I am continuing a journey that began in the beginning of this year. It is not easy, nor do I suspect it to get easier. I am learning and growing in new ways.
I made a promise last spring to work on my pride. To make it not get the best of me. I can proudly say, I am still doing a horrible job at it. It is rough, I wish I had all the answers.
I remember calling my Best Friend Benny, and asking him to pray for me, because I was struggling with my pride. I was allowing it to make me powerful, and I will admit, without trying to brag, I had a lot of responsibility that made me very powerful. I was on the top of the chain for many things. Heck, I bought into the role that people placed me in. I accepted EVERY leadership role out there that was ever offered to me. So on top of my life, I was leading this that and the other, my grades CLEARLY reflected it. My approach to life was exhaustion.
I have begun to see why I am ignoring this call from Christ. We as a Christian culture praise the people who do so much. We praise those who have great strides in life. Who seem as if they have to piece every moment of their life together with the PERFECT timing. How many times have we heard the phrase “I just don’t know how you do it?” and use it as a sign of praise towards the life they lead.
I am convinced the reason I never experienced true repentance was because I was fearful of looking deep into my own life to allow for all the darkness to be exposed. I am convinced that true busyness is evil. When a common saying in your life is “There is just never enough time” or “I will never have the time” think deeply about it.
More importantly how does this align with what we preach about God? Or is it just the sayings we have about God and His Kingdom that fuel our days?
Much Love,
Casey
You know the drill.
Women- I have worked in children’s ministry for years. I have seen many different moms drop their kids off. However, I have seen many types of moms, but two stick out; the tired mom and then the exhausted mom. The tired mom is the mom who drops off her child knowing they will be fine, so that she may have a chance to grow with her community. Then there is the exhausted mom. The mom who is running a mile a minute and has no clue what is even going on in their child’s life. The mom picks up the kid and she just goes to the next place. She times everything because every minute is planned because if it gets off track, then everything gets messed up, and you can see it in her eyes the pain of keeping everything together.
So, I will keep these points simple.
1) Don’t preach God’s timing if you take control of timing yourself. What this means is, stop telling people to wait for God’s timing if you have every minute of the day planned out to the way you want and need it to be! Do you see how this contradicts what we preach? If we talk about God’s timing for everything, do you begin to see the danger of living a life that you plan out every day to day activity? It simply can’t be both. So I make a claim, a claim that begs you to live a life filled with finding purpose, and exposing your weaknesses.
2) Be tired and exhausted because of God. Fill your life with heavenly things. Such as Loving your neighbor. Such as giving to the poor. Such as listening. Such as being silent in time of chaos. Such as serving in your church, your community. Such as doing something as simple as what you Love. God did not give you a life to fill with business, but to be filled with passion.
3) Start being honest with yourself. I have been meeting SO many women who are busy because they feel like they have to live up to something. The greatest Christian in the world took time away from everyone in the garden. So many women I know are exhausted from being the person they think they have to be instead of being simple. They end up beating themselves up for it because they wake up every day tired, having to face another day trying to be something they have no clue how to be. I know it is hard to be honest with who you are, but once you begin to be free in that, you will begin to free yourself from the business of life. It is interesting how it all works, but one thing I do know is that when we hide who we are, what we are going through and our deepest dreams, we begin to busy our life so we do not have to think about it. Thus distracting us from where we really should be.
Men- I will never ask you to leap a canyon if I knew you could journey through it. That is the same about life. Recently I have been faced with it. I am going to be 100% honest. Blind Faith is not our strong suit. I do not believe I have met many (if any) people who just blindly go into everything. I would love to say that I do that, but I CLEARLY do not. But, I think that is the point. You see, maybe the problem is not that we don’t blindly leap, but that we poorly execute. (Praise God for Grace!)
So, I will keep these simple.
1) Journey through life with a faith that sees everything. Maybe our problem is that we have faith, but lack purpose. See, life is worth little if we don’t begin to Love and live out that purpose of Christ. When we stop loving our neighbor, when we stop serving each other, when we give up on the good fight, when we simply live a life feeding our own gain, we are missing the point of life. When we do this, we lack purpose.
