What Do You Want Out Of Life?

 God said to me, “I know you keep feeling that something is missing in your life. What do you want out of life?”

My first thought was happiness but being happy is too shallow.  My thoughts turned to joy but that is selfish too. If God is really asking me what I want out of life, those answers didn’t seem to cut it.  I thought of love but I have love so it’s not missing from my life.

God turned my attention over to the prayers I have been sending up lately.  Prayers to sell this house and to provide another place for us to live as we move and for us to be successful at our new jobs.  So he asked me, “Is it money and success you want out of life?”  And although that was what I had been praying for, I knew it wasn’t what was missing either.  He then brought my constant prayers to my attention, the ones for my family, friends and church.  Do you want the ones you love to always be safe?  And  this one sounded the most appealing.  I especially want my children to live a long safe life but I was left feeling that this isn’t quite it either.

I thought long and hard about this and since I already have a relationship with God, I knew it wasn’t God missing from my life.  What is it that I keep wanting, but don’t quite have that I can’t put my finger on?  What is it that I know I once had but now in its absence I can’t  figure out what it is? 

Then my answer came but It came as a question, I said “Faithfulness?”

It didn’t seem that could be it.  Faithfulness?  I have faith!  I know Jesus died on the cross for my sins and I know I am going to heaven.  I read my Bible and go to church and try to do the right thing.  Why would faithfulness be what I am lacking? 

Then the flashbacks came from this entire year.  The huge disappointments, the betrayals, the way life has taken us in a direction we never thought it would take.  The hurt and the pain that has drove us to want to take things into our own hands.  The gratefulness for their being a safe place to fall but the resentment of our other plans not working out.  All of these things pointed to not being faithful to God’s ultimate plan.  That the hurt and the pain had to happen to drag us to where God wanted us to be.  We wouldn’t have left on our own and so God had to hand deliver us.  The emphasis for us the past several months has been on what God has taken from us but God is showing us He has given us more than He took away. 

So now I know what I want out of life.  I want faithfulness.  I want to be faithful to God.  I want to do His will not my own.  I want to feel his faithfulness each day.  As a by-product of this faithfulness, I will find joy, there will be days of happiness, and by faith I know God will provide for our family what we need and that He will provide safety.  I know by faith He has every detail of our life already planned out.  I know all of this because I have lived all of this.  I have had faith through everything although it was just a mustard seed.  It took faith to keep moving through the pain.  I never lost my faith but faithfulness  is much deeper.  Faith is knowing what the Bible says and finding hope in a scripture. Faithfulness is believing it and living it out in our life. Faithfulness is full surrender to His word and to His will not just knowing His Word and praying for His will. Somewhere through the journey I held tight to my faith but lost my faithfulness.  I would have never figured this out on my own.  God saved me from myself once again!  

The Broken Glass

This weekend my kids were playing with a balloon at their Gigi's house.  I told them to stop and they both set down but my daughter continued to throw the balloon up within her grasp but behind her was a large glass vase that she inadvertenly tipped over when playing with the balloon and the vase shattered.   My reaction was that I had JUST told her not to play with the balloon, yet she still did so and she broke something that didn't belong to us.  So I did raise my voice and was not to happy with her.  

Then tonight we had just finished watching a movie together and I was doing laundry and checking email when I heard a crash.  I yelled, "What have you broken?" from the office and I was pretty upset to find a softball went through one of the glass panes in the door!  I was pretty upset and began the questioning and the "How could you throw a real softball in the house?" And somewhere in it all, I stopped. I looked at my kids and saw true repentance in their eyes along with great fear of what was to happen next.  God was showing me there was a better way to handle this and so instead of picking up the glass, I told the kids to have a seat on the couch.  I came back to the office to collect my thoughts before going to the bedroom to bring in my Bible.  I set between the kids and asked them if they knew how many times the Bible talked about Obedience. We then counted in the back of the Bible the scriptures listed that talked about obeying and there was 81 scriptures!  We decided obeying must be pretty important to be talked about that many times.  We read Ephesians   6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor your father and mother"--which is the first commandment with a promise-- 3 "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."  We talked about why this commandment came with a promise and why it's important to listen to your parents and when we were done the kids offered to pay for the window, told me they should go to bed for the night, and listed several punishments they believed fit the crime. I never once mentioned any consequences for their actions, they did.

