Today I paid for the people behind me in the drive-thru lane at CookOut. I don't say this to brag but on the way home from work/CookOut I heard a lot from the Lord.
My church is on this theme of "Give it Away," which I totally heart because giving and serving just causes rejoicing in my spirit. I am so proud to be a member of my church and so proud of them for doing this series and for focusing on true service. Not the kind of service that crams Jesus down people's throats, but the kind that just loves on people like the family God intended for us to be. Which leads back into my CookOut Drive Thru give-it-away.
So I've heard of people doing this paying anonymously for the folks behind them in the drive thru lane, like on the radio they talked about it and I have heard it various other places, but a major shift occurs when you do it yourself. So I'm sitting in line after ordering my milkshake, not even thinking about anything except getting home to relax and my gaze suddenly focuses on the car behind me. Then my spirit starts to move to pay for them and immediately, lies come upon me: "they don't need you to pay for them - if they couldn't afford it, they wouldn't be here," "people will think you are weird," and then the ultimate trickery ensued: I began to think about the purpose of paying for them. Would they know it was a Christian act? Did they see my "COTR" (church) bumper sticker? Was I representing/advertising the church?
Even looking at those questions I had going through my mind an hour ago, I am laughing. When I got to the front of the line, I paid for the car behind me. Did it matter if they could afford it or if people thought I was weird? Did it REALLY matter if they could see my bumper sticker?! Seriously, self! As I drove away quickly, not even glancing back, I realized the point of the exercise: the five words that changed my life and fate and everyone else's who accepts the eternal gift were being repeated now to the family in the red minivan. "It's been taken care of." Your bill has been paid. You are free!! It gave me chills to think about the parallels and how if I had listened to my devil-inspired doubts those folks may have never heard those words!! I have no way of knowing, but I smiled to consider the possibilities I could have helped create in their lives that God could work with. I will definitely be doing this more often.
Further down the road, I considered unrequited love. I teach seventh graders for a living and their lives are rampant with stories of unrequited "love." I thought about how primed they are in that regard to understand how God feels about us. He has taken our debt and wiped it away! And he has made sacrifices only Abraham and Hosea could begin to understand - yet his love is essentially unrequited, even by those of us who claim to try. It's amazing how much teenagers could relate to their Father if they understood!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Separate
So this word keeps popping up - separate (adj.). On the way to work this morning, it spoke to me. I was listening to His Radio and musing on the lyrics of the song "While I'm Waiting" by John Waller. In it, the words are: "I will move ahead bold and confident/Taking every step in obedience/While I'm waiting/I will worship while I'm waiting I will not faint/I'll be running the race even while I wait..."
It made me think of the last Women's Encounter. Having been to an encounter before, I knew the hot-seat session was coming. My problem was I had pretty much dealt with everything at the previous encounter - all the fears, childhood issues, self-confidence problems, "Yahweh's child," and so what did I have left? Two cool things happened as I pondered this at the Encounter. One, God spoke to me - words so comforting I broke into tears: "Rejoice in your wholeness, child." Of course. God had healed so many aspects of my life - it was time to rejoice in finally being full and whole and finding value in being a child of God. And two, as I searched, I realized that what I still faced was the physical healing issue. Don't know if I have mentioned it, but I am in a wheelchair. I was in a car accident as a child and have been in a wheelchair ever since.
Have been a Christian pretty much my whole life but it was not until I encountered philosophies that embrace spiritual gifts that I began to understand God's power to heal. Of course, Jesus and God healed all the time in the Bible, but what did that have to do with me? Slowly, I began piecing together my view on physical healing. It is harder than you might believe - to reconcile your faith in God's power to heal and the recognition that it may not be in His will. I am an adaptive person, perhaps by nature, or perhaps as a result of my "condition" but I am, nonetheless, the type to accept things as they are and move on. To this end, I have never really developed a sense of pity, nor one of pride, toward my disability. It just is what it is and I move on. However, the revelation that broke me at the Encounter was: I WANT TO RUN AND DANCE FOR GOD - and my body just won't cooperate!!
