If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road – abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To that you were called. In Latin America someone who feels sorry for himself is said to look like a donkey in a downpour. If we think of the glorious fact that we are on the same path with Jesus, we might see a rainbow.
Reasonableness is a common thread of our culture. In law, the reasonable man is used as a starting point to determine negligence and liability. In accounting, a reasonableness test is used to evaluate the various line items of the financial statements to determine how much needs to be reviewed or tested. In culture, we use “average behaviors” to determine what is reasonable. Christ tells us to lay all of our concerns before our Lord and Paul adds that we should come boldly before God. While our church culture or past experiences may encourage us to be reasonable or polite in our prayers, scripture dictates both by instruction and example that we should, in fact, take a bold approach.
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If you believe in prayer at all, expect God to hear you. If you do not expect, you will not have. God will not hear you unless you believe He will hear you; but if you believe He will, He will be as good as your faith.
Last week I stayed at the Holiday Inn at Cleveland Clinic while I was seeing doctors and having tests done. (You can read more about that in last week’s post here.) While I have stayed in many hotels with varying levels of service, I’ve not been in one like this before and I really didn’t notice how different it was for at least a day. As I was sitting at dinner in the café on the second evening, I noticed that the din which typically surrounds the restaurant and bar areas was missing. In fact, it was rather quiet. I also noticed that there were more families taking the time to thank God for their food. It then occurred to me that the vast majority, if not all, of the patrons were either ill, caregivers or some combination of the two. As I sat there taking this in, I further realized that the staff was different as well as they were more engaged that I’m used to. With this realization came an awareness, an opportunity and a blessing.
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The thankful heart sees the best part of every situation. It sees problems and weaknesses as opportunities, struggles as refining tools, and sinners as saints in progress.
For those of you that follow my blog closely, you may have noticed that my Monday quotes and the verse of the day have dropped off. Life has been a bit challenging and I’ve had to surrender a bit to maintain my sanity. Life with chronic illness is a battle against both known and unknown factors. It is a battle of the mind and soul as well as the body which often leaves one feeling besieged.
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Despite my chronic illness, I would be considered by many to still be high functioning and unless one knows me, they would be unlikely to recognize my limitations. I have learned over time that when I yield to the needs of my body for rest and watch what I eat, I can function somewhat normally; that said I still struggle. It’s a challenge not to worry about the cost of my illness both financially and as a source of stress to myself, my family and close friends. I also struggle to maintain some sense of control; if I can’t fix my illness than I try to fix other things that don’t matter in the larger scale as they provide some sense of reassurance that things are ok. I also struggle with my self-image. Physically I want to appear normal yet not so normal that people think I’m a hypochondriac. It’s a common struggle for those of us with invisible illnesses. Further, I want to be relevant and useful, but feel that is regularly not the case. The verse above is displayed in our den right beside our TV. I’ve put it there for two reasons. First it is the primary focal point of the room and my focal point needs to be God’s sovereignty over all things. Second, it sits next to the TV as a reminder that God is the final authority on whatever the world offers as truth. Part of that truth is that I need to let go and trust God.
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Whether alone or in a crowd, have you ever wondered where God is? Despite God reminding us throughout scripture that He is in fact with us and will never leave us, we still have our doubts. I’m not sure how it came about, but during a recent worship service I started thinking about the presence of God. If I had to guess, I would assume that Matthew 28:20 was one of the texts used in the sermon. In any event, I’ve been pondering our failure to recognize the presence of God in our lives. I don’t know about you but, I certainly have a tendency to take it for granted and, therefore, fail to recognize it or rely on it when I should. As I’ve considered this problem, there seem to be four primary reasons that we fail to recognize God’s presence in our lives: ignorance, immaturity, impediments and refusal.
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The greater your knowledge of the goodness and grace of God on your life, the more likely you are to praise Him in the storm.
If there is anything that my parents taught me, it was to have a servant’s heart. I don’t recall them ever doing it through instruction, but they certainly did it through example. As a child I remember my mother making lunches for drunks who came to the parsonage from the bar down the street looking for a handout. Never did she speak a disparaging word against them. I remember one long night when a man came to our door drunk and my dad spent the entire evening getting him sober. In the coming weeks he and his family began attending church. In high school and college, I had the opportunity to work with my mother in a small country hospital. As a nurse she had great compassion for her patients and, if needed, advocated for them. At that same hospital I also had opportunities to see my parents work in tandem as Mom was meeting patients’ physical needs while Dad, as a chaplain, was addressing their spiritual needs. Both served in various ways without the need to be praised as their charity was an outpouring of their faith.
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