Relationships

I started to read the novel "The Shack" by William Young. I wasn't sure what to expect but I am beyond happy that I started reading it. The point where I am at, the main character Mack is talking to the Trinity. At one point I think it is either the God figure or Jesus figure that says this about relationships that made me think...he said: Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself - to serve.

The context of that comment was that Mack was amazed that the three could have a conversation without one trying to be the boss. I think too often like Mack in the story thinks God is the boss of the Holy Spirit and Jesus, but that isn't the case. But that quote made me think of not only my relationship with God, but earthly ones. In a relationship with God we don't want to have power over God, but there are people that do want to try and have power over him. They want God to do the things they want and how they want it. They try to mold God into something he isn't. So to avoid trying to have power over God...we serve Him. We go out and do the things that he wants us to do...we listen to him and be obediant.

As far as earthly relationships, what good does it do to try and gain power over the one you love? That turns into what would feel like a controlling relationship and honestly no body wants to be in a relationship like that. Nate and I were talking the other night and he said something that made me think and I agree with: he said that a relationship is a partnership. I agree with that because that means one person does not have power over the other, we're equal in our relationship. That is how we should view our relationship with Christ: a partnership.

How do you know

It has been posed to me before, and recently..how do you know God is talking to you. Or rather the question I have been asked has been how do you know someone is the one, but let's go with how do you know God is talking to you. Is it a feeling of "just knowing" or "having the feeling." Sometimes I think we want realistics, definites with everything including God, but that really isn't the case is it. How can we have a definite answer to knowing if God is speaking to us without actually hearing his voice in our ears.

I mean is it something within our hearts or something we really won't know until we die and get to ask God if he was talking to us at a specific point in our lives. How we know if something we want is what God wants from us or wants us to do. How do we know our own feelings and desires aren't influencing how we feel when we think God is trying to tell us something or do something...or to go somewhere. This is something weird for me to be struggling with, but since it has been posed to me a few weeks ago, I have been wondering it myself. How do we really know when God is speaking to us? Sadly the only answer I have is that we really don't know for sure until we met God in heaven.

Judging

This is a very special friend: Nate. You may not be able to see it in the picture, but he has purple hair, slight gauges in his ears, tongue ring, a few tattoos, and a certain attitude towards the world and people around. It is basically he doesn't care if you don't like him because he is who he is. That is part of why I get along with him so well and I enjoy his company. I mention my dear friend for a reason. He gets judged all the time. People take one look at him and have a certain image with him and thought about him and who they THINK he is. The thing is people do the same with everyone. People look at me and have a certain image. People see us together walking in the mall, and I can only imagine what they think.

The River of Life's motto is "judge no one minister to all" what we believe is that you do not judge anyone for any reason. Too often we are quick to judge someone based on their appearances like people do with my dear Nate here, but they don't really know who he is or what kind of person he is. They don't take the time to get to know him which is something we need to do. God loves us no matter who we are, what we do, or more importantly what we look like. Who are we to judge other people? Aren't we all basically the same inside with the same emotions and feelings? So why should we treat each other differently?

Recently there was someone judging him as well as myself based on things he thought he knew. Sure he may have been right on a few things, but he was wrong on so many other things. He didn't give Nate the time to see who he was and obviously in my mind this person didn't take the time to really get to know me. We are quick to judge someone when they don't fit into our little world and image of what people should be like or how they should act. We put expectations on people before we even met them. For some reason that just sounds so wrong to me. God doesn't put unrealistic expectations on us, so why should we place them on others or even ourselves?

You look up at the picture I have posted and tell me what do you think before you even know the man in the picture. You look at me and what do you think. When you look and begin to judge think about how would others look at you and what would they judge you based on? After spending a large amount of time with Nate I see the wonderful person that he is inside and out. I see his heart, personality and other things you don't see when you simply just look at him.

Past Experiences

Many of us have gone through different trials and tribulations throughout life and many times those things shape who we are and strengthen our faith in God. Other times our past experiences can destroy our future relationships. Too often we let the past affect how we react to situations we are dealing with now. Sometimes that is helpful because we all learn from past experiences, but other times you cannot base a situation on what happened in the past. You can learn how to deal with it through faith and trust in God, but when you treat every situation the same, the result will always be the same.

God gives us hardships and experiences to teach us things. And I think sometimes we don't really pay attention to what God could be teaching us, which is probably why we treat many situations the same when they are not. Sometimes we can handle them the same when the way of handling hardships is putting our trust and faith in God and pray about the things we deal with on a daily basis. Sometimes we let those hardship come in the way of not only our relationships with each other, but our relationships with God.

