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What Are You Trying To Say, God?

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Many years ago, my husband and I were at a crazy point in our lives, let alone our marriages. No, things between US were fine. It was the typical young couple stuff, though: I was teaching full-time and had just finished my Master’s, and my husband had finished his bachelor’s after years of selflessly working all day and then taking a full courseload at night, driving an hour each way to school in order to do it. With our degrees behind us and our jobs settling down, we decided the time was right to start a family.

And it didn’t go so well at first. Don’t get me wrong, all the attempting was nice, but there were no results.

Then one morning, I had a revelation. It wasn’t the kind where God speaks to you in a booming voice or where angels come down with a banner. No burning bushes, no tongues of fire… just the knowledge of something, and this feeling that it was 100% correct.

We’d let church attendance slip by. We’d been raised in church, dated in church, and were married in church, but between grad school and night school and coaching the cheerleading team and trying to keep up a house we’d just bought, we’d let that “day of rest” concept go a little farther than we should have. Instead of going to church, it was the time we usually slept in and got ready for all the crazy of the week ahead.

So this knowledge I woke up with that day was that we were never going to have a baby if we didn’t put our relationship with God back on the front burner. I told my husband my theory, and he kind of scoffed: “It doesn’t work that way, God doesn’t hand out presents for good behavior.” But he did get up and get dressed for church, mostly because I explained it this way: WHY should God trust us with a baby if we’re not going to raise it in church?

We were pregnant the next month.

Now, however, we’re in another dry spell. A house we’ve had on the market for four years finally had an offer and we had a signed contract… they backed out yesterday. We had a tenant renting the house for several years, just to offset the cost of us having TWO mortgages, and she skipped out last summer owing months of back rent and an $8,000 repair bill. We filed the paperwork to recover that money in small claims court, and three days later she declared bankruptcy… for the FOURTH TIME. We cannot do anything to her, and we now have a $10,000 loan to pay back for the repair and cleaning of our house, on top of the fact that we aren’t selling it next month like we’d planned.

And where is God in all this? He’s sitting back, watching us struggle, waiting for us to come to him.

I know, I just painted a picture of a really vindictive God, and that’s the farthest thing from the truth. He didn’t DO all of this to us, but I know in my heart that he isn’t lifting a finger to get us out of our troubles so long as we have been neglecting going to church. And yes, for a variety of reasons, it’s been several weeks since we’ve gone. (I know, you’re probably wondering why you’re reading a post by a Christian blogger who hasn’t been to church since early March!)

Yesterday, when our realtor texted me to tell us the deal had fallen through, I didn’t panic. I didn’t get upset or get angry. I’ve already spent the last week and a half creaming internally and plotting revenge about the horrible woman who left us with a nasty debt. I’ve wasted more than a week of my life in totally pointless anger, and I don’t want to do that again. Instead, I felt a really firm sense of peace and conviction and I knew the answer just as surely as if God had actually spoken it: I can’t help you until you come back to me. I can’t do anything about your troubles until you bring them and lay them at my feet.

Make no mistake, we haven’t “left” God, and there’s no way in the world he’s “left” us. But we are learning for ourselves what it feels like to try to do it on your own, and let me be the first to tell you that it’s not possible. You will hit every obstacle head-on, even a few that you made for yourself, if you don’t place your trust where it belongs.

Wrapping up this post now… I have to go wake my family for church.

Faith Like A Goldfish

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No, not “faith like the kind a goldfish has,” I mean, “faith in God like I have faith in my goldfish.” Well, now that you think about it, that’s hardly any better. Let me explain.

I am an EARLY riser, and by early, I mean 4am. It’s a long story, but it works for me. I get up without waking the rest of my family, let the dog out of my daughter’s room, head downstairs to take the dog for a quick walk, make the coffee, etc. Somewhere between getting downstairs and taking the dog out, I feed my other daughter’s fish. It’s one of those cute little wispy black fish with the bulging eyes, and in the dark house it’s hard to see him.

But I know he’s there, and I feed him.

I used to cringe while turning on the lights, expecting to see he’d betrayed my by floating belly up during the night. But no, every time, he’d swim to the top and wait for his food. Now, I don’t need to turn on the lights, I just drop in a pinch of fish flakes before heading out with the dog.

And that’s how my faith works, too.

