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Interesting times we live in. My wife was laid off again this past month. My business just experienced its first slow down. The bills march on and God is still challenging me to trust Him. Interesting!
Heh, the good news is it only took Glenda and me about 48 hours to work our way through the shock of another lay off. The first 24 hours was tough, the second a little easier and now we are back to “seeing what God will do”. And God continues to provide.
Transforming our lives into it’s best possible version is of great interest to many of us. We are tired of the same old life, same old pain, same old results.
The million dollar question is “How does transformation happen”? What is our role in the process? What is God’s role in the process?
And so we begin (again?). We search for new knowledge that will jump start the process. We read books, go to seminars, listen to sermons, pray, read God’s word, serve when we can etc. We do all this for the purpose, perhaps unspoken, of becoming a better version of ourselves and Jesus Christ. And after we do all this we find we are incrementally different which we don’t mind but it seemed like a lot of work for such little change.
Well it’s the day after Christmas and all is very quiet around the Miller household. The ladies are shopping, the young men are sleeping and I’m writing. It has been weeks since my last blog. I’ve been kind of blocked and probably lazy.
This week has been interesting and I’m glad to see it behind us:
In last week’s blog I talked about Embracing Your Pain (godintersections.com/archives/303#more-303), why it works and the benefits of doing it. The primary benefit of Embracing Your Pain is freedom. Freedom from from the fear of our pain and freedom to make the loving choice. Making the loving choice allows us to invite God into our relationships and situations. And where God is there is joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control . Not a bad place to be.
BUT THEN WHAT?
In an earlier blog I talked about how the pain in our lives effects doing our best. I have observed that a great deal of my life is spent avoiding or minimizing the pain in my life. Pain comes in all forms:
I’ve been pondering the question of Doing Our Best. I’ve had several Intersections of late regarding this point and the universal thinking I’ve run into is that NO, most of us do NOT do our best. We simply do what it takes to get by. AND if they would simply Do Their Best everyone’s life around us would be improved. In essence I’m hearing the world say that if those around us would only do their part then my life, my job, my economy and my world would be a better place to live.
My CBT (Current Best Thinking) is this is a big lie we choose to believe and by choosing it moves the blame for the condition of our world to “the other guy”.
WRONG! I believe 80% of us our doing the very best we can in almost every situation.
