“Fully Rely on God,” the radio broadcaster explained one morning this week, encouraging his audience to add the familiar F.R.O.G. acronym to their electronic signatures, just as we type LOL for “lots of laughs.”
Now, anxiety is my middle name, and yet as a believer in Christ, it should be farthest from my imaginings. Fully rely on God. If I could just really live what I believe, how would I ever feel anxiety at all?
From whence comes each anxiety or fear? Aren’t they connected to our ultimate fear of the unkown, death? Again this week, listening to a relaxation tape, I was reminded that death is not something to fear, but a thing to rejoice in that it is a necessary step to another, better stage in existence. Fully rely on God. Seeing this life and its troubles as a stepping stone to a better, at this stage unknowable, existence should be a source of solace instead of fear and anxiety in a Christ-centered world.
Twice this week, I have been encouraged to turn to God when I feel the pressures and anxieties of this world coming down on me. How will I turn to Him? In prayer? By reciting my favorite verses to myself? By stating to myself that there is a purpose to what I am feeling or experiencing that means something to God, even if I can’t see it in this moment?
Christ seemed to know that we would be challenged by anxieties in this life. We are encouraged to “cast our anxieties on Him because He cares” for us. His parables tell us about people who faced harsh masters, life-altering mistakes, and the early death of loved ones. Even Simon, called Peter, who certainly fully relied on God, fell victim to the devil and denied Christ three times before the cock crowed.
When I think of all the time I have wasted on feeling unnecessary anxieties, I wonder how I haven’t learned from them. What is it going to take for me to fully rely on God in even the smallest of things, not to mention the really big challenges of life?
For those who are predisposed to overmuch anxiety, relying on God is a daily struggle. But even the most steady of personalities faces challenges where relying on God’s will helps to make the challenges more emotionally manageable.
Maybe a little more F.R.O.G. in our correspondence is really a good idea, especially if we refuse to forget the fully part and practice a little more reliance.
Author: Ramona Levacy Billingslea
I am a 50-something Texan with a feisty cat and a supportive husband of 25+ years. With a Master's degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing, I have taught creative writing at Texas Tech, won awards for my writing and been blessed to be mentored by Horn Professor and poet Dr. Walt McDonald. I earn a living by helping my husband's family run a health food store, but my avocation is writing. I hope you enjoy reading about some of my triumphs and tragedies as I continue to work on figuring out what life is all about and on growing my ability to share my writing. May your own journey be a blessed one.
Remember the Sabbath?
History buffs know that even after the Reformation, the importance of the Sabbath was so felt that it was legislated well into the early days of the Colonies, punishing those who failed to show up on a Sunday morning as if they had stolen a loaf of bread.
But what were the slackers really stealing? What do we get, and give, from our Sabbath “rest?”
I find myself contemplating these questions at the beginning of this new year, in part because I feel a bit more drained than usual from the year that has passed. I have to ask myself, was the energy output worth it? What exactly did I spend my time on? More importantly, what mistakes will I correct and winning strategies will I repeat in the coming year?
So, all the first of the year resolution business is what brought me around to thinking about the form and function of the Sabbath. Of course, we all know that God Himself chose the seventh day to rest and consider the good work He had done. But have you ever contemplated how often the Jewish religious calendar also called for even the land to rest? At the end of 2 Chronicles, when the Jews have been driven out of their own land by the Babylonians, the chronicler describes the land as having its sabbath rest.
In a world that is not dominated by physical labor for survival, we have inched further and further from the concept of a resting Sabbath. Long gone are those Sundays of our youth when nothing was open except for maybe a gas station. How many of us do our Sunday duty at church, and then drive straight to a restaurant, thereby depriving the waiter, hostess, busboy, and chef of their Sabbath rests? Do we even know how to rest in a world blitzed with electronics we can carry in our pockets and to-do lists much too long to fit into the waking hours of a seven-day week, much less a six-day one if we were to take our resting truly to heart?
Still, as with all of God’s instructions, there is more than just the arbitrary to the Sabbath commandment. Our bodies do need rest, especially in a world where too many of us have fallen victim to what the experts call “chronic stress,” where the body stays in flight or fight mode all the time, the adrenals pumping hormones that are preparing a body for a fight that is actually spending the day in front of a computer screen. Without enough time in a day for our bodies to “stand down,” turning off the fight or flight response and allowing what is known as our parasympathetic system to kick in for the gearing down of the adrenals and hormones, we eventually burn out, mentally and physically. Anxiety, depression, excess weight, and many autoimmune disorders have been linked to this modern-day curse of chronic stress.
