Choose Life

Please forgive me for not "seeing you tomorrow", which is what I posted A WEEK AGO.  I'm starting to seriously think that 41 is the age of senility, at least for me!  I'm forgetful!

A couple of prayer requests, if you happen to remember - my father-in-law is at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville.  He had a radiation procedure today to shrink a lesion that rests on both his optic nerve and his brain.  Things went well today, please remember him though, and pray that things will continue to go well.

Also pray for me - I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with life these days!  I've got no more going on than normal, but . . . do you ever have those times?  Maybe I'm just being whiny.

And finally, I have another family member who needs prayer.  I would love to share the burden with you, but I don't even know what it is.  But God does, and the more people praying for this invisible request, the better.

Let's go back to Romans.  "There's more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!"  Romans 5:3-5, The Message

Last week we talked about the term, "passionate patience."  Let's move back a step - "we continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles."  We all know how that feels, yeah?  To have trouble everywhere we turn, where there's no good answer - just less bad ones.

We know that we are supposed to endure, get through, hold on.  Tie a knot in the end of the rope and hang on (have you ever seen the poster with the kitten hanging on the end of the rope with this saying on it?  Gotta say that kitten creeps me out).  But Romans paints a bit different picture.  Paul tells us we aren't just supposed to survive.  We're supposed to thrive!

How in the heck are we supposed to do that?  How are you supposed to shout praise when your home life is falling apart, or you can't rub two dimes together, or you're sick and not getting better?  Where is that praise supposed to come from?

Come on, everybody say it with me.  All together now!  It comes from Jesus.  Ok, I know, that's the Sunday School answer.  But what's one of the first things we let go of when we are going through trials like what i mentioned above?  Our time with Jesus, right?  The Bible sits on our desk or table or worse yet - we have no idea where it is.  We might call out to Jesus to ask Him to take our pain away.  But we don't seek Him with the same intensity we do at other times, looking for ways to worship Him.

It's almost as if when we are going through these deeply difficult times, the thing we are actually enduring - is Jesus.  We endure our Bible reading, even though we aren't getting anything out of it.  We deal with going to church, even though worship is the farthest thing from our minds.  And we mumble through some sort of prayer, even though we aren't even sure what we are saying. 

We can't shout our praises when all we are choosing to think about it is our troubles.  Notice, I used the word, choosing.  It's our choice to praise or not.  It our choice what to focus on.  Deuteronomy 30 says, "Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."  (19-20)

It's not easy to to make that choice.  It's not easy to shout praise - not just praise, but to shout praise! - when are world is crumbling down.  Deuteronomy doesn't say that it's an easy choice.  But it is OUR choice.

Tomorrow I want to finish up this topic, and I'll be using some information from Rabbi Simon Jacobsen.  Until then!