Oh How He Loves Me

We just had an awesome church service at Authentic. I don't know what was different tonight, but it was so awesome. I felt God so close tonight, closer than any other night, at least, as far as I can remember. We had great worship and then a great word on Nehemiah 9. We talked about covenants and the importance of a covenant. I learned that a covenant is like a contract, except if someone breaks a covenant they die. We talked about the old covenant God made with Abraham and how God made Abraham and His descendants (the Israelites) many promises, gave them many mercies, and blessed them abundantly. We also talked about how the Israelites ignored, disobeyed, and rebelled against God. And we talked about the new Covenant that was created when Jesus died for us.

It was really interesting how we approached this study. We first wrote down all the things God gave the Israelites in Nehemiah 9. Then, we wrote down all the responses from the Israelites to the things God gave them.

This really put things into perspective for me because I know we are much like the Israelites. As we were writing all these things down on the dry-erase board, I thought about my own life and how it resembled the Israelites. God has blessed me abundantly and given me so much and yet I continually disobey, ignore, and rebel. I'd like to think I don't intentionally ignore God, but I know I do.

As I thought about my life, I thought, "Gosh, I must really drive God nuts. One minute, I love Him, the next minute I'm ignoring Him, the next minute, I'm asking Him for favors. I must seriously drive Him crazy."

As much as I would love to think I am NOT at all like the Israelites, I am exactly like them. When I read about how God made them promises and then two verses later, they are doubting Him, I think, "OMG they are so stupid! I would NEVER do that! I wouldn't doubt!" But if someone read a book of my life, they would find the same thing. They would see God make me promises and then two paragraphs later me doubting what I clearly heard Him tell me.

I don't like coming to this realization, that I am exactly like the Israelites. I like to pretend that I would be better than the Israelites. I would like to think that I would obey God and listen and serve Him perfectly, but I know I will always be just like them.

This makes me feel bad. I feel bad that I can't do a better job. I feel bad that God created us and we fail Him constantly. I feel bad that His children constantly ignore Him.

At the end of our service, we had an in depth theological discussion about all sorts of things and my mind was overwhelmed. I am not an abstract person. I like concrete ideas that have steps and can be figured out. Anything else is hard for me to grasp. I came to the conclusion at the end, that despite me being just like the Israelites and failing constantly, and no matter what I think about free will or the rapture or death, Jesus still loves me and nothing can change that. He will ALWAYS love me no matter what I do, say, think, or feel. He will always love me, even if I am like the Israelites. And I will always love Him. I won't love Him perfectly like He loves me, but I will try.

That's all that matters.

Strike Up A Conversation

At Bible Study last night, we discussed the first few parts of the book The Tangible Kingdom Primer: An Eight Week Guide to Incarnational Community. If you're thinking, 'what?,' you aren't alone. When we first started talking about this, I had never heard of the word 'incarnational.' What it means is: to be a representation of Jesus. So, an incarnational community is a bunch of people being a representation of Jesus. Makes sense, right? Right.

Anyway, as we were discussing this book/guide, we came to a part I did not like. Before I get into that, let me tell you something. I did NOT want to go to Bible Study last night. If you know me, you might be thinking, "Gina, you live there, you have to go!" True, but there have been times I sat in our bedroom because I was too tired and there have been times I went out because I had errands to run. Last night was one of those nights where I was too tired. I was just drained in every aspect of life: physically, emotionally, and mentally. I told my husband I didn't want to have Bible Study and that I wanted to relax. That wasn't an option, unfortunately, because it was too late to cancel and we had cancelled last week. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind having Bible Study at our place every week, but it's HARD. We open up our house twice a week: once for Bible Study and once for church. It's draining, especially when you have a baby.

Anyway, I desperately wanted to cancel Bible Study, but when that wasn't an option, I told my husband I needed a break and I wasn't going to attend. I had every intention of not attending when some how, some way, God orchestrated my steps otherwise. Yes, I ended up attending Bible Study even though it wasn't MY plan.

Here's where I pick up where I left off a few paragraphs ago. We get to a part in this book/guide I do NOT like. The book and John had challenged us to do the following this week: cross you fence and do something to bless or simply converse with one neighbor on your street, cross you street and do something to connect with someone who is close to your home, but with whom you haven't built a relationship yet, and cross a social, political or ethnic barrier.

"Excuse me?! No, I am not doing that! I do NOT have the time for that," were my initial thoughts. Then I thought, "I should have skipped Bible Study like I planned, then I wouldn't have to do this." I honestly hate going out of my way, now more than ever because I don't have the energy or the motivation, but as a group we committed to this so I was stuck. And honestly, since we committed, I was going to take it seriously.

Fast forward to the next day. Here I am at ShopRite starting conversations with everyone I cross paths with, which at 730 AM, isn't a lot, but I did manage to strike up a conversation with an old couple from Bucks County in the deli line who had five sons and 6 grandchildren (by the way, the old man likes his cheese VERY thinly cut). It's amazing what you learn about people. And I did strike up a conversation with my cashier, which may not seem like a big deal, but to me it is because I NEVER talk to my cashier. BTW, she has three sons, non of which have kids and she was desperate for grandkids.

No, these people weren't in my neighborhood per se, but they were at the 'neighborhood' supermarket and it was nice to talk with them. I didn't talk about Jesus, but I made sure to give them a friendly smile and a 'have a nice day,' as I walked away. And it felt good, to be nice and friendly.

