Growing Pains

I meet weekly with some good friends in my living room to talk about books that we are reading. They are Christian non-fiction books by Francis Chan, Craig Groeschel, Chip Ingram, etc. We have amazing discussions and are able to share struggles and encourage each other in our walks with Christ and in being wives and mothers. I love these nights and I love these ladies.

I have been thinking a lot about something that seems to come up periodically in our talks. Many of these authors really challenge us to be “all in” for God. The bar is high and the examples of radical discipleship are real challenges and often far from where we live our everyday lives. Our response is often “That is awesome but I don’t even come close to that.” Or “I sometimes question if I am really a follower based on what I am reading.” Or just basically “I suck.”

Some thoughts have come to my mind as I try to process and respond to that.

• It’s a process. The examples in the books and the standards that God sets are really high. I can’t imagine living that way 100% right after being saved. I often feel led to look back and self-evaluate. Am I doing better than I was a year ago? Am I moving towards looking more and more like Christ or am I basically standing still?

• Would we really want it to be easy? Saying yes to God at the beginning is not necessarily hard. Turning every aspect of your life over to Him and submitting ALL is hard. To live every day with Him as the Lord of your finances and your time and your parenting and your marriage and your decisions is not natural. But if it was just a switch we could throw, we wouldn’t learn to depend on Him. We wouldn’t fully appreciate the process and the growth. We wouldn’t fully appreciate his grace when we turn things over to him and then take them back and then turn them back over to him, etc. etc. etc.

• More sin awareness. More grace awareness. The more I grow in my faith, the more I become aware of my sin. I am able to see it more clearly and I am more disgusted with how far short I fall from God’s mark. Sometimes I think that is why the statements above come out. We are growing and we see just how crappy we can be. BUT....the good part is that the more we see our shortcomings and our sin, the more we are thankful for God’s grace! When we are feeling really good about ourselves and our Christian life, what do we need God for? If I read books that perfectly described me and what my walk looked like, what would be the point? My Grace Group just finished a study and one of my takeaways from it was “The bigger my awarenes of my sin is, the bigger my view of the power of the cross will be in my life.”

Books and speakers and friends who challenge me to live more fully devoted to God are my favorite. If I had a choice between a sermon that made me feel all warm and fuzzy or a sermon that showed me what I am not doing well and taught me to do better....I would choose the 2^nd one every time. I love when a little seed is planted deep in my soul and I am convicted to repent or stretch myself or change or speak up.

My prayer for my friends in my living room is that they come away feeling more conviction than they do comdemnation.

Dear Teen-age Me......

As I watch my teen-age daughters go through life and become the adults they will one day be, I can’t help but think that there are lessons that I wish I could have learned back when I was a teen-ager. Sure I have tried to teach these lessons, just as I’m sure my parents tried to teach me. But you don’t listen. You have to learn for yourself through the trials and challenges of life. My kids don’t believe me when I tell them things...they think I am old fashioned or just saying things a mom should say in order to get them to behave in a certain way. But if I could have ‘gotten’ certain things way back then, I have to wonder if my life would have unfolded differently. I will write about more of these things in future blogs, but here are some that are on my heart right now.

“If God is the main thing, everything else will fall into place.”

God was part of my life when I was growing up, but I didn’t have a personal relationship with him until I was an adult. Church/Christianity was just one of the activities in my life amongst things like marching band and yearbook staff. I can’t help but think how things would have been different if my life was defined by God. If what my God thought of my everyday choices mattered more than what my friends thought. If I loved Him more than some kid I had a crush on. If getting spiritual things right was more important than grades or winning. If I was more concerned with telling people about Jesus than worrying that they thought I was cool. Am I getting all these things correctly now? No, but I am trying to live that way and I think I am improving.

“Don’t worry so much about stuff that doesn’t really matter.”

Things seem so big and daunting when you are in the middle of them, but in the big scheme of life, they aren’t. Think of things that you lost sleep worrying about, cried tears over, thought your world was going to fall apart. They don’t matter any more, do they? In fact they probably didn’t really matter a month later. Whether it was about a relationship, a big test, how you look, whatever.....it goes back to my first point...if God is the main thing, everything else will fall into place. And worry is nothing more than not trusting God. Am I getting this one right now? Nope. Still worry about things. But I think my perspective is different. I try to pray about those things rather than worry and fret. I also try to keep everything in it’s place. I think I have more wisdom about what are big things and what are little insignificant things. Worry is still worry and still wrong...but again, I am getting better.

“Sin is sin and there are consequences.”

Young people in their teens and twenties have a messed up view of their mortality. They honestly don’t think anything really bad can happen to them. Kids think dabbling in things is not dangerous. “That won’t happen to ME.” “There are plenty of people doing worse things.” But sin ALWAYS has consequences in God’s economy. Maybe you won’t die, maybe there won’t be serious physical consequences, but there will be baggage. The standard needs to stop being “just not as bad as so-and-so.” The standard is Jesus! You are not going to reach perfection, but that should be Who you imitate and strive for. I promise you that your friends will have more respect for your “no” than if you go along with whatever it is. They may not say that, and your circle of friends might shrink a little, but I don’t think you will ever regret making a right choice.

My list could go on and on....and I will revisit this in another blog.....