Category: Christian Living

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

Reign It In

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight reign on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. James 1:26

Words are everywhere. Humans, it could be argued, are only distinguished from the animals we were placed on this earth to take care of, by our ability to express our thoughts through a recordable, historical language.*

Because words are the only conduit through which we may know ourselves and understand others, their importance cannot be underestimated. But because we also are surrounded by words, except for maybe when we sleep, it is all too easy to take words for granted.

But God makes it more than clear throughout the Bible that our words are never meaningless. We shall be held accountable for every word. I try not to think about that verse too often because its implications for my day in the judgment seat are just too frightening.

Make yourself an exercise sometime of looking up all the references to our words, our tongues, our speech throughout the Bible. And once you have contemplated the immense emphasis God places on our words, consider ways in which you may watch your words from day-to-day.

As James tells us, if we cannot keep a tight reign on our words, we are only fooling ourselves if we think we are Christians. As the representatives of Christ on this planet, how often do we say things that actually present a false religion to those who are not yet believers in Christ? That, perhaps, is the scariest truth of all.

*(Far be it from me to denigrate the conversations that take place between chirping squirrels or from mail post to mail post in a doggie world, but we must admit that until we are more evolved or the animals catch up to us, depending on how one looks at it, we are supposed to be the caretakers of the planet with, presumably, the most advanced minds.)

Posted in Christian Living, Love, Self-Help

Pitfalls of Perfectionism

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Others may find perfectionists hard to live with, but we are no harder to live with for others than we are to live with ourselves. Nothing is ever good enough. No compliment is ever really deserved. Peace of mind is an ever-elusive state, just out of reach of a mind that can always find something else that needs to be done, or edited, or tweaked. Who can rest when there exists some problem that still needs solved, or when one never feels to have found one’s purpose, much less fulfilled it?
Add to this self-incrimination, the endless onslaught of perfectionism applied to a flawed world, and you wind up with a very busy mind indeed. Perfectionists can always find things wrong with the way other people choose to live their lives, even when those lives are none of the perfectionists’ business. We can solve problems all day long for people who haven’t asked for it, barely curbing out tongues as we have learned from years of rejected advice that when someone wants to hear our opinion, they’ll ask for it.
But we still think it. All the time, our minds repeating like a CD in our car stereo, and burning just as hot.
“Judge not that ye be not judged” may be the most important verse for we perfectionists to take to heart if we ever hope to kick the “perfection habit.” If we can truly quit judging others and ourselves, just think about how much time we will free to do the true work of Christ, which is to love ourself and others, not judge them.
When God, who is the only true Judge, looks into our souls, He does so from an all-knowing place of perfect righteousness. He alone can read our hearts, knows our motives and can offer grace. God’s judgment is pure, healing and meant to bring us into closer relationship with Him.
When we, who have flawed hearts, judge others, we are not looking into their souls at all. In the moment that we judge, we stop loving them, if we ever cared for them at all. We are incapable of proper judgment. Did Jesus not say to remove the beam from our own eye before trying to extricate the splinter from the eye of another?
Just because we shouldn’t be judging doesn’t mean that we don’t have an accounting to make of ourselves each day in the face of God’s code of ethics. But, we need to make sure that what we are calling God’s ethics are truly His and not our own dressed up to look like Godly righteousness. Is what I am chastising myself for really a sin I need to confess before God? Then confess it and stop the action. If it isn’t a sin in the eyes of God, then why am I torturing myself with chastisement?
If I can only learn to be perfect in love, God’s greatest commandment, then perhaps I can reduce my obsession with judgments about myself and others and sever my ties with perfectionism once and for all.
In the end, the forever elusive “perfection” just isn’t worth its pitfalls.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Self-Help

Learning to Lean

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

“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.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith

Remember the Sabbath?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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.

Posted in Christian Living, Self-Help

Not Just a Bumper Sticker

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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.

Posted in Christian Living

Christmas Junkies

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

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!