Every Time

Last night, my mom said something to me that totally convicted me. She said, “I read your blog, that post from a long time ago about working for the Lord, when you only got $7 in tips.” She commended me for my attitude. And I wanted to change the topic, quickly. The fact is, I have not had that attitude lately, at all. In fact, I’ve had a very poor attitude. I’ve whined and grumbled and complained about making a pathetic amount of tips and have been highly unmotivated to work or work well. Everything that the Lord showed me that one evening went in one ear and out the other. And I give the Israelites a hard time about their forgetfulness…

Colossians 3:23-24 says:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 

The verse that stuck out to me, “because you know you will receive an inheritance from the Lord." That means that He's in charge of making sure that I get what I need for the amount of work I do. I may, on average, not make enough tips to buy myself a cup of coffee, but that is not reason enough for me to not do a good job. I am working for God, not for men. God has called me to work “as unto the Lord.” He is my boss. I’m not working for a paycheck or to impress my manager, I am working for the Lord. This means that I look to GOD to provide for me, not my job. And He’ll provide exactly what I need when I need it. So when I don’t make much in tips, I am basically saying that He’s not providing enough.

The fact is, how much I make is pretty irrelevant. What matters is the state of my heart. The point is that I serve the Lord by giving my best and He provides exactly how much I need.

Every. Single. Time.  

Contemplations over ice packs and injuries

It's amazing how something as small as slipping and falling can mess up a whole afternoon. Or so it would seem. I re-pulled a muscle today that I pulled last month and it sent me into a fit of tears. But I was crying about a lot more than a bruised leg.
This past month has been an amazing month of the Holy Spirit's work in my life. He has been tearing down walls in my heart, opening up my spiritual eyes, and bringing me to the foot of the cross over and over and over again. As I've been growing in leaps and bounds, I've also been faced with struggles that keep appearing in leaps and bounds. Today, as I sat on the floor crying over my silly injury, my heart jumped at the chance to cry over all of the other things that were buried in there.
Yet, after all those tears, the only thing I can say is this: God is a God of faithfulness, even amidst struggle (especially amidst struggle!). He is faithful to keep His promises. As I've drawn close to Him over the past few months, He's given me a lot of promises and revealed a lot of truths to me. It has been a huge exercise in trust for me to stand on these promises. As I lay with an ice pack and a large amount of pillows under my leg, I kept thinking of all things that I'm struggling to believe God for. Doubts kept screaming at my mind, "Can God really love you that much? Will He really come through? Surely not. Why would He do that for you? Why would He actually care for you?"
The only answer I could find was the one thing that I've been standing on (albeit somewhat shakily, I admit). Time and time again, I find myself coming back to the simplest, most elementary--yet the most revolutionary--truth. God is love. And He loves me.
If I believe that God truly loves me then all of my fears are invalidated. Every. Single. One. As 1 John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
He loves me, therefore He will do what's best for me. He loves me, therefore He will keep His promises. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.
1 John 4:10 "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
I think that I just need to sit and chew on that for a very long time. It sounds like the perfect accompaniment to a blanket, a large amount of pillows and perhaps...an ice pack.