How far can I go without being a cheater?

Imagine that you are in a relationship. Imagine that your partner tells you consistently how they love you and just want to spend time with you. They tell you that you are all they need and that you are the very air they breathe. Now imagine they tell you that next week they are going to see their ex and need to know how far they can go with them before it's considered cheating. They want to know if they can hold hands or kiss or embrace and still be considered faithful to you.

This is what we do with God. We tell Him that we love Him. We say that we just want to dwell in His presence. We say that He is all we need and we even sing songs about how we need Him to survive. We claim to be so in love with Him, but in the next breath we ask how much we can play with sin before it's considered wrong. Young people go to their youth pastors and ask how far they can go with their boyfriend or girlfriend without it being considered sin. Adults ask their pastors how dishonest they can be without being a liar.

Sin goes against the very nature of God. He doesn't kind of dislike sin or sort of have a problem with it, He HATES sin. Sin killed His Son. We must hate sin the way God does. If we love Him the way we claim, we will do everything in our power to avoid the thing He hates the most.

More Blessed Than I Deserve

A couple of months ago I was watching a sermon series on prayer. The speaker was pointing out that we always pray for God to bless us when we already possess so many blessings. He spoke about a woman at a fast-food restaurant who always responds to the question "how are you doing today?" with "I'm blessed". I adopted this policy for myself and have been astounded at the results. I'll admit that if someone had given me such a response just a few months ago I would have meet them with sarcasm and eye rolls, but I'm beginning to see that it is the only acceptable answer.

Nine out of ten people you say this to will feel the way I used to. They will think it is contrived, and I don't blame them because I used to be cynical too. But that one person out of the ten will respond with "why do you say that?" And that gives me the most amazing chance to minister. I tell them how blessed I am that I woke up in America, in a bed, and that I have clean water. That automatically makes us incredibly fortunate. I get to tell them that I have a job and am able to attend school, which is a luxury for many women around the world. And then I get to tell them the biggest reason that I know I am blessed. I serve a God who loves me so much that He sent His son to die for me and who longs to speak to me.

Since I began giving this response, I have had the opportunity to witness to co-workers, friends, servers, and even the people working checkouts. I will never be someone who is comfortable with walking up to someone and asking if they knew for a fact that they would go to heaven, but telling people how blessed we are has become my personal evangelistic tool.

So, on this Thanksgiving day, I encourage you to take the challenge and begin to acknowledge your blessings everyday and use it as your testimony. Take stock of what you have and stop asking God for blessings (He has already given you all that you need) and instead use your life and every word to Bless God.

Cliffs Notes

I am an incredibly slow reader. I mean like painfully slow. This made literature classes very difficult for me. Until I found Cliffs Notes. These notes are designed as a study aid to be used along with reading a book. They give the synopsis and character summaries and offer explanations of symbolism used throughout the book. I used these notes as they were intended, meaning I read the book as well, but most people read them in place of the book as a short cut.

What does this have to do with anything? I'm glad you asked. It occurs to me that many of us use church as spiritual cliffs notes. We show up expecting the work to be done for us. We depend on the moderator to put us in the mind of worship, the worship leader to choose the right songs to allow us to enter into God's presence, and the pastor to teach us something we didn't know about God.  If we don't get what we expected from the service we blame the aforementioned participants for not being in tune with God's voice.

And that's the problem, we should be actively seeking God's voice all week long, seeking Him through worship and reading His Word on our own time. There are no short cuts to God's Presence. You can not show up on Sunday and expect the work to be done for you. If you desire God's Presence, you have to put in the work yourself. There is no one else to blame if you don't put in the time on your own.