One night during our first year of being married, my wife Holly and I lay awake ridiculously late, tossing and turning, completely unable to fall asleep. But this wasn’t just any sleepless night; this was the night we discovered what would forever be known as the Reset.

I’m not sure if it was the delirium from an increasingly long day, or the growing anxiety of facing an early get up for work exhausted, but finally I suggested we needed to Reset — suddenly we both started laughing and sprang from bed, turned on the lights, and began rehearsing the same bedtime routine we had completed just three hours prior, as though it had never happened. The thinking was that our bodies had missed the regular bedtime cues and needed a reminder. It worked, and 20 minutes later we were both out cold.

Life can be a lot like a bad night of sleep. We are stuck, we toss and turn, and in order to solve our problems we tell ourselves to do things like flip the pillow, lose the blanket, or switch sides of the bed. We spend far too long on quick fixes, hoping that somehow things that never work will do the trick this time. Instead, what we really need to do is turn on the lights, get out of bed, and re-orient ourselves to those things we really want and truly need.

During Bruce’s talk Sunday, I was struck by the suggestion that quite often we do not know what it is that we most deeply need or what it is that we most deeply desire in life. We can spend an entire lifetime asking, or evading, questions like who was I created to be, what was I created to do, and what is at the heart of the tension between my discontent with life and my inability to articulate a vision from God for my life. Can we identify the brokenness that prevents us from answering these questions; do we know the first step towards wholeness? What have we tried, perhaps repeatedly, that hasn’t worked?

The idea that I can desire without knowing what I desire for (which I believe to be true) completely upsets my standard program of self-help. You see, I have become quite adept at the spiritual quick fix (the more you try it, the more you have to try it again). When the hunger for growth becomes strong enough, or the message on Sunday morning is inspiring enough, I pull out all the stops and go for it. For about three days. I buy a new Christian book, come up with an aggressive new devotional plan, and wake up at 5:00am the next day to get started. And very soon the fire is gone and the alarm is turned off. I am finished before I ever really began, back to tossing and turning in my relationship with God. I think it is safe to say that quick fixes don’t work because they miss the point, skirt around the real desires and lack vision from God; they are a well-intended first step in the wrong direction.

If you desire life change from God, I encourage you to embark on a Reset this week. Before you jump into well-intended, but potentially short-lived disciplines, first pause and take this week to seek vision from God for your life. Commit to simply spend time praying and listening to God, and find out what he desires for you. Then let your new orientation dictate the choices and disciplines that will lead you towards his vision for your life. For this week, have no other goals, no other pressures and no other benchmarks to prove to yourself you finally did it this time. Just sit with God and let him speak his vision, his desires and his heart into yours. Let your first step be towards Him.

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*Note: If you wish, you can look up this and other Bible passages online at youversion.com
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