Sometimes I take a look at my life and don’t like what I see. Wednesday was one of those days.
Its not that I have anything to really complain about for how I am being treated by “life itself.” I can only say that God is good to me. In fact far better than I could ever deserve. I have a good job. I have contented family and everyone is healthy. I have a nice house, and no current challenges in how it works. I have a budding fleet of decent cars to get my family around in. I have a good job, with lots of people who like what I do. I can have a positive influence on people through the things I teach, and through them have an impact on the town I live for the sake of the kingdom of God.
Yet I still take a look inside and am disgusted.
I think you get where I am going with this. I look at my own self and see how far I have got to go.
We have a conference coming up that our church is hosting. There have been some stressful moments in the preparation for this event. I have not handled them well. I have see a powerful resurgence of a critical spirit through out preparing for this. I am also learning, thanks to our study of “Peacemaking” at our church, that I have a powerful “Control” idol in my life. I have found myself saying mean things. I have found myself angry frustrated, and lost in the details of getting things ready for Saturday (conference day) Sunday morning, and Sunday night study, all so I can restart the cycle of preparation on Monday.
I know I have so much to be thankful for, yet I still find myself lashing out and being angry over silly things, or worried about how key individuals will feel if things don’t go well over the course of the next few days. What a grouch! And much of it over a conference that is going to be over in few days. Its not that there are not other pressures too, but I also have an amazing capacity for imagining the worst possible outcomes to everything. There are the regular challenges and pressures that come with my job, but by and large much of the stress I am feeling comes from a couple of key personality defects coming together with a challenging and time sensitive event. In other words, I myself am a significant part of my own problem.
Of course I don’t begin to realize this until after I have been sitting on my couch, locked down and stare at the wall shaking my head. Then, I hear Jackie telling me, “What should you be doing now?” The answer of course is: “I KNOW! I know! I should be praying about this.” Why do I wait to hear this from someone else before I do what really needs to be done? To pray.
Its in the moments that I replace the anxious thoughts about what I am facing with worship that I begin to be open to any hope of seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Its in those moments when I return my precious idol of control back over to my God. Its in those moments that God reminds me that He saved me not because I am a great person, but He saved me to make me like Jesus, the most amazing person, ever.
Becoming that person means I have to come to the death of self, and sometimes that means I have to go through hard things that show me that I still cling to life and control. I have to die to control and self to have Him become more and more alive in me.
You are no different, though you may come to these things by a different path. Mine leads through ministry in a church, and a family home on Shiawassee St. in Bancroft. Your path may go through a factory or out on the farm; maybe in the school room or lab or a big office building before it winds its way back to home. You deal with people who rub you the wrong way, all the while you are rubbing THEM the wrong way. But all the time, the people and tasks and roles you deal with are not just rubbing but are God’s hand sanding and forming you into the image of Jesus. Someday I will get to the place where I think about that reflexively too.
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