I don’t need the proof of turning on the lights or demanding a sign of some kind. I know God’s there. I can’t see him, but he’s never let me down by floating dead in the tank (that was a metaphor). I don’t have to wait to see if he’s still swimming (and deserving) before feeding him my morning prayers. I know he’s there, swimming around happily looking back at me.

That’s how faith works. Faith is just believing, even when you have absolutely no reason to believe. It’s trusting, when all you have to go on is your gut feeling that you’re being loved and watched over. And really, when it comes down to it, it’s also deciding. You decide to put your life and your trust and your faith in God, even when you can’t turn the lights on.

 

You’re Not Blaming God for This One!

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Every once in a while, I have to write an angry post. This is one of them. You might automatically think I’m angry at God, but I’m not. I’m not even angry at the person I’m going to tell you about…well, not very angry. I’m angry at the rest of the people in this saga, the community of believers who just slandered God so horribly that it makes you think back fondly to the days we used to stone people for blasphemy.

A horrible, horrible thing has happened: our tiny, close-knit, “everybody knows everybody” community suffered a great loss. A 16-year-old girl died in a car accident Sunday morning. It has shaken everyone who even knew where her school was, let alone those who actually had the privilege of knowing her.

Sadly, she’d only gotten her license two months ago. She was driving fast enough to flip her SUV when she went off the road…at 3:30 in the morning, after leaving a party.

I sound like I’m judging her, but I’m not. I promise. Yes, statistically there’s an excellent chance that alcohol or texting were involved, but there’s just as likely a chance that inexperience and exhaustion were the culprits. Perhaps she fell asleep for a split second and jerked the wheel when she realized she was going off the road; it doesn’t have to be drunk driving.

But here’s the anger: the response from the community–even those who claim they are Christians–has been to blame God for this. Oh, they don’t realize they’re blaming him, but that’s exactly what they’re doing. Facebook posts and text messages of support and other notes of reassurance have all said the same thing: God called her home.

“God has picked another flower from his garden to brighten up Heaven!”

“We are often laid low by God’s plans, but we know it’s his will!”

“God called another one of his angels home!”

STOP IT. This isn’t God’s fault. I refuse to believe it was his will, either. I know that God had a plan for this beautiful, talented girl, and it involved college, marriage to a man he chose for her years ago, and raising up children in the way that they should go. Dying alone in an upside down car when she should have been home in her bed was not his plan, so stop blaming him for this one!

The sad thing is people think they’re being supportive when they say these things. They think they’re sharing words of encouragement. THEY’RE NOT. They’re telling two parents whose own hearts broke when the police knocked on their door that GOD DID THIS TO THEM. And why? Because he was bored and wanted to hang out with this girl for a while? Because he wanted another angel nearby? NO.

God didn’t do this. God’s perfect design for us included free will, and that free will led to a decision to drive a car at a high rate of speed at the wee hours of the morning. Free will led to the person who purchased alcohol for the kids at this party; we don’t know that the driver had even had anything to drink, but we do know there was alcohol there. If there was texting involved, free will led to the driver picking up her phone. Even if it was just an animal crossing the road in front of her and she swerved to miss it, it wasn’t God’s will to kill a beautiful girl this week.

You might think, “But why didn’t he do something to stop it?” and that would be a really valid question. After all, by some versions of the story, this driver had just dropped a friend off at home before heading to her house. Why did the other girl get spared?

Who knows? But when we put the blame on God, even if we think we’re saying something kind, we destroy his name and his reputation for the believers and non-believers alike.

Now, this girl was an active Christian who openly professed her love for God and his son, Jesus Christ. Is she sitting at the Lord’s feet right now, worshiping and praising his name? YES. But for those of us who are left behind, instead of blaming God for our hurts we should focus on the love she had for God and the hope of salvation that we all can share.

Separation of Church and Hate

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Get ready…we have our first official announcement of an intent to run for President in 2016. We’re still in the first quarter of 2015, but so what? Let the games begin.

There is so much wrong with the election process in America, starting with the fact that you have to be rich and have rich friends to even run for office. If you don’t meet those two criteria right there, you might as well not even bother running. You can’t become the proverbial dog catcher in your town without the funds to make all those yard signs, if nothing else.

But once we move into the upper echelon of elites who have the power and wealth to run for higher offices, the real problems begin, mostly in the fact that eager campaigners who haven’t darkened the doorsteps of any church in this country since their own wedding days are now going to claim to speak for Jesus in an effort to win voters. What am I rambling about?

