Recently I was faced with a difficult decision to make. The decision itself isn't important. What is important is that this decision came with far greater reaching consequences than I was comfortable with, and I knew I had to do my best to see that I made a wise decision.
I have always been rather impetuous in my decision-making. I know what I want, so I actively pursue it. My passion and zeal can be construed as a positive characteristic, but there are some decisions in life in which this type of active pursuit is inappropriate. It's not wise to make rash decisions on the fly without stopping to thoroughly consider all the possible consequences and outcomes. This, I have learned, comes with age and experience. If only I could've been blessed with that wisdom in my youth!
As I have grown older, and gained more responsibility in the form of a husband, bills, children, and a home, I have grown to understand and even appreciate that certain decisions in life require the careful insight and consideration that only the Holy Spirit can provide. What exactly do I mean? I mean, I have to be a Proverbs 3:5-6 kind of decision-maker: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." It's not about MY will for me, it's about HIS.
In coming to the ultimate conclusion for this particular decision, I petitioned God for wisdom and clarity. It wasn't until I completely and absolutely submitted myself to His will that I received an answer. It was an "eleventh hour" response, but God's timing is superior to that of mine anyway. I asked Him to help me, and He did. I asked that it would be His will for my life, and not my will for my life, that would speak louder. Asked... and answered.
For those who may be in a similar situation, allow me to offer a small word of advice: don't try to go it alone. God knows what is best for each and every one of us - even those of us who would keep Him at arm's length or refuse to acknowledge Him altogether. He knows what our ultimate best is, and He wants nothing but that ultimate best for each and every one of His children.
It is my prayer that those who are facing difficult decisions would ask for God to reveal in their hearts what He has in store. That we would "lean not on our own understanding" and lean on the one who understands EVERYTHING. God, help us to hear you speak, and help us receive all that You have for us. Open our eyes and ears to receive Your words, then give us strength and courage to do Your will. Show us how to move, and give us patience to wait. Please, God, speak to us in a way that our hearts will understand and find peace. Help us to know Your voice from any other...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Rich vs. Poor
Jesus spoke more about money than he did any other topic in the New Testament. Clearly, it is a subject that he felt strongly about. While we may not like the dirty word "money" to be spoken in our holy churches, we have to know that even in Jesus' time, he understood the power of money.
For me, the subject of money has been repititious in my life. Over and over God has spoken into my heart on the topic. But today, without my prior knowledge, God hit me with the proverbial ton of bricks. The sermon subject for today was money. Specifically, it was about being rich.
Who among us would say they were rich? I live in a nice upper-middle-class neighborhood. I drive a car similar to that of my neighbors. My house is red brick and looks very similar to the others in my neighborhood. Our kids attend the same schools. We would look around to one another and think that we were blessed, but we would never say we were rich. But what is it to be rich? Is there a magic number that, once attained, one can say they are rich? If a person has assets at a certain value, does that make them rich? What is rich, exactly? Most people view "rich" as just having more than they currently do. "Rich" is a moving target. If you don't feel rich, you'll keep trying to get there. But being rich isn't about income at all; it's about what you do with the money you have. It's about having more than you need. God has blessed me with more than I need, therefore, I am rich.
At the end of the pay period, when the bills are paid, I look at what's left and mentally divide it up: groceries, clothing, gas, etc. It goes pretty quick. I might even be guilty of wishing I had more. But my needs are already met. Therefore, I have more than I need. Rich.
Here's a few numbers to chew on: The average annual income in the United States is roughly $37,000. For the rest of the world, the average annual income is around $675. Yup, you read that right. If we assume that each person in the world works about 45 years of his/her life, those numbers work out to be about $1,665,000 for Americans, and only $30,375 for the rest of the world. These are lifetime numbers, friends. That means the rest of the world will work their whole lives to make what Americans make, on average, in a year.
How rich are you?
For me, the subject of money has been repititious in my life. Over and over God has spoken into my heart on the topic. But today, without my prior knowledge, God hit me with the proverbial ton of bricks. The sermon subject for today was money. Specifically, it was about being rich.
Who among us would say they were rich? I live in a nice upper-middle-class neighborhood. I drive a car similar to that of my neighbors. My house is red brick and looks very similar to the others in my neighborhood. Our kids attend the same schools. We would look around to one another and think that we were blessed, but we would never say we were rich. But what is it to be rich? Is there a magic number that, once attained, one can say they are rich? If a person has assets at a certain value, does that make them rich? What is rich, exactly? Most people view "rich" as just having more than they currently do. "Rich" is a moving target. If you don't feel rich, you'll keep trying to get there. But being rich isn't about income at all; it's about what you do with the money you have. It's about having more than you need. God has blessed me with more than I need, therefore, I am rich.
