Tag: contentment

Categories
Worship

The Good God of Good Friday

scrabble tiles spelling friday, as a visual representation for Good FridayA very few of you that have been following me for the short time I’ve been posting on facebook may have noticed that I have been adding my prior facebook posts into my blog. Going back through some of my posts that I wrote for facebook before I started the email subscription and blog, I felt they would be useful to share with everyone. So when you read today’s post and wonder why I am posting about Good Friday several months after it has occurred, it is because it is a “recycled post” but one with ideas that are applicable for today. So…   What’s So Good About Good Friday?

The reason we celebrate Good Friday as a holi-day (Holy-Day) is because of Jesus – His Goodness. His goodness to leave Heaven and put on humanity; His goodness to come to earth as its Eternal King yet not to be served but to serve; His goodness to take the punishment of my sin though He was sinless.

And it isn’t just that His greatness is to be remembered only on Good Friday or on the days when I feel blessed, but God is good all the time!

Corrie ten Boom reminds us of this when she says:
“Often I have heard people say, “How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!” Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp.”
the inside of a concentration camp barracks
What an amazing outlook on this sin-filled, evil world where God’s goodness is evident even in the midst of our circumstances. We invited sin into His perfect world. We chose to listen to and trust Satan instead of God. And instead of blasting us into oblivion, He becomes our righteousness in the midst of this perverse earth. We still have to endure the consequences of living in a sin-soaked world. We still have to endure the consequences of our own poor choice of choosing sin. But thankfully, we can do so knowing that our God of goodness will walk with us through every difficulty.

Corrie ten Boom knew that God was good even though she and Betsie had to endure the evil of the concentration camp. What an amazing statement she made showing that she was allowing God to transform her mind, and therefore change her entire outlook on life.

God, change our outlook on life so that we better understand your greatness no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in. And Thank You for Good Friday!

(Thanks to my friend Mariah Fields for sharing this wonderful quote with me from Corrie ten Boom!)

— brian rushing

Categories
Relationships

The Pitfalls of Personal Marketing

“We spend money we don’t have…
      to buy things we don’t need…
            to impress people we don’t really like.”

So often we seek applause from others. But on the flip side of that coin of seeking applause FROM others is the applause we hear FOR others, and our envy of it. A friend asked “How much is enough?” And for some of us the answer is “one dollar more”… that is, unless my neighbor just received two dollars, then my answer changes to “three dollars more.” We live in a world of comparisons, and we are constantly comparing ourselves with those around us, wanting more than what they have (or at least just as much).

I have heard of people limiting their time on social media (such as facebook), because it was creating too much envy and covetousness.
social media buttons by pinkmoustache.net Society tells us to “toot your own horn,” so we use social media as our own personal marketing tool. Too often it is all a facade. And when we look at the status and pictures and info of others, we get jealous and think:

–Why are their kids so well-behaved? I can’t get mine to sit still for one photo without them tearing each others’ hair and clothes.
–Why is their marriage so easy? They seem so happy together, but all we do is argue, fuss, & fight?
–Why can’t I have a brand new house, car, boat, etc. like they do? Everything we own is either in the shop now or needs to go there tomorrow.
–Ultimately, Why does it seem that everyone has a perfect life but me?

The truth is that we all have struggles, but when we look at snapshots of the lives of others, we get rattled by our comparing. Facebook and other social media can upset our own self-confidence, and even tempt us to do a little boasting of our own – praising our own situations and successes so that we keep our applause up and keep their applause down. It makes us feel better about us. Until we realize that it really hasn’t made us any happier.

Paul learned that success was less important than knowing Jesus – much less important: “…whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord….” This from a man who could have really had an impressive facebook profile!

Social media is supposed to let us connect with each other, but it could damage a relationship by causing envy or greed. I want to be able to celebrate the good things in the lives of others, while also being completely satisfied with my own situation. I want to be neither envious, nor boastful – just satisfied in Jesus.

William Wilberforce said, “I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of devotions starves the soul, it grows lean and faint. I have been keeping too late hours.”

When I keep late hours and live too publicly (Social Media being one way to do so), I find that my devotional time with God gets shortchanged. Then I am in much more danger of envy and of feeling the need to boast. The solution – “God, help me to secure more private devotional time with You!” Social media is a great tool, but we must not allow it to intrude upon our time with God nor with our time building relationships with people who are right in front of us – such as our family, friends, & co-workers. And we need to stop using it for comparing ourselves to others, which damages our ability to find contentment.

Why is our satisfaction with life so elusive when we are supposed to find contentment in Christ?
Why do our actions seem to show that He is not sufficient to bring us complete contentment?
Why do we engage allow superficial connecting pull us away from real relationships?

— brian rushing

Categories
Christian Living

The Yo-Yo of Seeking Approval

“I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone-it, people like me!” Do you remember the Saturday Night Live character who told us to say this in the mirror each day? We might want to be good and smart, but doggone-it, even more so we want people to like us. But there is a problem if we live our lives seeking approval and using it as our guide for happiness.

wooden yo-yo to represent the ups and downs of seeking the approval of others
photo credit: xuliánconx

Gordon MacDonald tells us of the tragic consequences: “Since people’s approval inevitably comes and goes, increases and evaporates, motivation through approval becomes a yo-yo of emotions. It’s one of the first reasons men and women quit spiritual leadership. No one is clapping anymore.”