So, taking a Sabbath to really embrace the idea of rest is a good idea on many levels, not the least of which is the ability this day of rest can give us to praise God and contemplate our blessings. Have you ever noticed that it is hard to be in a bad mood if you make yourself smile? That’s because the smile action actually triggers feel-good endorphins to be released into our systems.
Throughout the biblical texts, we see God’s joy in being praised and recognized by His people. He created in us a desire to seek Him, in part I think, because He longs to be sought. Remember when Jesus said that the stones would cry out if we would not?
Those who know me realize the irony of me discussing Sabbath observance. As a high-anxiety introvert, my efforts at church attendance are truly acts of discipline on my part. Still, God’s Sabbath can be observed anywhere you are, where two or three are gathered. It may be best observed according to His will in a church, but worship, praise and rest can also occur wherever the faithful are.
Could I truly do it? Could I truly spend an entire Sabbath with no distractions? No television, or computer, or books, no cooking, or laundry, or work projects unfinished, but only the word of God, still moments to hear Him, and my own, clumsy prayers?
Am I willing to risk it for the rewards it offers–gratefulness, compassion, and pleasing my Creator?
Are you?
Here’s hoping our 2012 time management includes some down time with the One above us.
Not Just a Bumper Sticker
The world is full of one-liners. Some of them make us laugh. Some of them bore us. Others are supremely forgettable.
But others somehow find a way of sticking in our brains. In some way, they reflect a deeper truth than the ten seconds it took to read them as they zoomed past us on the back of a worn bumper sticker on the busy freeway.
My latest brain sticker came to me through one of those email blasts of “feel good” lines that I often usually skip over, as too many emails come through my box every day. This email, however, had been “screened” and forwarded to me by my dad, so I knew it would be worth a look.
As it turned out, I was really glad I did because the email led me to a new mantra that is helping me approach my life from a better perspective each day. I even put the statement on my day planner as a recurring task so I read it each day.
What’s this great perspective? “Don’t take yourself seriously. Nobody else does.”
This statement doesn’t work for everybody. If the problems you are dealing with are extreme low self-esteem or feeling alone in the world, then your statement would be something more along the lines of “God loves you,” or “learn to love yourself and love will find you.”
But for someone like me, who was driving herself crazy with a pile of things I “should” be doing, beating myself up about what I wasn’t accomplishing every day, and feeling like I was somehow wasting my life because I wasn’t doing an undefined “something” that was my great purpose in life, the idea of not taking myself seriously is helping me put things into a more realistic perspective. It’s making me not judge myself or others the way I was doing. And, when I catch myself getting revved up into anxiety about what I am or am not accomplishing, the statement helps me shift back down into a more reasonable gear.
The statement is also getting me to see life from other people’s perspectives much better. After all, the reason no one is taking me as seriously as I take myself is because we all of us face the world from the very limited perspective of the self. I’ve even caught myself doing a better job of thinking about what I am about to say and realizing that what I would think is obvious or practical might actually be insulting or wounding to somebody else. I am also learning not to take things personally that I might have otherwise done. People aren’t deliberately wounding me so much as rightfully being caught up in their own problems and wounds.
Finally, the statement reminds me that I am not supposed to be sticking my nose in other people’s problems. I like to be the fixer, you see, and so I find myself volunteering to do things or solve things that aren’t really in my purview. Sure, I’m supposed to be helping people as a Christian, but that does not require that I do everything for everybody, which is a trap I can easily fall into. When you find yourself sitting around thinking about how to solve somebody else’s problems, when that somebody hasn’t even asked for your input, your are taking yourself way too seriously. Do you really think you are that smart or important? All you are really doing is avoiding solving your own problems and making yourself feel more important than you really are in the grand scheme of things. Most importantly, always thinking just flat out makes your brain tired.
So, I hope if you are dealing with a particular, pervading issue that you can find your own “bumper sticker wisdom” to help serve as your own reminder of how best to beat the challenges in your own life.
Just remember, that while others aren’t taking you seriously, God most certainly does. All the time. Unwavering.
Christmas Junkies
It starts earlier every year, and even as we grumble as the retail marketers begin their Christmas decorating before the Halloween leftovers have even been clearanced from their shelves, a secret part of us starts to feel the tingle that accompanies the sparkly sight of tinsel, bright bulbs, evergreen and twinkling lights. Despite our best efforts to fight it, we find ourselves buying new decorations, even though our attics or garages have boxes full of castaways we just can’t quite bring ourselves to get rid of.
We get caught up in the giving spirit, too, but not always in a good way. We spend money we may not have on things that the people we buy for don’t really need, including suddenly discovering that we need a few new things ourselves. We assuage the prick of conscience by telling ourselves it’s the season of giving, thus validating the new television for our living room. We did take two angels to provide for from the giving tree from the Mall, after all.
