…but I like my cheese where it is

How many of you read that little book Who Moved My Cheese? I read it years ago and then again recently. (If you don’t have time to read it watch this short video.) The premise is easy, change is going to happen and you have to control how you react to it. If you stand firm and refuse to accept it you will get left in the wake of change. If you flow with it and adapt you will be better after the change levels off and status quo sets in again.

Most people do not want their cheesy goodness to move and do not want change. Change is scary and challenging. In the end I believe most people accept change and move along to the better cheese. Then there is me….

I have been a solid do not move, touch or even look at my cheese kind of person. I like my daily routines thank you very much. As long as I am in charge of the change and I am the creator of the change it is fine, but let someone else change something that affects me look out. I think it is the helpless feeling of not having control. What’s crazy is I haven’t had control in years until just recently. I have let life push me along. I did grab hold of control, went to school and changed my stressful job. Slowly I have taken control back. It is my cheese and I will do the moving..not you…me.

There’s old wisdom that advises that we can only lean against that which resists. This suggests that there might just be something good, or at least useful, about resisting change. Discovering what this resistance is and learning to work with it is key to understanding reluctance to change. That is all fine and dandy as long as I am in charge of the cheese…I mean change.

What throws me for a loop is when I am not in control of the change. That sends me in to flight mode. You know, fight or flight? I am a classic flight risk when I loose control. Either I fly or I bury my head in the sand and ignore the change. If I don’t see it, don’t acknowledge it, then it is not real…..there you go…denial.

Learning that change, even wanted change is stressful will make dealing with the cheese realignment easier. Taking the cheese knife in hand and carving the life you want is hard too. I have no answers here. You have to decide how you will deal with the fact of life that someone will move your cheese. It is just a matter of time.

 

Just Walk Away

We have all heard the old saying , Not my circus not my monkeys. It is true that when we try to wrangle monkeys that are not ours that we risk the chance of getting hurt or used.

When you find yourself in a situation that is not yours some times our first instinct it to help. If we can and it is the right thing to do we should help. Other times it is just our desire to feel needed or useful and helping is not the right thing to do. Maybe there is someone who has better skills or resources to help. Let them. It isn’t always your place to calm the storms that other create. Often getting sucked in the storm will cause you pain or unnecessary heartache.  Listen to your gut and follow what is right. If it is right to act then act. If your gut tells you to stop, don’t get involved, pay attention.

Reserve your right to literately walk away from the chaos that is not yours. Leave the situation that you can not or should not try to calm.

Just who I am

I know I’m a paradox. I’m a Christian but I refuse to conform to a belief that other Christians tell me I have to agree with because it’s in the Bible”. I will not blindly follow your man-made version of God. I will not accept any premise on the logic that another Christian insists its true without investigation  or that goes against the teachings of Christ. Being a Christian is easy. Love everyone. Serve those who need it most and deserve it least. Forgive and ask for forgiveness. Seek peace.
Yes I cuss sometimes and have gay friends. Sometimes I drink a beer or two. Sometimes I am brutally honest. Am I less a Christian than one who doesn’t do those things?
If you can’t accept me for all the multifaceted things that is who I am ? That’s too bad. I will miss you

Trust God

All my life I had this image of who I would be when I became an adult. I am nothing like that image. I have not landed in the career I thought I would be working in and I have not landed in the city that I thought I would live. I am nothing like what I thought I would be. I am not any better or worse. I may not be affluent as I imagined I would be. I can attribute a lot of this to how I was raised. My parents, grandparents and other adults in my life said to me “You can be what you want to be.” While that is true in a sense we are also bound by our station in life. Where we are in society, how much money we have and how much determination we have, and our level of discipline play a part of where we go in life. There is also the factor of our faith.

The most significant factor on what we can accomplish in life is our faith. Our faith in ourselves and faith that we made the right choice are vital to success. If we lack faith in just one of these areas we can fail, but if we lose our faith in God we are certain to fail. Will we trust God enough to provide for what we need? Will we allow him to lead us to our future? What if what we want is in stark contrast to what God wants for us? We have to trust that God is in control even when we feel He is not. We have to believe that He is there at work even if we can’t see any results yet. This is difficult and we often give up.

