Who vs. What

There is this conversation that I seem to continually have with God.  It honestly should have only happened once, but we have it on a regular basis.  I like to ask God what He wants me to do.  You know, “What great task do you have for me God?”  He reminds me that I am getting ahead of myself and He is more interested in who I am.

            I’ve heard that restlessness is something that plagues a man throughout his entire life.  I think I believe that.  It’s like when things start to lose their shine, when I feel like I’ve been standing still I get figity.  I begin to pelt Him with questions about the role I’m supposed to play and the things He wants me to do.  When I do this I have a tendency to take my focus off of the kind of person I should be.  But you see I think that God is more concerned about who we are because God can use someone who loves Him to do, well, anything. 

            It makes since because Jesus does say, “Seek first the kingdom of God and it’s righteousness and all these things will be given to you.”  Oswald Chambers points out that Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.”  Mr. Chambers then goes on to say that purity affects vision. 

            So I guess that when I get a bit frustrated with where I am in life, with what I’m “doing”, I should focus my attention to loving God, being the right kind of person

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

   What is it about a cold that turns men into sissies?  I played almost an entire year of football on a fractured foot, I can handle pain, but the minute I get a cold I want someone to make me some food and rub my back.  I seem to get them whenever the weather changes, and you would think that after recovering from so many of them I would realize that I’m not going to die from a sinus infection; in fact, I’ll be just fine.

            There is this “common cold” that seems to infect most people who claim Jesus as Lord.  We call it apathy.  It’s when we get bored, we feel dry, and we say things like, “God feels so distant.”  I can almost picture myself plucking the pedals off a flower in a grassy meadow comforting myself with a game of “He loves me; me loves me not.”  Maybe it’s just me.

            But I came across some scripture in Romans chapter 5 that comforts me during these spiritual sinus infections (sorry, I had to say it).  Paul tells us of two different ways that God shares His love with us.  The first one is found in verse 5, “…because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit…”.  These are the times when the air is thick with God’s presence, you know that He’s there and you know that He loves you because you can feel it.  The second way is in verse 8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  He doesn’t just tell us, He shows us.  No matter how apathetic I feel I have a day, an actual real historical point in time that I can look at and know that God loves me.  How do I know?  He died for me, even when I wasn’t who I should be. 

            It reminds me of a marriage.  From what I hear a married couple doesn’t always feel the same way about their spouse as they did on their wedding day.  Rumor has it they get frustrated and tired of each other.  Good thing love isn’t a feeling, but a truth.  Feelings are fleeting and people are finicky.  It takes me a week to decide how I feel about a hair cut. The love that exists between a husband and wife isn’t validated solely by how they feel about one another, but also by an actual day, a point in time when they stood before God and man and made an oath to love the other regardless.

            I guess this means I can put the flower down.  I really didn’t like the meadow anyway.