Work hard, and then let Jesus

I got a wild hair on Saturday morning before I met with my friend K for our Bible study time doing No Other Gods by Kelly Minter. I actually decided to go outside and do some yard work.

*gasp*

Yes, I know.

But, believe it or not, I like the occasional time of working in the yard. There are such immediate results. And I tend to think a lot while I’m doing it. It sometimes ends up being a very refreshing time of quiet for me as long as the kids are otherwise occupied.

And as long as the physical labor isn't too hard.

Because if the work is too hard, then it's too much like... well... work.

On this particular day, I for some reason decided that it was time to dig up that rosemary bush that’s been slowly dying over the last year. I’ve said countless times over the last 6 months or so, “Oh, I need to just dig that thing up and start over.” But I guess I kept holding out hope that it would pop back to life. But no. I realized that it had finally given up the proverbial ghost.

So I got out there and with the loppers cut off all the big branches. Then, I began to dig and pull up the roots. It’s so obvious it was dead because the roots weren’t hanging on at all. They all came right up. The whole job took less than a half-hour.

But that half hour was so full of spiritual lessons for me. I thought about this dead thing that had been sitting in my garden, just taking up and wasting space that could be used for something that was alive and useful. I realized that same thing could be said for all these things that I look for my life in, things that I make into idols, and how they take up room in my heart that could be filled with the life that Christ gives.

I also think I had been putting off digging the thing up because I was afraid that it would be too hard. That it would be too much work. And yet it wasn’t, because it was already dead.

I am the first to admit that letting go of some idols is hard work. However, I have to wonder that if I would go ahead and realize that they are already dead, since they are not producing fruit, and let the Master Gardener take over, if the job wouldn’t be a ton easier.

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:30.

But I think the hard work for me comes in admitting them and recognizing them. Once I can agree with God on what I am putting before Him, then I think I can let him clean house.

If I would go ahead and start just filling up with Him, wouldn’t He just take over and kick out those idols that are dead anyways? I have to believe that He would.

We’re not done with this study yet, and I am anxious to see what these last couple of weeks hold. But one thing I think K and I have realized already is that this is going to be a continual process.

Both of us have some idols and false gods that are very deeply seated in our personalities and psyches. These are the areas where we are most vulnerable to temptation. For me, one of these areas is independence, which leads to distrust, unbelief and pride. This is an area that I have to be extremely diligent about taking captive each thought and going back time and again to seek cleansing from Jesus.

Not Worth the Calories

I lost a bunch of weight last year and slowly, over the last 4 or 5 months, I’ve gained a little back. I've been trying to re-lose it. I've been going to an aerobics class 2-3 times a week now on top of getting on my elliptical trainer each... well most mornings. I also have a favorite phrase right now when it comes to food that I'm trying to talk myself out of eating.

For certain foods, I just have to keep telling myself, “It’s not worth the calories.”

The bad part is that, unfortunately, there are some things that definitely ARE worth the calories.
For instance, a co-worker celebrated his 40th birthday last week. We took him out to lunch and we surprised him with a cake, which the whole office shared. While my lunch was definitely not worth the calories (IMO Olive Garden rarely is), the cake... oh the cake...

As I was sending out the email to everyone about joining us for cake, I recognized that almost everyone I know in the office was on a diet of one kind or another. So, I made sure that they realized that this cake was totally going to be worth the calories since this was not just your ordinary grocery store cake. I had ordered it from a local bakery called Hot Chocolates.

It wasn’t as pretty as something from Charm City Cakes (Ace of Cakes), but boy howdy… it was goooo-oood.

It was this same day that I read Psalm 29 in my quiet time earlier that morning. In verses 1 -2 the idea of God’s holiness and worthiness of our worship just hit me upside the head.

“Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.”

I began to think back to what the Lord had revealed to me about His holiness just a month or so ago and began to link that to how completely and perfectly worthy He is of my worship.

And then it hit me as I was typing my email to our office-mates about the cake that our false gods and idols are SO not worth the calories, so to speak.

Not worth it at all.

Ever.

Not even those good things that God gives us that we have managed to distort and turn into objects of our worship… they’re not worth it.

Including the church.

Some of our Christian brothers and sisters in the Episcopal church here in the U.S. are going through a difficult time right now. However, the Bishop of Springfield was quoted last week as saying, “We are all idolaters. I discovered in 2003 that I had been putting TEC [The Episcopal Church] in front of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I committed myself not to do that any more. In 2006 I realized I was still working on that process. I am doing a lot better.” He then ended the interview with this statement, “The challenge is this. I am to give up everything for Christ.”

Are you willing to give up those most precious things to you for Christ? Am I?

That’s a hard one isn’t it? Especially when we feel that it is something that God himself has given us. But it is easy to take a gift from God and let it become the object of our worship rather than worshipping the Giver of the gift.

Abraham may have let Isaac, a gift from the Almighty God, become a false god. But, he was willing to give Isaac up, and had faith that God was perfectly in control and that He keeps His promises.

Can the same be said for us?

Will we realize that all those other false gods are just not worth it? Not worth the calories and extra weight and baggage they bring with them?


I'm starting to get it. But just like with food, I've got to keep reminding myself.

NOG - Week 3

Talk about in your face, life changing revelation. The last couple of weeks have seen just that for me in this study.

I have come to realize that I have serious trust issues. Yes, I have problems trusting people. I put up defenses and play the, “I won’t get hurt this way,” game. But it also translates into not truly trusting God.

After I came to this realization, and through the help of some outside reading I was doing (Don’t fall off your chair, I was doing outside reading. I’ll post about that later), I came to see that I have been living with independence as an idol. Absolutely addicted to it. Wrapped up in and attached by fear to independence.

I had been plagued for several days by the fact that I was searching and felt like I kept dancing around what the core issue was. I’d come up with this or that but nothing that seemed to really be what I thought was the core problem. (Which is partly why I didn't post anything about week 2. I never felt finished with it.) Then, when it hit me, after I really realized it, it was like a ton of bricks was lifted off my shoulders.

I don’t know yet how I am going to deal with this idol. But I do know that I’ll be depending on Jesus to help me tear it down.

NOG - Week 1

My sweet friend K and I are doing the bible study No Other Gods by Kelly Minter this summer along with about 3000 of our closest friends from all 50 states and several other countries in conjunction with Beth Moore’s LPM Blog. It took forever for my book to come in at the store where I ordered it. But I got it on Wednesday and dove right in.

Holy Moly… let me tell you. It’s good so far.

And God… He is a-talkin’ to us.

We had our first meeting today (Saturday). And it is so interesting to me how certain words or phrases from a passage of scripture or from the text of the book will jump off the page at me… but completely different words or phrases stick out to her.

The whole study is about the idea of false gods in our lives. And it truly is amazing what has been revealed to each of us in just this first week.

It talks a lot about the idea of the God we believe in and profess versus the gods that in day to day living we functionally worship.

For me, personally, this idea of pride has been coming back up again and again. And when I really stop and think about it, I realize that self is the god that I am functionally worshiping.

Ouch.

More to come on this I think.