We can break those bounds and be more than what we think, more than society says we can be. We must not give up. We must keep trusting God. We can not allow the alternative to be an option. We can’t trust feelings or emotions or even what we see around us. We must trust God is keeping His promise to protect and keep us. When the road of our life is darkest  God is working for us for the benefit not of us but for His kingdom of which we are a part. We must hold on until the light shines on us again.

 

Where is God?

I have to wonder why people don’t believe in God. I can’t imagine not believing in God. How can a person look at this world and think nope, no God? It all just appeared from some big bang. (Not to be confused with the Big Bang Theory TV show that I love. Bazinga)

To me each possibility is sort of the same. Believing that a being that we never see created this place we call home and really cares about what happens with us is just as hard to wrap your head around as some of the scientific theory that  a cosmic accident created us.

The big question is where is God? In this world of war, devastating weather and evil people, where is God? Why is God, if He exists, not stopping some of this bad stuff that is happening all around us? I have one answer, free will.

We all have free will. We have the free will to call on God or not. We have the free will to talk to God or not. Are you praying? Are you asking God to come help intervene? No? Oh that’s right! You don’t’ believe He exists. So, why would you expect Him to come in to this life of yours and fix things for you if you do not believe in Him? He is not going to act in your life until you get on your knees and ask Him to be present.

All I can tell you is, I have seen God act in the lives of believers, me included. The catch is you have to ask. You have to make the move to accept God. That’s how it works. Simple act of faith. If you can believe that this world came from nothing how much more of a reach is it to think a God created it? Maybe He caused the big bang in the first place?  It isn’t that far a stretch. It’s all simple really.

Matt 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

Not Here

I was looking at the books that are coming out over the next month and it struck me that a lot of the fiction books are either mystery, the who done it kind or fantasy. Why is it that as a society we are trying, the only way we know how to escape and check out of reality? It isn’t just books its movies, television and social media too.

We do not want to live in our reality. We focus on the shiny little box in our hand. We read books that are about imaginary lives and we watch movies about fantastical creatures and places. We do all that we can to escape our lives. We do what we must but then we fade out to some place else. We spend less time face to face with life and more time focusing on the what if. What is the draw that keeps us going back to that sort of thing? What makes us want to live through the characters of a good fantasy book or movie? What causes us to pick up our phone and read the fabricated lives of people who say they are our friends on social media?

I think the answer is a simple one, it is who we are. It is hard-wired into our brains that we come from better. That our source of life force is not of this reality. We long for that other place. The place that will fill us with the feeling of home. We struggle day by day to create that atmosphere of adventure. We filling that empty longing with fantasy that only satisfies for a minute then we are on to the next thing to satisfy that curiosity of looking for our home, where we belong, our place that makes sense. We justify it as participating in the norm of life.  This is the thing to do. We may try to abstain for a bit, but find that the pull is too hard to fight. We have to pick up the phone to see who posted what, we have to watch that popular movie or show and we must read that next best-selling fantasy novel.

We want what we do not have on earth, we want to be in the presence of something  grand, exciting, adventurous. We need to fill that desire for the other world out there. We need to live that fantastical life through that character, whether it be in a book, movie or someone who appears to be living the perfect life on the social surface.

Jesus said, ““My kingdom is not from this world.” (John 18:36). As children of God, we can’t feel satisfied here. We will not feel that complete rightness of place until we are home in the presence of God. Each of us have to live our journey to that place. We can’t dictate the path of others, but travel along with them to reach home. We can’t help longing for what we do not have, looking for adventure around the next corner, or wishing it was us who had that great life. We want to be home. We are aliens from a strange land and we want to go be with Him. We want God to save us from this and take us to where He is. We miss home.

We can search and search but we will not find it here. It isn’t here.

 

 

A Different Kind of Tired

I spent so many wasted minutes in my life complaining that I was tired and stressed when I should have been thanking God that I was surviving. I was tired and very stressed, but I was the problem. Once I realized that the problem wasn’t God, life, my job, or anything else, the problem was me. I decided to fix me. I was tired, but now I am a different kind of tired. I am a happy, blessed tired.

Often we think that the issue is God and His not answering prayers as we beg for a new life, job. money , whatever you are begging for, when the entire time we are crying to God He is waiting on us to move and change our attitude. I had to change me, make a stand for what was right, then the blessing came.What is more, I knew what God wanted me to do, but I was like Job with every excuse as to why I shouldn’t do it. Once I did as I was being led to do. God answered.

