Oh the places you'll go...

Dr Seuss once told me I'd go incredible places. But I never really believed him. I always assumed I'd be a normal person and do normal things in normal places just like every other normal person that I knew.

But, interesting things happened in my normal life that just didn't fit.
I became a flight attendant for American Airlines, spent 6 weeks learning evacuation drills and airport codes and learning how to fly. Would you care for a soda or a headset?

I sat in a hotel room watching the news as the second airplane flew into the World Trade Center. If it hadn't been for inclement weather, I would have spent that week stuck in Buffalo NY. Because of said weather I'd worked too many hours in one day so they had to cancel the next leg of my journey which had me snug in my apartment on that fateful Tuesday.

Then, years later I became a foster parent. Fell in love with 5 adorable children and stressed myself to the maximum that I could handle. Normal people don't suddenly receive two children in the middle of the night. Spend thousands of dollars on daycare for children that aren't their own and suddenly find yourself on CPS's speed dial.

But here's what I've discovered.

None of us are normal. Whether you feel it's your diagnosis, or some traumatic event or even a joyful event that's made you abnormal; you'll always be abnormal.

I remember a phone call from a woman who was simply on my phone because she wanted to order checks. In the course of a simple check order she had repeated at least 4 times that she was "the baby girl who was held hostage on the plane". I was curious for the story, but always mindful of time constraints I didn't ask for the story (though by mentioning it so often I assume she was itching to tell me).
She was ordering checks though - and based on the sound of her voice I had the impression that she was in her late 20's at least.
And yet, when asked anything concerning her identity she defined herself by name and by the fact that she was the "baby girl who was held hostage on the plane".

It's easy to define ourselves by the abnormal things that happen to us, for us, around us.

Or we'll even define ourselves by the mundane or ridiculous.
"What ruby stone are you?"
"Which Harry Potter character are you?"
"Which color of the rainbow are you?"
"Which ice cream flavor are you?"
"Which Biblical character are you?"
"Which celebrity are you?"
"Which cartoon character are you?"
Thank you facebook for your ability to define me so easily.

But our true definition, comes from an event that took place 2000 years ago that concerns us. Yet too often we minimize it and don't see our identity in it. And yet, it defines us far more than say, winning the lottery or a cancer diagnosis.
It defines you more than your rape.
It defines you more than your secrets.
It defines you more than your successes.
It defines you more than your money.
It defines you more than your Olympic medal.
It defines you more than your friends, or who you know.
It defines you more than your election Senator.
It defines you more than your addictions.
It defines you more than your past.

This one event eclipses anything else about you that you might assume to be important. Your looks, your car, your home, your kids abilities, your job.
It says you are the adopted child of GOD HIMSELF.
It says you will have eternal life.
It says you have access to the King who is able to do all things. The One for Whom nothing is impossible.
It also allows you to walk, and talk, and live your life in a relationship with Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit as they speak into your life and lead you into holiness.
Because you once were lost, and now you're found.

So next time you consider who you are and what you're capable of - make sure you base it on the correct information.

The angry post.

**Disclaimer, I am officially ranting at myself. I will be broad and generalize in some areas because if this hits you too then I am very thankful. If I mention something that you specifically are doing then I assure you I am not trying to hit you, but it's because I'm trying to think of examples and that is one. You can be a perfectly good Christian and do whatever you're doing that I use as an example I'm sure. So please know, this is a rant specifically aimed at myself because I need to hear it and no one else will say it to me. And yes, I am angry.**



STOP.

Just stop with all the petty excuses, stop with all the flowery words and religious mumbo jumbo talk. The blogging world doesn't need to hear it, your co-workers don't need to hear it, your church family doesn't need to hear it. Just stop PLEASE.

Now repent.

Your one and only number one priority is to be a Christian.
It's not to be a good daughter, good wife, good friend, good employee.

You are to be a Christian.

So when you make some stupid thing, more important than chasing after the holiness and righteousness of God - then you are shallow. The world doesn't need any more shallow Christians. The world needs a Christian, YOU, to be spending time in Gods Word, and in PRAYER (not just the prayers you pray while doing your household chores but undivided attention, focused, heart-rendered PRAYER). EVERY SINGLE DAY. And I don't mean 15 minutes a day.

DO YOU GET THAT?

15 minutes a day?

Are you really going to change the world by spending 15 minutes with God a day?

Clean laundry is NOT more important than your time digging into Gods word and praying EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Your kids t-ball game? NOT MORE IMPORTANT. And if your kids t-ball game is going to interfere with that time with God, guess what - T-ball needs to be unenrolled from. Oh, and if that t-ball game keeps you from church then you never should have enrolled in the first place.

