The blog of a man STILL addicted to beef jerky

Friday, October 26, 2007

Here's the dealio

It's time for my idea of the month. This one doesn't (necessarily) involve women!

Situation: There's a crisis in your life. Your mother is going to get surgery to have her thyroid removed because it may have cancer growing on it. Yes, this is a real scenario, and yes, my mom survived the surgery. How do you respond? You could ask your friends to pray for your mom's surgery. Good call? Yes. Go do a study on healings in the New Testament (even just miracles in general will work), and see what's going on when those people are healed. Usually there's someone who has total faith that the healing will occur, or there are a lot of people who have faith and as a result there are a lot of healings or miracles. There are a lot of examples where a lot of people faithfully praying for someone's healing for the right reasons (right reasons mean that you aren't praying for your faith to be increased because the faith needs to be there first before the miracle, you're not trying to impress others or draw attention to yourself) can bring about a healing if it is God's will for that person to even be healed at that time or even at all. Yes, run on sentences are fun.

Moving on, what else can you do? You can pray to God yourself! Good call? Yep. Personal prayer is important. Asking others to pray for someone or something is good, but it means nothing if you don't actually do it yourself. You think God's gonna like seeing you pass off prayer responsibilities (we do have a responsibility to pray for others) to others and not do it yourself!? Heck no! If you want to see something done, at least pray for it yourself.

So let's say you do these things but you've been neglecting other areas of your Christian life. Know what that's called? Yes, it is stupid, but that's not what I'm looking for. The word I'm looking for is selfish. SELFISH! The 'fish' part of that word may stand out and seem kind of funny (it does for me), but think about it! Everything is good, everything is fine, your spiritual life is suffering but it's not a big worry right now. You just KNOW that you'll get your act together later. Some way, some how, you'll drop all these habits of yours and start being a better person. You know you should be doing better, but you're just not right now. But it's ok, life is fine right now. Could be better, could be worse. And then WHAM! Something bad happens. Your mom is going to get surgery. She could die. Replace that example with something in your life. Someone close to you is sick and dying. Your family is facing serious financial problems and if you don't get money in 30 days, you'll be living on the street. I know we all can think of real serious things in our lives that we've wanted God to work out.

Got that example in your head? Good. Think about how you felt during that time. You may have cried or wanted to. Other things in your life now seem trivial. You really want God to work this out. You want a good resolution. So you ask Him to heal that person, provide money for your family, whatever. Problem is, you've been neglecting your spiritual life.

"Hi God, remember me? Yeah, I know, I haven't talked with You for a while. I haven't read much of Your book lately. I do enjoy it sometimes though. Anywho, I was hoping You could forget that I've been spending like no time being the Christian I should be and work out this miracle in my life. Why? Oh, umm...because I'd like You to? I'd be so thankful that I'd...well, I don't want to make any promises I know I won't keep. How about we just say that I'd really like this miracle worked out in my life and I might try to be a better Christian for a while and hopefully I'll stick with it. Well...hopefully in the future, when I'm done having all this fun, I'll stick with it."

That is in essence what you'd be saying. You've been neglecting God, if it weren't for the fact that God loved you, there'd be no good reason for Him to work a miracle in your life, and based on your past and recent actions, you certainly can't guarantee that you'll do any better in the future, even if God does work out that miracle in your life. We all know that no matter what we do, we can't "pay God back" or however you want to word it, but if we're going to live a Christian life, there are things we have to do. If we ask God to work things out in our life and don't do anything on our end, that's selfish. SELFISH! Not shellfish, selfish!

So here's the dealio: if you're gonna ask God to do something for you, you should do something for God. When I say something, I don't mean just one thing. By something, I mean that you should obey Him. That's a lifetime thing. He does uphold your life, work out things in your life that you don't even know about, and has reserved a spot for you in the Book of Life. This is all after He gave you life. The least you could do is obey Him, rather than kind of obey Him and ask for things in return. Once again, that's selfish. SELFISH.

You know what else would be stupid/selfish? Not thanking God after working out that miracle in your life. I don't think there's a word to describe how stupid that is. Saying it's Paris Hilton-ish is two words, so that doesn't work. Anywho, when God delivers, give Him the credit! Right away! In public, in private, wherever. When it happens, do it. You didn't bring about that miracle, and your goodness, or lack thereof, certainly didn't bring it about. It's selfish to ask for something, get it, and not say thank you. "Oh, cool, things worked out, I can get back to avoiding God now with less worries." Yay, you're being a selfish idiot!

Think about how you're living your life and just how selfish you're being. Think about how selfish/stupid you're being for getting upset that God hasn't worked out something in your life yet if you haven't done anything to deserve it (I know we don't earn things from God through our works. We need to do something from our end, that's the point I'm trying to make).

Before, during, and after a crisis, do the right thing and obey God. It's just that simple.