God is good all the time. How do we know?
"Oh, the Bible says so!" one meek Christian will shout out from the corner somewhere. "It says so in the Bible!"
There are two types of believers- firsthand believers who have tasted and truly felt the power of the Lord daily, and there are secondhand believers, who believe what they believe... and you wonder if they know why. In your life, do you feel like you are a firsthand or secondhand believer?
Many people would answer that question as being a firsthand believer, because they have felt the power of the Lord in their lives. However, believing means more than that. Believing is more.
Is God really good all the time to you? Or was God good during that first taste? Or maybe every few tastes of his glory? Once you get a taste for all God has in store for you, are you satisfied for a while, or do you crave more? Is believing more for you?
This is what separates firsthand and secondhand Christians. Is God really good all the time to you, or does the rest of the world take the spotlight? Are there times when you would rather watch TV until you fall asleep at night, or do you really spend that time praying to God? Maybe you do make God your focus every now and then, but if it is not more than that, you are satisfied with just a taste. You don't crave it as badly as you believe you do.
If you truly believe God is good all the time, "the Bible tells me so" would not be your first answer to questions about your faith, even if it is a response you use. If you truly believe God is good all the time, you would talk about why every moment of your day deserves to be focused on God. Those reasons would answer your question.
Do you want a taste for a moment, or for a lifetime? Are you a firsthand or secondhand believer?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The "One Thing" Game
Venting. It's that crazy thing we all do to make it seem like something, anything, in our lives is important.
Our rant-fueled moments seem so simple; if I peek you interest once with this topic, I'm sure talking about it over and over and over again will still interest you. Anymore, girls can just say "you have to hear about the last guy thing" and everyone instantly knows who and what you are talking about. If that has happened to you, you are venting.
It's called the "One Thing" game. You talk the hell out of one topic until you can't stand to talk about it anymore. The guy, the job, the diet- you throw out a topic, wait for a response from those around you, and whether or not that One Thing was successful determines how much you are willing to play this glorious conversational hand you have been dealt.
So it begins. "Hey, did I tell you what the boy did for me?," "So, I've got an update on the diet," translation: "hey, let me beat this horse some more."
How do you prevent venting? Lose your friends or come up with something new to talk about. Either way, you'll be playing the "One Thing" game for even just a little while.
Our rant-fueled moments seem so simple; if I peek you interest once with this topic, I'm sure talking about it over and over and over again will still interest you. Anymore, girls can just say "you have to hear about the last guy thing" and everyone instantly knows who and what you are talking about. If that has happened to you, you are venting.
It's called the "One Thing" game. You talk the hell out of one topic until you can't stand to talk about it anymore. The guy, the job, the diet- you throw out a topic, wait for a response from those around you, and whether or not that One Thing was successful determines how much you are willing to play this glorious conversational hand you have been dealt.
So it begins. "Hey, did I tell you what the boy did for me?," "So, I've got an update on the diet," translation: "hey, let me beat this horse some more."
How do you prevent venting? Lose your friends or come up with something new to talk about. Either way, you'll be playing the "One Thing" game for even just a little while.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Seasons and Years
"You need to know when someone is meant to be there for a season and when someone is meant to be there for a year." That simple statement is the best and worst advice I have ever gotten.
I feel like anymore I have put too many expectations on love. After all, it is all I have been able to talk about for a while. The more I analyze love in my life, the more I question it. I begin to look for little signs in people that they might be the one, and they either fall short or sweep me off my feet. Either way, I wonder if I'm getting their roles in my life right.
There is a difference between someone who is meant to be there for a season and someone who is meant to be there for a lifetime, and anymore I have begun to notice myself getting them painfully confused. In a season, the person teaches you something you either didn't know about the world or you didn't know about yourself. You are changed in a great way. It may even be years of little things that change who you are. All these little things will come to an end, and expectations meant to last a lifetime are too much. You have changed in the season, and that is all that was meant for you.
However, a relationship for a lifetime is one that continues to change you in many ways. For years you continue to grow and learn about the world and yourself. That person is not going anywhere in your life because they are not meant to.
How do we tell when a season is just a season? Is there a way to tell if it is meant for a lifetime, or we are trying to make it last too long?
In a season, we learn something new. We don't learn new things. We learn something. However, when all these little pieces begin to build up at times to create this one moment of learning, it's easy to think we are changing in many ways. How can we tell the difference between a change that will last a lifetime and a relationship that will last a lifetime?
People have been feeding me lists of information about true love. They tell me that you'll know when you experience certain situations together and you experience these little signs. Everything they said was situational. Everything they said told me that what you feel was dependent on the moment- a little piece of time, which is much like a season. Were they right, or am I seeing mistakes in relationships as a whole?
Every now and then I begin to question my "gut reasoning." I tend to rely on instincts more than knowledge. I don't notice that a guy helping me clean could mean he will be an equal partner later in life, which is a clue many women tell me to look for. I don't think about a guy being a good father because he has the ability to take care of a pet. I know in ways that people doubt. In the end, if I still get butterflies in my stomach when they call or put their arms around me and I blush just hearing their name that they mean something to me. I know that they will always mean something to me, even if it only lasts for a season. I think that's more than a checklist.
Maybe I'll never be able to crack the code and figure out how long someone will last in my life physically, but I know that even just for a season I have built a lifelong connection. I wonder if seasons vs. years is advice I shouldn't listen to, or if it's just advice I'm not willing to listen to. Only my love life will be able to paint an answer.
