Any of us who are Christians probably use the terms "believing in God" or "trusting God" or "having faith" on at least a semi-regular basis. But how often do we live that way? When I look at Biblical standards of what having true faith is, I don't see any person being perfect at it except Jesus. But I definitely see many other Biblical models, old and new testament.
In Daniel 3:14-20, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were about to get tossed into a furnace as a form of public execution for not bowing down to a false God. You know what they told the king who was about to have them murdered? "...We have no need to answer you in this manner. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if not, be it known to you O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up" (vs 16-18). Okay, did you catch that? They are about to burn to death and they say "My God can do anything and I believe he can do this miracle. But even if He chooses not to, I will trust Him anyway." They knew that he loved them and that his heart is good. Do we really trust that?
There's another passage in Hebrews that we commonly call refer to as describing the "heroes of faith." But Hebrews 11 also tells us exactly what faith is. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things visible" (vs 1-3).
Psalm 37:3-4 tells us "Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
So there are several things that go all together with this thing we call faith. You either trust God and who he is and what he's promised and obey him, or you don't. Especially after walking away or struggling with doubt, trusting God is a daily and even moment by moment decision.
"Since we have a great high Priest who has entered heaven, let us hold firmly to what we believe." -Hebrews 4:14 (Read versus 15&16 as well.)
Do you trust God when it doesn't make any sense to? What has God told you to do that you are refusing to obey in? Where are you not trusting God? For me, I had an eye-opening moment earlier. There was a moment in today's sermon where someone said "It doesn't matter how much hurt you've been through. Don't harden your heart." That hit me like a nail driven through my heart. I did that. I hadn't even realized...
Let me give you a little something more than that. My church is currently going through a series called "Before I Die" and today was about (go figure) trusting God. There were these huge chalk boards in the courtyard that they encouraged us to write down what God was telling us to trust him with on, so that the staff could specifically pray over those things. I wrote down things that I would never want to admit to anyone. Not ever. But in faith, I put them on the boards and I'm going to tell you now. I want to dream. To have dreams...not goals, but dreams of things I want to be able to be and do before I die. I currently have absolutely nothing I want to do or to be besides God's hands and feet. I don't have a career in mind or desperately want a family or anything else. And talking with my dear roommate tonight, I realized that a large part of that comes from not trusting that God will follow through on what he promised. (And if you follow my posts at all, you probably are thinking "Doesn't she have an entire post about that?" The answer is yes. I'm far from perfect, dear reader. And I'm walking through a huge stretching/growing process that I feel is incredibly long.) But I don't want to stay there. And I'm not. As I said, it's something I haven't wanted to admit, but that has been growing in me for quite some time.
I wish I had some happy anecdote to end with today, but I don't. I'm in the process of learning how to really trust God and to learn what true faith looks like. I hope you're able to do the same.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Friday, August 31, 2012
Re-partitioning My Hard Drive
Okay so this summer I started working at the computer tech center at my university. This analogy will be incredibly nerdy, mostly because I know that I am incredibly nerdy. If you bear with me, I think it will be worth it.
I am a Mac user. When you want to install Windows on a Mac, most of the time we go through the process of partitioning the hard drive and allocating a certain amount of space to use both the Mac OS and Windows.
So I was at church on Sunday and one of the things that Pastor Chad was talking about was how often times we get distracted by busyness to the point that we forget our purpose. Now for any of you who have read my past blogs, you'll notice that I have made a similar observation. If you are just now reading my blog for the first time, try reading my post "Just Living Life" here. Now I don't know what your life is like. I may not know you at all. But just so you get a glimpse into my life, since the semester started 2 weeks ago, I have had less than 3 hours of "me" time. This means being at school between 06:30-06:45 and not spending a substantial amount of time at home till about 22:00 on average, and then the rest of my night is spent doing homework and sleeping.
My life has been the epitome of busyness. And as great as it has been to spend time with people and even do a lot of enjoyable things, where does that leave time for God? And the better question is, why am I trying to squeeze time for my Father into my life instead of prioritizing and arranging everything else around Him?
I cannot even begin to tell you how many times God has brought this to my attention. And I'll be decent at doing prioritizing Him for a while...and then I get back to just being busy.
"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." -Romans 12:2
Right now, I'm working on re-partitioning the hard drive that is my life. I don't want my life to be filled up with things and people and busyness and then try to squeeze time into my day for my heavenly Father. I want my time to be full of life. I want to spend my time around other people using it for the glory of God. I want to use my life and the opportunities presented to me to show who God really is...not some aloof being, but a dear, personal, intimate Father who loves us and wants us to know Him and have time with us.