I realized as I tucked them both into bed how much they matured and I realized there was a lasting change in them but more importantly a lasting change in me.  On Sunday, all I did was make my daughter feel bad for what she had done and by her actions today it was clear she learned nothing from it but tonight with a different attitude, I got much different results. Tonight she wasn't sorry for breaking the glass, she was sorry for a long line of defiance that led to breaking the glass.  There's a big difference between the two. And my son hadn't thrown the ball but he stood by his sister and owned up to his part in it and wanted to pay half for the window.  Neither one of them tried to blame the other.  They had each others back.

True repentance isn't just about being sorry for what you have done or caused, it's being sorry for everything that has led you down that path where the wrong choice was made.   My daughter may have shattered the glass in the door, but the disobedience she has been encased in also cracked.  We decided that studying all 81 scriptures of obedience is something we should begin doing each day to shatter the disobedient tendencies. It may be a small setback since the house is on the market to sell but it was a step-up in seeing how we all handled the situation.

"It's Something We Are Praying About!"

We are moving as coaching families do and my son was asked what the mascot was for our new school.  My son looked down and sheepishly said, "They are the Demons but it's something we are praying about."  And it is. None of us like the Demon mascot.  We don't say the "Demon" part in our house and I've even considered not buying any shirts with the mascot on it and plan on wearing a cross necklace to all the games!  Some may think it's just a mascot but for a coaching family it can certainly turn into more than that.

So like my son said, "It's something we are praying about!" And in my prayers, God has been showing me areas in my life where I am off-balanced.  I've been spending more time in the word and listening to sermons online to get my balance back.  I've started a diet to lose weight to get my eating habits back in balance.  I've started changing my attitude about somethings and try to lighten up a little more with the kids.  I had no idea all of this was stemming from praying about our "demon" problem but then out of nowhere God showed me it was related. He showed me our family tends to get out of balance with a lot of things and one of those is football.  Football becomes an idol to us at times.  Every coaching family knows that when a sports season starts things change and are different but there is an extreme to the time, the effort, and the importance the entire family puts into it and our family for the past several years have lived in the extreme.  God has placed my husband to coach the Demons to serve as a very visible reminder of what is truly important to us and so that we don't allow the Demons to become an idol in our family and put us on watch so that we can guard our heart against it.  If we were the Eagles, Lions, Bears, Bulls, or Thunder it wouldn't get our attention like this does and the team could certainly once again become an idol in our life. But because it's the "Demons" and it makes me cringe it puts the decision front and center of who are we putting first, God or our team the Demons.  

Our family never tosses God out of our lives but we don't always put Him first.  We still go to church during the football season, pray, read the Bible, serve at church, and can look like God is #1 by all of things we do and even say but our time, our efforts and our heart can belong to the team. The AP polls could say God is our #1 but God can take the poll of our heart and see that He doesn't always hold that #1 spot.  So as God calls us to go where the "Demons" are I can see His guiding hand.  After all even the demons believe their is one God (James 2:19). It will be up to us to show our Demons it's not enough to believe there is a God but to show our faith through our works of God being first in our life and in heart and from there everything else will flow.     

Hypocrites

From what I gather, the biggest reason some people don’t go to church, don't become active in organized religion, and/or don’t believe in God is because of their view that all Christians are hypocrites.  I don’t know why people are so shocked that Christians are hypocrites or why Christians are shocked when they are called a hypocrite.  The truth is we are all hypocrites!  At some point in our life we say one thing and do another.   The definition of a hypocrite is "a person who claims or pretends to have certain beliefs about what is right but who behaves in a way that disagrees with those beliefs."

Paul went on to say in Romans 7:5" I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”  Paul struggled with this as well as everyone who has ever walked on this Earth.  Jesus was nailed to the cross because some people did not believe He was who he said he was because they didn’t believe that he would do work on the Sabbath if he was truly the Son of God. He was accused of being a hypocrite for saying who He was, but did not abide by the man made rules they believed governed what was right and holy. So everyone who has ever walked this Earth has been accused of being a hypocrite.  Jesus is the only one that wasn't a hypocrite but suffered as if he was.  

As a Christian, I beat myself up mostly about my hypocrite ways.  I can be so close to God that I hear Him so clearly and He gives me great insight into my life and I know exactly what I need to do and it is laid out in front of me and chances are that within 24 hrs of hearing from God, I will at some point in the day have done exactly what I wasn’t going to do and will have gone against the very thing I knew was the right thing for me to do. I totally get Paul.  I totally understand his confusion.  I don’t know how I can be so close to God in one moment and be so stupid the next to go against what I know is right.  The disciples went through the same thing.  Several times they proclaimed they knew Jesus was the Son of Man.  They saw His miracles and saw Him walk on water.  There was no denying it yet they continued to deny him.  They still had moments of disbelief and even Simon Peter who had said for certain that He would never deny Jesus, ended up doing the very thing he swore he wouldn’t do and then stood in disbelief of what he had done.

