Connection Failed

I really have no idea what I would do without internet. I really think the Earth would stop spinning if something happened to to it.

My brain is actually connected to the internet. Seriously.

Whenever I get a thought that I feel is worthy to be shared with the world I pull out my phone, type it up and send it to my Twitter account. From there, this thought is tweeted to everybody who follows me (I like to pretend more people follow me than actually do), sent to my Facebook as a status update, and posted to the side of my blog for my readers to see. Some thoughts come to me that I want to write down but not publish yet so instead of using my brain to remember all that stuff I send that thought to my Evernote account (via Twitter) where it is stored in a big electronic notebook filled with random ideas that sync with my computer every time I turn it on. Many of these random thoughts evolve into bigger ideas and as my brain begins processing and hashing them all out my fingers begin typing and with one click the whole shebang is published to the world on my blog account, usually without me even proofreding fr spelllling errors. Then I post a link to this blog on Facebook.

Someday I am sure that Google+ will make it’s way into my brain, but I am not cool enough for that yet.

I was thinking about this the other day and something occurred to me that makes me continually grateful. What if I was trying to do all this with dial- up?

Ooh, just saying the word dial-up just brings back painful memories of the electronic dark ages of the nineties.

Remember dial-up internet? It took like four days to check your email and you had to pay by the minute? Signing on would take forever and then for some reason your computer would begin making noises that sounded like R2-D2 was having and asthma attack while you waited patiently for that happy little guy to say “You’ve Got Mail!” The worst part of it was that it seemed like every time you would finally get to 99% connected point some jerk in another room would accidently pick up the phone and cancel your connection.

I think that there are seasons in our lives that feel like our prayers travel through a dial up connection.

I have noticed, that when things aren’t going the way we would like them to, we question our connection first. We always doubt our ability to hear from God and His ability to speak to us.

This isn’t new, it happened way back in the garden.

In Genesis we find two people who have a closer walk with God than anyone has ever had since, with the exception of maybe Jesus. The Bible says that God would actually walk with them in the garden and speak to them. There was no sin or death that could get in the way of their relationship and they could communicate freely at anytime they wanted. Nothing could interfere with their relationship.

Then comes this dumb serpent who tries to mess everything up. He says to Eve, “Did God really say ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”₁

Notice that the serpent didn’t try and attack the logic of God’s command, try and prove it wrong or convince her that his idea was better. The serpent questioned Eve’s ability to hear from God and she fell for it. We do this all the time.  Life gets hard and God tells us something that doesn’t make sense at the time so we question our ability to have heard from Him correctly. We forget how long we have been in this journey with God and we forget how many times we have heard directly from Him.We forget how well we know His voice.

Eve was so deceived into believing the serpent heard God more clearly that she completely forgot that is was she who used to walk with God. How could that serpent know what God told her, he wasn’t there! The enemy wasn’t there when you heard from God, in that moment where you broke down, humbled before God and He wrapped you in His arms and began whispering dreams and purpose into your heart. He wasn’t there when you decided to give God everything and have an actual relationship with Him.

Satan attacks what he is most jealous of.

He used to be able to go to God whenever he wanted. He used to be able to sit at his feet and worship Him. He used to be able to hear from Him, but he threw it all away. Now he has to convince us that we can’t hear from Him.

Ever find it funny how many times we go through things and wonder if we are even saved? That no matter how long we have known God and seen Him move, whenever we mess up or are just confused we always question our salvation?

I think it is time that we remind Satan that He wasn’t there when that preacher or Sunday school teacher gave that altar call that drove you to your knees and compelled you to give everything over to God  for the first time. He wasn’t there when you were rolling around in the dirt of your past and a hand came down from heaven to pick you up, wipe you off and give you a new name. How could he possibly know what you and God had a private conversation about? He isn’t in the loop, don’t let him convince you he is.

There is nothing wrong with our connection.

I’m tired of seasoned Christians asking themselves if they were sure they heard from God when they began dreaming of the impossible or wondering if they will still make it into heaven after they made a little mistake.

In Ephesians Paul talks about the armor of God and starts with what he calls the “Helmet of Salvation.” People wear helmets to protect their heads. They are pretty important.

I think the reason Paul calls Salvation the helmet is because that needs to be what guards our thoughts. Everything that comes into our mind needs to go through the filter of the knowledge that we are saved and have a real, tangible relationship with a real, tangible God. We hear from God and our helmet covers our ears so that we can’t hear from anybody who tells us otherwise.

When we pray, God hears us. When He speaks, we hear Him.

Let God remind you that you know what His voice sounds like and that He knows what yours sounds like and there is nothing wrong with your connection.

Let your prayer life be in 4G.

 

1-Genesis 3:1 (NIV)

Glowsticks

I used to really like rocks.

I would collect them, read about them, and talk about them all the time.

Did I mention I didn’t have too many friends back then?

