I love the persistence of my one year old. Today I watched as she tried again and again to wad of a string of beads and get all of it to fit into her tiny little hand at once. An impossible task. But the beauty of it was that she didn't know it was an impossible task and so she kept at it...for about as long as a one year old keeps at anything before moving on to the next thing.
We adults put so many limits on ourselves, each other, and regretfully even God. We have long lists of things that seem impossible.
What's on your list? Graduating from high school or college, getting a job, getting married, beating an addiction, sharing your faith with others, healing from deep hurts, becoming president :)...?
And I don't know about you, but when I encounter something that seems impossible, I tend not to be as persistent as a one year old with a fist full of beads.
The reality is that we have it all wrong. Let me show you what God says about impossible.
Matthew 17:20 says "He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”"
Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all this through him who gives me strength."
In Luke 18:27 Jesus says, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
I read today in 2 Thessalonians 1:11 and 12 how God comes up behind us and adds his power and strength to our efforts. The Message version says, "we...pray that he'll fill your good ideas and acts of faith with his own energy so that it all amounts to something."
What the Word is telling us is that on our own things may be impossible, but with God working in us and through us, we have the power to change ourselves, overcome our fears, and change the world for the glory of God.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
Get Back Up Again
My little girl has officially been a walker for a couple of weeks. While she gets around very well, she still falls a lot! Whether it is the pile of toys she thinks she can bulldoze through, an invisible bump in the floor, those annoying shoes her mommy puts on her, or just uncoordinated limbs and an awkward center of gravity, something sends her landing with a thud on that diaper clad bottom.
And as long as she's well fed, not over tired, and the bang of the head on the hardwood floor wasn't loud enough to be heard in the next room, she typically just jumps back up again and is on her way.
I know this is not a big stretch but a 13 month old learning how to walk closely resembles us as sinners learning how to live for God.
We typically can get around pretty well, but we still fall down a lot. I fall when I choose to judge someone or gossip, when I get angry and say something sarcastic to my husband, when I ignore the nudges of God and don't obey, when I am prideful. The Bible calls this sin and says that none of us are immune from it.
Romans 3:23 says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
It is important to not ignore the fact of sin, but this blog is actually meant to be more about the getting back up again. Like I said, most of the time our little walker doesn't sit and wallow in her fall. She jumps up, shrugs it off, and forgets it ever happened. This is actually what caught my attention and reminded me of God's grace.
Romans 3:24 & 25a (New Living Translation) says, "24 Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. 25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood."
And Romans 8:1 says, "So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus."
God offers a way for us to receive forgiveness for our sins. We can accept that Jesus paid the penalty for them when he was sacrificed on the cross. Our responsibility then is to repent, ask forgiveness and commit with the help of God to sin no more.
God doesn't want us to sit and wallow in our sin, no matter how terrible we think it is. He wants us to get back up again and keep moving forward.
This reminded me of the lyrics of a song by TobyMac. You can listen to the song and read the lyrics below.
And as long as she's well fed, not over tired, and the bang of the head on the hardwood floor wasn't loud enough to be heard in the next room, she typically just jumps back up again and is on her way.
I know this is not a big stretch but a 13 month old learning how to walk closely resembles us as sinners learning how to live for God.
We typically can get around pretty well, but we still fall down a lot. I fall when I choose to judge someone or gossip, when I get angry and say something sarcastic to my husband, when I ignore the nudges of God and don't obey, when I am prideful. The Bible calls this sin and says that none of us are immune from it.
Romans 3:23 says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
It is important to not ignore the fact of sin, but this blog is actually meant to be more about the getting back up again. Like I said, most of the time our little walker doesn't sit and wallow in her fall. She jumps up, shrugs it off, and forgets it ever happened. This is actually what caught my attention and reminded me of God's grace.
Romans 3:24 & 25a (New Living Translation) says, "24 Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. 25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood."
And Romans 8:1 says, "So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus."
God offers a way for us to receive forgiveness for our sins. We can accept that Jesus paid the penalty for them when he was sacrificed on the cross. Our responsibility then is to repent, ask forgiveness and commit with the help of God to sin no more.
God doesn't want us to sit and wallow in our sin, no matter how terrible we think it is. He wants us to get back up again and keep moving forward.
This reminded me of the lyrics of a song by TobyMac. You can listen to the song and read the lyrics below.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
A Choice
I make a choice every day. It is a simple, mundane choice really. The question I have to answer is, do I feed my daughter this bowl of applesauce and plate of vegetables, or do I let her feed herself? 9 times out 10 the choice is for a few minutes of productivity elsewhere in the house or kitchen while she feeds herself. The trade off is the mess that I have to clean up when meal time is done. First the hands, then the face, then the tray, then the seat, then the floor, before you know the entire kitchen is shiny clean :).
I reflected on this mundane every day choice today...because with my choice to give my daughter freedom and independence comes the consequence of cleaning up the mess. God also made a choice, a choice to give us, you and me, fumbling messy children, a lot of freedom to choose. With our freedom, we make messes, just like my sweet daughter does with her dinner. We make messes like war, divorce, abuse, stealing, ...sinning.
Does God then come in and clean up after us just like a mommy? Well sometimes, but not always. As adults, given the freedom of choice, we most often have to sit in our mess and deal with our consequences in the short term.
But the bigger picture is that at the same time that God gave us the freedom to choose, he had an ultimate clean up plan. We hurt ourselves, each other, and God when we make messes, but God sent his Son, Jesus, to do clean up duty. He lived on earth as a man, was tortured and killed, buried, and then he rose back to life. Death, the ultimate mess, was cleaned up when Jesus conquered it and came back to life. Jesus is going to come back to earth again some day and he is going to finish cleaning up. The Bible says there will be a new heaven and a new earth, no more tears, no more sickness. No more mess.
I reflected on this mundane every day choice today...because with my choice to give my daughter freedom and independence comes the consequence of cleaning up the mess. God also made a choice, a choice to give us, you and me, fumbling messy children, a lot of freedom to choose. With our freedom, we make messes, just like my sweet daughter does with her dinner. We make messes like war, divorce, abuse, stealing, ...sinning.
Does God then come in and clean up after us just like a mommy? Well sometimes, but not always. As adults, given the freedom of choice, we most often have to sit in our mess and deal with our consequences in the short term.
But the bigger picture is that at the same time that God gave us the freedom to choose, he had an ultimate clean up plan. We hurt ourselves, each other, and God when we make messes, but God sent his Son, Jesus, to do clean up duty. He lived on earth as a man, was tortured and killed, buried, and then he rose back to life. Death, the ultimate mess, was cleaned up when Jesus conquered it and came back to life. Jesus is going to come back to earth again some day and he is going to finish cleaning up. The Bible says there will be a new heaven and a new earth, no more tears, no more sickness. No more mess.
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