Are You Pretending?

Are you living for God or just pretending?

I look back on my life and realize that for the majority of it, I was keeping God at a distance. He was a part of my life. But just a part. He was there, but just on the sidelines. And, at the time, I saw nothing wrong with this. Why should I pray about what job God wanted me in? I would make the decision and, obviously, since God knows everything, it would be in his plan. He would have known ahead of time what decision I would make and, therefore, it was all just up to my choices. Right?

I was a Christian, I went to church, I prayed often, but it was more like I was talking to God and not talking with God. He was basically my Genie In A Bottle (link to Christina Aguilera’s music video…just kidding). He was a Being I called on when I needed help and when I didn’t need help, he was a very distant thing.

Not only did I not see anything wrong with this way of living out my Christian walk, I saw many things wrong with the opposite way of living out a Christian walk. I heard of people who asked God what he wanted them to do in the daily, no-brainer, decisions (what job to work at, who to date, where to go for lunch, IF they should go for lunch…) and I thought this was ridiculous. These people didn’t have their own brains, God created us with freewill for a reason, they were too weak, they were too dependent.

I actually don’t remember thinking that I should try it their way, I just remember my mindset: They’re stupid, I’m not, I’ll do it my way. Brutal.

My mom always told me I had to learn things the hard way. She was rolling her eyes when she said this, just like I’m shaking my head as I write this.

When I assess my Christian walk, I realize that I used to pretend to be a Christian. I was going through all the motions but there was no change of heart, barely anything different about me than a non-believer, and certainly no passion for the Lord. If someone had asked me “Do you love God?” I would have said “Yes, of course!” but inside me the words “But no one is actually in love with God” would repeat themselves.

The dictionary’s definition of ‘Christian’ is: “a person who has received Christian baptism or is a believer in Jesus Christ and his teachings.” Was I a believer of Jesus Christ’s teachings? I would have said I was.

In Mark 10:21 Jesus tells a rich man to go sell everything he has and then he will have riches in Heaven. He tells the man to do this, and then to come follow him. I was a believer and a follower of Jesus, but there’s no way I would have been willing to sell everything I had for him…

Matthew 16:25 says that whoever loses his life will gain it. There was no way, when push came to shove, that I would be willing to give up my…anything…for God. Give up your life? God isn’t really asking you to do that…

God will provide whatever you need, clothes, food…whatever it is, he will provide. But you need to get a job, make sure you’re earning good money, advance in that job, make sure it’s one you’re passionate about. And if you don’t do this, you’re lazy. God will help those who help themselves. Right? Um, no. Not what the Bible teaches, actually. Check it out in Matthew 6:26. (As a side note, I Googled “God will help those who help themselves” and…well…Go Google it, see where this saying stems from…).

If I was really, truly, living a Christian walk, loving God and believing his commands, why was I not living like I believed him? Why was I nodding my head to his teachings but yet my thoughts were whispering something different? Why weren’t my actions reflecting what I was telling the world (ok, not the world, but a select few, which in itself should have been a clue)?

I was pretending I believed what I had been taught since I was born, but really, I didn’t actually believe God would do what he said he would do.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Matthew 11:28

No, actually, what I need is a good nap, not some “quality time” with a God I rarely hear from.

If only I had taken the time to just try what the Bible was telling me! If only I had taken that quality time with God instead of the nap. I would have realized that the rest God is talking about goes deeper than just resting my eyes. It satisfies and stills the very depth of my soul. The root of my foundation is quieted. My need is met, not just temporarily satisfied with a band-aid.

I don’t want to pretend anymore. If God says move, I will move. If he says speak, I will speak. I have learned, the hard way, that when God tells you something he will follow you until you are obedient. And it’s not just because he wants you to listen to him, it’s because he knows that when you do listen to him, it will quench that hunger you feel inside.

I don’t want to pretend anymore! I want to see God work! I want to see his power in my life! I know now that when God is telling you to do something, all you have to do is take that one step of obedience and he will allow everything else to fall into place. He will do all the work.

Do you want to pretend you’re living for God, or do you actually want to do it?

You can start by opening your Bible daily. It’s just one simple step. God will cause a hunger in you that isn’t based on emotions but based on necessity. You will learn to crave him as you press into him.

Do it, I dare you.

Pace of Life

The pace of life. Do you allow life to take you at it’s own pace, or do you determine the pace in which your life moves forward?

Normally, we tend to think that busier is better. Maybe not rushed, even though some people like this pace, but active. When we sit still, it’s either because we’ve been forced to (tell that to my injured knee!) or because it’s a rare break in the steady stream of visits, errands, lists and demands.

Have you ever paused to ask yourself what pace God wants you to move at?

Every. single. time. my schedule gets to full, God reminds me to slow down. I begin to think that, yes, maybe this time, God wants me to stay busy in order to send money here or witness there. It all sounds good! My intentions are, for the most part, to bring God glory in this busyness. But just when I’m settling into my new, busy schedule, God pulls the rug from under my feet and shows me that he wants me to slow it down. He reminds me that even though it might make sense to earn a lot of money, that’s not his plan for me right now. Another gentle reminder that I need to lean on him more heavily because that is what he’s there for. Another reminder that he doesn’t intend for me to be too busy to minister in the fields he’s put on my heart.

