The most common question I get these days is, “what are you doing now?” or “what are you doing next?”. I’ve been in this space for awhile now where I have no idea what I’m doing now or what I’m doing next. Over the past couple years I’ve been realizing how much my life has been motivated by wanting approval, acceptance, and adoration. God has been teaching me that I already have all these things and that I don’t need to order my life around trying to get them.  But I’ve now come to this place where I wonder what my motivation or inspiration is if it’s not any of those things. Why do anything?

As much as I’d like to, I can’t seem to force motivation or inspiration. I’m either motivated and inspired, or I’m not. Before there was always an ample supply of motivations. There were plenty of people to please, to look impressive for, to achieve great things for. But if that’s no longer my motivation, what is? What should I be doing with my life?

I’ve dropped just about everything and have been staring that question in the face hoping for breakthrough. It seemed that perhaps I had to face the fear of doing nothing to gain the motivation to do something. Often the fear feels like a heavy weight of expectation upon my shoulders.  I keep looking at God, and He seems to be shrugging and saying “don’t look at me, I don’t do heavy weights or expectation”.

A group of friends and I have gone in together on a 1 year lease on a house in the mountains about 2 hours outside of Beijing. I was up at the house recently talking with some friends. During one conversation, a friend was talking about a time when he took a sabbatical and suddenly had the realization, “I’m on sabbatical. I can do whatever I want to do. What do I want to do?”. That comment stood out and I wrote it down. Then the next day there was a conversation about being up at the mountain house and how it was really nice and restful because there are really no expectations when we go there. We all seem to escape the world of expectations that we leave behind in the city and find rest at the mountain house.

This bugged me. Is sabbatical an alternate reality? Is the mountain house an alternate reality? Or are they just times when we’re more intentional about saying “no”, and then we just go back to being what we think everyone else needs us to be when it’s over.

So what about when sabbatical is over? What about when we go back into the city? Is it just the hard truth of life that we have duties and obligations that we have to live by? Is the mountain house environment of rest and freedom from obligation a false reality? Is the life back in the city of duty and obligation our true reality?

It sounds reasonable. We’ve got assignments at work to be done, bills to pay, rent to pay, dishes to do, friends to meet, family to call. Some of us have families to provide for, with kids to feed and wives to love.

As important, and dutiful, and responsible, and upright as it sounds to do all those things, something about it just feels “off” to me. They all seem like good things, but they are all positioned in what feels like a prison of “oughts” and “shoulds”. Dutiful and responsible, yes. But life abundant and free? It doesn’t feel that way. Is the life of freedom really just a life of to-do lists to make sure we’re doing our duties and fulfilling our obligations? I just can’t get excited about that. Do I stay alive and do all my tasks just because I “should”. That is not an inspiring vision of life to me.

And then it hit me…….

“I don’t have to do anything”…….”I don’t have to do anything.”……”Really, I don’t have to do anything.”

People want me to do things…..

But I don’t have to do anything.

I may have committed myself to do things…..

But I don’t have to do anything.

It seems like I need a job to make money…..

But I don’t have to do anything.

It seems like I need that money to buy food…..

But I don’t have to do anything.

It seems like I need that food to stay alive…..

But I don’t have to do anything.

It seems like I should stay alive…..

But I don’t have to do anything.

I have the freedom to sit on this couch where I type this and remain sitting here until I starve and die.

I have freedom. I have the freedom to choose. I can choose.

I can choose life or death.

I can choose blessing or curse.

I can choose obedience or disobedience.

I can choose to love or abandon.

I can choose pepperoni or sausage.

I’ve not said that it’s a good idea to not do anything, only that it’s an option that is available. Every choice I make has a consequence. Some of those consequences may end up hurting me deeply. Some of those consequences may end up hurting people I love.

I’d be wise to count the cost before making a choice, but in the end the choice is mine.

I don’t have to live a life of duty and obligation!

I do have the responsibility that comes with freedom and the responsibility of the choices that I make, but there is a world of difference between “I ought” and “I choose”. A world of difference between “I ought to stay alive” and “I choose life!”. In the former I’m a slave, and in the latter I wield great power.

I can finish assignments because I choose to. I can pay the bills, do the dishes, meet with friends, call my family, feed my kids, love my wife because I choose to. It really matters what I choose.

There’s an ancient book that puts it this way:

“I place before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your children will live. And love God, your God, listening obediently to him, firmly embracing him. Oh yes, he is life itself.”

That’s just good advice.