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Okay, God. What’s my Job?
Stop judging I confess, I can be a judgmental person. I never used to think so. Perhaps because I grew up in a judgmental church and, subsequently, a judgmental family. We were the “good Christians”. You know the ones. Go to church every Sunday. Sunday school. Vacation Bible School. Parents worked and paid bills. Kids behaved and did well in school. It was okay for us to judge since we had it so together, right? And, it’s not like we went out of our way to publicly judge people or tell them to their face they were bad or doing things wrong. Nope, we sat around the table on Sunday…
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Okay, God. What’s My Job?
Let go of control In the last few articles we’ve touched on the idea of letting go of control and depending on God, but today we are going to dive deeper. One of my favorite old movies is Days of Thunder, starring Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman. In one scene, Cole and Claire are in an argument about Cole, Cruise’s character, going back to racing after an accident. Claire, Kidman’s character, tells Cole that “control is an illusion.” Hard to believe that such profound wisdom could come from a 90’s cult classic, but it’s true. The illusion of control trumps us all up at some point. Here are some things to know…
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Okay, God. What’s my Job?
Fully depending on God Surrendering to God seems easy, but as we’ve seen its harder than we think to surrender our will and follow God. I don’t know about you, but in any relationship I find that I do much better when I have a clear understanding of my role. Honestly, I don’t know that I have ever clearly understood role in relation to God, but that is changing. According to Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their book How People Grow, we need to do four things to have right relationship with God. First, we need to fully depend on God, we have to stop controlling, we must give up…
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You Are Not the Boss of Me
Surrendering to God I’m going to confess something. I have lived most of my life in rebellion to God and most people haven’t noticed. You know why they haven’t noticed? I’m nice. I’m kind. I go to church on Sunday. I used to be a church pianist. I have a good job and pay my bills. I don’t watch porn, I don’t drink, and I rarely swear. I’ve had a couple of more obvious rebellions, such as having a child out of wedlock, divorce, and buying a fancy red sports care that screams look at me, but my daily life looks pretty Christian. I suppose my rebellion is subtler than…
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When I Focus on My Problems Instead of God
Whether you have been on your faith walk a short time or a long time, I think at some point we all come to realize that a life of faith doesn’t necessarily mean problem-free life. In some ways, it may even bring problems, as our faith asks us to live a counter-cultural life. We must often live against the grain. Perhaps one of the biggest struggles we have is focusing on our “problem” as if it was the core of our issue. I know I have been guilty of this in my life. I’ve written before about my health issues, which have plagued me in some way most of my…