We the Plants…

Have you ever noticed how a plant will start to grow and bend toward the light? Of course we know the plant does this because it needs the light in order to… LIVE. Isn’t it funny how these simple organisms, that have no brains or emotions (despite what some tree-huggers may say :-p) know enough to do such a thing. I mean we may take it for granted, but the fact that plants know they need light in order to survive, so they will do ANYTHING they can to reach it, is pretty remarkable.

 

Notice the phrase, “THEY REACH IT.”

 

See plants don’t expect the sun to move for them, nor do they expect anyone to come along to move them into the light. They have it programmed to reach for that light.

 

As weird as it sounds, we are a lot like plants.  We know we need The Light in order to survive. We know that without The Light, we die. Unfortunately, unlike plants, many times just because we may not see The Light right now, we expect that Light to move around to meet us instead of us reaching out to meet The Light.

 

Going through life, we are like plants that when we were seeds, we fall down to the ground ready to take root. However as time goes by, dead plants and other debris begin to fall on top of us, blocking out The Light from reaching us. When this happens, some plants will push their way up and out in order to reach the light, where others can’t, stay trapped under all that debris, and eventually die.

 

Our walk with God, the One True Light, shouldn’t be like that plant that stays trapped. What we need to see is that the light hasn’t moved or changed because the plant got trapped. It wasn’t the light’s fault that things fell on top of the plant, and the plant knows this and doesn’t blame anything on the light. The plant knows that it got itself buried, and now has to do something to get out of it. It is up to that plant to find a way out of that debris to reach the light… not up to the light, nor can that plant wait around and just hope for someone to stroll by and move off the debris that is on it.

 

It may sound silly, but many of us are like this. In life, we go through things; some good, and some not so good. We may start to dabble here and there in sins of this world… just a little. However, as time goes on, we soon start to see that sin will take us farther than we want to go, keep us longer than we want to stay, and cost us more than we are willing to pay. Then comes the reality check, where are eyes open and we see just how far away from God have become.

 

Just like the plant that is trapped under the debris, The Light is still shining bright. It hasn’t changed one bit. Just because we have a hard time seeing the Light, doesn’t mean it stopped shining. CS Lewis once said, “The instrument through which you see God is your whole self, and if it’s not kept clean, your glimpse of God will be blurred.”

 

When we get ourselves trapped, we need to strive to push through to reach the Light. Unfortunately too many of us don’t think it is up to us to reach toward the Light, and expect it to change for us. Our vision gets blurred we begin to think that it is God’s fault for us getting trapped into the things that we got ourselves into.  We get into this mindset that, because it may take a little sacrifice, or a little temporary pain to change our situation in order to reach the Light, we just will wait around for the Light to change for us or someone else to move us.

 

Fortunately for us, we DO have a Light that will reach down to us and meet us right where we are at, BUT that doesn’t mean we can stop reaching for Him. God is ALWAYS reaching down to try to help us. But if we’re not reaching up, how do we expect to grab hold of God’s hand?

 

How Hard You Can Get Hit

There is a scene in the recent Rocky Balboa movie Rocky’s son tries to confront his dad, and call him out on things, and pretty much blame him for not being the person that he wants to be. However, this little session didn’t turn out the way the son planned. You see, the son planned on ‘setting his father straight’ when what really ended up happening was his father setting HIM straight. In a little speech to his son after being confronted, Rocky tells his son that, ”The world aint all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently… if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody!”

Upon just recently watching that scene, I saw it in a whole different perspective. This confrontation between this man and his son can be compared to a our confrontations with us and God. I mean let’s face it, whether we’re call ourselves Christians, Catholics, Jews, White, Black, or whatever, life can really suck from time to time. However, its how we react to these situations. Many time when life throws us a curve ball, we get all upset and start pointing fingers at whoever or whatever is around. We even rush to point fingers at God and ask him how He can do this to us. We get upset and try to rationalize with God. We tell him how we go to church every Sunday. We tell him how we wear shirts with scriptures on them. And we even ask if he remembers how even though we were in a rush, we stopped to help a little old lady across the street. And with our fingers pointed to the sky, we demand that God be ”fair” and hold up His end of the bargain. I mean we do all these ”good” things, doesnt God owe us a little bit????

Well like Rocky said, it aint about how hard you can hit, It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. Or in our case, how hard we can get hit and keep our faith in God.

You see, many times when situations arise in our life, it isn’t because God wants to punish us. It’s because He wants to expose all the nasty stuff in our life so there is room for what he wants in our life. Like a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing. Instead of asking why something is happening, why don’t we ask God what He is trying to teach us through this, because, it is through suffering and through tests that we draw closer than ever to God. God never closes one door in our life without opening another, and He’ll never expose us of what we may be hanging onto to shame us or condemn us. But in fact He wants to redeem us and set us free from it so we don’t have to keep hanging onto it and trying to keep it covered up.

From personal experience, I’ve found that when God has a plan and a purpose for someone’s life, He will get through to us one way or another. And at the time, it may even hurt a little and we may shout and yell at God because things may not be going the way we planned them, but be rest assured, that whatever God’s plan is, it will be 5000 times better than we we could have even imagined.

So when situations arise and we can do one of two things. We can go off confronting and blaming God and cursing Him out because he’s not being ”fair” and totally miss out on God’s opportunity to expose and fix the things in our lives we may have been struggling with, OR we can try to sit back, take it all in, press into God, and after the little storm, we end up getting the wake up call and see what God really had in store for us.

No Religion…Just a Relationship

These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.
~Matthew 15:8-9

What!? It may sound funny but God does not like religion. In fact he thinks it hinders one’s walk with him. Religion is not what God seeks…It is that personal relationship with him. You see, in Heaven there isn’t going to be separate sections where all the Baptists go, and another section for the Catholics, and so on. All that there is going to be is a large group of people who truly hope put off their cover of religion and decided to have a deep relationship with God. The reason why Religion is not the way is because it actually gets in the way and takes the place of God. People get so caught up in being a specific religion instead of the actual meaning behind it. Prayers become more of a scripted habit instead of coming from the heart. Going to church becomes a chore just because you “have to go” because it’s Sunday. God desires to have a relationship with us no matter what day of the week it is. Just going through the motions and being “religious” is not what God is looking for. Going to church week after week and giving lip service to God means nothing if we are not living the way He wants us to live. You don’t have to believe me, but you should believe what the Bible says. Take another glance at the scripture above and think about what it really means.