I don’t feel like believing God’s doing super stuff in my life today.
I don’t feel like much of anything. I’m physically tired and therefore mentally dulled just enough to have a remarkably crappy attitude.
Life? Love? Discernment? Friendship? Responsibility? Discipline?
Nah. Nah-nah-nah. Not interested. Don’t feel like indulging myself in any of it. In fact, I don’t care right now if I never adult again. The most challenging thing I might pull off today is to build a blanket fort with the next-door neighbor’s 3-year-old, make pbj’s and Kool-Aid, crawl in our fort and retire.
I have, however, no interest in doing that. His mom got sharp-tongued and blessed me out a few months back for daring to check what was happening in their house when, on a Monday at 10:32 AM I heard loud banging and abnormal noises from there.
Well, of course you get it. Most people are at work during that time of day. Young single working mom trying to raise a tyke with ADHD? Seeing all but part of the hood of a car you don’t recognize sticking out of your neighbor’s garage when you figure they’re gone? I called possible tomfoolery and snuck over to peek around the door.
Haven’t made that mistake again. I noticed that people who are self-absorbed never seem to appreciate others’ experience and help. Well, at least until they realize its been withdrawn and suddenly want it again.
I digress. Today, strangely, that feels good. Uncooperative, recalcitrant, disengaged and obstinately, intentionally turbid, I’m raising nonproductivity to new levels of mediocrity.
I know. You’ve had days like this. “Don’t know, don’t care. Just wanna be left alone to deal with my typhoid symptoms. I’m sure death will be excruciating and slow. I think my face might be melting, too, from something no one’s discovered yet. Succeeding generations of kids loping along beside their parents walking the family dog will look strangely at the oddly-shaped mound a few feet off the path.
” ‘Sat, mom? ‘Sat?” She’ll not-so-patiently explain it’s the molding earthly remains of a stubborn writer who, in the midst of a spectacularly bad day expired while mowing. Well-meaning but care-less neighbors simply began dumping their clippings and leaves there, and over the years it became known along that short stretch of Boston Street as The Mound. Letting the dog finish liberally baptizing my mortal remains with especially-pungent urinary libations, they’ll continue their trek.
“Okay, am I supposed to be laughing until tears flow, or feeling sorry, or—”
As you suspect, there is a point to this literary self-vituperation.
Anybody can believe God’s busily at work when the body, mind and spirit are synced and everything’s beautiful – well, yeah, in its own way. Right.
Today’s quiet time verse, Hebrews 11:6, is brutal in its simplicity: “It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that he exists and that he cares enough to respond to those who seek him.”
You better get this. I don’t feel like repeating myself because I’m sure my larynx is swelling and turning bright blue from Rigelian Swamp Fever. Pay attention to the highlighted words.
Here’s the point. I’ve been praying nonstop for a particular set of events to occur in the life of somebody very close to me. I never told them about it for the first year. I just kept at it.
Every day, several times during the day. When I began praying for that particular set of events, it looked impossible. SO not happenable.
Today, two years later, that set of events is beginning to happen.
- The answer – God’s response – didn’t come first.
- I had to begin getting tough, expecting God to make it happen and pounding on that rock with my faith, every day, when it seemed to me like it would never work out.
- Yeah. I had to exercise my faith in God, as in WORK OUT. I had to do repeated reps on every machine in that verse: Impossible, Anyone, Must, Both, And, To respond and Seek. All of ’em. Every day.
- The converse is just as true as the verse: In and through faith, it’s not only possible to please God: it’s guaranteed.
“I just have a hard time believing that.”
YOU PUT THE FAITH IN BEFORE YOU GET THE RESPONSE OUT.
With respect, that’s your problem. Nobody can do faith for you. You’ve got to get the belief thing happening inside. You bet it’s work. What? You thought all those people you’ve made fun of as “Prayer Warriors” got that way by attending VBS without missing a day?
Yeah, it’s work. You put the faith in before you get the response out.
“But TWO YEARS?” Look, cupcake. God’s in charge of the timing and means. All he’s asking you to do is knock off the blubbering and whining and get down to some steady believing, and praying that belief into reality.
All right. Enough. That’s it. I’m going out to mow before it’s fried-egg-on-the-car-hood time out here on the range. Nope. Don’t feel like doing it. But I hate a cruddy looking yard even more. Hm? My neighbor’s lawn? Not any more. I was doing that for her because as twin homes our yards aren’t large and are connected. I had to mow, anyway, and didn’t mind doing her’s, too–until she decided to yell without asking why I was checking on them. Can’t have it both ways. There’s such a thing as being too nice.
I don’t feel like being nice today.
And–I don’t feel like believing today, either. But I believe in believing today. I’m seeing God’s response playing out right before my eyes. You oughta try it. Leave the time it takes and the means by which He gits ‘er done in His hands–and He’ll astound you every time.
Later, if you’re walking Poochie along here and happen to notice a strange mound a few feet off the path, tenderly lay some dandelions or yellowed iris leaves on it.
But you might consider modifying the dog food.
© D. Dean Boone, August 2015