Bike Day

Every Monday, my son’s camp has “Bike Day”. For Bike Day, the kids bring in their bikes, scooters, skateboards, roller-skates etc…and are given the opportunity to play with them at camp during the day. My son loves to take his bike or his scooter, but there are two recurring issues that seem to surface.

1. Every Sunday Evening, my wife and I ask him to totally prepare himself for the next day. Meaning that he must gather everything he needs for the next day the night before so that we are not scrambling around with him on Monday morning looking for “his” things.
2. In preparing for the Bike Day, if he wants to take his bike, he must coordinate that effort with me, because his bike will not fit in my wife’s car. She can only transport the scooter.

Last Monday, I worked from home. This means that I usually don’t leave the house until late in the afternoon, when it is time to pick up the kids. Being that it was Monday, it was also Bike day and of course through indirect actions and “reading between the lines” questions and answers with our son that morning, my wife had determined that my son wanted to take his bike (which meant that I would have to get myself together to take him and the bike to camp).

Taking him and the bike to camp would usually not be a problem for me, but in this instance, I was not moved to act upon my desire to make my son happy. Here is why…

My son ignored the house rules. He had not prepared himself the night before by getting the bike out and loading it into the proper vehicle.
He didn’t make his intentions clear to anyone with a request until it was too late (My wife was on her way out of the door)
He did not follow through and complete several of the household duties that he was responsible for.

Through this situation I was forced to take a look at myself and how the situation mirrors my relationship with my Heavenly Father. Many times I want my Father to move on my behalf, I want Him to give me the desires of my heart, I want Him to stop what He is doing to “come through” for me, I want Him to make provisions for me…etc. God loves me and there is no doubt in my mind that He does, but I think that because He loves me He tells me NO. Especially when I’m not walking in obedience.

While God’s faithfulness, love, grace and mercy are beyond human understanding, He does require that His children follow His will, His instructions and His example. God honors obedience and He wants us to choose to honor Him in our actions and not just our words. He wants us to honor Him because we love Him and not because we want what He can provide for us. God wants obedience that is driven by Love. We can’t ignore His will, His calling on our lives and His desires for us and expect Him to bless our “mess” and to “budge” just because we are crying out to Him.

God has a track record of blessing those who follow Him. These blessings may not appear to be blessings to the natural eye as they may be spiritual in nature (a better understanding of the Father and His ways, wisdom, power over spiritual enemies...etc), but their worth far out way any “blessings” that the world has to put forward because His blessings are eternal.

David wrote:
Psalm 5:12 (Amplified Bible)
12For You, Lord, will bless the [uncompromisingly] righteous [him who is upright and in right standing with You]; as with a shield You will surround him with goodwill (pleasure and favor).

I have found in my life that when I have trusted my Father and have committed myself to His “uncompromising righteousness” He has blessed me. In addition my prayers have been less about what I “need or want” Him to do but more about how I can position myself to receive a “larger portion” of Him. Meaning that when I begin to focus on allowing Him to shape me, in many cases what I thought I wanted or needed seems to have a reduced significance in light of my desire to become more like Him.

Just like I advise my son to prepare Himself and to be faithful for “Bike Day”, I am persuaded that I too must position myself for the blessings and provisions available from my Father by preparing myself through practicing a lifestyle of obedience.

Are you prepared for your “Bike Day”?

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing,
B

Almighty Answers

Have you been praying and praying for strength, wisdom, a financial breakthrough, a door to be opened, for something in your life to change for the better, for your family to love one another more deeply, for forgiveness, for peace, for hope…etc? Many of us spend time praying for these and other things, not realizing that God has answered our prayers, but His answers did not come in the form of the manner that we thought they would.

Recently my wife and I watched Evan Almighty for a 2nd or 3rd time. I forgot just how hilarious this movie was. In the movie Evan (a modern day Noah type) is charged with building an Ark. Throughout the movie, Noah has conversations with “God” who is played by Morgan Freeman. During one on the conversations, “God” talked to Evan about how “He” answers prayers. He basically said that humans make prayer requests and think that God is confined to answering those requests in a manner that they desire Him to. We pray for strength and think that God is going to give us some “magic spinach” (like Popeye) and all of the sudden we will be strong. We ask for courage and we think that we are going go to sleep being the “cowardly lion” and wake up the next day as the “King of the Forrest”.

In general, God doesn’t operate that way. What God does is give us opportunities to demonstrate the abilities or qualities of character that we seek. In doing so, He allows us to see His faithfulness as He “pulls” those attributes out of us. For example:

*We ask for financial blessings…God answers by giving us opportunities to be good stewards of what we have now, so that He can confirm that He can trust us with more.
*We ask for strength…God answers by putting us in situations were we must demonstrate ability beyond what we think are capable of, so that we can testify of His might.
*We ask that God helps us to be more loving…God answers us by giving us opportunities to love the lovely and the “unlovely”.
*We ask for salvation for our family/friends…God presents us with opportunities to bear witness of His delivering power and to walk (live) and talk before them so that they will be drawn to Him through us.

I truly believe that as we pay more attention to our circumstances and as we allow God’s Word to serve as the scope that we examine our lives (and especially our circumstances) through, we are sure to find that God has already answered many of our prayer requests, but we have not taken the time to receive His answers.

Praying to God is not like rubbing a genie lamp and making a wish when the genie appears. It is much deeper than that. It is a time to have a two-way communication with our Creator and to ask for insight and guidance so that we can see ourselves and our situations through His eyes. God is not forced to answer us How, When, Where, etc we want Him to. We just need to live in expectation of an answer.

God hears our prayers…but do we hear His answers????

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing,
B