All of these ideas would certainly bring me happiness…no job, unlimited income, beach living, traveling and having time to enjoy my husband and my hobbies in life.  As a Christian, I am not sure it would bring me joy however.  For in my years on this earth, I have grown to learn that my life in this dimension is not here for my enjoyment.  Rather, it is a training ground for my eternal life in heaven to come.  If I were to spend my days just doing the things that make me happy, I think I would quickly become discontent.  For I have found the things that bring me true fulfillment and joy are those things that I do for God.

I get so excited when we have a harvest moon.  Do you know what I’m talking about?  Have you ever seen it when it looks like you could reach out and touch the beautiful, full, orange moon? I have tried on occasion to photograph it as it appears so huge and majestic on the horizon before ascending into the sky.    No matter how hard I try, I cannot make my photos even closely represent its awesomeness in real life.  Once it ascends into the sky, it’s still pretty but nothing like it is while it is so close to us here on the earth.

Jim and I were talking about it the other day and he reminded me, “Lori, the moon that you see so brilliantly on the horizon is the same moon you see in the sky.  There’s no difference.  It’s just when it is against the big dark sky, you have no perspective as to its size like you do when it is beside something here on earth.”  I thought about that.  Wow.  He’s right.  Sometimes it is so close that I feel like I can touch it and other times it seems so distant, I even forget it is there.  Isn’t that like it is with God?  We often get so wrapped up into our lives that we forget how big God really is.  We look at our problems and lose our perspective.  He seems so distant and uncaring at times.  We pray and pray and never seem to get answers.  We begin to think He can’t handle our problems.  Maybe we need to get involved.  Maybe this job is just too big for God.  We’ve all been there.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded that the God who created the earth and saved us from our sins is the same God who reigns in heaven today awaiting our arrival someday.  As we draw closer and closer to Him, He is magnified—it is as though we can reach out and touch Him.  As the chaos invades our lives, we lose our focus on the important things and start serving our own selves, He becomes smaller and smaller as we fade farther and farther away from Him into our deep, dark sky so to speak.

Maybe we need to adjust our thinking.  For example, what does your prayer list look like?  Mine usually has things like, please sell my house, help me sell houses and books so I can make a living, protection over my husband, children and their families, etc.  You get the picture.  I challenge you this week to forget your wish list as you have your daily devotions.  Spend time simply focusing on how big and wonderful God truly is.   Praise Him for loving you and caring for you even when you don’t feel Him so close to you right now.  Instead of asking Him to do things on your checklist, ask Him what you can do for Him.  Ask The Holy Spirit to make the requests on your prayer list be His requests and not yours.  Beg God to come near—let you feel how huge He really is and how small the sufferings in this life are in comparison to that which is eternal to come.

For the same God who walked along with the disciples here on earth is the same God who has now ascended into the sky into His heavenly realm.  He wants us to cling to Him and know of His majesty even through the tough times in life.  He doesn’t want our joy to be dependent on our circumstances or surroundings; rather, He wants to fill us with joy that goes beyond anything we can imagine or explain–just like the difficulty in conveying the true beauty of the harvest moon in a photograph.

God desires us to draw near.  Even when He seems so distant and far from our reach, cry out to Him!  He’s still the same, it’s just that our perception has been altered.  He wants to be SO BIG and bright in our lives that we will no longer even see the chaos, our suffering won’t matter anymore and our wish list will surprisingly become insignificant.  He wants to change our dark skies to blue!  The truth is, He is way bigger than anything we face in this life.

James 4:8 (NKJV)  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

http://seg.sharethis.com/getSegment.php?purl=http%3A%2F%2Fjusttryingtobeablessing.wordpress.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost-new.php%3Fpost_type%3Dpost&jsref=&rnd=1327890052947

Before we were married, Jim took me and the kids—his and mine—to Gatlinburg for a long weekend so that we could all get to know each other a little better.  We had all gone hiking up one of the mountains in the state park where he planned to propose to me during the trip.  However, one of the kids was sick and it just didn’t seem to be the right environment as she whined up and down the mountain, so he kept my ring in his pocket and continued to watch for the perfect moment to ask me for my hand in marriage.

There weren’t a lot of parking spaces near the trail we were hiking on so we had to park on a small spot on the side of the skinny mountain road on a very sharp incline.  When we were done hiking and all piled back into the car, Jim put his foot on the gas pedal to leave but we didn’t move.  He tried gunning it a couple of times and still nothing.  So the boys climbed out to see what was going on and why we weren’t moving.  The back tire was hanging off the edge and they thought maybe it wasn’t getting enough traction, so with the two boys pushing, Jim tried again to no avail.  Some nice hikers saw us trying to get out of the parking spot and offered us a hand too.  Before we knew it, there were about five men pushing from behind to get us on our way.  They pushed and pushed and again…nothing.

Then one of the men came from behind the van, knocked on Jim’s window and asked, “Do you have your emergency brake on by any chance?”  Much to Jim’s dismay, he reached down and low and behold, found the brake on.  It made sense because we had been parked on such a steep incline, he just forgot to take it off when we started again.  We all laughed as we realized that we just made about five strangers sweat and work to try to move our van that was never going to move even if there were ten pushing!  Once he released the break, he easily pulled out of the spot with no help at all!  Had Jim not been so distracted about once again not finding the perfect moment to propose as he had planned and not been so tired from the trip, he probably wouldn’t have been so preoccupied and forgot to release the brake when we were leaving.