Not only does God want and rightly deserve to have priority in our time, but also in our influence. I am a huge people person. And as much as I tend to try to put off a vibe of not caring what people think, the truth is I tend to care a great deal too much about what people think.
I'll give you an example. Today, I was on campus at our club fair working a booth for cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) when I ran into someone who no longer goes to my university. I was more than shocked to see him and after seeing him, one of my best friends came over and pulled me aside. The influence this person has had on my life in the last few months is far larger than it has any right to be, and the shear surprise of seeing him upset me greatly. I literally burst into tears with the entire campus buzzing around right next to me. And while I didn't care who saw that I was crying, I was afraid to see him in case he saw...
WHY?? Why do I care so much about what he would think if I was crying? I obviously had emotion to process. But guess what? Instead of taking it straight to my Father and laying it down before him, I cried to my best friend feeling sorry for myself...
"...for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God...." -Exodus 34:14
A god isn't just a physical idol as was often referred to in the Old Testament. A god is anything that pulls our eyes off of Jesus. Busyness, life, people, our sphere of influence. And as I've said before, none of those things on their own are bad things. Its simply what we do with them that can turn them into idols.
So I'm laying a lot of things down right now, and this is going to be a long process all the way around. Rearranging life, habits, thoughts, feelings, etc. is never an easy process. But I'm not the one doing it. I just have to allow God to work His work. (Isn't it crazy that the God of the universe created us to be able to have the will to allow Him to do things?? But that's a blog post for another time.)
I hope this has been helpful to you, or will be one day. Either way, I'm walking this journey out one moment at a time, actively pursuing God and His will.
I am a Mac user. When you want to install Windows on a Mac, most of the time we go through the process of partitioning the hard drive and allocating a certain amount of space to use both the Mac OS and Windows.
So I was at church on Sunday and one of the things that Pastor Chad was talking about was how often times we get distracted by busyness to the point that we forget our purpose. Now for any of you who have read my past blogs, you'll notice that I have made a similar observation. If you are just now reading my blog for the first time, try reading my post "Just Living Life" here. Now I don't know what your life is like. I may not know you at all. But just so you get a glimpse into my life, since the semester started 2 weeks ago, I have had less than 3 hours of "me" time. This means being at school between 06:30-06:45 and not spending a substantial amount of time at home till about 22:00 on average, and then the rest of my night is spent doing homework and sleeping.
My life has been the epitome of busyness. And as great as it has been to spend time with people and even do a lot of enjoyable things, where does that leave time for God? And the better question is, why am I trying to squeeze time for my Father into my life instead of prioritizing and arranging everything else around Him?
I cannot even begin to tell you how many times God has brought this to my attention. And I'll be decent at doing prioritizing Him for a while...and then I get back to just being busy.
"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." -Romans 12:2
Right now, I'm working on re-partitioning the hard drive that is my life. I don't want my life to be filled up with things and people and busyness and then try to squeeze time into my day for my heavenly Father. I want my time to be full of life. I want to spend my time around other people using it for the glory of God. I want to use my life and the opportunities presented to me to show who God really is...not some aloof being, but a dear, personal, intimate Father who loves us and wants us to know Him and have time with us.
Not only does God want and rightly deserve to have priority in our time, but also in our influence. I am a huge people person. And as much as I tend to try to put off a vibe of not caring what people think, the truth is I tend to care a great deal too much about what people think.
I'll give you an example. Today, I was on campus at our club fair working a booth for cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) when I ran into someone who no longer goes to my university. I was more than shocked to see him and after seeing him, one of my best friends came over and pulled me aside. The influence this person has had on my life in the last few months is far larger than it has any right to be, and the shear surprise of seeing him upset me greatly. I literally burst into tears with the entire campus buzzing around right next to me. And while I didn't care who saw that I was crying, I was afraid to see him in case he saw...
WHY?? Why do I care so much about what he would think if I was crying? I obviously had emotion to process. But guess what? Instead of taking it straight to my Father and laying it down before him, I cried to my best friend feeling sorry for myself...
"...for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God...." -Exodus 34:14
A god isn't just a physical idol as was often referred to in the Old Testament. A god is anything that pulls our eyes off of Jesus. Busyness, life, people, our sphere of influence. And as I've said before, none of those things on their own are bad things. Its simply what we do with them that can turn them into idols.
So I'm laying a lot of things down right now, and this is going to be a long process all the way around. Rearranging life, habits, thoughts, feelings, etc. is never an easy process. But I'm not the one doing it. I just have to allow God to work His work. (Isn't it crazy that the God of the universe created us to be able to have the will to allow Him to do things?? But that's a blog post for another time.)
I hope this has been helpful to you, or will be one day. Either way, I'm walking this journey out one moment at a time, actively pursuing God and His will.
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