It's Not Fair!

God is fair. God is just. God is good.  I really truly believe this with all my heart.  But I’ve been known to ask, why do you get more than me?  Or why do I get more than you?  I’m not just talking about possessions or money.  I’m talking about talent, health, opportunities, strength, personality, ability to connect with others, etc.

Why does one get perfect health while I get a rare liver disease?  Why am I born an introvert with a heart that wants to be an extrovert? Why do I get to be born in a Christian culture while another is born into in Islamic culture in Afghanistan? Why do I get to be a mother, but another must struggle with infertility?  Why do I get a childhood of relative ease while another struggles growing up jumping from one foster home to another? 

God isn’t giving away the answers quite yet.  He doesn’t have to, even if it seems unfair.  But He has a reason.  Just read the parable of the talents, where the master gives varying responsibilities to each of the servants according to their abilities.  God is not obligated to treat us all equally or give us all the same things.

So some have more than me while I have more than others.  That’s how life is – a sort of pecking order – some above, some the same, some beneath.  This reality leaves us with three choices:

1.  We can use what we have or don’t have as an excuse for why we do or don’t do something.
2. We can waste away our lives playing the comparison game, complaining about the some that others have that we didn’t get.
3. We can gratefully accept what we have been given and do everything we can with it – give it all we’ve got.

 So rather than asking “Why don’t I have that?” or “Why didn’t got make me more like that?” or “why did that happen to me?”, I resolve to ask more often “what” to do with what I it, instead.

When I Don't Feel Like Doing What God Wants Me to Do

We often hear that we should follow our passion and our calling, use our spiritual gifts.  This is true, but sometimes God calls us to do something, and we may not feel very passionate about it, or gifted enough, yet we know it is what He wants us to do.  We get excited to follow Him anywhere, but when the rubber must meet the road, our flesh screeches us to a halt.

Jesus was in turmoil and anguish when he and his three disciples approached the Garden of Gethsemene.  He wandered a short distance from them and dropped to the ground, overwhelmed with distress.  Deep distress.  Face down physically in the garden but emotionally before the throne of His Father, seeking His face, he expressed his deepest emotions.  He lived his whole life in submission to His Father’s will.  Everything he did, every act of service, was an act of submission.  But this was too hard. 

“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not as I will, but as you will.”  Matthew 26:39.

Jesus asked if there was some other way.  He knew His Father could do anything, so he asked that the cup of suffering be taken away.  He still wanted the Father’s will, but perhaps there some alternative to fulfilling His Father’s redemptive plan?  As he converses with the Father, he bravely accepts the reality that there is not, but that the Father would give him the supernatural strength He needed to follow through.  At the end, he wakes his sleeping disciples who seem oblivious to the significance of the moment, and says “Rise, let us go.”  The time had come, and he was ready to face it head on.  He was ready to fulfill what he was called to do, whatever the cost. 

Our spirit may be eager to follow Jesus, whatever the cost, excited to do His will, whatever it is, but when it gets right down to it, when that moment comes, we hesitate.  Maybe we don’t feel emotionally prepared to handle it, or we feel tired, or we are afraid we won’t do it right, or it’s just completely inconvenient.  Maybe it doesn’t jive with what we feel like doing. 

In the moment, we have a choice.  When we know God wants us to do it, but our feelings or emotions are in conflict, we must drop to the floor on our face and ask God for the strength, to submit our flesh to His will.  And if even then our feelings don’t match up, maybe God just wants us to move forward in obedience, in spite of our feelings.  While our feelings affect our actions, it is also true that our actions affect how we feel, and once we act in obedience, then God will bless with the alignment of our emotions.  

Thoughts on Not Wasting Your Life

Living a meaningful life – it’s about living life with a single passion for God and displaying His excellence in all spheres of your life.  John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life and the related Bible study as well as the Lecrae song by the same name have been a favorite theme of mine over the last six years.  It’s about not living life on trivial diversions or living for comfort and pleasure. It’s about not living a life that counts for nothing.  We are to live with a war-time mentality, risking our lives to make the treasure of the Gospel known.  When we reach the end of our lives, we don’t want to say “I’ve wasted it”. 