MY JOB is not to make sure that my niece and nephew knows their Aunt Net loves them. *And it hurts a little bit just to write that out. MY JOB is to seek GOD with all my HEART, and with all my SOUL, and with all my MIGHT. And I'M NOT DOING THAT.

There are many around me weak and sick because I've made TRASH more important than that purposeful EVERY SINGLE DAY time with God. I'm not tapped into power that I should be tapped into, because I haven't paid the cost, I haven't sought the LORD with all my MIGHT.

I want to be a Christian. But I DO NOT want to be like the Christians I know. Because we are all weak and foolish. We have L O S T what our purpose is as a child of God, and became mediocre respectable clones of what "Good Christian Folk" should look like.

Church is not to be a place where respectable people come to act respectably. Church is where children of God show up to confess their faults to each other, to provoke each other to good works, to pray for one another. And that's why I should never have dared to miss. Because I'm not supposed to have gone for what I can get, but because I have a responsibility to my church family to be there to do those things for them as well.

So when I skipped church because I was SICK. I was insane.

Because that is where the collective power of healing prayer should be the strongest.

I confess, IT'S NOT. But it's HIGH TIME that I started expecting things of the church people. It's high time I showed up sick, and vomiting and walked in expecting these people to have BEEN IN TOUCH WITH GOD during the week so that the prayer of faith can save the sick.

It's time, no, it's PAST TIME I came in to church expecting something, reached out for something and was bitterly and vocally disappointed if I didn't get it, and maybe even refused to leave until I did. But I don't have a single right to complain if I've allowed work, or packing, or painting, or whatever to come between me and MY EVERY DAY TIME WITH GOD.

It's high time I unpacked God from His simple place in everything that I do and said HE MUST HAVE DEVOTED TIME EVERY SINGLE DAY.

And that's all there is to it. Christians are weak, and pathetic compared to what God would have us be. I am weak, and pathetic compared to what God would have me be. And it's all because I've let other things be and s t a y more important. DEAR GOD I'M SORRY!

What have I done? How dare I have spent all this time blogging... over a 1000 posts, talking about God but, too busy blogging to give Him REAL time so that He can work in me what HE WILLS. Oh GOD be merciful to me a foolish child!

The problem, I so often tell myself, is that I just don't have enough time, or that I'm tired. And the absolute truth of the matter is that whatever else I did that day, whether it's dishes, laundry, family time, or even volunteer work was allowed to be more important than God to me. I can excuse it away, I can say it's not so, but that's simply not true. And so whatever I'm doing that's keeping me from that time needs to be cut out from me.

And here's the clincher - I probably don't want to let it go.

That's why it's been there for God knows how long preventing me from spending GOOD SOLID AMOUNTS OF TIME in Gods word, and in earnest prayer each day.

Which, with this revelation, leaves me at an impasse: Do I let it go? Or do I put God second?

And if I put God second to whatever it is, that tells me I have made it an idol in my heart. And God is clearly a jealous God who covets every last bit of me. And for the record, carrying on and not changing IS a choice in itself. And a slap directly into the face of God. It's SIN.

............

The problem isn't that I fill my time with sins. I can fill it with so many good works. But God wants me to seek Him, seek Him FIRST and FOREMOST, and then He will add things to me that I might be working to add to myself right now (to the exclusion of God).

Christianity has to be the simplest thing in the world.

Love God, seek God FIRST.

It's only complicated because to put God first, whatever is first now has to move. And that's a struggle of the highest degree.

God help me die. Please God help me die to myself. I don't want to be a halfway Christian. I don't want to live a life for myself with You simply a part of it rather than the whole of it. Because that's what I'm doing now. And it shouldn't be that way. I can sing the song about You burning away sin and dross, but when I do I'm always talking about sin. Dross is defined as "waste, base, inferior" and that's what everything is compared to You.
Yet I spend more time reading blogs than Your word. I spent more time checking and responding to e-mails than praying. I spend entire weekends deeply focused on my niece and nephew, yet You gets 2.5hrs Sunday morning and 1hr Sunday night and the random worship evening in my home. I'm sorry God. So sorry. This life, I get that it needs to be all consuming. But also, when You consume it I won't have lost everything. Everything would be consumed right along with me. I wouldn't lose. I would only win. But, dying is hard to do that's why I need help.

I want more of You Lord, You must increase and I must decrease.

Please God, HELP!

Salt

I love details. I truly do. And digging for them served me well today.

Tomorrows Sunday School class is dealing with Matthew 5:13-20. I was researching some of the key information for the verses.

The very first verse starts out "Ye are the salt of the earth..."
So I looked up the general information about salt; it obviously flavors things, preserves, and if it doesn't have any flavor you just throw it out.