When I look for verses about the pace of life, I find ones like:

“Be still and know that I am God” Psalm 46:10

“He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters” Pslam 23:2

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” Isaiah 30:15

Jesus even tells Martha that she should be more like Mary and just sit and enjoy his presence.

When you read stories of Jesus’ life on earth, I don’t believe you will ever see a hectic schedule, a plate with to many responsibilities, or a rushed pace. The point of Jesus’ life was to build relationships. He didn’t rush, he asked people to stop what they were doing and follow him. He told them that he would provide the water and bread of life they needed. He took time in the early mornings to talk to his Father.

The point of our lives, the very thing that will satisfy the depths of our soul, is to pursue a relationship with God. Having a busy pace to our lives usually means that our priorities are out of balance. It usually means that quiet time with God is either overlooked or, if we have made time for him, it’s quickly forgotten once our busy day gets started.

The last thing we need is to forget what God has spoken to us or even the feeling of his presence. He is what will help us through the day! He gives us the strength in tough situations, he shows us what to say when a friend needs the right words, he helps us to be patient, he reminds us that he is in control, he takes worry and anxiousness away…If we miss out on getting to know him and spending time with him each day because our schedule is to full, we will see our day quickly going downhill. Simply, we can’t afford to put God on the back-burner and busyness makes this happen more often than not!

Action Plan:

• Ask God if there are things, commitments, habits, thought-processes, in your life that you need to pause, if not remove completely, in order to slow down.
• Think about your relationship with God. Are you making it top priority each day? If not, where can you make space for a few minutes with him? If you are already, how can you limit distraction during this time?

 

The world makes us think that giving God time instead of achieving and conquering and accomplishing whatever it is that our human nature wants will not be as fulfilling. Even when we have tasted a bit of Godly fulfillment, it’s easy to be convinced of this. Let’s be honest about what this truly is: This is satan lying to us about God in order to drag us away from the potential God created us with.

Let’s make it a goal to slow our lives down and to allow God to show us what he thinks is important and erase what the world tells us is important.

Diving back into Exodus again this morning. I just love how God whispers into my heart as I read and allows things to jump out at me.

I’m in Chapter 6 and I’m reading the genealogy of Moses and Aaron. And, honestly, I’m about to skip over this part. Boring. Who reads genealogies anyways? A bunch of people, another bunch of people, someone lived for a certain amount of years…someone had this kid or that…ok ok, skipping this part and moving on into the ‘meaningful verses’. But this time, instead of skipping the genealogy, I Googled it. “Significance of genealogy of Moses and Aaron”. A Jewish write-up came up and I skimmed through it. I am, after all, a student of God, I might as well educate myself further in these things.

The author points out that in Exodus 6:12 Moses is talking to God and put some blame on to the Israelites for not listening to the message God gave him. But then, in verse 30, the bible seems to repeat itself by saying basically the same thing. The difference is, in verse 30, Moses leaves out the part of the blame against the Israelites. Interesting.

After the genealogy, Moses leaves out blaming the Israelites.

After Moses is reminded who he is and where he came from, Moses stops blaming his people.

This is cool. Moses is reminded that he has a responsibility to these people, he is one of them. I’m thinking it would have been hard for him, growing up in an Egyptian palace, raised by a princess and having that life engrained in him. It was normal for him to think that he was Egyptian. Egypt was home for him, Israel wasn’t. Their traditions weren’t his, their God was new to him, their slavery wasn’t a part of his direct history…he was born an Israelite but it had never been an actual part of his life. Actually, I’m thinking it was probably something he had tried to hide.

But suddenly, when God became real to him, Moses needed to confront the fact that he belonged to these enslaved people and they belonged to him. He was a part of them. They were his family.

And so I finished my reading and started praying. And suddenly God started talking.

The troubled people around me are my people. I might have been rescued out of the muddy river by a God that is full of grace, I might have been delivered into a better life like Moses was, but I was once a troubled person too. Not too long ago, I struggled with their struggles. I understand them, my heart grieves for them, I can feel where they are. I am a part of them and they are a part of me and I have a responsibility to them, to lead them out of their slavery and to show them the life that God has promised them.

I love it when God speaks to me, when I know that the Holy Spirit has just opened my eyes to a message he wants me to see.

“Since I speak with faltering lips…”

Exodus 6:30

I don’t always have the right words or the confidence to say them, but it doesn’t matter. I have a responsibility to my people and I have instruction from God and all I asked to do is be obedient. When I am meant to speak, he will give me the words. All he needs is a vessel to work with. Obedience and a willingness to listen.

 

Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him all the earth

Psalm 96:9

Our lives were made to worship God. All of creation, every thing on the earth, every star in the sky, every human, every bug, every river, every tree…it was all created to worship God!

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it.