If I continually ask myself if I’m living a meaningful, unwasted life, I often feel like I’m failing.  I’m not leading any Bible studies right now.  I’m not serving in any capacity in my church right now.  Sometimes I’m not even there for my friends or my family as I think I should be. I haven’t shared the good news of the Gospel with anyone lately.

Even though I want every minute of my life to count for something, to serve God wholeheartedly, my flesh can’t keep up.  My failure fills me with guilt.  While trying not to “waste” my life, I have caught myself succumbing to the following risks:

·        Doing too much – leading multiple Bible studies at one time until I burned out,

·        Focusing on what I am doing in the church more than who I am being in relationship to God and the people nearest me,

·        Serving to justify my own existence or to validate my worth.

If I sit down and watch Funniest Home Videos on TV, am I wasting an hour of my life?  Maybe.  Maybe God nods and says it is good to sit and relax and laugh a little bit.  But maybe sometimes He is telling me to just be with Him instead.  If I ask Him in the moment, I think He will lead my heart.  The key would be in remembering to ask Him.

On the other hand, Ken Gire has challenged me to think about the whole concept of evaluating a wasted life.  Sometimes to understand the life we have lived, we need time to “sort through all the memories, to re-mat them with perspective, reframe them with forgiveness, hang them in a place where they catch the light just right so they can be seen the way they were meant to be seen” (Relentless Pursuit, 143).

The thief on the cross surely felt he had wasted his life when he came to realization of who Jesus was and put his faith in Him.  But who knows how many people are in heaven now through the example of the thief and realizing that yes, they can make the decision on their death bed to put their faith in Christ.  My grandfather is one of them.

So how do I live my life so that it is not wasted, without continually evaluating and being consumed with guilt that I’m not doing more?  I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that, but at the moment I think the key to the answer is in I Corinthians 10:31 (and Colossians 3:23), whatever you do, in your work, in your rest, in your relationships, in your finances, in your parenting, in your church, in what you eat and drink, in every single thing that you so, do it to reflect and display God’s greatness and to show you treasure Christ.

Linking up with Finding Heaven.

Serving Others When I Feel Like I Should But Don't Want To

Sometimes I know without a shadow of doubt that God wants me to invest myself in someone’s life because He gives the burning desire in my heart – a burning desire to meet a need or merely connect with them or to come alongside and encourage each other.  The fire is one that can’t be squelched and the Holy Spirit fills me with motivation to follow through even if it is tough. 

Other times, I feel like I OUGHT to minister to someone but the desire is not there. I don’t want to do it.  God loves a cheerful giver, so if I don’t feel cheerful about giving my time, emotions, resources, I shouldn’t do it, right? If I don’t want to do it, does that mean that God is not leading me to do it?

I struggle with this because it is emotion-based and the heart can be deceiving.  Just because I don’t want to do it does not necessarily mean that God is not leading me to do it.  I have several choices. I could:

1.       Deny how I feel and devote my energy to simply doing it instead of how I feel about doing it.

2.       I can try to convince myself that I really want to do it.

3.       I could do it even if I don’t want to and feel guilty for not wanting to or not doing it well.

4.       I could do it and maybe God will change my heart in the process.

Maybe the first thing to do is evaluate why I feel like I ‘should’ do something when I don’t want to do it? Is it to please others or is it to please God?  Is someone putting an expectation on me that God is not requiring of me or that God is reserving for someone else? Or do I know it is God leading me to do it, but I am afraid of how people will react so I’m reluctant to face rejection or being thought a dork?

I think sometimes God can convince me that it is His plan for me to do something even if I don’t “feel” like it merely because He inclines my heart to do it.  Obedience should not be based on feeling, but what if the inclination isn't there either?  The flesh and spirit are constantly at war in me.

All I know to do is pray that God will change my desire, to incline my heart, or give me a knowing that will help me move beyond the “don’t feel like it” feeling. 

How do you know God is leading YOU to do something when your feelings don’t match up?