At any rate, this is what I shared in the hot-seat session and this is what my great spiritual adviser said: "You like to rationalize, don't you? I feel God saying the word, 'separate.' Work out your salvation and purpose SEPARATE from the chair and the disability. Separate.'
Yeah, okay. Easy for walkie to say, but my struggle since has been to understand what it means to be separate from what I have seen for so long making me who I am. The disability has never defined me, or at least I have gone to lengths to ensure it hasn't, but of course it is part of me and who I am. It has taught me so many things and I am a better person for having had the experience. Suddenly, I am forced to reconcile a whole new concept: who I am is SEPARATE from this chair! What?!
To sum up what I am struggling with, here is a poem I wrote some time ago about the conflict between embracing God's will and fully trusting it:
It made me think of the last Women's Encounter. Having been to an encounter before, I knew the hot-seat session was coming. My problem was I had pretty much dealt with everything at the previous encounter - all the fears, childhood issues, self-confidence problems, "Yahweh's child," and so what did I have left? Two cool things happened as I pondered this at the Encounter. One, God spoke to me - words so comforting I broke into tears: "Rejoice in your wholeness, child." Of course. God had healed so many aspects of my life - it was time to rejoice in finally being full and whole and finding value in being a child of God. And two, as I searched, I realized that what I still faced was the physical healing issue. Don't know if I have mentioned it, but I am in a wheelchair. I was in a car accident as a child and have been in a wheelchair ever since.
Have been a Christian pretty much my whole life but it was not until I encountered philosophies that embrace spiritual gifts that I began to understand God's power to heal. Of course, Jesus and God healed all the time in the Bible, but what did that have to do with me? Slowly, I began piecing together my view on physical healing. It is harder than you might believe - to reconcile your faith in God's power to heal and the recognition that it may not be in His will. I am an adaptive person, perhaps by nature, or perhaps as a result of my "condition" but I am, nonetheless, the type to accept things as they are and move on. To this end, I have never really developed a sense of pity, nor one of pride, toward my disability. It just is what it is and I move on. However, the revelation that broke me at the Encounter was: I WANT TO RUN AND DANCE FOR GOD - and my body just won't cooperate!!
At any rate, this is what I shared in the hot-seat session and this is what my great spiritual adviser said: "You like to rationalize, don't you? I feel God saying the word, 'separate.' Work out your salvation and purpose SEPARATE from the chair and the disability. Separate.'
Yeah, okay. Easy for walkie to say, but my struggle since has been to understand what it means to be separate from what I have seen for so long making me who I am. The disability has never defined me, or at least I have gone to lengths to ensure it hasn't, but of course it is part of me and who I am. It has taught me so many things and I am a better person for having had the experience. Suddenly, I am forced to reconcile a whole new concept: who I am is SEPARATE from this chair! What?!
To sum up what I am struggling with, here is a poem I wrote some time ago about the conflict between embracing God's will and fully trusting it:
I want to lay it down at your feet
But I can’t let it there when I leave
Can’t means something to me
And I can’t leave this at your feet
So if I bring this to you now
I have to stay until you heal
The pain you found inside me
If I leave it with you
I can’t go anywhere
And if I want to leave
I can’t give it to you
This thing is attached to me
And I need you to set me free
And here are the words that can best explain where I am with this now:
"I'll be running the race even while I wait/I will worship while I'm waiting."
See, because Christians are MEANT to be SEPARATE! We are not better than everyone else, we are not holier or above the things of this world - we are separate from them (which by the way is actually what "holy" means, so maybe we are that). We are not from this world. We are separate. We can be here and learn the lingo and fit in and get jobs and so on, but our purpose and calling and our home and hearts reside in HEAVEN! I can find my purpose in God's plan separate from my chair, because I am not in a chair - I am separate - I am running and dancing for God: running the race, worshipping, and waiting...to go home. And when I get there, that chair will have never mattered a bit.
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