I think about this and still giggle to this day.  Poor guy had a plan and between the kids and I, it kept being thwarted.  I think about that story and can relate it to our Christian walks.  How many of us feel as though we are in out of control situations, like being parked on the edge of a cliff on a steep incline?  Our first inclination is to put our emergency brake on and stop everything isn’t it? You know…take control to make sure we are safe.  Often we feel like we push and push and never get anywhere.  Or sometimes when we find our plans not going as we thought, we get tired, and we simply loose our focus on God where our true power lies.   Sometimes, we just forget that we have God’s power over us when we are in scary situations as we feel weak and vulnerable.  There is no need to put on the emergency brake.  It might require our friends who are not in the middle of our situations to come alongside to remind us that we need to let go, or release the brake so to speak though when we can’t see it ourselves.  As Christians, we are given God’s power through His Holy Spirit.  With God on our side, we should have no fear.  If we simply release our control, God is free to show His power and keep us safe from those things that cause us to fear and prevent us from moving forward.

My prayer for you is that you will call on God’s power in your life this week.  May He be more real to you than ever as you cling to Him through your trials, looking to Him for His mighty power to get you through.

Isaiah 40: 28-31 (NKJV)

²⁸ Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
²⁹ He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
³⁰ Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
³¹ But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

Don’t you just love little kids and what they say?  I was having dinner with my grandson this week and my daughter was telling me he had gotten into a bit of trouble with the teacher last week.  Apparently he had not finished his homework on time.  The teacher asked him, “Brycen, why isn’t your homework done?  You’ve had a whole week to do it.”  He looked the teacher in the eye and said, “I’m a busy guy.  I didn’t have time to complete it!”  Needless to say, mom got a call and the issue of unfinished homework was resolved.

As I was hearing the story I asked, “What kind of homework could you possibly have in kindergarten anyways?”  He was telling me he had to practice his letters and read a book every week.  I said, “Do you know how to read already?” His answer was, “I’m working on it Grandma!”

Yesterday Jim and I went to breakfast at our favorite Saturday morning pancake house for brunch.  Neither of us wanted to stare at the wall behind us so we both sat on the same side of the table that faced out to a huge wall of windows.  As we were sitting there waiting for our food, it came to my attention that there was one tree out of several planted in a row that still had all of its dead leaves from fall hanging on it.  I laughed because I thought maybe it was not a real intelligent tree or something…maybe confused a bit?   I said something to Jim and he said oak trees do that.  I looked into it and found out that oak trees are the only deciduous trees that hang onto their leaves until winter once they die.  Most trees shed their leaves in the fall as they die as a means of survival through the cold winters.

As I pondered this scenario, I thought the tree just looked a bit silly for hanging onto all of those dead leaves…oak or not.  Then my thoughts went immediately to Christians.  Have you ever met someone who says they are a Christian but never seem to be able to shed the old dead life and embrace their new life in Christ?  I think perhaps others look at them and think the same thing I thought about the oak tree…don’t they look silly?  Perhaps they’ve already learned that if the new believer would just let go of the old and give God control, it is a lot easier to move forward in the new life.  However, some of us just come into our new lives with more baggage than others.  I’m not saying it’s OK to remain in the sinful activities we once did as an unbeliever.  However, we must let go of the reigns of our lives and allow God to work in our new lives to help us make changes. This is how we survive and thrive as Christians.  We can choose to give it all over quickly and easily or we can hang onto the old and take more time getting to the fullness of the salvation we have received once He’s had the time to do His work in us.

When I think of oak trees, I think they’re a pretty strong tree. So this analogy wasn’t working real effectively because I couldn’t criticize them for doing what they were created to do.  The fact is, the oak tree gets to where the other trees do but only when new growth from within their branches forces the leaves to fall to the ground.  This being unlike most other trees who recognize that the dead leaves are hazardous to their well being and allow them to fall away quickly so they can survive the winter and make room for new life in the spring. I’m making this sound like the trees have a mind and a choice on how this process works.  However, they don’t.  They are just doing what God created each one of them to individually do in order to make it through this life.  He knows what’s going to be best for each one so He helps each, individually, make its way to full and healthy maturity.

I think the lesson is this.  We as Christians have all accepted God’s gift of salvation in our lives and each one of us has a path to travel in order to receive our new life in its fullest dimension.  We can’t look at the person next to us who needs to hang onto the old life a little longer before they fully understand their new gift and judge them like they are false or not good Christians.  God created each one of us differently.  So what if we don’t fit the mold of a model new believer? I’m not saying it’s OK to continue in our sin.  But if we truly seek God and His wisdom, He will work from within to help us purge the old stuff out of our lives so that He can bring new growth to us in His time.

Is there something that is hindering you from letting go of the past?  Do you feel a little silly when you look around and no one else seems to be struggling like you?  Don’t worry.  Keep praying and be patient.  God has a plan just for you.  He’s already at work helping you from within even when you don’t see the evidence on the outside yet.  For when it is the right season, God will bless you and give you more than you ever imagined.  Don’t look at your struggles as a sign of weakness.  Even though the oak tree takes its time as opposed to others, it is a very strong and noble tree.  Just as you too, in God’s time will be strong and wise as you allow God to work in your life, helping you to push out the things in your life that are pulling you down.

So don’t allow others to question you or judge you for the path God is taking you on.  Rather, as Brycen might do, look them in the eye and say, “Even though God is a very busy Guy, He has all the time in this world to help me make it through this life here on earth. This Christianity thing is going to take me some time to perfect, but don’t you worry…God and I are working on it!”

2 Corinthians 5:17(NKJV)   Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

Philippians 1:6, 9-11(NKJV) …being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ; … And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment,  that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.