A lot of the time we think we can handle the hardships on our own and not turn to Him for help or even see His love as being powerful enough to see us through it all. When we foresee or try to foresee what will happen we forget that God's hand is in everything.

Hardships

There are times in life when we need to go through different hardships to grow closer to God and see how strong our faith in God truely is. Just because we go through one hardship doesn't mean another one won't come at some point. I am dealing with something right now that seems so incrediblly hard. I know what could harder than beating cancer? I mean nothing seems that hard, but there are things that are hard to deal with. Just because I went through cancer and came out on the other end healthy doesn't mean I will be able to be immune to pain and hardships. And I think there are people out there who think that when they deal with some sort of hardship they won't deal with something so hard again. Or when they go through a hardship like divorce or the lose of a loved one, they let it affect their future with people who love them dearly.

Sometimes we will never know what goes through another person's mind so why should we try to figure out what is in God's mind when we deal with the hardships in life? Why do we try to predict what God will do and when he will do it? When we try to do that we will surely fail in anything we set to do when we try to predict what would happen. Many times we need to go through the motions and deal with everything one day at a time. We need to have fair in Christ and believe that no matter what happens he will be there to see us through the problems we face each and every day. When we sit there and try to think of things that would be hard to deal with it's only inevitable that we will start actually looking for them in our lives and then we become paranoid and like I said destroys ourselves. It destroys the relationships around us and in turn begins to eat away at our relationship with God.

The point of a hardship isn't to sit there and ponder about then and try to figure out what they will be, when they will happen, and whether or not we will be able to deal with them. We would slowly lose our faith and trust in God. That is never what we need or should do. It would damage our relationship with Christ. We need to do everything we can to build on it instead of harm it.

Appearances

Sometimes we make quick judgements on people based on how they look or even where they work, how they act, what they do and other things like that. God doesn't want us to be judging others for any reason. Some people are just different in different ways some of us could have purple hair while others will have tattooes and others will dress a certain way. That doesn't mean we are any different from each other or anything like that. Doesn't make anyone better or worse than another.

I have a friend who gets judged by how he looks and sometimes by what he does for a living. But since I know him fairly well, I know the type of person he is and I know he is a good guy with a great heart. Sure he has purple hair, gauges in his ears, dresses a certain way and acts a certain way, but it honestly doesn't make him less of a person. He has already stated one of the best things about me is that I don't judge him, I still want to be his friend.

Why do we sit and judge others based on different things about who they are? We know nothing of the person, yet we judge. Do we honestly think as Christians that judging others makes a point or makes us seem like a good person? If anything it makes us come across as not a Christian. That is one reason why I love my church because our motto is Judge No One Minister To All; that is something we all need to live by.

In a Box

Pastor Marvin said something at one of the Bible studies that has made me think. HE said that many times we try to keep God in a box. He is right too often we try to keep God in the small box and only let him out when we want him in our lives instead of keeping him at our sides throughout life. What good does it do to keep God in this box? WE need to let him out and experience him in our lives.

We don't want to admit that we need God or that we do not have control over our own lives. How can we do anything for God if we don't let him out of his box? Everyone talks about living and thinking outside of the box, yet we won't let God think outside the box for our lives, and why? Are we afraid to see where God will take us? Are we too afraid to let God work in our lives because there is that small part of us that doesn't want him too even though we constantly say we do? I know somethings I will admit that I put God in a box, and when I do my life goes downhill and all kinds of nastiness occurs. But when God is out of the box things are better and I can feel his presence more.

We need to keep God out of that box!

Making God Real

Pastor stated in his sermon last Sunday and in the past week, that he has been saying a simple sentence during his prayer time. It is something we all could say and even say it once or twice during the day when we aren't in a specific prayer time. The sentence is simple, only ten words: Lord I need you to be real in my life. Too often we don't allow God to be real enough in our lives. What I mean is that we like to think of God just sitting up in Heaven looking down on us and answering or not answering prayers. We don't let him have full reign in our lives and have control over everything. That is something we NEED to have.

We need to say the same thing that pastor has been saying. I need you to be real in my life God. I need you...How can we live for God if we don't allow him or ask him to be real in our lives? How can we truly serve God at our best if we don't ask him to be real for us? When God is real in our lives it becomes easier for us to be disciplined in praying, reading, and it will be easier for us to tithe, and give of our time; at least that is what I think.