So yes churches are full of hypocrites, just like your job, school, circle of friends,  and your family are full of them too.  The Bible that churches use as their resource for teaching is full of illustrations of hypocrites so what do you expect.  A Christian life isn’t a perfect one but it is a forgiven one.  My imperfections, my hypocrite ways, my mistakes are all forgiven when I repent to God.

 So yes there are plenty of times you may read something from my blog and then encounter me in the real world and can’t believe how different what I write and how I behave can be.  I’m aware of it.  I do have hope because my heart does know what is right and it does know what needs to change.  It’s a struggle Paul knew all to well and one that I don’t understand either.  But each day I ask for forgiveness and try to do better the next . It’s all I can do.  As the late Maya Angelou put it, she could never believe someone would come to her and say “I am a Christian.”  Her response was always, “Really so soon.” Because to her it was a life long process to become a Christian and one that may not end until one is in heaven. I understand that view point more and more each day as I try to follow Christ through this life. I am not perfect.  I choose to aspire to live my life for Jesus but I will stumble and I will fall and yes it does make me a hypocrite.  I'll proudly take the claim of being a hypocrite because it means I do know God's Word and I do know what is right.  No one but Jesus could possibly live the Bible out and never make a mistake.  So while I go through this life following Christ, maybe Maya Angelou is right and I don't deserve the title of a Christian as it is a life-long endeavor but I certaintly do deserve the title of a Hypocrite.  I would rather know God's truth and fail daily living out the truth than to never know God and make up my own truths as I go through this life.  

Jesus's Life

 I've been thinking a lot about Jesus's life.  Jesus was a sinless man, yet he still encountered trying times.  There are many times I just scream out to God, "Why us God?" Why is it although we are trying  to do right and we are trying to be fully devoted followers of Christ and we try to follow His will but yet we are still ridiculed, overlooked, betrayed and hurt.  Why is it that it feels at times we can't catch a break?  Then my thoughts turn to Jesus.

 Jesus didn't have a lot of money growing up.  He wasn't born in a palace but rather in a barn.  His parents weren't executives or big time celebrities but rather a carpenter and a stay at home mom.  He didn't have the best money could buy but He was better than anything money could buy.  He grew up and began his career turning water into wine.  He started getting 12 guys together and they went around teaching about God.  He’d often stop to heal the sick, to play with children, talk to the down-trodden, give sinners hope, walk on water, calm storms and waves, make enough food to feed multitudes out of a few loaves of bread and some fish,  and even brought the dead back to life.  There are many reasons to see Jesus was pretty cool.

But ultimately his passion led to his pain.  Proclaiming who His father was, lead those who knew Him to betray Him.  The High Priests and the Pharisees believed Jesus to be blasphemous and couldn't be the Son of God.   Their disbelief of Jesus’s claim caused others to believe them and somehow this wrong way of thinking entered into Jesus’s disciples.  First it came from Judas, who plotted with the high priests and captains for Jesus’s capture.  Then slowly as things began to unravel even Simon Peter began to deny Christ even though He had promised He would never do such a thing.  

In Jesus’s final days He was ridiculed, overlooked, betrayed and hurt.  He didn't deserve any of the treatment He received yet it was all in God’s Will and all in God’s Plan for Him to go through this. So if Jesus who was the only sinless man to ever live, went through that kind of treatment and pain why do  we question when we are going through it ourselves?  It ultimately is God’s will.  Perhaps the key to understanding how to handle our problems lies in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus went to pray. Luke 22:40-44  Knowing what was to come, He sought His Father And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and ^vknelt down and prayed, ⁴² saying, ^w“Father, if you are willing, remove ^xthis cup from me. ^yNevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” ⁴³ And there appeared to him ^zan angel from heaven, strengthening him. ⁴⁴ And ^wbeing in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Jesus may have been without sin but he still felt pain and anguish.  The only way to find comfort and strength was to pray.  He did ask for the pain to go away but He ultimately asked for His will to be done and not his own!  That is what each of us must do when we face the things in life that just don’t seem fair.  And because God sent Jesus  to walk among us in flesh, it meant Jesus too would have to endure the things of life each of us go through.  The cross was not just about Jesus dying for our sins so that we could have eternal life but it was also for God  to send the Great Counselor (The Holy Spirit) and to be the one we turn too when this world doesn’t seem fair.  Jesus knows how to navigate through this messy world and He is there for us!  He died for us after sweating blood fighting his own will for God’s will to be done.  Perhaps when we find ourselves struggling with God’s will we need to keep praying until we sweat blood if that’s what needs to happen! 