At the end of the pay period, when the bills are paid, I look at what's left and mentally divide it up: groceries, clothing, gas, etc. It goes pretty quick. I might even be guilty of wishing I had more. But my needs are already met. Therefore, I have more than I need. Rich.
Here's a few numbers to chew on: The average annual income in the United States is roughly $37,000. For the rest of the world, the average annual income is around $675. Yup, you read that right. If we assume that each person in the world works about 45 years of his/her life, those numbers work out to be about $1,665,000 for Americans, and only $30,375 for the rest of the world. These are lifetime numbers, friends. That means the rest of the world will work their whole lives to make what Americans make, on average, in a year.
How rich are you?
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Love into Action
I am incredibly blessed. I have never gone hungry. I have never been without shelter or clothing. I have never struggled to find clean drinking water or failed to receive adequate medical care. I've never been enslaved or abused. Honestly, I've never really even had it all that hard. God has blessed me with so much.
But there are many who live without these things. They have no luxuries. They pray for their basic needs to be met. They likely live in extreme poverty. And I've probably seen their faces more than I can recall. Sure, we have all seen the kids on Save The Children ads with missing teeth and bones protruding out of their thin skin. We've passed the guy who lives under the freeway on-ramp who carries every worldy possession he owns in a grocery bag. We know them. They're "undesirable" because they look funny, smell bad, or maybe they don't speak our language. They're dirty. They're sad. They're pathetic. We know them. And we likely think, "they chose to live like that." We are wrong.
Rich Stearns wrote the following paragraph in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel:
The truth is that at some point, I too have looked on the poor as "lazy". I probably felt that they are finally reaping what they have sown and paying consequences for poor decisions. And perhaps I've been right - but only a very small percentage of the time, at best. In Guatemala, a country near and dear to my heart, I saw some of the poorest of the world's poor. But I also saw some of the hardest working people in the world: men, women, children, elderly. No one was exempt. They worked hard all day. But their circumstances would never allow for that hard work to pay off. It was then that I realized my view of "poverty" was off. Poverty isn't a choice, but a circumstance.
Faced with the option to work hard and live well, or to be lazy and poor, I believe that the world's poor would work hard and be freed from the shackles of poverty - especially since they already work so hard. But the sad news is that they often don't have that choice. That's why so many illegal immigrants risk their lives for the chance to work hard and receive the reward due their efforts - fair pay for work.
Here in the US, our "poverty" issue is very different from countries like Mexico or Guatemala. Here, we have an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class. Many countries, especially those considered "third-world countries" like Guatemala, have rich and poor and little in between. If a US citizen finds himself homeless or hungry, we have shelters and soup kitchens, funded largely by the generosity of the middle and upper classes. We have resources available to meet our basic needs of food, shelter, water, hygeine, and medical care. But the poor in Guatemala outnumber the rich, and very few resources exist internally to give aid to even a small portion of the poor. Nearly all aid is foreign. And Guatemala is overrun with corruption, leaving little aid for the most needy. The rich will likely never leave their station, and the poor will never get rich. It seems almost hopeless. But God loves them anyway... and so should I.
So how do I do that? How do I love these "undesirables" the way God does? And will it matter? I mean, I can't save the world. I'm just one person.
"Don't fail to do something just because you can't do everything." I love this quote from Bob Pierce, the founder of WorldVision. But isn't that true of us, sometimes? The problem seems too big and too overwhelming. We fool ourselves into thinking there is just NO WAY we could ever fix the problem, so we do nothing. And while we sit around doing nothing, the problem gets bigger. But maybe WE are the problem, or at least our way of thinking is. Why would we ever believe that we could fix such big problems like HIV/AIDS, hunger, lack of clean water, and other injustices? On our own there is very little any one of us can do to solve these problems. But do we not believe in The One who can? With Jesus, ALL things are possible.
In Mark 6, the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 teaches us about a God of miracles. 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish fed 5,000 men and an unknown number of women and children. In John, the story goes a little deeper: it was the lunch of a little boy that fed all the people. The disciples searched the crowd for food and found only "a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish." (John 6:9) On his own, that boy couldn't feed 5,000. Likely, he wouldn't have been able to feed even his own family with just 5 loaves and 2 fish. But when you put all you have in Jesus' hands, it's more than enough. Give Jesus your heart and all you have and let HIM do the miracles.
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke those words decades ago, but they still ring true today. We cannot sit back and do nothing. Not when there is injustice in this world. God's children are suffering, and we are called to take action. It is a far, far greater sin to do absolutely nothing than it is to take action and fail. All around us there is a world aching for someone to help. The need is everywhere. People are hungry, people are thirsty, people are naked, people are sick, people are enslaved. What will you do about it?
At the end of my life, I will stand before God and He will ask me two questions:
1) I sent my Son for you; what did you do with Him?
