Hey all! M. here again! Happy November to all of you!! How is your Thanksgiving week going? Tell me in the comments below!!
Today
I want to talk about a saying that really really annoys me. (I know,
it's brilliant to be complaining the week where we are supposed to be
thankful!) I use this saying all the time, but I hate using it and I
hate the idea behind it.
"That's life," we say.
When we lose a job or our microwave breaks, we sigh and say, "that's life."
When we're super busy or we don't get along with other people, we shrug it off and say, "that's life."
When we find flaws in our work or we have to start a project over, we grumble and say, "that's life."
When we have an impossible dream and lose our motivation, we quit and say, "that's life."
When wars and crises arise and we think our world's just gone down the drain, we say "that's life."
When it feels like God is distant and we're stuck on our own, we just say, "that's life."
And we move on.
Why
do we have to say that? Why are we obligated to a mysterious fate
called life? Yes, there are about two things we have guaranteed in this
life, first, death; second, taxes! Yes, we can generally look at lives
from the past to learn from their mistakes, predict possible outcomes,
and maybe make better plans for the future.
But we
aren't tied to that. We never have to be controlled by the outcome of a
unknown lottery machine of future events. Isn't God the one who created
life? Doesn't He have control over our future and over us? Jesus told us
that He came to earth so that we might have life, and have it "to the
full!" So why do we settle?
Because we're comfortable.
We American Christians are so comfortable in our little Jesus boxes that
we don't bother to dream the impossible. We don't care enough to look
and see if this is really all there is to life. We rarely ask the Holy
Spirit to be present in our lives every day. We don't expect God to move
in miraculous ways for us. We don't hope for things like what happened
in the apostles' stories in Acts to happen today. Because we're
comfortable.
How comfortable are you? How okay are you
with your life? When was the last time the Holy Spirit pointed out an
attitude to change, a relationship to mend, an opportunity to give Him
glory? Did you follow that call? Have you even heard His voice?
Living
life to the full is like skydiving - you have to jump out of a plane
that has a seat for you, a nice buckle to keep you in that seat,
protection from the sun and the wind and the rain and the pull of
gravity. You have no need to jump out. You have no need to use the
dangerous route to get back to the ground. You can just ride the nice
plane down to safety.
But you're not going to have much
of a story when you get back to the ground if you never jumped out of
that window. You're not going to have the thrill of falling, flying,
hurtling down towards the planet unrestrained until at the last second
you release the parachute.
It's the same way in our
walk with Jesus. We could stay in our comfy churches with the seats
we've picked out with protection from the elements of our broken world
and the gravity of life's messes. We don't have to go do things to earn
our salvation. We aren't obligated to take the dangerous route because
"His grace abounds in our weakness." We can just ride the nice Christian
life to heaven.
But you can't live life the way God
designed you to when you're still inside the airplane! It's time to let
go of following the status quo of "that's life." Because there really is
more than the nice busy Christian life full of church services with
plastic perfect people and life groups full of plastic perfect
discussion and the rest of your life as the quiet, unoffensive office
worker with a "Jesus loves you" sticker in your cubicle. There really is
more to life than the loads of dishes and laundry and kids' noses and
faces to clean and meals to prepare and arguments to interrupt. Oh, yes,
that mundane still exists. Oh, yes, the trials and the failures and the
car breakdowns and feeling distant from God won't go away. That's
because we're human and our world is broken.
(But we're
not just human beings. Our soul is eternal and will live forever in
Christ's presence if we've accepted His salvation. I'm learning, too,
that that soul isn't the only things that will live on. We will have
eternal bodies in continuity with the old, but those bodies won't decay
or become useless. What an exciting prospect! I can't wait for heaven.
And seeing Jesus.)
When we are in eternity, I think I'd rather tell the story of how I went skydiving.
What about you?
There's no going back once you jump. But when it come to living God's life for you, you won't regret jumping.
You'll get the opportunity to truly be God's hands and feet for this broken world.
You might get to see God's presence tangibly changing lives and changing whole cultures.
Your heart attitude towards God might be personally transformed from the inside out.
You might be hated for your radical ideas. Jesus practically guarantees it.
You won't be comfortable. But you probably won't miss that comfortable life once you leave it.
You might live that impossible dream in spite of every voice that says it can't happen.
You'll have the chance to redefine what you call truly living.
You will be changed. And
that's life. God's way.
