Wading through life

Ever wonder what of you is supposed to stay, and what of you is supposed to go?

I do.

People often say: God loves you just the way you are. He created you that way. He designed you special to do things for Him only you can do.

And other people say: You can’t keep doing things the way you do them and expect to get anywhere. Or, you’re never going to be comfortable following God. Or, God’s going to ask you to do things that don’t come natural.

And still others say: He loves you where you’re at, but loves you too much to leave you there.

At my new roomy’s prompting, I took another personality inventory tonight. Same story, different test. It of course had a unique slant and offered more valuable insight than I could possibly retain, let alone put into action.

As I was taking the test, fresh off another zombie-inducing day at work, I was reminded of a few things:

• I am the doormat-of-a-person I frown upon when I see it in others, reminding me that we tend to be annoyed most about stuff that actually strikes deepest into our own hearts
• I don’t enjoy much about leadership and I don’t know why, especially since I supposedly have a spiritual gift of leadership
• I lack direction in my life because, among other reasons, people like me tend to lack direction

Roommate Dan is pretty much exact opposite of me. It must work only because, well, I can pretty much work with anybody. I’m flexible. I’m a mediator. I avoid conflict. I’m steady.

Dan is the excitable visionary. During J-term of his senior year of college, he didn’t take any classes because he wanted to spend time figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. He hadn’t even heard of pharmaceutical sales at that point. But a couple weeks later, he knew he wanted to be a pharma rep. And once he got a job doing that after college, he knew he wanted to be one of the best in the country. So, he promptly made himself No. 16 out of 400 or so. Then he decided he wanted to be a district manager and, a few years later, here he is a district manager. He owns a home he’ll surely profit from when he sells it and moves to Grand Rapids. But even if he doesn’t sell it, that’s okay, because his employer will take it under it’s loving wings.

I, on the other hand, took J-term of my senior year to work and pay bills I still haven’t paid off. Then I graduated from college, went to England and Scotland, acquiring more bills, and came home to help a friend’s dad hang drywall. Then I got a crap job in Ann Arbor that could hardly pay the bills and am working a job that does only slightly better at paying the bills, but does a decent job at creating a retirement account that they’ll probably expect me to donate back to them when I die. Four years and a couple months later, I seem to have less of an idea of what I’m supposed to do with the next 2/3 of my life. All I know is that I don’t want to keep working to pay bills. And that reminds me, I own a home that I’d love to loose only a few thousand on. It’s easy to forget about that when you aren’t actually living in the house you own, but in the far nicer home of your roommate, to whom I give a few hundred he doesn’t need each month.

Dan makes life happen. Life happens to me. (To the extent life happened to the Lost Boys of Sudan? Of course not. I’m venting. I know life isn’t rough for me.)

So, with natural eyes and natural understanding, it’s hard to believe I’m okay and that I’m just the way God wants me. With my welder’s helmet spiritual eyes, it’s maybe a little more believable, but still a stretch. God doesn’t want me yoked to debt, He doesn’t want me wandering around aimlessly and He doesn’t want me to live a passionless life.

And now I’m going to end, because I’ve again stayed up too late doing nothing of consequence, which is probably atop the list of things I’d like to see go.

…one of your top fantasy picks (Terrell Owens) tries to committ suicide.

Tell me that doesn’t sound like one of the worst omens ever for a fantasy football failure.

Here’s how to live to tell of it:

http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Long-Fall

I think I’ve written about this before, but I love it when God kinda preps me for teaching that is coming my way. A few weeks ago, I read through James and was really… not so much convicted, but reminded… of the power of our tongue. Then Pastor Scott preached on it about a week later and has continued down the road of how our words impact our lives way more than we give them credit for.

James 3:6 says, among other things, that “the tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature…” The phrase “course of nature” really jumped out to me, so I read up on it a bit. It could also be translated: “wheel of life”… or “the whole course of life.” Basically, our tongues have the ability to ruin (set on fire) our whole lives.

But our tongues also have the ability to bless our whole lives, when harnessed by the Holy Spirit. James says in verse 8 that no man can tame the tongue. But we know that God can do anything, so He can surely tame it for us. And He’s actually already gone a long way toward doing so by giving us His word. One simple way to start taming our tongues is to speak the words of God found in scripture.
So anyway, this whole power of words thing has been going through my mind for a few weeks now. Just now, as I was doing some lunchtime reading in Numbers, I was given another case study.