All the “good Christians” who are going to make promises to hopeful voters about returning this country to God.

In God we trust, one nation under God, prayer in schools, Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve… you’re going to hear it all over the next year and a half of your life. Abortion is murder, homosexuality is an abomination, women don’t need equal pay because the Bible says they should be submissive unto their husbands… it’s all about to come pouring out, and God is going to get blamed for all of it.

The sad thing is, the “good Christians” who are both running and voting are going to blame God for what changes they think he wants in this country, and the atheists are going to blame God for every dumb-assed remark these campaigners say. As I sit here writing this, Phil Robertson’s most recent rant about raping and murdering atheists is making headlines all around the internet, as is video of the interview in which Senator Ted Cruz’s father supposedly said we should round up the atheists and put them in camps.

When did being a “good Christian” mean you had to act like a pompous moron and slander the name of God? Do you ever wonder if God is sitting there face-palming himself and thinking, “Senator, you just caused 4,000 people to turn their backs on ever knowing me?” When did knowing God stop being about love and start being about one-upmanship and campaign victories?

Folks, it’s so easy. It’s so incredibly easy to know and love God. Not only that, it’s so easy to PROVE you’re a good Christian. Just love people! That’s all it takes to prove it. Let every decision you make demonstrate and be based on this one fact: every single person you bump into is a child of God, made by God, loved and adored by God. If you act at all times as though you genuinely believe that, you won’t have to prove anything. The world will see it plain as day.

What Exactly Is A “Safe” Sin?

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I wish I could give credit where credit is due, but I swear I’ve completely forgotten which dynamic speaker presented this concept in a speech. God knows who he is, and I’m grateful to him for coming up with this idea.

This speaker was outlining a serious problem within the Christian church, one that spans across all denominations, and that’s an idea he called “safe sins.” It helps explain why Christians get absolutely up in arms about certain social issues while absolutely ignoring our own sins. Here’s what he meant:

1. Abortion – it’s 99% safe to safe that I’m never, ever going to have an abortion. At this point in my life, if I ended up pregnant it would actually be kind of funny. My husband and I have teenaged kids, and while I would have loved to have had a bigger family, we decided not to have more after our youngest was diagnosed with severe autism. But if I were to find out tomorrow that I was pregnant, it would be strange but it would also make for a good story about a “late in life” baby to keep us young.

And that’s why it’s completely safe for me to condemn abortion. I’m never going to do it, so it doesn’t feel wrong to speak out against this kind of evil. I will never be guilty of speaking out, then sneaking off and committing this sin myself.

2. Homosexuality – this is the one that everybody rails against, and even though it’s funny to say, “Methinks he doth protest too much,” I’m sorry, but–come on, people–Michele Bachmann’s husband is absolutely 100% gay, despite their pray-the-gay-away therapy business. But if you’re certain you’re a heterosexual, again, you’re never going to find yourself accidentally giving in to temptation and accidentally having gay sex. It’s “safe” to speak out against homosexuality and gay marriage since you’re never going to be a hypocrite here.

3. Internet Pornography – Again, this is somehow a big topic for Christians who want to point to the depravity of our society. Most adults I know don’t even know how to find online porn, but they know it’s out there. Again, if you don’t own an internet-connected computer and you don’t know which websites supply pornography, it’s pretty safe to scream from the rooftops about it.

But you know which sins people don’t like to talk about? Running red lights. Cheating on your taxes. Lying. Raising your voice at your kids when you lose your temper. Watching ungodly television shows. NOT tithing. NOT spending as much time in prayer and study as you should. NOT fasting. Gluttony.

Where are the Christians speaking out against gluttony? Interestingly, many of the individuals who point fingers about other sins are guilty of gluttony themselves, and even more interesting is the fact that gluttony is one of those few sins that you wear on the outside, everywhere you go. Your weight is right there for us all to see, but where are the preachers and politicians fighting the sin of gluttony? Even funnier is the fact that if a politician was to introduce a bill that limits your calorie intake, he’d be called a control freak libtard who’s trying to take away Americans’ rights.

You have the right to eat yourself into a heart attack, but a woman you don’t know who lives in a state you’ve never been to isn’t allowed to have an abortion? Why is that?

We have to stop allowing this concept of “safe” sins and instead pray for guidance in overcoming all sins. There is no such thing as a sin that none of us will ever commit, because all sins are the same in the eyes of God. Whether it’s abortion, adultery, pornography, homosexuality, or just driving over the speed limit, it’s sinful to God. We’re all the same, and no single person is “safe” without the love and acceptance of Christ.