We also find ourselves listening to the radio stations that play the Christmas carols, feeling a great pick-me-up and especially warm feelings in our chest as memories of Christmas past are brought to mind, or at the reminders of the ultimate gift offered by the baby whose birth is supposed to be the reason for the season.
Maybe we Christmas junkies get so caught up because this is the one time of each year when the world seems to come the closest in line to living in the spirit of Christ. We are all more likely to look out for each other, be more polite, and put love first.
But the world, as usual, is never on the same page, especially when it comes to God. Dismayed as I flip through the television channels (and, yes, I shouldn’t really be watching television anyway), I have been noting this holiday those channels who have chosen to show horror movies or other shows totally anathema to Christmas. These are the channels I know for sure have an anti-God mentality. What excuse is there to show “Silence of the Lambs” during Christmas time? Every movie shown doesn’t have to be a holiday movie, but why show a movie that glorifies the evil one during the season that celebrates the One who can conquer all?
We Christmas junkies always vow to maintain the feelings of this season all year long, but how long does it last once the decorations have come down, and the world around us goes back to its usual, well, “worldliness?” This is when we have to become even more diligent in our walk with Christ. James reminds us clearly of the struggle ahead of us as he encourages our perseverance: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). In other words, to be pure and faultless in our practice of religion, we should set our New Year’s goal as being sure we take care of those who cannot take care of themselves and that we are diligent in not falling into the traps of thinking the way the world thinks. We must know the word of God to know what is His truth versus the “truth” of the world.
Make the most of this time when the world’s “truth” comes closest to being God’s truth, and don’t get sucked into the black hole that is the marketing goal of making us buy, buy, buy in the name of “giving.”
Oh, and, Merry Christmas, of course!
The Importance of Choice
Even beautiful flowers can have blemishes, and they often grow amongst what we consider “weeds.” Still, flowers in the wild can be a good, visual reminder to the rest of us of how we can be beautiful anywhere. How do we do it?
First, we have to realize that our emotions are not us. We choose the emotions we allow ourselves to feel. Sometimes, that backfires on us, like when we swallow our discomfort with a situation instead of expressing our thoughts (in a gentle way–remember Paul’s admonition to proceed always first in gentleness), leading eventually to so much internalized angst that we become physically ill.
But what if we instead chose each day to feel good feelings? If Christ, God-incarnate, could take the beatings He received from the Roman soldiers without calling out a legion of angels to save Himself, then shouldn’t we, as Christians, work to follow His example by sloughing off the “slings and arrows” of this world and choosing to feel the love and peace that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit offers?
The Christmas season seems like the best time of year to get into the habit of choosing good feelings. When you wake up to start each new day, begin by thanking God that you are here to see it. Smile at your bedraggled self in the mirror. Feel empathy for the frazzled driver in front of you who just cut you off and don’t seethe with an anger that can ruin your day. After all, we all have been guilty of at least one near-miss in a car that could have led to an accident that would have been our fault. If Christ could give His life for us, what are an extra two minutes at a light to us because the driver ahead was driving a bit slow?
Of course, to those for whom the holiday season is generally a sad time, full of bittersweet memories or genuine sorrow, the idea that we are in control of the choices we make concerning our emotions probably sounds trite and maybe even unfeeling. But God understands our hearts. He created them, nurtures them, and heals. Going to God about helping you choose your feelings is the best path anyone could take. If you doubt it, re-read your Psalms. In these prayers and hymns from various writers, we see the true gamut of emotions and ideas between the created and their Creator. The psalmists praise God, can’t live without Him, and downright hate Him.
But they always come back to Him. And He is always ready to receive them. Choose love this Christmas, and make it your New Year’s Resolution to truly choose the feelings each day that will serve God best.
That’s what I plan to do in 2012. I pray you plan to join me.
Knot-tying
Tied up in knots. We use the phrase to describe that state of being in which we feel so anxious or confused that we cannot move forward. Our bodies agree with our brains. Muscles are also “tied in knots.”
But knots can be good things, holding things in place, keeping our shoes on tight or mooring a boat in rough waters.
In a world full of information, it is very easy to find our brains tied up in knots. From the internet to television, the radios that play as we wait in traffic, the smartphones that let us drown in messages wherever we are willing to take them, we are not only surrounded by information, we’re practically breathing it like oxygen.
