Hey guys! How was your Labor Day weekend?

As for me, the highlights of my weekend were:

  • Drumming
  • Having an epiphany while sitting on the trunk of my car reading a rather helpful article, then having a couple drive up to me and ask what time my church started
  • Designing
  • Drumming
  • Hearing a cop relate The Hunger Games to the Bible
  • Art
  • Biking

It was a beautiful weekend for biking. Anyone else get out?

There are three other things, but they are not quite as self-explanatory.

Starting not one but TWO jobs this week.

The first is a job at a crowdsourcing agency, which I’m pretty excited about. The second is taking care of preschoolers for a couple hours. That one’s way beyond my comfort zone. Woo!

Giving myself an hour before bed to read and write.

This a habit I somehow stumbled upon in high school that I lost along the way. I blame the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

This weekend I picked it up again. I’ve been writing in a journal. An actual journal. Not just typing on my laptop like I usually do. I write slower than I type, but when I write in a real journal, I tend to write only what’s important, what’s really on my mind. (Yes, I have a rambling problem… I know. Me? Crazy.) Marking up a page causes me to slow down, let myself feel, let myself remember. I write to God because my journal isn’t listening and doesn’t have any power.

Believing again

Believing in God’s power through prayer, that is. Here’s a little something God’s teaching me about prayer this week:

If you don’t pray, it’s because you don’t believe God — in and of Himself, even apart from your own human work — is powerful to affect aspects of your life and your world. It doesn’t mean you don’t have time to pray. Because that time you would be spending on praying, you are actually spending trying to manage the problems and responsibilities in your life all by your lonesome.

Is God not the one overseeing and administrating all the aspects of your life? Is He reluctant to intervene? Then continue in your toilsome, lonely labor, and pray not. For if God is unfaithful and lazy to hear and respond to our prayers, then our best shot is to use whatever device we deem necessary to gain control over the people and circumstances in our lives.

If we cannot ask God to work in our lives, we will end up undertaking the responsibility only a divine god could handle. We will become manipulative and anxious, and, soon enough, bitter and complacent, with nothing to show for it but a sense of learned helplessness.

I am writing this to myself. Believing in a weak, unresponsive God is a habit of attitude I often fall into. It’s a stupid habit, and I’m turning from it. So I’m gonna start praying, and believing that God will respond to each and every prayer I send up, and in a powerful way.

I’m gonna stop feeling helpless and blaming people and circumstances and complaining, and I’m gonna stay faithful. Because I have a God who is faithful, and who tells me to obey no matter what.

I’ll be looking for His answer. I will expect it. I will believe in His promises before they actually happen. (Hey, it already worked for my job situation. And all the mercy I have received for the past 20 years of my life.)

 

Moral of the story

Let’s change this world from the inside out. Starting with our own hearts. But even when we can’t change the whole world, let’s be faithful with what we do have.
Then, when we’re given more, we’ll be ready for it.
  1. What are your dreams for the future?
  2. What responsibilities do you have in your life right now?
  3. Are you being faithful in your current responsibilities?
  4. When God looks at you, do you think He sees someone whom He’s excited to entrust with fragile, valuable things?