Gonna Bake Me a Cake

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There is so much talk on the news and social media right now about Christian’s rights. I’m sorry, the term is 100% laughable, a walking joke. It’s the punchline to 200+ years of US history.

We don’t have the “right” to be Christians, we have the right to choose whatever religion we want and to believe whatever we want. We don’t have the “right” to inflict our beliefs on anyone else, and in fact, when our beliefs actively block someone else’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we’ve created a Constitutional issue. We’ve also said, “My religion is more important than your status as a human being and a citizen.”

That’s wrong.

The real issue at hand? These stupid wedding cakes!

I’m married. I even had a cake. I had two cakes, in fact, one wedding cake and one groom’s cake. Guess what? My husband never saw either cake until I shoved a piece in his mouth for a picture at our reception.

So why are bakers suddenly so concerned about the genders of the people who will eventually be honored with a cake? WHO CARES if the cake is going to be eaten by straight people, gay people, Christian people, atheist people, illegal immigrants, Walmart employees…WHO CARES?

By the way, wedding cakes can run the gamut from a couple hundred dollars to THOUSANDS of dollars…are you really going to forfeit thousands of dollars just to prove that you’re legally entitled to? You’re not only hateful, you’re a dumbass! Suze Orman needs to have you on her show and tell the entire country what a moron you are for refusing to take money that would pay your bills, all because YOU don’t agree with how the cake will get eaten?

But there’s a bigger problem here: the same people who wouldn’t bake a wedding cake for a gay couple will happily turn around and charge a lot of money for a Bar Mitzvah cake, a celebration that conflicts with Christian teaching. They’ll make a cake for a fraternity celebration, which is an organization that excludes people based on gender, and in many cases based on religion and race. Do these same people make the increasingly popular “losing my virginity” cake? A bachelorette party cake that celebrates a weekend of drunkenness and promiscuity?

But not the gay cake? That’s strange, and it’s wrong. And it’s not representing Christ in a positive way. Instead of demonstrating God’s love to the world, you shined a light on the fact that Satan’s hatred is at work within the Christian faith. And we’re all going to suffer for it.

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner

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I just had an interesting conversation with a fellow Christian, although I hesitate to say “fellow” here because we don’t see eye to eye at all. As with nearly every conversation I have with another Christian, it wasn’t long before this one ended up circling around to homosexuality. Why that is, I couldn’t tell you. It’s like we have this hangup about gay people that is so overpowering that it blocks out every single issue we could be talking about.

Anyway, as many Christians tend to do, this individual summed up his stance on the existence of gay people by saying (rather magnanimously), “It’s like God said: hate the sin but love the sinner.”

WHOA. Stop right there. You’re wrong.

I don’t remember God telling me to hate the sin. What verse is that, exactly? And is that King James edition, or NIV? I do remember God saying a lot about not judging, though, about planks and specks in people’s eyes, about prodigal sons and sinful kings and loving my neighbor as myself and a host of other things that I’m supposed to worry about long before I ever get around to hating what activities people engage in when I’m not looking.

God never told me personally to hate anything. More important, he did tell me not to hate. And therefore, I refuse to.

Is not hating someone’s sin the same thing as condoning it? Of course not. It is entirely the same thing, though, as saying, “God didn’t put me in charge of you. He’s got this. He does not need my input on this situation. Amen.”

When Christians finally understand that the rest of the world thinks we’re assholes for that very statement about hating sin, then we can finally start to move in the right direction towards being good ambassadors for the Lord. Until then, it’s just another pretty way of saying, “I hate something about you, and God said I could.” We’re wrong, of course, but that’s what we’re saying.

John 3:16 – Yeah, Yeah, We’ve Heard It All Before

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Imagine my surprise at opening my devotion book this morning and finding the featured verse was John 3:16. Okay, you’re probably wondering why that was such a shocker.

It surprised me because that verse is everywhere. It’s on posterboard held up at NFL events. It’s painted on the walls of Sunday school classrooms. It’s hand-stitched on decorative embroidered wall hangings for baby nurseries. It’s even on coffee mugs, billboards, T-shirts, and one unfortunate beer coozie I saw at a barbeque.