Is the problem with your prayer life you?

I challenge you to change your prayers to those of thanking instead of asking. Change what you are doing, change your attitude and listen. Move your prayers from ” I want”, “Help Me”, “Give Me”, to “Thank God” and “Help others”.  Then act on those prayers.

See the blessing follow.

 

 

 

Redemtion Hurts

On this blog, you hear me talk about following God’s will for your life. Well, try doing something that is not on His agenda for you, it is a struggle. For me it is trying to write something that is not what I know I am to write. I am avoiding the thing that I should write because it is going to hurt. It will touch some deep place that I am not ready to deal with.

No one told me that  when God forgives sin, he often makes you face your sin to learn from it and that, my friend, is forgiveness that hurts. It is painful to look your sin in the face and say, “I did that and I am truly sorry.”  It is even more excruciating to look sin in the face and say, “Wow, that was me? I really did that?” Yes, you did and yes it hurt.

God doesn’t offer a caveat on His grace. There is nothing you can do to repay the gift of redemption. You must take it with a remorseful heart. Part of that remorse is facing your sin for the dirty, ugly, pathetic, nasty thing that it is and learn from it. If you don’t see what it is for the truth of it, you risk a repeat performance and more of the same. You don’t have to be scared, God is with you. He forgave you. He will be there to wipe tears and heal the hurt.

Do you remember telling your mom that your leg hurt and she said it was growing pains? Pain isn’t always a bad thing. With facing your sin comes pain, but you must face it to grow in faith. You must realize where it was that God saved you from, what life you had that His grace redeemed you out of, and what mortal sin you were forgiven. When you face your self, your sin, you can grow into that person that God can use for His glory.  If you don’t face your sin, deal with it and move on, then this life, this hard, painful, struggling, forgiven life is for nothing but your self-serving purpose, not God’s will.

Think about that thing you are avoiding looking at, that tucked away sin that needs light shined on it, yeah that one, deal with it, today. The sooner it is dealt with the sooner you can praise God for the redemption.

Feel Good Religion

Christianity is not simply a  feel good religion. There is nothing wrong with having an experience that leaves you lifting your hands and praising God, but when your religion is only that and not based on the Biblical reality that Christianity is not always warm in fuzzy you can get in a bad place spiritually very quickly. In a feel good religion one is unaware of the reality of the simple fact that we are not worthy of God and we are sinners. The problem with that is it lends to the tendency of Christians to ignore the fact that God is just. In a feel good religion reality is generally not talked about.THe focus is solely on how much we love God and the Grace of God.  What is the reality that is being ignored? It is the fact that true religion requires obedience to the Commandments of God and repentance, not merely feeling good. Humans have free will and they are given the choice to either obey or disobey God. God’s word says,  “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life” (Deut 30:19). If you refuse to accept the seriousness of this human life and its purpose, you are essentially disregarding the fact that there will be a day when you will have to answer for your actions.  Many have been deceived into thinking that all God requires is to believe in Christ and to attend church. What happened to the “obey my commandments” part?

It is difficult to face accountability, but we have no choice. It is not fair to avoid that accountability part in Christianity. Most feel good churches are luring people in with the music, acceptance, even a success ploy and let things continue that way, when it comes to the reality that God is a jealous God who expects us to obey, people avoid teaching that to the members of the congregation.

Don’t be that kind of Christian. Look at the reality that you are called to face. Accept that God has certain requirements of us and do that to the best of your ability. Yes you will fail, that is a fact but it is what you do to acknowledge that failure and repent that matters.

Word of the day Sadness

Sadness creeping around the edges of my consciousness. It is leering at me waiting for my thoughts to settle on one of many things that it knows will open the door for it to enter. The Lord knows there are plenty of opportunites for sadness to take over me. I fight it with all I have and all I am, but it is still there. I can feel it seeping in my heart. I can see it in my eyes through the mirror. Others, the ones who know me, hear it on my voice. Sadness does not care that I want no part of it.
No not one bit. I made the decision to give the sadness to God. God is stronger than than the influence of sadness. The concern for the future remains, but God is in control.