When We Really Live

When do we really live?  To live is Christ, but what does this look like in everyday life? 

While studying the book of James along with a small group study of Beth Moore’s Mercy Triumphs, I am convicted to ensure that I am not living a half-hearted faith but a faith that is fruitful, one that actually demonstrates what I know and believe. 

I randomly pulled a book off my shelf that caught my eye this morning – Everyday Religion. It belonged to my great-grandmother.  I hate the word ‘religion’ because of the negative connotations that go with it.  The word “relationship” is more palatable when describing my faith – a relationship with Jesus. 

But devotion and dedication are part of that relationship, so I tried to read the first few pages through the lens of what “religion” meant in 1950 with an eye focused on living out that relationship.  Here are my top five ways of how we know we really live in Christ:

We really live in Christ when….

1)   When we know how to throw off things, and not let them stick like burs and sting like bees, and how to forget our regrets.

2)   When we know how to get out of our little selves into the lives of others, putting ourselves in their place, sharing life in fellowship, changing mirrors into windows.

3)   When we can look into a wayside puddle and see something beyond mud, and into the face of a forlorn mortal and see something beyond sin.

4)   When we are ruled by our admirations, not by our disgusts, seeking the best in people, giving every soul the benefit of the doubt.

5)   When we know how to love, how to pray, how to laugh, how to live with God, how to serve Him, glad to live but not afraid to die.

From Joseph Fort Newton’s Everyday Religion, 1950, (selected from pages 13-16).

Doing "Whatever"

You might think no one notices, but they do.  You might think your hard work, your integrity, and choosing the right thing when no one is there to see are invisible before the world.  But maybe it’s not.

You might think only God notices when you do “whatever” for His glory – and that is good enough, but it would feel more fruitful if the “whatever” impacted the world for Him and produced visible fruit.  Maybe when you think you are invisible, you really aren’t.  

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on the floor next to my closet in my bedroom, tying my tennis shoes for a hike in the woods.  My twelve-year-old nephew walked in unexpectantly from outside through the sliding glass door of my bedroom and was startled when he saw me.  He apologized profusely, over and over, and I kept telling him it was okay.  Still apologizing, I tried to re-assure him, checking to make sure I really was wearing pants or a shirt, that he hadn’t actually walked in on me half-naked. Not sure what he thought he saw, I finally informed him I was just putting on my shoes and it really wasn’t a big deal, to come on in.  Relief replaced the guilt on his face as he crossed the threshold and said, “Oh! Okay, I thought you were praying.” 

As I thought more about it later, he must have thought I was praying when I was actually putting on shoes because he had caught me down on the floor in my bedroom before, on my face in desperate submission before God, unaware I had been observed. I have been doing that a lot lately. 

One day this summer at work, I was overseeing a driller as he probed deep holes into the ground to evaluate the extent of contamination from an underground chemical.  While the sun cooked us at 110 degrees that afternoon, he continued to labor hard, all by himself on a two-man job, never once complaining.  Early into the evening at the last hole, we plopped on the grass with exhaustion, waiting for the results so we would know if the day’s work was finished or more holes were needed.  He smiled cheerfully and announced, “I’m really praying this one will be clean.” I was too!

I knew immediately his brightness and work ethic originated from the light of Jesus in him.  I will likely never see him again, but I will never forget he worked hard without a single gripe on a miserable day conducting mundane, tedious work that may have seemed senseless.   He may think it went unnoticed, but it impacted me.  I’m sure God was proud of him that day and all the angels were applauding because he was doing his “whatever” for the glory of God.

You might think what you do every day is insignificant. But He wants us to do “whatever” it is that we are doing for His glory (I Corinthians 10:31).

And who knows just what people see in us on a day-to-day basis? Whether checking out at the grocery store, typing a report, taking care of our homes, loving our husbands, or teaching our children –  our efforts will not go unnoticed. And even should you think they do, God and a whole realm of the unseen are watching you on the stage of your life and He and the angels are yelling “encore!!” while you are doing “whatever” for the glory of God.