It’s losing its impact. Even worse, people see it so often that instead of being a message about how much we’re loved and cherished by a creator, it’s become an instant-sign of your Christianity. You don’t have to live your faith for others to see, you just have to have a Jesus fish car sticker and a John 3:16 license plate on the front.

What really gets me about that verse is that I don’t think the writer of the Gospel got it right. Good thing there are no hordes of soldiers working under the king’s command right now, or I’d be tied to a stake and roasted like a hot dog before I finished typing this.

When you look at that verse in great detail, it’s all about God. How much GOD loved us. How HE sent his son. How HE did this so we can have everlasting life.

That’s not how I read it. John Milton, in Paradise Lost, describes the scene that took place in Heaven when the moment that sparked the verse actually took place. In that scene, God is devastated and heartbroken by man’s disobedience; he’s been trying and trying and giving chance after chance after chance, but man is a jerk who keeps doing whatever he wants to do, instead of obeying the Lord. The angels are actually rending their garments in agony over how utterly sad God is.

Jesus stepped forward. According to Milton, Jesus was the one who said, “Dad, I’ll go. I’ll die as the sacrifice so your people will come back to you. Please don’t be sad anymore.”

That’s a beautiful image of love, one that is far bigger than a sign someone scribbled for the benefit of national television. More importantly, it reverses the willingness in the sacrifice. God may have physically sent Jesus to die for us, but Jesus stepped up first. He had a moment of weakness in the garden where his very human heart cried to be delivered from this, but ultimately said, “I’ll do it if you need me to.”

It’s not important whose idea it was. None of that really matters. What matters is Jesus agreed, and God allowed it. I will tell you that I hadn’t even left the hospital with my firstborn child before I realized exactly how big a sacrifice that was for God. I wouldn’t let my child die for anyone, let alone hurtful, sinful strangers.

It’s good to know God loves me more than I deserve.

Sticking My Head in the Sand

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I came across this quote, and it had the power to stop me in my tracks:

“Prayer is not flight, prayer is power. Prayer does not deliver a man from some terrible situation; prayer enables a man to face and to master the situation.” –William Barclay

For all the times that people have shown disdain for the power of prayer (I know, because I’ve done it myself whenever some sweet little Christian tells me, “Well, we’ll just have to pray about it,” instead of offering me real-world, tangible, IMMEDIATE solutions to the problem at hand), I offer up this quote. Prayer isn’t hiding, or refusing to address the situation, or blindly passing the responsibility (and therefore, the blame) off on God. It is the ultimate form of devotion and faith, while also taking extreme control over any situation.

Once I have prayed about any particular concern or problem, it’s done. It is finished. The most that I can do has been done. There may be little things I can do in that problem, things that people can see and respond to, but the most powerful thing I can do is over.

Unfortunately, it’s really, really hard to remember that. I’m one of those “last minute” Christians, the kind of who thinks, “Oh yeah, I should probably pray about this.” It’s just not my natural response, probably from not having strong instruction in prayer to begin with. I have to literally write reminders to myself to pray, but hopefully with this shift in perception–with this realization that prayer is the most effective thing I can do, EVER–it will move into the forefront of my mind instead of being the action of last resort.

God, Be BIG!

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This is one of my favorite phrases, and I’ve completely stolen it from Beth Moore. She said one time in a presentation that when she gets so overwhelmed by a situation, she simply prays, “God, be big!” which basically translates into, “You’re God, you’re enormous and all-powerful, now do your thing!”

It takes a lot of trust to pray those words. You’re essentially saying, “I’m turning this over to you, and I’m willing to take whatever you want to do.” Those words don’t mean, “Give me blessings,” or “Make me happy,” they mean exactly what they say. “God, this problem is so far above me and my ability to comprehend, so do with it as you see fit.”

What are the “Be Big” problems in your life?

I’ve had to fall back on Be Big when I learned my friend had had her fourth miscarriage in a row just that morning. I had to ask God to Be Big when my daughter told me her friend and the friend’s mother are living with an abusive man. I’ve asked God to Be Big over the lawsuit we waged against our handicapped child’s school, over job changes, over the decision to quit my job and start my own business.

Of course, God will be big even when we don’t need him to. I’ve prayed for God’s bigness over my daughter’s auditions, over the decision to build a house or buy one, over whether or not we should change churches.

Basically, God can’t help being big. It’s what he does. So when I’m struggling with the words to say to him and I don’t know what to even ask, I take an incredible amount of comfort in asking him to do what he does best, and that’s BE God.