However, recently I tried to pray this fervently and I ended up falling asleep just as the disciples did !Luke  22:45  When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. 46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.".  As hard as I tried, I fell asleep just like the disciples.  My sorrows exhausted me.  I am falling into the temptation of wanting my will to be done and not God's.  My first reaction when I woke up was disappointment in myself  but then I remember even the disciples failed in this and the best that I can do is to keep praying and know that although I may not accept it at first, it will be God's will and not mine that will be done. A hard pill to swallow at times when you realize the desires of your heart may turn again into hope deferred. 

               

5 Things Tennis Taught Me About The Christian Life. . .

     1.  The one you serve to is the one who decides what is permissible and what is not.  In junior high and high school tennis there are no officials.  The one you serve too determines if the ball is in or out.  Just like in life, who you serve determines your belief about what is right and what is wrong.  If you are serving to the world and bowing down to its standards more things are permissible and are “in” for you to do.  But if you are serving God then the calls are made tighter and the things that are riding the line are called “out” for your benefit.   

2.        Love -  In Tennis everyone starts out 0-0 which 0 in tennis is called “Love”.  We all start out with love but the score changes with the serve.  In life we also start out with love in this world but unforgiveness,  hardness of heart,  and the circumstances we are served can take our love away but our love can also grow through service to others,  forgiveness, and a heart for God.  With each moment you either serve God or the world with your love

3.        Serving and Being Served -   In tennis to be successful you have to know how to serve and how to return the serve.  In life, you have to know how to serve God and how to serve those around you but you also have to know how to accept others service.  I know a lot of people who are incredible at serving others but when others try to help them by returning the favor they become uncomfortable with it.  We have to learn how to serve others and how to accept the blessings of others serving us.

4.       . You can lose some battles but still win the war.  In tennis you can be down 0-5 in a set and rally back to win but to do that you have to let go of your mistakes and keep a positive attitude that you can do this.  Just like in life, you will make mistakes but you can’t let your mistakes negatively impact your present or your future.  You have to shake it off and keep battling back to win in life.  If you are a christian you know ultimate victory comes when you reach Heaven!  You'll lose some battles here but you will ultimately find victory!

5.        Tennis Etiquette -  It’s customary for fans and coaches to be quiet through a match.  While a player is serving and throughout the point it is so quiet.  Tennis demonstrates how important having quiet times are in life.  Times where you only hear your own thoughts.  Times when if one person is talking to you that you clearly can hear them without any outside noise.  Tennis demonstrates how to keep boundaries in place in order to keep things calm and quiet.  In life taking the time to be quiet so that you can clearly hear from Him is of the utmost importance.

In The Same Boat

^{Mark 8: 16}  They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

¹⁷ Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? ¹⁸ Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? ¹⁹ When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

²⁰ “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”  ²¹ He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

Reading how the disciples had not long ago witnessed Jesus take a few loaves of bread and broke them into pieces to feed 5,000 and 4,000 people, and now they are in a boat with Jesus and now they all forgot their lunch pail and are all grumbling over food.  Can you imagine already forgetting what Jesus had done and knowing He can and has provided for you before?

Well it’s exactly what I do many times a day and I bet you do too!  We forget what God has already done and let our set of circumstances define the situation.

• We see how our kids are struggling in school but forget about how God delivered the same child out of shyness to become an outgoing child.
• We see how sick a parent is and feel the overwhelming circumstances of it all but forget about how God showed up big time and saw us through the last time.
• We see how we are both out of jobs and unsure of our future and forget about the time God provided for us through a full year of unemployment!
• We see how impossible every thing looks but forget how all things are possible through Christ! 

 As the many times God has provided for me floods my mind, I still go back to my problems and that's when God hits me upside the head and He says, “Hello, do you still not understand?  Don’t you get it yet!  It’s going to be just fine! I got this! Just like every other time! Understand!”  and then in that instance my heart begins to melt. 

Our hearts can get hardened by our circumstances.  Anytime what we are going through is more of the focus than God our hearts begin to turn to stone.   That’s why it is important to come to God with all of our problems first.  The disciples had Jesus right there and all they had to do was ask him what they should do about not having any lunch.  Jesus was in the SAME BOAT as they were and they let their circumstances be the main focus and not Jesus and there are plenty of times we all do the same thing!  Jesus is in the SAME BOAT we are in each and everyday.  Look to him for answers  and keep the focus there!