Creating our own giants

   I am reading an interesting book titled "Jesus and the Beanstalk". I haven't gotten very far in it, but am already finding the book helpful and encouraging. There is something the author said in the last chapter I read that has stuck with me:

"In a land of giants,  too often we Christians spend so much time contemplating our opponents and weighing the odds,  we defeat ourselves.  The odds are always in favor of the giant, but odds don't win battles. Ask David."

   As I have thought on this, the thought hit me, how often to we create our own giants? There is an age old saying "don't make mountains out of molehills", and more often than not, many of us make something a bigger issue or worry than it should be, and next thing we know we are facing a giant and cowering in fear from something we helped create.

 A personal example: about 15 years ago, I bought a small house here in the same town I am living in. I switched jobs a few years later, and wasn't getting enough hours, especially during the winter. I started using credit cards for necessary and unnecessary purchases and got in over my head. I never got behind on my house payment, but I got behind on other things. I sold the house, moved away, and eventually filed bankruptcy. After I moved back to Ohio, I moved in with my parents and put most of my belongings in storage. I have needed my own place for too long, but for a while finances and poor credit kept me from doing anything, but lately it has been fear. I have created a giant so big of fear of failing again, fear that I'll get my own place and not be able to afford it after all, fear that I'll get sick and won't be able to work..... and more. Goliath would have nothing on this giant I have created.

  At the suggestion of a friend, I have started looking to buying my own place again....and the giant is starting to grow again:

What if I can't get approved for a loan, even though my credit is good again?

What if I lose my job after buying a house?

Can I really afford it?

What if I get a house and it needs something major that I can't afford?

Will I have money for Christmas gifts and other things?

Can I really stand on my own two feet again, or will I fail?

Will I have to eat Ramen noodles for the rest of my life?

  There are other fears and worries that add on to this ever growing giant. Others may look at me and think I am nuts for having these worries, and maybe they are right. I don't have enough confidence in myself, but where is the line between that and not trusting God?

  David had 5 smooth stones, but took Goliath down with one. So what are the stones I can use?

1) Prayer

2) Trusting God

3) The fact that I am making almost $3 an hour more than when I bought my first house...and I had no problem til I switched jobs (and a house I'm looking at is the same price as the one I previously owned)

4) A good credit score

5) Hope

   The biggest thing I have on my side is God. If I pray for His will, and find the place I believe He would want - and yes, I believe it matters - then I shouldn't have any worries. A quote in a fiction novel I read comes to mind, A man was doubting God could work something out, and his friend said "Why don't you make a list of the things you believe God can do for you so He knows not to do the things you don't believe He can do...."Ouch. Maybe the biggest problem we have in creating and then defeating our giants, is we don't trust God enough and we try to do it in our own strength.

  And I am not saying in this post that every giant we face is one of our own making, but I do believe all too often we create the giant by making the issue bigger than it really is, and by letting our fears and worry add to it. If we trusted God more, maybe we wouldn't face so many giants, and maybe they wouldn't be so big to us.

Take this cup from me

It is a yearly tradition for most of my family to go see a Passion Play in Austintown, Ohio. It is very well done, and helps bring the whole reason for Easter home. I always walk away with something new from the Easter story, and this year was no different.

  The scene that stuck out to me this year was when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. The man playing Jesus prayed the words we all have read so many times in the Bible " Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.

  I have read that verse countless times in my life, but it hit me in a new way Saturday as I sat in the darkened church watching the Passion Play. It it me that I too have a cup of suffering, I have prayed and prayed, begged God, cried, yelled at God, only to not have it taken from me. And I am not the only one. We all have our cup of suffering that we'd rather not have. Most or all of us have asked God to change us or a situation, to heal, to move and change someone, and it never happens.

The woman with an unsaved husband who fights her daily about her Christianity

The missionary couple far from home and loved ones, seeing no fruits, but still feeling the call

The grandmother who never gets to see her missionary grandchildren and children

The Christian facing a life of celibacy and loneliness if he doesn't give into his same-sex attractions

The older Christian with the onset of Alzheimer's

The childless couple who are heartbroken and infertile.

  And the list goes on and on.

  We have somehow gotten this idea that the Christian life is sunshine, roses, and rainbows. Maybe we all have a little bit of Joel Otseen in us. Yes, God can deliver, heal, change situations and hearts.....but He doesn't always - at least not in our timing. Every human being is going to have troubles and trials, and Christians don't get an exemption. In fact, some of our troubles and trials come because we are a Christian.
 
