Right at the top of this blog, I concede that this post cannot do justice to giving a full answer of “Who Am I?” I will entrust the more full understanding of my identity to the ongoing reading that you may do if you choose to follow along. For now, there are a few things to understand that will help explain my approaches, my writing, and the focuses I will have.
It may be best to describe myself as a bloodhound on the scent of meaning. This encompasses a lot of the motivation for the content being produced here. Meaning is a two-sided exercise as it seeks out more basic theories of the world, but then also requires some sort of practical application. At root, I’m a thinker, but as a Christian, my pursuit is to truly love God and people, which means actually doing the things that embody love.
This idea of me being a bloodhound is going to be the driving force around a lot of my story that you will read about in the coming months. From finding Jesus, to my time simply working, to my education, I am pursuing meaning. Ironically, the first book study of the Bible I’ll be doing is Ecclesiastes, which notoriously regards all things as… MEANINGLESS.
Meaning, and Becoming Faithful
That’s the beauty of Ecclesiastes and my passion for meaning. Ecclesiastes is essentially correct and the pursuit of God is meaning enough to get on with the day. The scent for meaning, in that way, leads us into what Becoming Faithful is all about. Here, I am trying to understand and communicate how meaning is not a thing we can strive for in some distant future, or find in the past, but incorporates tradition, history, vision, and goals into the present. The fact of the matter is that as humans, God may be outside of time, but we are present right now. Our only opportunity to trust God and experience his presence and find true meaning for ourselves is RIGHT NOW.
“Fear God and keep his commandments” (Eccl 12:13) is the goal for my life. Apart from this fear of God and doing what is good, meaning is elusive, not because other things don’t matter, but because meaning ultimately comes from our Creator. My education in the Bible and social work combine to provide me with a strong vision of God’s heart, while also allowing me to understand and recognize the significant challenges that are posed to humans. Fearing God, while it may seem counter-intuitive, is the way in which we prioritize the overarching goodness of God over everything else. We do this by evaluating the actions we take every day considering God’s Spirit.
Each faithful step we take reveals a concurrent grace of God over our lives. This does not always look the way we would like, as you’ll notice I’ve learned in my own experience. But the truth still holds: God’s grace (his special concern or favour) over our lives is most experienced when we are faithful to him. We trust what he says and act in accordance. Belief is always followed by action; this is non-negotiable. Works will never save you in your own power, but your trusting allegiance to Christ cannot be deemed real and acceptable without movement toward him. But remember, here we talk about Becoming Faithful. Not a call to perfection, but to the process of becoming. One step at a time. It’s a daunting task to attain God-likeness, but each faithful step achieves that goal more and more.
The Short Answer
In answering the original question, “Who Am I?” maybe it’s best to simply say I’m in pursuit of Becoming Faithful; I’m on the scent of what it means to be faithful. I am looking to that next step on the path where God’s Spirit is leading, and there, I will find meaning and fulfillment.
Jacob Luyt-Dozois is a bloodhound on the scent of Godliness. I am not perfect; I regularly mess up, but each moment is an opportunity to catch the scent of the Holy Spirit and have a real experience of God’s goodness. It can look like many things, such as prayer, worship, a job well done, etc. But the goal is the pursuit of God, because those who seek him will find him (Jer 29:13; Deut 4:29; Isa 55:1–6).
Dory from Finding Nemo has a fun song to “just keep swimming.” Life requires the consistent emphasis to just keep moving forward. Keep your nose to the ground in search of the Spirit’s scent, so that you may find you’ve taken so many faithful steps, you might take a moment to look back and then ask God in trembling fear, “What have you done to make me this way?” I promise that you are going to be transformed and will become a new creation, and you’ll know it had nothing to do with your own work. You simply took faithful steps to seek him and his kingdom, and he did the work of changing your motives, your thinking, and your actions to reflect his kingdom.
I regularly pick my head up from the scent of the Spirit to look around. I see that I’m a completely different person than who I was, while I may struggle with old problems in new ways. Nevertheless, my small steps of faithfully pursuing the scent of the Spirit have meant an overwhelming amount of God’s grace in my life, transforming me into the person I am today.
Catching the Scent Yourself
If you take your head up off the ground and stop getting the scent for the Spirit, and instead just consume the scents of anxiety and struggle in the world around us, you’ll find yourself consumed with anxiety. But… if you follow the Spirit, you’ll find that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7). Focusing on Becoming Faithful will lead you to an abundance of peace and an ability to face hardships you know for a fact would have made you crumble.
So, in a dark world, where everyone is struggling with something, maybe catching the scent of God isn’t a terrible idea? Let go of your apprehensions. Let go for a moment and maybe you’ll taste and see that the Lord is good (Ps 34:8). I pray that’s the case, not because this is some sort of spiritual pyramid scheme, but because I actually think it’s good for us, and if you decide otherwise, bless you as you go on your way.
“As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Josh 24:15). I am going to continue to be the bloodhound on the scent of God’s Spirit.
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