2) What did you do with the rest of my children?
How will I answer Him? How will you?
But there are many who live without these things. They have no luxuries. They pray for their basic needs to be met. They likely live in extreme poverty. And I've probably seen their faces more than I can recall. Sure, we have all seen the kids on Save The Children ads with missing teeth and bones protruding out of their thin skin. We've passed the guy who lives under the freeway on-ramp who carries every worldy possession he owns in a grocery bag. We know them. They're "undesirable" because they look funny, smell bad, or maybe they don't speak our language. They're dirty. They're sad. They're pathetic. We know them. And we likely think, "they chose to live like that." We are wrong.
Rich Stearns wrote the following paragraph in his book, The Hole in Our Gospel:
What I have discovered in my travels to more than forty
countries with WorldVision is that almost all poverty is fundamentally the result of a lack of options. It is not that the poor are lazier, less
intelligent, or unwilling to make efforts to change their condition.
Rather, it is that they are trapped by circumstances beyond their power to change. Robert Chambers, a British researcher, has said somewhat
indelicately, "People so close to the edge cannot afford laziness or
stupidity. They have to work and work hard, whenever and however they can. Many of the lazy and stupid poor are dead." I have found that the poorer people are, the harder they work, usually. In fact, their
daily labor is more strenuous than most of us could tolerate. It is their
circumstances that conspire to prevent their hard work from bearing
fruit.
The truth is that at some point, I too have looked on the poor as "lazy". I probably felt that they are finally reaping what they have sown and paying consequences for poor decisions. And perhaps I've been right - but only a very small percentage of the time, at best. In Guatemala, a country near and dear to my heart, I saw some of the poorest of the world's poor. But I also saw some of the hardest working people in the world: men, women, children, elderly. No one was exempt. They worked hard all day. But their circumstances would never allow for that hard work to pay off. It was then that I realized my view of "poverty" was off. Poverty isn't a choice, but a circumstance.
Faced with the option to work hard and live well, or to be lazy and poor, I believe that the world's poor would work hard and be freed from the shackles of poverty - especially since they already work so hard. But the sad news is that they often don't have that choice. That's why so many illegal immigrants risk their lives for the chance to work hard and receive the reward due their efforts - fair pay for work.
Here in the US, our "poverty" issue is very different from countries like Mexico or Guatemala. Here, we have an upper class, a middle class, and a lower class. Many countries, especially those considered "third-world countries" like Guatemala, have rich and poor and little in between. If a US citizen finds himself homeless or hungry, we have shelters and soup kitchens, funded largely by the generosity of the middle and upper classes. We have resources available to meet our basic needs of food, shelter, water, hygeine, and medical care. But the poor in Guatemala outnumber the rich, and very few resources exist internally to give aid to even a small portion of the poor. Nearly all aid is foreign. And Guatemala is overrun with corruption, leaving little aid for the most needy. The rich will likely never leave their station, and the poor will never get rich. It seems almost hopeless. But God loves them anyway... and so should I.
So how do I do that? How do I love these "undesirables" the way God does? And will it matter? I mean, I can't save the world. I'm just one person.
"Don't fail to do something just because you can't do everything." I love this quote from Bob Pierce, the founder of WorldVision. But isn't that true of us, sometimes? The problem seems too big and too overwhelming. We fool ourselves into thinking there is just NO WAY we could ever fix the problem, so we do nothing. And while we sit around doing nothing, the problem gets bigger. But maybe WE are the problem, or at least our way of thinking is. Why would we ever believe that we could fix such big problems like HIV/AIDS, hunger, lack of clean water, and other injustices? On our own there is very little any one of us can do to solve these problems. But do we not believe in The One who can? With Jesus, ALL things are possible.
In Mark 6, the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 teaches us about a God of miracles. 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish fed 5,000 men and an unknown number of women and children. In John, the story goes a little deeper: it was the lunch of a little boy that fed all the people. The disciples searched the crowd for food and found only "a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish." (John 6:9) On his own, that boy couldn't feed 5,000. Likely, he wouldn't have been able to feed even his own family with just 5 loaves and 2 fish. But when you put all you have in Jesus' hands, it's more than enough. Give Jesus your heart and all you have and let HIM do the miracles.
"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke those words decades ago, but they still ring true today. We cannot sit back and do nothing. Not when there is injustice in this world. God's children are suffering, and we are called to take action. It is a far, far greater sin to do absolutely nothing than it is to take action and fail. All around us there is a world aching for someone to help. The need is everywhere. People are hungry, people are thirsty, people are naked, people are sick, people are enslaved. What will you do about it?
At the end of my life, I will stand before God and He will ask me two questions:
1) I sent my Son for you; what did you do with Him?
2) What did you do with the rest of my children?
How will I answer Him? How will you?
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