As I was cleaning the church tonight I started thinking. About alot of things really, but attitude seemed to dominate my thoughts and my conversation with God (yes I often converse with Him while I clean, LOL!). I was thinking about teen age attitude, husband attitude (neither of which helped mine in reference to cleaning), my attitude and that of other people-people often come wanting help with their attitude as the New Year begins. And after years of trying numerous ways to get people involved in ministries, especially in serving, attitude (my own) is one of those areas God is continually working out in me.
Where does our attitude come from? In part, I believe from expectations-others expectations of us, ours of them, God's expectations of us as well as our own expectations of ourselves. I think, too often, at least, in my own life, my expectations of myself are never realistic because they are self-based and therefore I always fall far below the mark. Things are never 'just right' enough. And certainly, our expectations of others are completely irrational - no human can meet every need you have simply for the reason that they are indeed human and at some point they will let you down. But what of our expectations of God? Anything? I don't think enough...why? One reason is that I still don't know Him enough to know what I should expect - I know that He is true to His Word so if I knew ALL that His Word promised then I would be willing to bet that my expectations of Him would be much higher, because what I do know, I know to be true and God is not a liar! Another reason is belief. Not belief in Him or who He is but in who I am in Him. If I truly understood and believed how much He loved me, I could then expect Him to always be there, expect Him to care about my needs as much as anyone else's, expect Him to continue loving me. Would it help if I told you you could easily exchange the word trust for expect? Now, ask yourself how much do you trust?
And yet another reason has everything to do with me as well (go figure, LOL!) Where is my commitment? Can I expect anything as long as I am unwilling to commit? Commit everything? As a society in general, we find it so easy to commit, even over commit, to lots of things-most of them very good things-but not all of them God things. Then after a period of time we find ourselves wondering how we got so far off track and why God seems to be so far away. As women and moms, especially, we will volunteer to be the room mom, the team mom, the concession chair, head of fund-raising etc. all without hesitation but why is it that hesitation (along with dread) comes so easily when it's Wednesday or Sunday and time to go to church, or serve in the nursery or make a dish for the dinner, or a phone call to someone who's been missing? Could it be because all of those things are not on our list of 'to-dos', so to add them now seems overwhelming. And since (as a general rule) there are no games, no practices, no events demanding our time and attention on these days we begin to justify our need to stay home: it's 'my' only day off, this is our family night, I can get laundry done or go to the store, or we are just so busy. (Just a side note: If we are a child of God, everything belongs to Him, including all of our days. And Scripture tells that we are to set aside at least one as Holy anyway.) Serving the PTA or the Girl Scouts needs no explanation but suddenly serving God brings out our creative side as we dig for excuses on why we can't (some of us could win a literary writing award). But why are the things we say 'no' to the very things we need to be saying 'yes' to, the things that are eternal and the things that will give you the rest you seek? Something about our lips saying one thing and our heart saying something else sound familiar? Everything really is about what is in our heart, not what is in our intentions. Settle the issue in your heart, because your words, thoughts and actions will ultimately speak what lies within.
For me, it's very easy to find reasons to stay home and work...right now it's soooo cold (my office takes about 2 hours before the frost breaks, lol!), it's much quieter, I can get more work done, I need to clean MY house and do laundry, blah, blah, blah...but God wants my presence, my being, my commitment to being there. In fact, when faced with the dilemma of working at the church or going back to work for a paycheck God spoke to me very clearly and told me that if I would give Him the time I would give a job, I wouldn't have to worry about the paycheck...Ouch!
I believe that principle can apply to all of us. We commit. He commits. We can expect. And by the way...He's already done all the hard work...He already committed everything He had.
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