2) You really do have a lot to offer. I know the world often sees you as this sex hungered beast, then the Christian world sees you as a sinner. Christ however does not have the same view. Christ knows you are worth it and can impact the Kingdom. That can be seen in many ways, from ending sex slavery to being an engineer finding new ways to helping clean up the environment. From being a singer/artist to saving people from fires. God knows each of us, and is pursuing us, knowing that we need to be loved and that we bring Joy to Him. Knowing also that we aid the advancement of the Kingdom.
Both-
1) This was a hard letter to write, because I am in the midst of the struggles of life! Life is not easy, and that is EXACTLY why Evil exsists. We push evil into the world when we ignore the darkness going on in our life. I am convinced, and know from studies that persons who struggle with hopelessness lack purpose and feel as life is just filled with tasks. God is not a task giver. God is not a busy God. God is not up for giving you busy work, why would He? There is a great need for Love in this world, for reconciliation back to a redeeming Christ, why would God just simply fill your life with menial tasks to get through the day? You are worth too much to be uselessly giving your time to busy work. NOW, I am not saying don’t have a job that pays the bills, or have a job that makes millions, all I am saying is give your time and money to the advancement of the Kingdom of God. This is not a cheap sales pitch to donate to your local church, this is a point that stresses the importance of giving to people who are poor, people who can’t get their head above water, and even your local church community, this being in time and in money.
2) I am sorry to say this, but I do not firmly believe that God has one single person in mind for us to date and marry. I just do not see it. On top of that, I just can’t see one perfect person for everyone out there. Think of it like this, God has given us all desires and dreams, don’t you think it would be easier to look for someone who matches up with our beliefs, values and heck, even hobbies then to be waiting for the specific perfect soulmate? If you are waiting for the perfect soul mate, you will spend a lot of time in fear trying to figure out if this is the right person, thus ending a relationship more out of fear. That is why life is a journey of exploring Christ and living in this world. This may also mean you may only have the values of what a life journeyer/adventurer/spouse are, not one perfect person waiting for you. That is why relationships are something you work at, not something that has been predestined to just work… I know NO relationships that don’t have to work at it and journey toward Christ.
3) God’s Plan is not as situational as we make it. Think of it like this: A person is flying in a plane, and it lands 2 hours late. Which works out the best because that person ends up running into an old friend, whom they greatly missed and got a chance to re-connect with them, seeing it as God’s Will that that would happen. However, on the same flight there are 239 other people. Do those 239 other people have the same plan that God has for you? Landing 2 hours late? Do you see what I mean? God’s will for the world does not revolve around you. We can’t just make these claims as “This MUST be God’s will.” Or how about this one: A guy is going to break up with a girl if the light turns green in ten seconds and she does not call. The light turns green, and the girl is still crazy about that guy, but has a dead phone. Is that God’s Will? Can you see how that does not work? God’s will is not chance. More importantly we can’t make it so selfish. We have to remember that there is a kingdom of evil out there reacting to every move that God makes, thus meaning, attempting to take us out of Love. We can’t assume that everything that we feel blessed our cursed by is the Will of God. Is it the will of God that unemployment is disgusting right now? You see, God is a lot more complex and beautiful than our attempt to understand the Will of Life for ANYONE. It is just like what God told Daniel, that it is not for Daniel to know. (Chapter 12). So, it is not for us to know, or to simply proclaim.
I know this is a very negative note. It seems that I am just ripping on concepts that have surrounded us. So in this, let me end by saying something that is so true- Life is only filled by the Joy we find from the Love that Christ has. We can only be something if we Love. The love chapter in Corinthians proclaims that without Love we are NOTHING. To me, that is beautiful, because it is a call to Love. It says in scripture that we can Know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING and still be nothing without Love. This is a great way to begin to view how we live. I could be the president/treasurer of every organization, be popular, have 1500 friends on FB, but if I have no Love, I have nothing. This is a challenge. Begin to slow down, allow Christ to work through you, to address the darkness you are suffering, then live out the purpose of Christ.
With much Hope and reliance on Christ to work through this,
Casey
"1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothin"
-1st Corinthians 13:1-3 NLT
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