Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Mini Miracles

Hello! This morning God did a major work in my heart and I wanted to brag on Him for a minute.

At work lately, the powers that be have been pushing me to do something I have been less than receptive to.  I tried shrugging it off, putting it off, even blowing it off; but I finally gave in and stopped fighting it- at least that's what I thought I did!

We had a meeting yesterday afternoon about me going around to all 900 of our faculty members and meeting with them to try and improve our store image and relations with the professors, ultimately improving our business.  I do think this needs to happen, but I do not feel this is the correct way to approach this.  I feel at best we'll just bug them and waste their little time they have in between classes.  Like I said, I thought I gave in and accepted the task.  Last night I was moody about not wanting to do this, got over it for a while and moved on.  This morning as my alarm went off, an alarm went off in my head too.  I was instantly reminded about this seemingly unreasonable task, and my aversion to it became apparent.  I was angry at my boss, and at the situation in general.

While I was in the shower, I prayed for God to change my heart.  I knew at this point that I simply could not change the circumstance, but I figured I'd give it a shot with changing my response to it.  It wasn't an instant feel better pass, but I did feel better giving it up to Him. 

During my childhood, I had the Serenity prayer hanging on my wall.  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  This did not pop into my head this morning, but upon my reflection of events, it's essentially what I prayed. 

We had another brainstorming meeting this morning, and developed a plan of attack on this behemoth of a project.  I don't know when it was, or how He did it, but suddenly I realized my anger and frustration had vanished! This was one of those truly happy times when I just sent up a silent prayer thanking God, and it put a smile on my face.  I remembered how we need to find contentment not in our immediate circumstances, but in our salvation through Jesus. This gives me the strength to get through the mundane and aggrevating circumstances once I think about it. 

After my change of heart, I was able to think logically about the project and begin to move forward with executing the plan.  Now I have the materials together, a game plan in place, and my first meetings scheduled for this Friday. 

It may not sound like much, but without my surrendering of the situation to God, and asking Him to do a work in the situation and in my heart, I would be in a different place right now.  Instead of getting the opportunity to brag on Him, I'd still be brooding about what a bad idea I think this whole project is.  As I wrote in one of my first posts, I think God really can work anywhere through anything.  We just have to listen! 

I wonder how many other mini miracles in my life I miss because of my pride or frustration. 

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Am I Macro or Micro?

Hello again!  I hope all 2 members of my audience have been doing well since last time:)  I wanted to write a little bit about our scope and focus as Christians.  The question then is, are we Micro-Christians, or Macro-Christians?

I have heard it put several ways before.  We get bogged down in the details of our lives, or we're self centered, or hyper focused on what is going on in our lives.  I've even heard our lives compared to shooting a rifle.  When we look through a scope, the image in our view is amplified, and we can see nothing else around it.  I think these are all good examples of what I like to call being Macro-Christian.  When we think of this in the terms or Economics for example, Microeconomics focuses on small scale immediate effects of the economy, and Macroeconomics looks at the big picture; how something happening in Libya can jack the gas prices up in Georgia for example. 

I think this is the same way in our focus as Christians.  Often when talking to people about God, I've encountered they have such specific questions, or will stick to one specific detail as the sole reason why they don't believe.  We can be so micro mindsetted that we lose sight of God and His glory and love for us.  We can sit there and argue about free will versus predestination.  We can argue about once saved, always saved or whether we can lose our salvation.  When it comes down to it, who cares?!  In my opinion, what really matters is keeping God in the center of my life, and sharing His love through my life and words.

Now, am I immune to this?  Definitely not.  I get very micro about a lot of things, and everything else in my spiritual growth will come to a screeching hault.  I spent about 3 months chewing over a theological argument in my head, and honestly it was just making me frustrated and bringing no glory to God in the process.  Once I realized that, I moved on.  Gradually my beliefs on that subject began to take shape, but it's still a bit ambiguous to me and that's ok.  I am quite certain there are MANY things in my faith and my life that I just won't understand.   Am I saying we shouldn't strive to figure out life's mysteries?  By no means.  All I'm saying is there should be a limit on the time we devote to figuring out everything.  There's a reason we call it "blind faith".  Sometimes we just have to take the plunge, and trust in Him to work out the rest for us. 

Like everything else in my life, I like to keep things balanced, and I think this is important for all of us to do.  If I'm too involved in my work, my relationship with Christy would suffer.  Conversely, if I did nothing at work because I couldn't stand to be apart from Christy for a second, I would most likely be fired.  Or another way to look at it, if I only have good vision up close and made no attempt to correct my distance vision, I would stumble and go through life blurry, seeing nothing more than a few feet in front of my face.  I think this is the same thing in our faith.  We have to have a balance of micro and macro to have things make sense.

