Impossibilities

So lately I’ve been studying about Gideon… turns out he’s a pretty cool guy: just your average dude, chosen to lead the Lord’s army against the enemy. Seems like it would be an impossible task for a “nobody” without any experience or connections, right??

Well the cool thing about it is our God is in the business of doing the impossible.

You see, I’ve found that He likes to make things supernatural sometimes, solely so He can get ALL of the credit and ALL of the glory. Sometimes, He allows us to be in situations where only His power could pull us through, so that we have to look to Him for the strength. That’s what Gideon had to do… trust that God knew what He was doing.

Often times, I think we get caught up in this idea that God’s will for our lives is hidden somewhere and we have to be on the lookout at all times or we will miss it… But the truth is, if we are spending entirely too much time looking around for God’s next assignment, we are probably not doing a very good job on what He has us doing right now.

Trust that when you are doing the simple things that the Bible tells you is the will of God, HE will reveal the next step:

Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone. See that no one pays back evil for evil…. but always try to do good to each other and to all people. Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in ALL circumstances. For THIS is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:14-18)

God revealed His will, His next assignment, to Gideon: God downsized Gideon’s troop from 10,000 men to a mere 300… that is not very many guys in this scenario.

Scary? Yes.

Logical? No.

Ultimately God-glorifying? Absolutely.

Gideon took a huge leap of faith and obeyed. And the crazy part?! Gideon won. GOD won.

Perhaps God is downsizing some areas in our lives too?

Friends. Money. Stability. A job. All of those things that make you feel secure.

And although you may never understand why He does that in certain situations, can you trust Him without fully understanding?

One mark of a mature Christian is accepting God’s ways without having to completely understand them.

Confessions of a Habitual Speeder

It’s funny how God tends to teach us things through even what seems like the most insignificant matters. Ok, it’s time for me to fess up. I speed.

Like it is slightly ridiculous… I have a problem that is in desperate need of being fixed. If I’m frustrated, in deep thought, or simply distracted, I have the most intense lead foot you will ever find. I honestly don’t always intend on going fast, but I get comfortable… and then, once I glance at my speedometer, I’m going 20 mph faster than I had initially begun. It’s not even necessarily that I’m a bad driver, because I have never even been close to being in an accident while driving (to my knowledge anyways), I just drive entirely too fast. And recently, this little habit has landed me in a lot of trouble.

Over Labor Day weekend, I was driving with my best friend Courtney to Mississippi to visit some friends. We were talking about life and drinking Sonic raspberry tea and jamming out to 90’s music… it couldn’t be a more picture perfect roadtrip.

It was at that very moment that I spotted him… a policeman had pulled out right behind me (then again, it’s was kind of hard to miss the blue lights flashing in my rearview mirror.)

I got pulled over in Forrest City, Arkansas (which actually happens to be home to the State Trooper Department... who knew!?) and got a ticket for going 90mph in a 70mph zone. To top it all off, the policeman was a complete jerk about the whole thing. That is one way to just completely ruin your day, AND your trip… the worst part was coming home to tell my parents. Needless to say, I had never been in more trouble in my whole, entire life.

I had to suffer the consequences for that choice. I had to go to Forrest City for my court date. I had to pay a $165 ticket (which is a lot when you are living on a Nanny budget…). And I will have to have that on my driver’s record for a while.

But I swore I would never speed again.

Funny how those promises usually last a grand total of 24 hours… Ha. The very next day, I look down and I’m going 5mph over. Now, I realize that that’s not too incredibly fast, but that’s against the point. The point is that I was speeding again, after I had JUST had to deal with the consequences of my first actions. I would catch myself and slow down, but then, the next time I was in a hurry, there I would go, speeding “just a little bit” again.

But then I got to thinking.

I’m the exact same way with sin. You get caught crossing that boundary, and you have to suffer the consequences. Getting caught in that secret sin is no fun, but what is even greater danger is NOT getting caught. Sometimes it takes the sin’s surfacing in order for us to realize it needs to be removed from our lives.

Often times, we make empty promises to ourselves and to God… “Oh, I will NEVER do that again, never!” just to fall right back into our old sinful habits. Why is this the result? It is because we have hearts that are not truly broken over the actions, over sin. We say that we are sorry, but are we really? Do we truly know what is at stake when we make those decisions? So often, we don’t really grasp how much of a sacrifice Christ paid because of our stupid actions.

Those boundaries, just like those speed limits that are placed by the government, are there for our own safety… we don’t always like them, but ultimately they are there because we NEED them. Without them, we are just a bunch of idiots that do stupid stuff for no reason…

…just like going 5mph over the speed limit.

It doesn’t matter if everyone else is doing it and it’s not “that bad”, it is still wrong. And no matter how much we try to justify it, a sin is still a sin.

Tragedy

I have been really praying about it, and I really feel like now is not the time to share with you guys the biggest issue that has been a part of my life the past two years, simply because it involves other people that are really trying to get help and make things better, and by sharing the past struggles with people in this crucial time of healing, I’m very likely to reopen scabs that just need some time to seal… Perhaps soon I will be able to share a little of what has taken place.

But for now, I WILL share a few of the other struggles I have faced.

First of all, this year has been a huge season of loss and tragedy in my life.

My grandfather battled cancer for over a year before going to be with the Lord in the early fall of 2009. This was really hard on me because, due to some issues at home, He was seriously the compassionate Father-figure in my life at the time. He spent his last days at home and up until about the last week, He was in fairly good health. However, those last 6 or 7 days I spent in Heber Springs helping my grandmother were heart-wrenching... just seeing my once-strong grandfather in that feeble state of health. Not to mention the emotional toll it had on my mother. Mom is like one of my best friends, so it hurt me even more to see her hurting. It was already a sensitive time in our lives, and I really couldn’t understand why God would take Him from us at that time. Not until recently have I learned the truth behind praising God in the midst of troubles… and that the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.

Just when things seemed to be looking better, tragedy stuck again. One rainy day, right before Christmas, my Aunt Bobbie and Uncle Junior were driving through Forrest City when a car hit them, head on. Uncle Junior died on impact, and Aunt Bobbie was med-flighted to Baptist. After many surgeries, we lost Aunt Bobbie as well. The driver of the other car was a teenage guy that is now permanently paralyzed from the neck down.

I don’t always understand. And I’ve realized that I don’t have to.

As cliché as it seems, God IS always in control.

And that has never been more real to me.