I feel like anymore I have put too many expectations on love. After all, it is all I have been able to talk about for a while. The more I analyze love in my life, the more I question it. I begin to look for little signs in people that they might be the one, and they either fall short or sweep me off my feet. Either way, I wonder if I'm getting their roles in my life right.
There is a difference between someone who is meant to be there for a season and someone who is meant to be there for a lifetime, and anymore I have begun to notice myself getting them painfully confused. In a season, the person teaches you something you either didn't know about the world or you didn't know about yourself. You are changed in a great way. It may even be years of little things that change who you are. All these little things will come to an end, and expectations meant to last a lifetime are too much. You have changed in the season, and that is all that was meant for you.
However, a relationship for a lifetime is one that continues to change you in many ways. For years you continue to grow and learn about the world and yourself. That person is not going anywhere in your life because they are not meant to.
How do we tell when a season is just a season? Is there a way to tell if it is meant for a lifetime, or we are trying to make it last too long?
In a season, we learn something new. We don't learn new things. We learn something. However, when all these little pieces begin to build up at times to create this one moment of learning, it's easy to think we are changing in many ways. How can we tell the difference between a change that will last a lifetime and a relationship that will last a lifetime?
People have been feeding me lists of information about true love. They tell me that you'll know when you experience certain situations together and you experience these little signs. Everything they said was situational. Everything they said told me that what you feel was dependent on the moment- a little piece of time, which is much like a season. Were they right, or am I seeing mistakes in relationships as a whole?
Every now and then I begin to question my "gut reasoning." I tend to rely on instincts more than knowledge. I don't notice that a guy helping me clean could mean he will be an equal partner later in life, which is a clue many women tell me to look for. I don't think about a guy being a good father because he has the ability to take care of a pet. I know in ways that people doubt. In the end, if I still get butterflies in my stomach when they call or put their arms around me and I blush just hearing their name that they mean something to me. I know that they will always mean something to me, even if it only lasts for a season. I think that's more than a checklist.
Maybe I'll never be able to crack the code and figure out how long someone will last in my life physically, but I know that even just for a season I have built a lifelong connection. I wonder if seasons vs. years is advice I shouldn't listen to, or if it's just advice I'm not willing to listen to. Only my love life will be able to paint an answer.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
I'm giving my life to the only one who makes the moon reflect the sun every starry night...
When I pray at night, I look up to the stars. I've always been told God was in the sky, listening to your nightly prayers.
I've tried to see where God might be in the sky. I've looked for the fluffiest cloud. I've looked at the clouds with visible rays of light shining from them. I've looked for the brightest star in the sky. My eyes continually wander around the sky, trying to find the most beautiful spot for God to be.
Then I realized, maybe at those times when I'm looking for the brightest stars, God is sitting next to me, looking at the sky, making those stars shine.
I've tried to see where God might be in the sky. I've looked for the fluffiest cloud. I've looked at the clouds with visible rays of light shining from them. I've looked for the brightest star in the sky. My eyes continually wander around the sky, trying to find the most beautiful spot for God to be.
Then I realized, maybe at those times when I'm looking for the brightest stars, God is sitting next to me, looking at the sky, making those stars shine.
Speak louder than the words before you and give them meaning no one else has found...
Have you ever found yourself trying to come up with something inspirational to pull you out of the funk you're in? Maybe it's a sentence that you believe will give you hope or a prayer you find yourself praying in tough times, but no matter what it is, somehow it gives you hope, if just for a second or two.
Why is it so easy to find these little things that will give us hope when we really search for it, but some obstacles we face in our lives make us feel like we hit a brick wall and there is no way around it? Is it that some things cannot be cured with a little hope, or we just haven't looked for it yet?
I started examining the "brick walls" in my life to see why they make me lose hope. As I began looking a the big things in life that stress me out versus the little worries sprinkled in my day, I began to see that maybe it is the size of the brick wall that determines the amount of hope we can still have. Sure, it is easy to believe you can make it over a brick wall when it is two feet high, but when it is eight or nine feet tall we no longer consider climbing over the wall, overcoming it, to even be an option. We try to find side routes. We look for little detours we can take. We've lost that hope that overcoming it is still an option.
Shouldn't it be those times when the wall is too tall to clime alone that we depend on hope and prayers for a little extra lift? We depend on those little things to lift us up when we have all the strength we need to make it over the wall, but those times when we need someone or something to help us see what is on the other side of the roadblock we are facing, we don't ask.
Sometimes all it takes is a little hope, a little prayer, and a little lift to make it over the biggest obstacles.
Why is it so easy to find these little things that will give us hope when we really search for it, but some obstacles we face in our lives make us feel like we hit a brick wall and there is no way around it? Is it that some things cannot be cured with a little hope, or we just haven't looked for it yet?
I started examining the "brick walls" in my life to see why they make me lose hope. As I began looking a the big things in life that stress me out versus the little worries sprinkled in my day, I began to see that maybe it is the size of the brick wall that determines the amount of hope we can still have. Sure, it is easy to believe you can make it over a brick wall when it is two feet high, but when it is eight or nine feet tall we no longer consider climbing over the wall, overcoming it, to even be an option. We try to find side routes. We look for little detours we can take. We've lost that hope that overcoming it is still an option.
Shouldn't it be those times when the wall is too tall to clime alone that we depend on hope and prayers for a little extra lift? We depend on those little things to lift us up when we have all the strength we need to make it over the wall, but those times when we need someone or something to help us see what is on the other side of the roadblock we are facing, we don't ask.
Sometimes all it takes is a little hope, a little prayer, and a little lift to make it over the biggest obstacles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)