This is my challenge to myself, to keep a good balance in my life and my faith.  I plan to explore the things I feel are important in my growth, and for the rest just be thankful for the life I have been given.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Here again!

Hello all,

  As I was looking over my blogs today, the second to last post was October 6th and it dealt with my feeling distant from God, and how I got back on the right track.  Well, somehow about 4 months later, I find myself in the same boat.  How did this happen, you might ask?

  First of all, I think it's easy to feel distant with you fall out of your regular routine.  We didn't go to our church for about 5 or 6 weeks in a row due to holiday travels, and that really took a toll on our lives.  Also, we stopped putting in the time and effort to pursue a deeper relationship with God.  It's just like any other relationship in the regards that if I completely ignored my wife for 6 weeks, you can bet we'd have some issues to work over! It's silly of us to think our relationship with God is any different.  I've heard it compared to maintaining your car as well. If prayer is the battery of your car, and studying the Word is the fuel, you'll only go so far until it's time to replenish or else you'll find yourself on the spiritual side of the road. 

  I don't like to be spooky spiritual, but we can fall victim to our adversary at any time as well.  I like to think about my faith as a strong, impregnable wall that can stand against any raiding party or attack.  If there's no defects in the wall, everything should be fine.  If a stone is missing because I haven't maintained my wall, it would be much easier to tug on that hole in the wall and eventually pull the whole thing down.

 So how did I get back this time?  Once again, it was a gradual and multi-step process.  It began with recognizing there was a problem.  I told myself everything would be back to normal once we got back in the routine of church and worship.  This certainly helped, but by no means did it solve the problem. 

  In my "distant days" I experienced more animosity in my life in general, and even doubts about the God I know and love.  I came to the point about a month ago that I realized somewhere along the line I had lost the feeling in my faith.  I felt like I had too much knowledge, and not enough emotion.  That night on my drive home I laid it all out to God, and got real and honest with Him.  Believe me, He's big enough to take it- plus He already knows it!  It's very cathartic to be open and honest.  That is where He can begin to transform your heart again.

  I prayed for feeling, and passion in my life again, and the desire to seek Him in all that I do.  This also helped, but it was not the end of my journey.

 I remained in this spiritual state of mind for about 3 weeks.  Around this point, I began reading my Grandpa in Law's book, When God Turned Off the Lights, by Cecil Murphey.  Reading about his struggles and so called "dark and starless night", I got several ideas on how to help myself out of the pit.  I am not quite finished with it, but certainly recommend it to anyone feeling distant from God.

 Last weekend's sermon began to chip at my heart and mind too.  Our pastor spoke on finding contentment and comfort in God.  He reminded us that if we place our joy in our eternal salvation through Jesus, the little stuff that life throws at us shouldn't shake us.  If we find contentment in life due to God's grace, and don't let the outcome of each situation determine our happiness, we can actually be content!

   That night I read about how we are called to praise God and rejoice in all circumstances.  This is a biggie, and I wasn't doing this at all! I read that my Grandpa in Law's book how he would force himself to come up with 5 or 10 things every morning that he was genuinely thankful for.  He would then actually thank God for the gifts and blessings.  It's really difficult to feel sorry for yourself and complain about your circumstances when we look at all we have.

  Monday night of this week, my wife and I were hanging out and she gave me the figurative kick in the butt I needed.  I am so blessed to have her in my life, and more times than I can count, God has used her to teach me a lesson.  We talked about what we were both feeling, and how we'd both been in the dumps spiritually.  It is my job as the head of the household to be our spiritual leader as well.  I was doing a terrible job at this, and once I realized the effect it was having on her, I knew I had to change.  I made her a promise to make more of an effort, and with God's help get back to the relationship I once had with God.  I of course should have been motivated to work on it simply because I knew I was letting God down, but I had to hear that I was failing my wife to make me change.

  All this week we have read the Bible together, and I have noticed a real change.

  Wednesday of this week I had an awesome conversation with my mom about my faith and struggles, and I got off the phone so excited and encouraged!  I went and met with some of the guys from my men's group and that was the icing on the cake.  I got home that night and happily told Christy that I was back and my faith and relationship with God had been restored!

 I certainly intend to keep up with my spiritual maintenance this time so I won't have to re-write this blog in 4 months! I am sure this won't be the last time I feel in a spiritual rut, but thankfully God is patient and He has never ending grace!

 Thanks for reading and God bless!