Have you ever been trying to figure something out with a friend or even a stranger and they immediately tell you what you should be doing? In rare cases, they hit the nail on the head with a brilliant idea that you have never heard of before and you can feel your heart come alive. But in most cases, you can feel the burden of all the things you “should” be doing just get heavier.
Whether it is about what you should be doing with your resources in the present moment, what you should do in the future, or even how you should be as a Christian, we accidentally end up taking on tasks and goals that are not our own, do not make our hearts come alive, and are not beneficial to us.
The definition of “should” is that it is “used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions.” When we are making plans for our present and for our future, we don’t want to act out of someone else’s obligations, duties, or what they view as correct. We want to act out of the things that God has placed on our hearts, the things that God has called us to do, and to do them in the way that God has called us to do them.
God has so many beautiful and wonderful things in store for you. A plan that is so magnificent that He created it at the beginning of time. When we fill our lives with obligations and “shoulds” from other people or our culture, we don’t have time, energy, or resources to accomplish the very things that God has woven into our beings.
We don’t want to base our lives on “shoulds”, we want to base them on love. We don’t want to do something because we should be doing it but because we genuinely see the value in it and see God in it.
Partner with God to define what a good life is, partner with the people you love and respect to define what a good life is, and partner with your own heart to know what a good life is. And then, completely ignoring the “shoulds” from the peanut gallery, run towards it with abandon.