“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
~~~1 Peter 5:8 (NIV)~~~
The Miraculous Life “And He always points me to the wedge when you’re cutting firewood. And I don’t know if anybody’s chopped firewood before, but you have this big, strong log. And you take this wedge and you pound this wedge into this big log. And it’s amazing how this very tiny point of a tip is the thing that makes the inroad. It gets in there just a little bit. And as it further goes down it creates greater and greater separation, so much so that this big log splits in two. And I believe that’s the way many mundane, everyday circumstances are happening that priorities begin to get out of wack. We begin to not care or nurture for this most precious relationship called marriage the way that we should”.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Henry Cloud of Boundaries.Me discusses what a safe person is and is not.
“Change does happen, and it starts with you. Henry emphasizes that hope spends time and energy, and we have to accept what’s in front of us when we’re making decisions about unsafe people. We can’t expect someone change if there’s no tangible fruit for it to happen, but as we look forward to the future, we can embrace our capacity to change, set boundaries, employ consequences and build our support systems. When we equip and empower ourselves in such a way, the other person has no choice but to change the way they’re treating you.“
“A safe person helps you become and because of your relationship with them helps you become the best version of who you were created to be. See an unsafe person tries to either they harm you in some way or they try to turn you into somebody you’re not suppose to be. The second thing a safe person does is a safe person also helps you become more connected and able to connect and oriented towards connecting with other safe people. Cause some people that you think are safe, they don’t want you to have other relationships, right, they want to own you, they’re possessive. So we don’t want controlling, possessive relationships, we want relationships that build us to being better relational people. The third thing that a safe person does helps me get closer to God. See good relationships get us out of this, this materialistic, temporal, you know, self-gratification world that calls us to be called to higher purposes. So I think safe people doing all those things and unsafe people make us go the other direction.”
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
Too often we find ourselves unknowingly holding on to our sins at the sacrifice of our relationships with our spouse, family, friends, and most especially our relationship with God.
Why?
Because at the root of every single sin is PRIDE.
And PRIDE is all about me.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”
I realize there is a dry humored and extremely funny British sitcom called “Waiting For God” which aired in the early nineties. Of course it is about those who are in their retirement years, making the best of it as they wait for God to grant them their final rest. Recently I have discovered we need to wait for God, but in another way.
Our world is bent on taking advantage of every second of every hour, filling it with what we consider to be productive activities. Our goal seems to be somewhat like a race. This race we gradually entered as teens, then college preparation, then hitting it hard climbing the ladder of success. Success being a nice home and other acquired possessions, marriage and family, position in our choice of career,…and of course the financial means necessary to have all of this and more. How do we do this? By what we consider to be productive activities.
At the end of this race we hope to have acquired everything and more. At the end of this race we enter the retirement years. At the end of this race we celebrate this monumental milestone, but only for a moment. We very quickly begin to reflect. Where did time go? Was it all worth it? What about the regrets, the sacrifices and fallout, the wrong decisions,…the emptiness.
Not for one second am I saying we should not be productive and have proof of our productivity. Each and every one of us has specific God-given purposes and have been given specific gifts and passions with which to fulfill our purposes in life. But maybe, just maybe we should slow down a bit, pace ourselves throughout this race, and wait for God to guide us along the way. And maybe, just maybe, during those quiet contemplative moments with God we come to realize what’s really important. In doing so we still are able to attain the good life we desired, but without the need to fill every second of every hour with ‘productive activity’ followed by making peace with our past regrets.
Instead we slow down, “smell the roses”, we take the time to look up and grasp the awesomeness of God’s creation. We notice the twinkle in our child’s eye for the first time in a long time. We really feel the love of our spouse and our heart begins to swell. And then we begin to relax a bit. We begin to desire subtle changes in how we think and how we behave. We promise ourselves to not waste another second of our time on empty and hollow pursuits. We come to realize relationships with those closest to us have now become our priority once and for all. And we relish our quiet moments of waiting for God.
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