  Jesus didn't have to go through with it. He didn't have to die for a world of sinners, most of who would never worship or acknowledge Him. But that was the only way to save the world. He knew what it would cost, what He was going to go through, so the human side of Him asked for His Father to get Him out of it, but if it was the Father's will to go through with it, He was willing.

 I for one, have spent a lot of time bellyaching and whining about my "cup". Paul prayed three times to have his thorn in the flesh taken away, but I have bypassed him many times over in asking God to take away this cup of suffering.

  If I wasn't a Christian, if I didn't have the desire to serve God, it would not be an issue. But if I want His will, and not mine, I have to do it this way.

  What if Jesus had said "wait a minute,,,,, I agree something needs done here, but this whole scourging and cross thing..... that is more than I am willing to go through. Let's find an easier way." It seems ridiculous, but so is any of us thinking we know better than God, and thinking He is going to make our life rosy and easy and that we will always be on the mountain top. Thankfully, there are times in our life when it is easier and we are on the mountain top, but a lot of us have a "cup" that we must drink from often, some of us daily.

  We must all come to the place that Jesus did. Pray if it be God's will to remove it, and it not, His will be done.

 I'm getting there. Maybe it is because I am getting older and getting used to it. The idea that this will never entirely go away isn't as horrifying and hard to handle as it once was. The idea of just surrendering it to God and letting His will be done comes a lot easier than it did years ago.

  Serving Jesus is all about surrender, denying ourselves, and taking up a cross..... and drinking from a cup of suffering, If we truly live for God and not ourselves, that is the way it will be.

It came to pass

 

Someone once said that some of the most encouraging words in the Bible are in the phrase "it came to pass." I did a search for the words in the King James Version of the Bible, and it showed 463 results. That is a lot of uses of the phrase, and that is a lot of things that came to pass. It is one of those things you don't really think about when you read it. I usually don't. But if you do think about it, it is encouraging.

  No matter what we are going through in this life, it will pass. It won't always be in our timing, in fact it may rarely be in our timing, but it will come to pass. Some things may last a lifetime, but even then, they will come to pass.

  I started my current job as a security officer in a hospital back in June. Since I started, I have been working 7am-3pm Friday-Monday. I wanted full time daylight, which I kept getting told would never happen. I had no seniority, and everyone wanted daylight.... if a daylight person were to quit, someone from another shift would want their place.

  I also wanted Sundays off. I hate working Sundays. I believe Sundays are for rest and church. Not for working. But as I learned,  sometimes you don't have a choice. I was also told to dream on about Sundays off.

  A few weeks ago, someone from daylight quit. And sure enough, someone from another shift wanted their position on daylight, so I had no choice.

 And then a new position opened up and was offered to a co-worker who works days and has Sundays and Mondays off. It looked like if she took it, I might finally have full time daylight....... but if she took it, another guard on daylight wanted her days off, so I would still work Sundays. However, if she turned down the new position, I could have it, and would have Sundays off.

  So I prayed about it, and asked some others to pray about it.... and I got the new position. Starting March 10, I will work Tuesday-Saturday, full time, and will have Sundays and Mondays off. I am a bit nervous about the new position, but also excited about an answer to prayer, and excited about being able to be in church again on Sunday mornings.

  I have been praying for quite some time about having Sundays off, and wondered if it would ever happen, but it is going to happen. It will come to pass.

  That may not seem like a big deal to some, and yes, there are people dealing with much worse things than working every Sunday. I do not mean to trivialize the problems others face, but it is a big deal to me, and yet God worked it out. In His time, not mine. Maybe He had lessons for me to learn. I don't know why it took so many months, but I am thankful He answered my prayer.

  There are other things in my life that I want to pass. And they will. We live in such a fast food type of world, that we almost expect God to work the same way. We zoom up to a speaker, yell our prayer into the speaker, pull up to the window and expect Him to have answered it.

  But God doesn't work that way. He doesn't have a drive through for faster service. It doesn't matter how fast we want an answer, or how desperate we are. He will answer in His time, not ours. If you're like me, you hope that verse about a day being as a thousand years doesn't hold true for prayers you pray. Tell God you need something tomorrow and His tomorrow is a thousand tomorrows away.....

 I doubt that holds true, but it is true that whatever we are going through is going to come to pass some day. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe a year or two from now. Maybe when we get to Heaven. Why He doesn't answer prayers faster, we may never know on this earth. But I do know one thing: He has a reason, and we have to trust Him. If we don't trust Him and give up, we will be worse off than if we hung in their and bore our burden or trial.

  No matter what we are going through, we have a hope that it will be over some day. If not on this earth, then in Heaven. And Heaven will be worth it all. And in Heaven, everything we have ever gone through on earth will pass, never to be experienced again.