When images and messages become this prevalent, it takes real persistence to keep the negative information out. We have to consciously choose what information we are willing to believe. Have you ever found yourself picking a box of cereal off the grocery shelf, telling yourself that this cereal is supposed to taste great or help you be healthy, only to realize that where you garnered that information was from a commercial, not from any real data?
The same kind of slippery slope happens all the time concerning our own self-image and, more importantly, morality, if we don’t have a clear definition of who we are and what we stand for. The moment we tell ourselves a certain action is OK because we’ve seen it portrayed as such so often on television, despite what the Bible has to say about the matter, we have truly let bad information tie us into knots.
The worst things about knots are that when we are tied up in them, we aren’t doing the one important thing–loving others. How can we be concerned with other people when we are tied up in our own selves?
So, how do we keep ourselves from being knotted? The “simple” solution would seem to be to think about the welfare of others more than we do ourselves, read our Bibles to be certain of the path of righteousness, and pray. Some days, those solutions seem to be working for me. Other days, I choose the wrong information, or too much information, and the knots make my brain hurt.
You would think on days like this, I would turn to my Bible or prayer even more than on normal days, but I have to admit that I do a grand job of knowing what I should do but not doing it more times than not (pardon the pun, had to do it at least once).
Jesus understood the threat of being tied up in knots. He told us to pray for deliverance from the evil one (and who would be better at tying a person up in knots than the devil?), prayed Himself for the strength to follow through on God’s will, even when He knew the outcome of His earthly existence, and sought moments to go to the quiet places where He could be still and know God, despite the masses making demands of Him all the time.
Seek your own quiet places. Turn off the television, the smartphones, the iPads and laptops. Choose to hear God’s voice, not the marketing bandwagon or your own self-reproving hangups. Look outward more often than you look inward, seeking to love others. The more good we do for others, the better we’ll feel about ourselves.
It may not keep us from knotting ourselves up every once and a while, but it certainly will keep us from staying tied up in them, useless to ourselves and, more importantly, to God.
Giving thanks through thankful giving
What seems like just a simple play on words could actually be a fundamental shift in one’s life. Giving thanks can be done without much effort. Some of us have said the same prayer over a meal so many times that it has become more of a mantra than a communication with God. There are also daily situations in which we say “thanks” with as much thought as we give to the standard “hello,” or “how are you doing”–not expecting or even listening to the responses we actually get, which are usually equally perfunctory or non-existent.
But just making the attempt to really mean what we say when we give thanks just doesn’t seem like enough in a world where so many bad things happen. If we have the guts to turn on the news, we are bombarded by images of war or protests or economic hardship. The tent cities that most of us have only read about in textbook sections on the Depression have sprung up in our own backyards, haunting reminders of what we too might become but for the grace of God.
If we give of ourselves thankfully, as God intended, we give with intention and love, not to rid ourselves of guilt over having too much, but because we truly care about others and are happy that we have been put in a position where we can be of help.
“No good deed goes unpunished” gives thankful giving a bad name. Even if I suffer a bit because I choose to help, I will never truly suffer if I approach all that I do with the thankfulness of my ability to give that I should have.
As a recovering over-achiever, I find just now that writing about this concept helps me realize that when I think that I am failing just because I haven’t made myself a “big wig” in the present world, driven by capitalism, I should instead be thankful for the opportunities I have had to use the talents God has given me to share and hopefully help others, even if those others count only in a handful, not a multitude. Remember the parable where the shepherd leaves the safe flock to save the one lost sheep? When I am not thankful for what I am able to give–forget about what I achieve from the “real world’s” point of view–I do a disservice to myself and, more importantly, to the gifts that God has given me to share with others, not hoard. I thank Him most when I give away what I have been given, not just bow my head and say “thanks.”
I hope my actions during this holiday season can be those of thankful giving, especially when I am tempted to become too tired or too busy to think about others. And I hope I can give the gift to myself of being thankful for what I am able to do each day instead of getting discouraged or bored with what is required or needed from me.
Two of God’s Most Important Concepts
Faith and Love. Without the first, we cannot begin our journey with God, and if we do not live according to the latter, then we are failing in our walk with Christ. Have you ever thought about how many steps there are between these two principles? In 2nd Peter, the apostle contemplates the diligence it takes to become “partakers of the divine nature,” in other words, closer to God. If you study 2nd Peter 1:5-7, you’ll discover just how many steps we must go through in order to grow from faith to Godly love.
These are the steps from faith to love:
- Faith
- Moral excellence
- Knowledge
- Self-control
- Perseverance
- Godliness
- Brotherly Kindness
- Love
Even a quick glance at this list shows us how one step builds on another, and also how much more difficult each next step would be if we had not first worked on mastering the one before it. “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing,” Peter concludes, “they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v.8).
