go.
Lead us forward, one faithful step at a time. Ground us where You place us, shape us as You will, and remind us that You make all things new, in Your time.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