A great contrast we find in the Bible to a person seeking others’ approval is John the Baptist. John “watched a formerly approving crowd leave him to follow Jesus. His reaction? ‘I must decrease.’ Only a person free of the need for approval could talk like that.”

I wish I was more like John. Not that I want to eat locusts, wear camel hair, or live in the wilderness. But I do wish that I didn’t seek so much approval from others. I wish I was a person free of the need for approval, but instead I am like so many who often find ourselves trying to “keep up with the Joneses.” So many of us spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t really like!

Too often, we put ourselves in compromising situations and are unwilling to take a stand, because we don’t want people to think we’re trying to be “holier-than-thou.” We compromise on our own standards to “get along” with others. We want our status to “increase” in the eyes of those around us. But I find that satisfaction in life remains elusive when I am seeking their approval.

So what needs to change? When I learn how to wholeheartedly say to God – “You must increase, and I must decrease!” Then I’ll find true satisfaction in life!

How have you gained some victory in this battle and determined to care more about God’s opinion than the applause of others?

— brian rushing

Categories
Relationships

Upwardly Mobile

As Americans, we are in a society that prides itself on climbing the ladder of success. We find ourselves striving to stay upwardly mobile – gaining more position, more status, more salary, and with all of it… more stress. And though we endure the stress, we tell ourselves that this must be the “good life.” We also might look down on others for not being the go-getters that we are (even though they sure seem less stressed).
ladder with blue sky and clouds behind representing our upwardly mobile desires
Those who aren’t striving to climb the ladder like us sometimes get labeled as lazy – like the mountain people of Appalachia in the book Christy:   “The highlanders were often accused of being lazy and shiftless. As I got to know them better, my conclusion was: relaxed, yes; shiftless, a few of them; greedy, scarcely ever. …”It’s today. I must be livin’.” summed up their philosophy well—a philosophy that aggressive people would spurn.

“Yet which is right? Human life is short. Each of us has limited number of years. So are we going to go through those so few years with little time for our family and friends, and unseeing eyes for the beauties around us concentrating on accumulating money and things when we have to leave them all behind anyway?

“I began to wonder, if the mountain values were not more civilized than civilization’s. At least I found the absence of greed and pushiness as refreshing as a long cool drink of sparkling mountain spring water.”

I have found this true in my own life as I have traveled to other countries in the past few years. At first I found it difficult to sit around and visit for so long when there was so much work to be done. Coming from a “Ready, Fire, Aim” society, it was difficult to sit still. But by the time my first week was complete, I was experiencing that same feeling of being refreshed just by seeing how relaxed they were and willing to enjoy one another. It also made me wonder if our civilized, upwardly mobile way was really as good as we say it is.

We are so busy scaling the ladder that we often do so to the neglect of our family. We work hard to accumulate so much stuff that we can’t take with us. The only real treasures that I will take with me when I die are my relationships. Maybe some of the values that have disappeared from our culture are less civilized that those of our great-grandparents or those of cultures that we do not consider as sophisticated as our own.

I pray that I will learn contentment in Christ and in my relationships, and that I will not allow society to push me toward being upwardly mobile just ‘cause everyone else says that is what the good life is all about.

Have you found an effective way to fight against the culture’s pressure to focus on the ladder? How do you fight to focus more on building relationships?

Categories
Christian Living

Where Roots Are Meant To Be

“I was invited to Miss Alice Henderson’s…[in her] there was an effortless beauty…a harmony that seemed to come from having one’s roots down in the place where the roots were meant to be.”

row of majestic old oak trees with great root systemsI want my roots down in the place where roots were meant to be. I want to be known as a stable, rooted person…one who is not given to bending with the changing wind, but who is firmly planted and confident and content in who I am. When I am able to accept myself as a person loved by God, it changes how I view and accept others.

“There was something else I had noticed too: an initial acceptance of herself as she was and [also] of other people with their [shortcomings]. And so she did as little scolding or criticizing of others for their foolish behavior or their sins as anyone I had ever known. It was not that she was willing to compromise with wrongdoing…just that she was a long step ahead of wasting emotional energy on fretting. And she never put pressure on the rest of us to accept her opinions. The secret of her calm seemed to be that she was not trying to prove anything. She was—that was all. And her stance toward life seemed to say: God is—and that is enough.”

That is how I want to be – able to accept others with their shortcoming because I realize my own failures and yet I also know that I still accepted and loved by the King of the Universe. I want to have a simplicity of life to be able to say:
God is—and that is enough.

Are you content in who you are in Christ? Or are you still struggling to accept you?
It will be hard to accept others until you are able to accept yourself.
Remember these words from a Matthew West song – that when regret and defeat try to remind you of what hold they have on you – tell them…

“Hello, my name is… Child of the One True King.
I’ve been saved, I’ve been changed, I have been set free.”

When we hold onto this truth, we are set free from so much weight of trying to impress and keep up appearances. We just relax in Him. And that let’s others relax when they are with us.

Let’s put our roots down where they were meant to be – in the foundation of Christ, knowing that we are Adopted Children of the One True King of the Universe!

(Quotes take from the book “Christy” by Catherine Marshall)