Then I moved on to the other key words.

But the salt thing niggled at my mind and I wondered how salt preserves things. I've always heard of it, but never understood the science behind how it works. It's just one of those things that you know - but don't understand.

So I looked it up. One of the most interesting things I found was a simple easy to read page.

When you use salt to preserve stuff, here's what happens:

1. Salt shifts the growth conditions to favor positive pathogens instead of negative bacteria.
2. Salt removes water from the food which further prevents bacteria from growing because bacteria uses the water to grow.

So when you apply the salt, the odds shift from the bad bacteria to the good pathogens, and the environment that bad things need in order to grow and survive is dried up.

I tend to focus on the savory part of salt. Salt makes things taste good. There's nothing like a buttered up piece of corn on the cob with a good sprinkling of salt.
I love me some salt.
Often though, because the flavor of salt is so noticable, the preservative capabilities tend to be overlooked.

But I've had a couple of talks with people this week where they were really encouraging the idea of tolerance and open-mindedness. Those two conversations came to mind as I was thinking about salt. I can add a lot of spices that make things "taste" good. I can be open-minded to others using spices also rather than salt. But hours later, our tasty things will have invisible bacterias growing away, and with time, visible bacteria will be growing.

The difference is what lasts. The difference is surface & taste vs. depth and physical change.

The entire brief study just reminded me that my life needs to preserve something on this earth, not just make it taste good for a bit.
I don't want to be the spice of the world.
I want the world to have some salt.
Life changing, environment changing, positive pathogen growing salt.

Destroy your reputation.

I found this comment in a post and... while I'm not exactly sure what the protocol is on posting someones comment I figured I'd err on the side of letting you see it. :)

It was a post where a young preacher asked what advice you would offer to someone "if you only had three minutes to pass on advice".
I did edit out the first paragraph that was specific to the original blogger.

A user by the name of Codepoke wrote this:

20 years from now your life will be more than half over, and you’re going to look back on the first half, just like I am. Looking back, I find that most of the times I felt like what I was doing was “little,” it was the Spirit Who was moving me to do it. I am proud and thankful for every time I did one of those little things, and ashamed of how many times I focused on some big thing I thought was important. Usually those big things came from my imagination and ambition.

Moses slew that Egyptian because he thought he was supposed to help his people. It was his idea, and he spent 40 years recovering from that mindset. Saul haled the Christians because he thought he was supposed to help his God. He spent 7 years recovering from that mindset.

Don’t conquer the world. Don’t restore right doctrine in your generation. Don’t even set your congregation on the best path. Feed MaryJane. Comfort BillyBob. Visit old Aunt Sue, and find someone who needs to do some visiting and get him to visit Aunt Sue. Love people.

Destroy your reputation, not by admitting faults you’ve had, but by admitting faults you’re having. Especially weakness, fear, and doubt. Not from the pulpit where it can sound grand, but wisely and judiciously to mature individual brothers who can hurt you. They’re the only ones who can help you.

As I’ve been doing these things (as a layman) for the last 4 years, people have finally started blossoming around me. It’s scary and disappointing to be “mere,” but it’s wonderful to see people unfold to warmth.

Just like the blogger commented back to codepoke, the words "destroy your reputation" are the ones that hit me hard. Reputation has always been a big word for me. One of those special words that are almost as close to me as.. well... the words "trinity" "righteousness" and "forsake not the assembling".

Yes, you should be a person of good reputation. Paul went "first" to those of certain reputation.
But, at the same time when I searched the bible for the word "reputation" the one that stood out to me was this verse:
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

That's important.
It's not important that I come off as strong, or grounded, doubtless, and faithful. It's just important that every day I stand before God as the real Jeanette. No faking, it's worthless with Him anyway, but that little fact has never stopped me before. It's important that other real people, see me as a real person, struggling, believing, hoping, failing, and winning.

I appreciated codepokes comment, because it put out there for me, how foolish my definition of reputation is. I put emphasis on things you can have a reputation for, that don't necessarily help people. Because anyone can trust in a person that has shown themselves to be strong (just to clarify, I'm not saying I've EVER shown myself to be strong, but it was certainly a goal!), but how much greater is a person who leads others to trust in God because they have a reputation for trusting in God, showing GOD to be strong, not themselves.

Do you imagine that's why He said that in our weakness that's when He is strong?
Yet, the number one thing Christians try to hide is our weakness.

God help our backwards little minds.

A new definition of patience.

Patience is...

...not crying while you wait.




I explained this new meaning of patience to Little One this afternoon as she sat dolefully looking at a can of soda that she was going to have to wait a bit for.
Do you have any definitons of your own to share?