Anyway, because of my love of rocks all I wanted for Christmas one year was a Rock Tumbler, which was supposed to take the boring rocks I found in my back yard and turn them into beautiful polished gems over a certain period of time. I had no idea how long this certain period of time was supposed to be but I was super excited when I got one and, with the help of my mom, assembled everything and placed my ugly rocks into the little plastic bucket that fit into this rotating motor on the tumbler. The basic concept was that if you put enough rocks and a little bit of water into this bucket then they would slowly grind themselves to perfection while the machine continued to spin constantly. This sounded great until after a week of hearing the rumbling sound nonstop from our garage where the tumbler was all we had was what looked like a bucket of wet cement with a bunch of rock chunks in it.

The thing just kept grinding and grinding and we never saw results.

Life can feel like it is in a Rock Tumbler sometimes.

We know we need God to change us and help us grow and develop but sometimes it seems like we are just going in circles. The grinding process of our lives seems to have been going on forever and we look at ourselves and still just see ugly rocks. Everything goes in circles.

Every time we finally come back up for air and get our footing back life tends to throw us another curveball that sends s back to the grinding process.

This was what I felt the other day when I felt like God was saying to me that I would be going into a season of breaking. I wanted to point out to God the rough time I had been having lately. I wanted to remind him of every thing that went wrong last year. I felt like I deserved to at least leave a season of breaking before I entered a new one.

It was like God was saying “Hey remember that brief moment recently when you felt well rested and excited about life? Hope you enjoyed it.”

I had to ask myself, is my life going to be spent on a mountain or in a valley? If mostly a valley, then is it worth it at all?

 

I love the fall. It is absolutely beautiful outside. I love seeing the brilliant colors that trees become capable of painting themselves with. I walked outside the other day and saw  this tree that looked like it was on fire. I had never seen so many yellows and oranges on a tree before and I stood there breathless. I never noticed that that tree was even there because it just always blended into the rest of the forestry behind it.

I thought to myself, “Why can’t this tree look like this all the time? Why can’t it always be this beautiful?”

And then I remembered. This tree is dying.

Soon the leaves are going to turn from yellow to brown and then they will shrivel up and fall slowly to the ground. Then the branches will be bare and exposed to the harsh cold of winter while nobody even notices because of how ugly they have become.

I thought about how cruel of God it seemed to be to make this tree such a spectacle at its’ weakest point.

If this were the highlight of this trees’ life then it would be cruel but it isn’t, because next spring it will come back.

Every spring this tree sees will make it stronger and more beautiful. A truly great tree is one that has been through some things, and is still standing.

Life is not a question of either valley or mountaintop. We go through the valley so that we can become the mountaintop.

When you realize that the rest of the world living apart from Christ will experience a plateau life at best, never reaching the heights that they were created to reach, it is easy to see that the mountain tops are worth the valleys. It is impossible to live your whole life without being broken. The question is, then, who are we going to let do the breaking?

We can let the world break us, rob us of our identity and hope and send us to destruction, or we can let God break us so that He can reshape us, heal us, and set us toward a greater glory than we ever could imagine. It is not a choice of staying whole or being broken, it is just a choice of whether or not we want to be broken for a reason.

What does it mean to be in a season of breaking? What does it mean to let God break us? I think it is the only method possible for God to rip off and destroy all the things we have put on that keep us from being the light He created us to be.

For some reason, when Jesus said that we were the “light of the world” we got this image of a candle stuck in our heads. I think a more accurate picture would be a glowstick.

A glowstick is one of those plastic tubes filled with a strange neon liquid that undergoes a chemical reaction and begins to, well, glow. The thing is, though that  to start this chemical reaction, the tube has to be broken. Not breaking it would be an injustice to its purpose. If nobody snapped it then it would remain the rest of its life as a useless plastic tube. God snapping us in half is the best thing He could ever do for us.

That is not too fun to think about.

C.S. Lewis wrote in  A Grief Observed  that “God always knew my faith was a house of cards, Him knocking it down was His only way of showing me that.”

The thing about glowsticks is that they don’t last very long. Neither do we.

When the light of a glowstick begins fading, sometimes they have to be snapped again. Their life is a cycle of snapping and glowing, snapping and glowing, snapping and glowing.

There will come a point when snapping will do it no more good and everything has been completely used up that would give off any kind of light. And then that is the end.

We always feel like when God is braking us that this will be the last straw and that this time will be the one that does you in. The truth is, it might be.

It is a good thing that God never promises to make you live forever here on earth, but up in heaven where there will be no more need of breaking.

God, I give you permission to break me of everything that gets in the way of you glowing through me. Break me of everything that doesn’t look like you. Break me of my wants and desires that fail in comparison to the desires you have for me. Whatever it takes, break me. I want you to do the breaking and not the world that I live in. Whatever you do will be so much more worth it. I’ll take whatever you give me.