8AM. Class meetings before school starts. Our Spanish teacher is giving us our morning devo. There's JFK talking about why we chose to go to the moon in the 60s:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. -JFK
He did something, two months before his assassination. He didn't want to do things that were easy. What would be the point? Maybe it wasn't backed up by scripture in his speech, but God certainly doesn't want us to do the easiest thing all the time. Which leads me to my next experience today....
Around 10:30. Sitting in Plus Period, watching Victoria Osteen say:
“Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”
No Victoria. No amen. I don't know what version of the Bible she was reading, but in mine, I read a story about when God allowed Job's family to die. He allowed him to lose everything that he owned and then to top it off, He allowed sores to grow all over his body to the point where he sat in dust scratching himself with broken pottery while listening to his wife (the only member of his family not dead) tell him to: "curse God and die" (Bad wife) I think God is sovereign. If He is, then everything that happens, happens because He wants it to. Ask Job about the prosperity gospel that our friend Victoria is talking about. He might have a few words... God doesn't have us here to be "happy", He has us here to (among other things) spread the Gospel. The real one. The Great Commission is our mission. And it says that we should do something.
12:30. Sitting in Study Hall reading Death By Living by N.D. Wilson, which I haven't picked up in months and decided to continue today.
"Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them fill with laughter...........I have 250,000 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths to....(my family)...or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end."
At this point I should mention: The theme for this school year is "Beyond Belief". It's about how we should do more then simply believe in God and dig deeper into our faith. Theme verse? James 1:22: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." Doers. So there's that. Oh, and the theme song? Do Something by Matthew West. You think God was trying to tell me something? At this point in my day I still hadn't gotten it. I went through the rest of the day, learned about soldiers in World War One (they certainly did something) and went home. When did the obvious statements from my day come together? When I did some lawn mowing and (as per usual) Switchfoot enlightened the obvious in my life.
I wonder why would I wait till I die to come alive?
I'm ready now I'm not waiting for the Afterlife.
-Afterlife, Switchfoot
Huh... that sounds familiar... Oh yeah! It's been pounded into my head all day and some of the rest of the week! So what's the point in all of this? Obviously, God has been teaching me to do the hard thing. Not because it's easy, and not because it will make me happy, but because it will be my purpose. God's will is my purpose and if that means doing the hard thing, then I pray that I can have the guts to open my life to Him and let Him take the wheel (Cliche points!). When I'll be presented with something hard to do, I don't know. But until then, I make the choices He would want me to. Not my fear, not my laziness, not my pride and not my mind.
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