Everything was going well at ShopRite. I was making an effort to talk to people and if the opportunity arose, I'd do something nice for them like the book suggested (I did move my cart to the side for people to get by a few times). Then, as I'm in the checkout line, with my groceries all packed up and ready to be delivered to my trunk, I go to pay and realize my debit card is MIA. I have no other form of payment except a checkbook, but ShopRite conveniently doesn't take checks. Surprisingly, I was able to keep cool without having a meltdown even though I had no idea how I was going to pay for my thawing food.

I called my husband and he told me to go to the bank and take money out and pay for the groceries with cash. "How can I take money out if I don't have my debit card?" I asked. "The old fashioned way," he replied. It's been so long since I've done that, I forgot how. Luckily, the bank was like 200 feet away and I dashed there and back in 7 minutes. As inconvenient as it all was, I was able to talk to another employee and strike up a conversation with her.

When all was said and done, it was a successful day even though I had a slight mishap while checking out. I was glad I made the effort to talk to people and learn about them. It was pretty neat. And I don't know why the whole debit card going MIA thing happened. Maybe it was Satan. Maybe he was angry I was being so friendly. Maybe it was God. Maybe God wanted me to talk to the second cashier I never would have talked to if I had my card. Or maybe it was just me being dumb and leaving it. Who knows. Either way, I feel like I accomplished something. No, I didn't lead anyone to Jesus or even talk about Him, but who's to say that my smile and friendly conversation didn't brighten up someone's day? Or reveal a love they've never seen? I'll probably never know, but that's okay, I feel like I did what God wanted me to do: show His love through my actions.

BTW, I don't write this to pat myself on the back. I know there are people out there who do this on a daily basis. But this was a big step for me and I'm happy and glad I could do something this simple for Jesus.

Be Careful What You Pray For

You know that saying, "Be careful what you pray for?" Well, here's a lesson in that.

Last Monday, I got bored. I was just flat out bored with life. I was bored of the same routine of waking up every day, getting Caleb, changing Caleb, feeding Caleb, playing with Caleb, putting Caleb down for a nap, and repeating those steps multiple times a day, every day. I STUPIDLY told God how bored I was and STUPIDLY asked Him to spice things up a bit and not just in my ordinary day to day life.

Spiritually, I was bored and I needed some motivation. I just wasn't 'feelin it'. I didn't have a desire to read the Bible, listen to worship music or pray. So, I asked God to help me by making my spiritual life, 'interesting.'

You would have thought I learned back when I was in labor with Caleb. While we were driving to the hospital, I STUPIDLY begged God for harder, stronger, contractions to let me know I was truly in labor. I didn't want to be THAT girl that got sent home for false labor. Anyway, two seconds later, while I was in the car on the Parkway, I got the worst contraction yet and I wanted to die. I remember thinking, "Did I REALLY just pray for that?!" Dumb.

So, here I was again on Monday, asking for God to spice things up. Of all the prayers I've prayed, God always seems to answer this one right away. Go figure. As you can imagine, it didn't take God long to answer my prayer, which wasn't even really a prayer, per se, more like a thought. I had that "thought" Monday afternoon. I never expected to wake up Tuesday to the chaos that ensued.

I was just waking up to Caleb talking in his crib when my husband storms in the bedroom and says, "Lovies, I think my car got towed." I was still half asleep, but I could tell he was mad. He was already late for work and this just made things worse. "What are you talking about?" was my response. Keep in mind I was still semi-comatose.  "My car got towed!" "No, that's not possible. Maybe someone stole it." "No, it got towed." was the conversation between my husband and me.

To make a long story short, his car did get towed because he forgot to hang the parking pass for our development on his rear view mirror. My husband ended up calling out of work for the day, which thank God doesn't hurt us financially because he gets paid salary, but the cost to the towing company did hit us in the wallet pretty hard.

The whole morning event pretty much ruined my husband's day and the mood in the house was miserable. Both my husband and I were frustrated, but since he was home we decided to call a Realtor, something we had been planning on doing for awhile, but just never got around to it. The whole towing situation gave us more motivation to move out of our place faster.

So we called the Realtor and she came over that afternoon. We were really excited to get the ball rolling on moving into a house, but we received bad news. Basically, we bought our condo when the market was still really high and now our place isn't worth that much. We can't roll over our loss into a new mortgage because they don't do that anymore so we either had to consider a short sale, which would kill our credit or foreclose.

In other words, we're stuck. I think my husband was more upset then I was, even though we both knew it was inevitable that we were staying in our condo for longer than we had planned. As you can imagine, this upset our day even more, but since I had asked God to make life interesting, I was somewhat prepared. I was ready for this and I was ready to prove to God that I would still praise Him in this storm. So, that's exactly what I did. I took to my Facebook status and proclaimed my joy even though our day pretty much sucked. No, it wasn't easy, exactly, but like I said, I was ready to prove to God I'd still serve Him no matter what.

I have to be honest, Saturday night at church (the Saturday before THAT Monday where I had THAT thought), John asked the question if we had no roof over our head and no food to eat, would we still praise God and thank Him regardless. Honestly, if life was that bad, I don't know if I could, but I wanted to prove to God that I was willing to try. When I asked God to spice life up a bit, I wanted something that would allow me to prove to Him that I would still thank Him and still praise Him no matter what.

Like I said, of all the prayers I've prayed, God answered this one pretty quickly. Then again, I don't always go asking God to hand me trials and tough times, so I guess it makes sense. Either way, one thing I learned about God through this is that He is the ultimate teacher. He is always teaching me something new whether it be through my trials, through my child, through people, or through my ordinary day to day life. He will find a way to reach me. I imagine I make His job a lot easier though when I pray for Him to 'make life interesting.'