Control

One of the things that got brought up last week in our bible study was the idea of control. I didn't spend a lot of time with them talking about it, but thought it was an interesting topic for me to let my mind wander with over here. The exercise started when Stanley was talking about the times that God tells us "no" to something we ask. This may mean when you are suffering with an illness that you aren't healed, if you are in need of a job, you don't get it immediately, etc. It might not make sense to us, but we have to believe that God will still provide. That we have to surrender our control over the situation and allow God to work through it. The automatic response is for us to get upset and claim that we don't want to serve a God that lets young fathers die, or doesn't give us a job to work and provide money for our family. Both are valid complaints, but Stanley than offered the option for us to work it out. He asked that you go home and write out what type of God you want. The next thing that he said sort of made me stop. Stanley said, that what we "want" is for us to be God or at the very least to have God think like we do. Just think about that for a moment, we have our ideas of what is right and wrong and we want to have God agree with us.

But thankfully we don't have a God who thinks like we do. We instead have a God who can empathize with our hurts and fears and loves us so much that He freely gives us His grace (the power to endure) to get through those times that don't make sense to us. We have a Lord who loves us so much that He desires us to call him father and have that intimate of a relationship with Him. The thing that it all made me start thinking about is that in order to do that we have to give up a lot of control, or at least or illusion of control. We have this strong desire to work everything out ourselves. We think that if we can just do this or just do that, everything will work out. This isn't to say that we sit around and just wait for God to do everything, but we allow Him to do what He needs to do and understand that if we don't understand, thats ok as well.

As I have been reading Proverbs, I have noticed lately that Solomon has included at least one verse over the past couple chapters that deals with God's path or plan for our lives. My favorite of these is this one, Proverbs 20:24, "The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?" We have this desire to try and understand why God would do something. I personally have asked God "Why" when I knew that even understanding why wouldn't have made it any better. Instead of asking why, I should have been looking for His comfort, His grace.

Stephen Johnson on a couple Wednesday nights ago was talking about a personal experience that he had where God was healing him. Each time that Johnson tried to figure out what was going on, God stopped and told him to just experience it. Of course, being a human, this was done many times during the course of the night. However, the thing that I take for this is that sometimes we have to just sit back and let God work. We have to understand that we might not understand. This goes against everything that we see in this world. Often, we get caught up in trying to control our situations and our realities, when we know that there is very little that we can actually control. So instead of worrying, instead of beating our fists and getting angry, my thoughts are that we should focus on the one who can control everything. We might not understand, but if we try to understand, we might miss the healing.

Lying

I promise that this post isn't going to just be a bunch of untruths that I string together. It mainly is going to be about things that I am seeing during my reading. I had mentioned the whole idea of watching our words brought up by Jacobs in his book, but didn't dive too much into that. But, it did spark a part of me to take notice of those verses while reading Proverbs.

In a recent passage, verse 12, I counted that lying or watching our words is mentioned about 7 times in the 28 verses. So, about 25% of the time in this one chapter, God makes mention of how important our words are. I don't think that I am overstating it when I say that our words matter. If we take just the verses that deal with lying, of the 7 verses, about half, 3 maybe 4 (verse 6), are out right condemning verses. This just speaks to me about what I say and what I should say.

I was telling my email study partner that I often have an urge to tell a lie. And most of the time its for no reason whatsoever. I just get these thoughts that it would be more fun, I guess, to withhold the truth rather than just tell what actually happened. Is it from a desire to make me seem more interesting? Is it just an impulse that my worldly self wants me to act on? Its a real struggle that goes on in my head. I would like to say that all the time I recognize this and choose the right path, but thats not true. See, even in typing out this about lies, I am tempted to lie. Its a never-ending cycle.

This really makes me focus on what I say. The idea that my mind is in constant battle with my words and with the truthfulness of them in question, I have to be diligent to choose carefully. I wish that I did that more. The problem, of course, is that I am lazy. I don't mean that as a condemnation on my lifestyle, I mean that as a fact that I am not as disciplined as I would want. To take the time and watch carefully everything that you say, that takes effort. Most of the time, I think that we don't want to put forth that much energy. I might be alone on this and thats ok, because mainly I am being confessional here.

Thankfully, our salvation does not hinge on being diligent to watch our words or even to keep up our desire to be mindful of things we say. During our bible study on Faith, there was a part that talks about how faith isn't a formula. Well, I think that can be expanded to our whole Christian experience. Its not a formula where we have to act or do a certain thing. Its an experience. Its a changing, growing relationship. We may not do everything perfectly, but because of God's love for us and our love for God, we try. I also think to a O.C. Supertones song that I used to love. The lyric is, "God I failed, but at least you know I tried." That was from their first album, which was released back in 1996. Over the years, that has stuck with me. The reason being, I get the reassurance from God that while I might not always get things right, that I should keep trying because He is so worth the effort.

Proverbs

I am currently reading Proverbs for my personal study. I am reading it along with a friend and emailing thoughts back and forth for our study. I know that I was going to try and tackle one book for a few months, but that really didn't go anywhere. I either didn't read or just wasn't motivated to keep it up. Either way, I am much happier having some one to keep me accountable and to encourage and share my thoughts with. I think those are important things in a study, but I might revisit that before the end of this post.

Right now, I wanted to talk about what we have been reading. We are on chapter 9 of Proverbs today and read chapter 8 yesterday. I include them both here because they fit pretty well together. They discuss the idea of wisdom being readily available for the asking. The imagery of a woman calling us to come and partake of the teachings is very beautiful. I love toward the end of 8, where wisdom says that it was created before the world. That it was the first helper to God. I guess what I take from this is that it is an important attribute. That it is something that we need to help us make it through the trials of this world. If it was so important, that God created wisdom before He started creating the world, why should we assume that we can make it through life without pursuing it?

In chapter 9, there is a very challenging passage. Its in verses 7-9. I usually read in my Every Man's Bible, which is NLT and the reason why most of the links that I give to verses are in that translation. Well, they also give a bit of commentary on certain verses. These verses were chosen. It said that we should accept rebuke with the knowledge that it might be for our betterment. That we shouldn't be so dismissive when some one offers advice that might be helpful. How hard is it to accept that? We live in a society and often a mindset that we know whats best for ourselves. However, isn't that a key component to Christianity? We have recognized that we don't know whats best for ourselves. Instead, we know that God has a better way and let Him guide us in our lives. So, why is it so hard to accept that He might use some one else's words to guide us? I am probably just as bad as anyone else about this. I guess its that idea of control. We are so eager to give up control over our sins and let God give us the freedom from those, but we aren't so eager to give Him our daily lives. Over at Stuff Christians Like, they have a post dealing with that as well.

I have been noticing that not only will I think one thing when I read my bible or when I hear a message, that I see it echoed in other messages that I might hear or blogs that I might read. I think that God is making sure that I get the point, which I know that I need.

I don't think that I will get into the idea of buddy studying today. Maybe tomorrow. I think that I will just let that sit where it is right now. I will leave you with this, a monkey on a Segway. Its as entertaining as it sounds.