MY BLOG POSTS

Last week, I was walking to a Pep Rally with some of my students. Seniors. And it hit me – somewhere between my classroom and the basketball court – I was a senior 20 years ago.

Yes, I am THAT old. But let me just tell you — these 20 years have gone by fast. Really fast.

Those of my generation reading this are nodding their heads in agreement. You know exactly what I am talking about. Those of you who, like my students, think 37 is light years away: it’s not. It’s really not.

But for all of us, there is a lesson in my Pep Rally revelation: some things that seem super-important, life-or-death right now, aren’t.

Here’s what I don’t remember from 20 years ago:

• My grade in Trigonometry
• Our Homecoming theme
• The score of any sport played my entire senior year
• The most popular girl/boy in school
• How much I weighed
• The most popular song/movie/dance
• Reasons for getting mad at my parents/friends/teachers
• Anything from my closet
• My SAT or ACT scores

I could go on – partly because I have a terrible memory….what was this post about, again? 🙂

So today, focus on what really matters: the parts of you that reflect Christ and are being shaped into someone who resembles him more and more each day.  Do your best in school, in sports, in your extracurricular activities, but don’t let yourself be defined by any of those. As my friend Laura tells her students, “You are not the grade you receive.” You are a beloved child of God. A child of God who may struggle with math, with some extra weight, with low self-esteem, with parents who are divorcing, with friends who have hurt you…but those aren’t who you are. You are God’s precious daughter. And all that other stuff…?

Fuggitaboutit!

In this third installment of “What is God’s Will?” posts, I want to talk about running. That’s right: God wants you to run.

My sister ran a marathon when she was 19. She trained for months, running her college campus, watching what she ate, learning how to find a rhythm, to push her body past its limits. And then she ran. And ran. 26 miles. Her body hurt. I’m sure, several times throughout that day, she thought about quitting. Limping home and curling up with some Ben and Jerry’s. But she was determined not to listen to her tired body. She pressed on. She called me when it was over, thrilled to say her socks were soaked with blood (only runners understand that is an exciting discovery — I am not a runner, so my response was, “Ewww!”). She did it. She was exhausted, in pain, aching all over. Running a marathon is NOT easy. But, she says, finishing is an amazing feeling. Worth all the sacrifices she made.

The writer of Hebrews says, “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”

The Christian life is like a marathon. We are running a race that has been marked out for us — God has identified our “route,” he has placed on it important landmarks to see, to shape us; people we are to influence and be influenced by; lessons we are to learn. The race isn’t always easy. Like my sister, there will be times when we’re just hurting and want to quit, times when the end seems too far away to ever achieve. But like my sister, we need to persevere. God is calling us to run, not a literal marathon, but a spiritual one. One where the prize is not a medal or bleeding feet, but “the prize of our high calling in Jesus Christ.”

So run. Grab your shoes, start your training, get rid of whatever it is that is holding you back from running the race God has marked out for you. Don’t sit on the sidelines. Don’t just read about the race. Don’t just talk about it. Don’t just listen to sermons about running. Don’t complain about the others who are running or claim to be running. Run! It is worth the effort. It is worth the pain. It’s worth the sacrifices.

Because making it to the end is going to be amazing!

I just did a Google search on “Worry.” It turned up 504, 000,000 pages. Pages that define worry, pages that diagnose worry, pages that medicate worry, pages that worry about worry. Five hundred and four million!

Compare that to searches on “Peace”: 198,000,000; “Calm”: 270,000,000; “Relaxed”: 166,000,000.

We are worriers. We worry about all kinds of things. We worry about things in the past that we can’t change. We worry about things in the future that we can’t control. We worry about things in the present that we can’t predict.

I looked up the origin of “worry,” and found it comes from an Old English word meaning “to strangle.” That sounds about right, don’t you think? Worry strangles us, makes it hard to breath, hard to function. It holds us back.  There is nothing positive about worry. Nothing beneficial. None of us gets to the end of a tough week and says, “Boy, I am sure glad I worried so much!”

We know worry is bad. It is unhealthy. It gives us stomach aches and headaches and muscle aches. But did you know it isn’t just bad…it’s a sin.

In Matthew 6:34, Jesus says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

DO NOT WORRY. Not, “May I make a suggestion?” or “Hey, you know, why don’t you try…?” or “It might be a good idea…” No, this is a command, the subject being YOU. That’s right. YOU. Don’t worry.

Here’s the good news: if God commands us to do something, we can be certain He will empower us to do it. It isn’t impossible.

But it is hard.

Jesus knew that. So he didn’t just leave us with the command, he also left us with a solution, an antidote to worry:

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Mt. 6:33

So when you catch yourself worrying about something – a big test, a cute boy, an angry boss, a broken-down car, a huge bill, a frightening medical diagnosis…Stop. Pray. Seek God’s kingdom, God’s righteousness. Invite him into your problem, give Him free reign in your soul, allow him to replace that worry with peace, even joy. Think about HIM, not the problem. Because HIS kingdom and HIS righteousness are eternal. Your problems are not. Don’t waste your time worrying. Spend your time seeking God: his kingdom, his righteousness. “And all these things shall be given to you as well.”

How do we find God’s will for our lives?

I think we can sometimes get so caught up in finding God’s will for the future that we miss doing God’s will today. So I’m going to spend the next few posts discussing some things that I know God wants us to do today.

I want to start with two things that Jesus thought were incredibly important. So important, in fact, he said “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments:”

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

How different would we be if we just followed these two commands? Imagine!

First – love God with everything we have. Following this command brings incredible joy, peace, comfort in difficult times, you name it. We were made to love God. When we are doing what we were created to do, other issues just don’t seem as important.

Second – love others as much as we love ourselves. And we do love ourselves. A lot. C.S. Lewis discussed this in his book, Mere Christianity. He says that one evidence of our self-love is evident in how quick we are to forgive and excuse ourselves for wrong-doing. We lied…BUT we didn’t mean to. We got angry…BUT the other person provoked us. We don’t hold grudges against ourselves. We don’t think the worst of ourselves. Let’s do that for others. Let’s lavish them with our love. Let’s forgive them, accept them with all their flaws – let’s treat them the way we want to be treated.

And THAT is God’s will for you – and me – today (and everyday!). So forget the “what if’s” and live right now, loving God and loving others. Let tomorrow worry about itself…whoops! That’s for the next post 😉