Psalm 96:11

I forget sometimes, that the path of my life needs to be to worship my God. I forget that the sacrifice I am making, that he has asked me to make, is worship him. It get’s overwhelming sometimes when I look at what I am doing, giving up my marital status. I look at my future and it’s completely unpredictable and I wonder what the point is, I wonder what God has for me and where I am supposed to go. But when I remember that the point of my life is to worship God, it all boils down to one thing: Glorifying God in what I do.

God has asked me to set aside my dating life, my yearning for a family, for being a wife, until his plan unfolds. His instructions to me were crystal clear, almost audible, that I was supposed to move back to my hometown and just live. Live to glorify him. And just live.

It seems simple but sometimes it’s so hard to just live simply and give up control to God. It’s a hard sacrifice to make, my marital-status. Society puts a lot of weight on dating and marriage and children. And sometimes when I look around, I feel like I failure. But when I look up and I focus on my creator, I remember that my sacrifice is an actual act of worship to him. When I look up I remember that this is the purpose of my life, to worship my savior and I am blessed to have been brought to this point.

My marriage failed for a reason. As hard as that is to understand, it’s true. Nothing is an accident. God knew that it would happen and he knew that I would run not only from my marriage and husband, but also from God himself. He also knew that he would bring me back to this point of living fully for him. It’s hard, it really is, to live simply to worship God and this last week has taught me that I still have so much to learn and I still fall so far from the mark. But God’s grace covers all. All he asks me to do is to focus on him and live my life to worship him. He asks me to constantly give him control and to trust that he is working even when I can’t see it.

Worship doesn’t just happen at church, worship is the purpose of your life. It’s the purpose of all creation. Take a minute to close your eyes and imagine all of creation making noise together in order to worship God.

This week my goal is to remember that my life is an act of worship to God. Every success, every sacrifice, is bringing him glory!

God’s timing. When did anything in the Bible ever happen in anything else but God’s timing? When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, it wasn’t in his timing that the situation changed, it was at the very last second…God’s timing. Going back even further, when Abraham and Sarah conceived Isaac…it wasn’t in their timing! Sarah was 90 years old and in her husbands words, beyond her prime. It was God’s timing though. It didn’t make sense to the humans in the story, but it made every bit of sense to God. What about Rebecca, praying for a child while she watched her sister, Leah, have son after son after son…She must have questioned God’s timing continuously. What about Hannah praying for children or the Israelites and the Egyptians, or Joseph, or Saul on the Damascus Road…

In each story, and the list could be as long as my arm, God’s timing turned out to be the best timing. It rarely made sense as the individuals were going through their lives, but when it all panned out, it turned out that God knew what he was doing and his timing was best.

After I left my husband I know that people were praying for my return. I’ve had people tell me that they were praying for my eyes to be opened, for me to be able to see what I was doing. In their opinion, their prayers should have applied to me two years ago, as soon as I left my husband. God should have listened to them as they were praying for me and, at that moment, zapped me with those blessings. But it didn’t happen that way. It took two years for me to go through my trials and to run away from God and my marriage, in order for me to be blessed (finally!) with seeing eyes and hearing ears. This was highly inconvenient for the people praying for me, it made no sense, and it likely still doesn’t make any sense to them. Why did it have to take two years? But does this mean that it wasn’t in God’s timing? Does this mean that their prayers weren’t answered?

No. Far from it.

It means that God’s timing isn’t our timing. It means that God heard their prayers and their prayers were answered.

Someone once told me that prayers are like drops of water going up to heaven. They’re kept in a bowl and once they fill that bowl, the answered prayers overflow and pour out. I love that visual. Prayer is about continually trusting that God has perfect timing and will apply your prayers when he sees fit. You only need to keep on praying. Just because our prayers aren’t answered at the exact right time, in our opinion, doesn’t mean that God isn’t hearing them or that he isn’t planning on answering them. It just means that his timing is his timing. He will answer your prayers in his way and his time. And it. will. be. perfect.

There is a reason that God chooses not to answer prayer at specific times. His eyes are always on you, his ears always hear your voice, but sometimes it feels as though he’s just not there. He is! He wants to hear your concerns, your praise, your requests, your worship. But he may choose not to answer your prayers in your timing. He only asks that we have the perseverance to push forward and ignore our feelings about his presence. We need to ignore what our human emotions are telling us and have faith that he is beside us continuously and answering our prayers in his time and his way. And it. will. be. perfect.

Our God is a God of healing. A God of miracles. A God of the impossible. A God of restoration. He loves us with a love we can’t even fathom. He chases us with a fervor we couldn’t attempt. He will never leave us and his plans are only for the best for us. If we allow ourselves to surrender to him and allow him to take over our lives, we will be amazed at the fulfillment we feel. Not only that, but we will be amazed at the simplicity life takes. It’s hard to trust an unseen God to take control of our lives, but it’s even harder to continually push forward through life against the current. When we learn to release control to God, the God that knows you better than anyone else and only wants the best for you, we will begin to see miracles in our lives. And it. will. be. perfect.