I’ve really been enjoying the Old Testament reading I’ve been doing. I’m going through a 61-day Bible survey right now that takes me through the key chapters of each book. I’m then going to do a similar chronological survey before launching into a full out, one year Bible read-through starting in January.

Numbers has proven to be a pretty interesting book. I was supposed to move on from it a couple days ago, but I’ve kinda gotten engrossed in the story, so I’ve been reading additional chapters. Moses’ heart for the people is simply amazing. And this thought just came to me: I wonder if that’s the main reason God chose him. I’ve often been curious why God chose Moses. And now I wonder if it was mostly because God knew His people would rebel time and time again and would need a leader to interceed and repent for them time and time again, lest He smite them. I can’t even recall how many times it says things along the lines “And the LORD’s wrath was stirred…” and Moses pleads with the Lord to not consume them all with His fire, or at least gets Him to lessen the punishment.

And now this brings to mind another revelation. Jesus takes that same role to the next level. He’s super-sized Moses. God knew His people (us) would continue to rebel and complain and that we’d need a leader who was willing to interceed and repent on our behalf, lest God smite us. I had never connected the ideas. For some reason, having read about all that Moses went through for the Israelites to stave off God’s wrath gives me more respect for Jesus. He’s essentially still going through it with us each time we sin.

Sorry for the tangent…

Regarding spoken words: In chapter 20, the people were again complaining about their circumstances. This time, they had no water. So, God told Moses to speak to a rock ( v. 8 ) and water would come forth. But what does Moses do? He smacks the rock with his staff. Twice. Water comes forth, out of God’s mercy, but Moses had made a major boo-boo. After all he’d been through and all he’d done to get the people into the Promised Land, he himself wouldn’t enter because of his disobedience. Aaron too.

God wanted Moses to speak to the situation. He didn’t want him to wave his magic wand at it or tap it with his stick. He wanted him to call the water forth from the rock with his words. Both methods seem equally supernatural from my perspective, probably yours too. Either way it was a miracle, so what’s the big deal? Besides the obvious Because God told Moses to do it that way, what else is there?

Drawing from a point Pastor Scott made a couple weeks ago, I think God is in the business of training us to be like Him. Scott suggested that when God sat Adam down in the Garden and had him name the animals, it wasn’t just a “quality time” experience for them. He was teaching Adam how to rule and have dominion through his spoken words. When you name something, you own it. God spoke the universe into existance. He called (named) the light “day” and the dark “night.” He owns the universe. And we are to be like him. So, it’s quite possible God was doing this with Moses as well. He wanted Moses to speak to the situation, own it, having dominion over it and see it change. Order out of chaos, just like creation.

So, assert your God-given authority. Speak to your situations. Own them. See them change.

PS: I promise more Tozer is coming soon.

Here’s a big irritation I run into way more than I feel I should: something won’t be working, and I of course look to myself first as the reason it isn’t working. Did I do it wrong? Did I miss a step? Did I break it in the process? Am I a moron? I’ll spend hours or days or weeks trying to figure it out and fix what I must have messed up.

And then I’ll resolve that maybe I’m not in the wrong… and maybe the thing just wasn’t made correctly or is broken. I send it back or get it fixed and viola! It works! And those hours and days and weeks of stress and labor were in vain.

I bring this up because Scott and I were setting up the garage door opener and every thing was working great–except for the sensors, which actually play a pretty large role in the operation of a garage door. It won’t go down if they aren’t working properly unless you hold the mounted down button the whole time.

We couldn’t get the sensors to sense each other. One sends an infrared signal to the other; when the signal is interrupted, the door stops going down. Since the signal was perpetually broken in our setup, the door wouldn’t go down.

Naturally, we thought we were doing something wrong–weren’t lining them up properly or something. So, we played with them for hours. We checked all the wires to see if we had caused a short somehow. We read and re-read the installation instructions. And then we conceeded defeat.

Scott called the company a couple days later and received new sensors yesterday. He installed them and it of course now works. He e-mailed: “It’s so easy to line the sensors up when they are working.”

No kidding.

This happened with a computer motherboard of mine and a couple other situations. It’s actually still a lingering problem with some new hard drives I bought for my computer.

Just really irritating.