Month: February 2012

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

“With God, all things are possible.”

Those are probably two of the most quoted scriptures in the whole Bible. I know that I’ve surely said them thousands of times. Do I always believe them? My actions don’t suggest that I do. Because if I DID believe them, there’s a whole lot more I would be attempting for the cause of Christ. If I did believe that I could truly do ALL things through Christ, I’d surely be about doing His business more than I am. If I believed that all things are possible with God, I wouldn’t be so worried about failing. I wouldn’t let the fears of my own abilities stop me from attempting what God wants me to do.

Ah, but there it is. if I’m dependent on my own abilities, I can do nothing except fall short. I have every reason to fear failure if I don’t include God in the mix. The scripture doesn’t say that I can do all things by myself. It doesn’t tell me that all things are possible if I work hard enough, or practice six hours a day, or study two hours for every one hour of class time. There is absolutely nothing in myself that guarantees success. Nothing.

But with God…now that’s a different story. With God, all things really are possible. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. And so can you. So here’s the question: What would you do for God if you knew that you could not fail? And knowing that He won’t let you fail, what are you waiting for?

I’m losing on all my Words With Friends games, and besides, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, so I thought I’d hammer out a few thoughts on the keyboard. How many commas does that last sentence have, and are they all appropriate? Who knows.

I’m feeling a little out-of-sorts the past week. Short version: last week I was diagnosed with hypertension. “Diagnosed” makes it sound so…serious. And it is. Hypertension is the “silent killer” and ranks pretty high up there on the list of things that will send you to meet your Maker. Many, many people have it and don’t even know it because symptoms are rare or misdiagnosed. But I did say “short version.” The meds the doctor put me on are working wonders in bringing my blood pressure down, but they are also doing a number on my body in other ways. So much so, in fact, that I no longer remember where I was going with this. 🙂

All this business with hypertension and the “silent killer” has gotten me to thinking of the brevity of life. Life really is a vapor, as James describes it in the Bible. He’s talking about people making plans, saying they will do this tomorrow or they will go here tomorrow. Yet, we don’t know if we have a tomorrow because life is “but a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow.” The New Living Translation puts it this way: ” How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.” So what gives us the right to say what we will or will not do tomorrow or a year from now? I’m not saying that making plans is foolish. Without a vision or a dream or a plan, we resemble a 4 year-old on a bicycle with training wheels, stuck in a pothole, peddling as fast as we can, going no where because we’re on unlevel ground. What I am saying is what James said in verse 1 5 of the same chapter. “What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Seeking God’s will first is what levels the terrain we’re learning to ride your bicycle on. Who knows what He has in store for our lives tomorrow. Maybe He wants us to be a missionary. Maybe He wants us to help the elderly neighbor next door. Maybe He wants us to speak to the youth group. Or sing a song in church. Or write a book or play. Or befriend a new kid in class. Or….you get the point. Our life is a vapor, but with God, the opportunities are beyond our imagination. Why would we want to limit them with our own minds, when His is so infinitely greater?

I don’t know how many times in my life someone has said to me, “Follow your heart.” However, I can tell you how many times I have taken their advice. Zero. That’s right, I said zero. Of all the decisions that I’ve made over the course of my 37 years, not once have I abandoned all logic and just did what I felt in my heart. I’m an analyzer, a weigher-of-consequences. I can’t make a simple decision without thinking through what might happen.

For the most part, I’ve been okay with this. It keeps me out of a lot of trouble. When it comes to being happy with where I am in life, however, it doesn’t do much for me. Oh sure, I faked it for a while when I chose to major in Education even though I had NEVER wanted to be a teacher. It was, or so I thought, a safe choice. There would always be jobs in the education field. When my job got eliminated last spring, I had to figure out where I would go from there. I tossed around thoughts of going back to school for something in the medical field. After all, if there is job security anywhere, it is in the medical field, right? But no matter how much I tried to convince myself that it was the right thing to do, I just couldn’t stay excited about it. I had to do something, though, because my unemployment was running out quickly.

Currently, I am in an entry-level job that any teenager with no experience or education could do. I work a horrible shift and often daydream of the day I can move onto something better. Something I enjoy. Something that I love. I hadn’t given the “Follow your heart” advice much thought until a few days ago when I read a friend’s status on Facebook. It said, “To find where your heart is, look to where you mind ends up when it wanders.” Hmmm. The quote caught my attention immediately, but I dismissed it just as quickly. The quote has come back to my mind several times over the past couple days.

Now honestly, the first place my mind usually wanders to is laundry. It’s not where my heart is, it’s just the thing that seems to take up most of my time. So I had to go deeper than that. God, family? Yes, yes, but let’s go farther. If someone asked me, “What is your dream career?” What would I say? The answer to this question has been the same since I was a kid. The answer has always been “A writer.”

So there’s my heart and now I have to follow it. I have no idea where to even begin, other than I thought blogging might exercise my writing muscles a bit. It’s probably not a safe choice. It’s most likely not going to pay any bills for a long time, if ever. But, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do.

It’s funny, after years of trying to make safe choices, career-wise, I still ended up in the same place I would have if I’d have majored in Creative Writing in college. I should have just followed my heart.