Following My Desires

This morning on the Desiring God Blog, I read, “Lord, I want to be free. I want my desires so changed into accord with reality so that I can do what I want to do and never regret it. That's what I want. And so I'm going hard after Jesus to change me, because many of my desires are stupid…”  It made me laugh, but it is also MY heart’s cry.

In recent years, I struggled with guilt for increased feelings of reluctance to serve in my church and community.  Although facilitating ladies Bible studies at church and the homeless shelter as well as assisting in children’s ministry activities were things I enjoyed at one time, they morphed into something I dreaded in my schedule. If the activity robbed me of time with my husband and kids, I dreaded it all the more.  Losing all interest, one-by-one, I dropped them until I was serving nowhere.  Then guilt blanketed me.  Being with my family was all I desired, and I worried that my world would become too small.  Had I made my family into an idol?

But the desire to dig deep in God’s Word never left me.  With my extra time, I brushed up on biblical Greek and began studying the Bible more systematically.  While I absorbed knowledge and relished a new intimacy with God, I knew it was right for this time in my life.  Yet, I knew I was not supposed to keep it private.  I’m still trying to figure it all out, but writing what God is showing me is definitely my sweet spot.  And dread is not a part of my life anymore.

Now I look for the things that spark my heart to beat a little faster, areas in which I can show love to people around me – not out of the ‘shoulds’ or to prevent guilt, but with pure desire.  I am concerned that this is based too much on feelings.  Sometimes there are unpleasant duties that must be fulfilled, but I know sometimes God compels me to do them.  Sometimes He compels others to do them.  Listening for the Spirit’s voice in compelling me is working for me for now. 

If I pray daily that God will change my desires so that they will coincide with His, then maybe I can do what I want to do and never regret it.  He will allow me to see through His perspective more and more, and He will continue to change me.

Being Versus Doing

My eyes are on Jesus, but where are my feet going?  Lately I have been ruled by my emotions and circumstances.  My eyes have tried to focus on Jesus, but my feet keep tripping over my emotions.  To get my feet under control, I must determine in advance what it is He wants me to do and just do it, regardless of how I feel at the moment. 

It is natural for me to start a “to-do” list which will easily be swept aside, forgotten, or induce guilt at my failure to accomplish.  But what if I had a “to be” list instead?  First I could consider what Jesus wants me to be.  Considering the things I do or want to do (or don’t want to do but should do) in line with who I want to be may help me to become more focused and less controlled by emotions or circumstance.

·        I want to be a woman of strength, love, confidence, humility, peace, courage, gratitude, beauty…the list could go on and on, but maybe I can be more specific:

·        I want to be a wife that encourages, supports, and loves my husband, enjoying his presence and bringing him joy.

·        I want to be a mom with the character of Jesus, who guides her children in a way that leads them to desire Jesus as the center of their lives and live passionately for Him.

·        I want to be a woman of prayer, to see the power of the Spirit at work in my family, my life, and the world around me.

·        I want to be a woman of the Bible, who loves to study and obey God’s Words in every area of its teaching and to grow deeper in my faith.

·        I want to be a woman whose heart is prone to praise and thankfulness to God so that I can keep my perspective on God’s power, might, and love, submitting to His beautiful authority in all areas of my life.

·        I want to be a woman of love, that the fullness of Christ may overflow in my daily actions and relationships.

·        I want to be what Jesus wants me to be and to engage in every opportunity for relationships where I can display my faith and show His greatness.

How do I do these things on a practical level?  I think it is a series of choices made at the daily level—choices in what to do and what not to do.  I choose to start my day in the Bible and with prayer and praise instead of hitting the snooze button in the mornings.  I choose to think before I speak when I feel short on patience instead of lashing out.  I choose to seek out my children or my husband to chat with or I choose to have a quiet time or exercise instead of sitting in front of the TV with a remote.  But what if my brain feels like fuzz or my body feels like a sack of potatoes? I choose to read or exercise anyway, and if it doesn’t work after attempting it, then I will exercise or read – choices that consider my body without being ruled by it.