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Problems – No Problem
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| By Rodney Drury |
So what does God do with a guy like me, with a guy who has so many desires, longing, and dreams?
So, if you are like me, you have a mindset that if you do
what you ought to do, you will have fewer problems. Are you like that? Do you
have some basic belief that if you work hard, strive to follow God, give it
your all, then life will be better. And by better I mean fewer money problems,
less relationship problems, no one invading my home, stealing my stuff, threatening
my life.
But does that fit reality and does it fit the Bible? Have
I missed what the God of the Gospels promised to me? Have I sought to trade a
God who will never leave me for a God who is intent on making my life easy? And
strangely, my life is easy. I just long, desire, dream about an even easier
life. I want life to be so good that I don’t need anything, everything I
desire, I have!
The backdrop to this rant is that recently I have been
enduring more personal pain, my knee is hurting. But that is small stuff; I
have learned to deal with physical pain. But my oldest kid got sick, I am
unable to help or be there. It makes me hurt worse that any self-pain. The
emotional pain of seeing your kids suffer is PAINFUL. Just to annoy me even more I have some financial
issue right now, insurance seeking reimbursement for an accident that happened
when I was uninsured. And those around me need some help, some little blessings
to show God’s love and personal care. And a wedding, graduations, and my motorcycle
trip around America with my brothers.
Ok the motorcycle trip is one of those dreams that is
more dream than substance, but I threw it in so that you could see I’m diverse,
that I have many desires, too many.
So what does God do with a guy like me, with a guy who
has so many desires, longing, and dreams?
He leads us into eternal things, eternal joy, and eternal
life. When I set my heart on temporal fulfillment, God in His wisdom allows the
temporal to beat me up a bit so that I see life is good, but not all that good.
God awakens in me a longing for more, so much more that all the stuff, all the
events, all the money of this world cannot quench my longing. I am being
nurtured to find satisfaction with God and the eternal. But I get to choose.
Even though God made me/us in His image, we can reduce
ourselves to almost nothing. We can take our appetite for the eternal, for God
and satisfy it on tiny earthly delights. Delights so small that they last only a day or
a moment are consumed and praised as satisfying while in reality they are only
training us to live on “nothing” and call it “everything.” We swallow air and
call it a fabulous meal; we drink in smoke and proclaim we are entertained and
satisfied.
If you heat your home with wood you know the work
involved. God’s fullness is like heating your home with wood. The goal is to
experience this burning presence that warms your life both with heat and the
treasure of working together with God to accomplish it. This partnership with
God, this labor of finding, cutting, transporting, splitting and finally
maintaining the fire are a part of the treasure of the eternal. Eternal things
are deep, lasting, enduring and as such require the spending of our lives upon
to enjoy. The things of this world are fast; they spend our lives, consume it
rather than build it. Partnership with God results in eternal life and rewards.
When we spend our lives on the delights of this world, it’s over, spent, gone.
This, God created world, has many good and great things.
I want you to enjoy life, to enjoy what God has created and given us the opportunity
to experience. I just don’t want you to live for this world only. I don’t want myself
to live for this world only and end up with nothing. I am soon becoming an old
man and I can start to give an accounting of my life in earthly terms. What treasures,
what titles, what rewards do I have and were they worth spending my life on? I
can only find lasting joy, eternal joy in what was done in partnership with God;
those are the only things that last. I can become depressed, wondering if I wasted
my life, spent it on “nothing.” Or I can find more joy, more peace, more hope as
the day approaches when my earthly life will be over and I enter into life
eternal. I can live with hope when I know that all I did in this life in
partnership with God is going to continue in the next life. Hope fills my bad
days with eternal light.
I have a good life now and a great one waiting for me.
Today, if I get another burden laid on my shoulders I am going to “joy-a-fi”
it. I’m going to remind myself that this trouble is not worth spending my life
on, but is worth enduring as it works in me things eternal. I am going to fight
the pressure to succeed in the moment by recalling the weight of eternity. Here
is my plan
Develop enough emotional intelligence to discover joy
In everything walk with God, fellowship, partner
Go for the greatest and don’t devalue my life by spending
it on momentary pleasures (OK, well only a few)
Live in ongoing conversation with God and seek wisdom,
direction, and purpose
Don’t allow anger to determine who I am
Live in this world, but not of it, by giving my life away
to God and others
Here is a passage of Scripture that might help us.
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| I found this story very encouraging. |
Jas 1:2-27 NASB
2 Consider
it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
3 knowing
that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
4 And let
endurance have its perfect result, so
that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
5 But if
any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and
without reproach, and it will be given to him.
6 But he
must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf
of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
7 For that
man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,
8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his
ways.
9 But the
brother of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position;
10 and the
rich man is to glory in his humiliation,
because like flowering grass he will pass away.
11 For the
sun rises with a scorching wind and withers the grass; and its flower falls off
and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed; so too the rich man in the midst
of his pursuits will fade away.
12 Blessed
is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will
receive the crown of life which the Lord
has promised to those who love Him.
13 Let no
one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God"; for God
cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.
14 But each
one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.
15 Then when
lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it
brings forth death.
16 Do not be
deceived, my beloved brethren.
17 Every
good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
18 In the
exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would
be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.
19 This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone
must be quick to hear, slow to speak and
slow to anger;
20 for the
anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.
21 Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility
receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls.
22 But prove
yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
23 For if
anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at
his natural face in a mirror;
24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he
has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.
25 But one
who looks intently at the perfect law, the law
of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an
effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.
26 If anyone
thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives
his own heart, this man's religion is
worthless.
27 Pure and
undefiled religion in the sight of our
God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
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