We should contemplate these steps if we truly want to grow in Christ. By faith, we believe and are motivated to do what is pleasing and right to God. When we approach His word for knowledge with the goal of knowing God’s morals better, not as a way to justify what we want to do, we increase our moral excellence. Only when we have a growing knowledge of God’s word and His will, can we begin to practice the self-control that keeps us from judging other people or giving in to our own worldly desires. Having to be of the world but not in it requires perseverance, and only when we are strong in our ability to hold out against the pull of this world and its desires do we reach any level of Godliness. When we can learn not to give in to the desires of the flesh, we are better able to practice the brotherly kindness which is the beginning of Godly love.
Obviously, this isn’t a simple or quick process, but a life-long journey. It helps me not to beat up on myself quite so much when I stumble considering the complexity of a life lived like Christ. I am also reminded anew how grateful I am that it is the grace of God that saves us and not our works, even though my faith in God leads me to want to do good, fruitful works.
Actions Make or Break Your Characters
Actions speak louder than words, in life and in the characters that we write about. Isn’t it ironic that even though our readers will only know our characters through our words, that it is truly through the actions that our characters take that our readers will come to know them?
There are so many different ways to approach and develop a story. Some people have all their major plot moments mapped out before they begin to write. Others have a general idea and sort of let things grow organically as they work through the first draft, taking later drafts to fine tune and give cohesive direction to their stories. But most all of us, I think, have to have a pretty good idea about the characters we are writing about before we begin. If we don’t, we can easily slip into the fallacy of the character’s actions not truly reflecting the person we are trying to represent.
I cringe any time I am reading a story and I discover that a character who had curly hair in the beginning is suddenly moaning over her straight locks. Usually, the gaffs are minor like this, evidence that the writer got caught up in the larger story and somehow missed the minor details on the re-run through. But what about when the thing that the character does, especially in those twist-at-the-end kind of stories, goes entirely against what the character has been throughout the story? When the twist becomes the main reason for the story, the characters fade to the background and, frankly, my interest in the story fades with them.
When you’re writing Christian fiction, your characters actions become even more important. Not that your characters should be perfect, because we live in a flawed world and we, presumably, want to create stories that will help people live better in that flawed world. However, the characters in a Christian story should match their actions to the words that define their faith. When they stumble, they should eventually recognize the stumble, confess it to their Maker and do the work it takes not to make the same mistake again. Their actions should seek Christ-like living as much as we are able in this flawed world and with the Holy Spirit’s assistance.
For a Christian, words should be married to action. When we are best at accomplishing this, surely we are closest to living as Christ would have us live.
God’s Marketing Plan
The true message of Christ needs a better marketing strategy–not by God, but by those of us who claim to be reborn in Christ to a renewed life over which sin should no longer hold power. Christ did not merely state His message. He lived it. He continues to live it, especially through those who choose not to see the baptism by water into Christianity as an ending but a beginning.
Living a Christ-like life means always striving to be more, but not more in the sense of this world. In this world, filled with television, movie, and internet messages, more means better cars, faster electronics, fancy clothes, bigger houses, high-paying careers. In Christ’s world, more means better sharing, increased love of others, joy in what one has, faith that one is where he/she is meant to be and the discipline to walk in the narrow path of God’s truth.
When you have to spend so much time in the world, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of being of this world, all too easy to grab the more expensive brand of something because the commercials have convinced us it’s better instead of saving those extra nickels and dimes to share with those who have even less than we do. When you are of this world and not just in it, it’s too simple to fall into the wide and easy ways of this world. When we choose based on what everybody else is doing instead of what Christ would do, we make our lives simpler in that moment, but we also buy into the devil’s marketing plan, as it were, and his way leads only unto death.
We’ve all fallen victim to it, especially often during the holiday times, when so many ads want to convince us that what they are selling will make us better, happier, more peaceful. But, think about the times you have fallen victim to this marketing. Do you really feel happier? Maybe for a moment, but what then? When you rely on the devil’s marketing plan, don’t you always have to go searching for peace and happy again?
Christ’s marketing plan was simple: love. If we follow this plan, we don’t take actions that will hurt others. We strive to perfect ourselves in aspects of life that really count, like helping others, doing good, being kind, taking joy in nature and each other, including our differences. How different would the world be if these were the messages that flashed across our televisions and movie theatres and computer screens?
We can’t change the whole world, but we can change our own actions and the ways that we interact with those with whom we come into contact. What steps are you taking to grow in your walk with Christ? I will be working this week to set up my goals to mature in Christ. I believe I will start in Galations with the list of the fruit of the Spirit. What about you?
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