For the last couple of weeks, a friend and I have been talking off and on about how life can be hard at Christmas even when we have great family and friends who love us. Christmas is a tender time for the human heart. The holiday season boasts of peace, joy and love, yet we hurt over losses, relationship challenges, lost or stagnant dreams, and missed goals. Emotions are stirred up and can crash into each other and we experience many things. The season of hope over the birth of Christ can feel more like an open season on our emotions than a season of hope.
Why is this? Why does the most hope-filled and joyful holiday of the year seem to trigger anything from a sense of melancholy to intense feelings of grief and loneliness? Could it be that the enemy of our soul might try to distract us from the true meaning of Christmas?
Jesus was born as the hope of the world. The Christmas holiday celebrates the birth of the Son of God Who chose to enter into human history by living as a man and dying for our sins. Being forgiven of our sins and escaping their penalty is a message of great hope. It is a message and a story that the devil will do everything he can to stop. Two thousand years have gone by, yet the story of a child born in a barn with angels announcing His birth is still told. I believe the devil knows he cannot stop the telling of the story so he uses other tactics like conflict, loneliness, and grief to distract us. He also uses depression and sickness among other things. The goal? To get us to doubt God’s love and goodness toward us so that we will not believe in the Son that was born to us, the One Who can save us and speak hope, peace, and love to our hearts.
I don’t know about you, but I experienced many painful emotions this holiday season. In spite of these emotions, I made sure I focused on the hope and love that only God can give. I refused to doubt God’s love and goodness toward me even in the midst of grief and loneliness. You know what happened? God provided comfort for me in many ways right in the middle of the grief and loneliness. God was so creative. He blessed me with the opportunity to have a new Christmas tree for a room in my house where I have wanted to put one for ten years, a father who put lights up on the outside of my house, a daughter and new son-in-law who filled my stocking when they came to visit on Christmas Day, and a friend who let me cry on her shoulder (literally!) when I was hurting too much to keep it inside.
Christmas truly is the season of love and hope. And if the season triggered despair, discouragement, depression, grief, loneliness, or any other painful emotion for you, hold on tightly to hope anyway and trust God’s love more than you ever have before.
Showing posts with label distraction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label distraction. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2009
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
You Can't Live Life in Bed!
I am a thinker personality type and it is not uncommon for me to wake up in the morning and lay in bed thinking about the day, even the week ahead of me. I imagine the things that need to happen and what might go wrong if I try to accomplish this or that. I naturally slip into thinking about the consequences and next steps after completing the things I have thought about. And what if I fail or can’t do it? I then think about backup plans A, B, C, and all the way through ZZ should my original plan not produce the desired results!! On a recent morning while still in bed I was in this thinking mode and I felt the Lord tell me that I “can’t live life in bed.” It was time to get up and get to it.
Do you live your life in bed? Maybe you live your life in a chair or on the couch. You get up, go to work, come home, and sit in the chair and watch TV until it’s time to go to bed and then you do it all over again the next day. While you are laying in bed, sitting in the chair or on the couch, do you think about the life you want? Do you think about having a more consistent relationship with God? A more satisfying marriage? A better relationship with your children? A more satisfying job? A physically fit body? A general attitude of being able to enjoy life? All of these desires are good ones but to have what you are thinking about you have to get out of bed, out of that chair, or off that couch and you have to do something about it. Wanting it will not be enough. You have to get up and get to it.
If you do not get up and actually live life, you place yourself in a vulnerable position of distraction. Thoughts simmer about what you want but an interesting dynamic happens when you do not actively pursue positive things…you tend to think about what is wrong with the things in your life that you would like to change. As you continue to brood on what is wrong, you can fall prey to all kinds of deception from Satan.
What kinds of deception can we fall prey to when we are not applying effort towards desires that are God approved? Subtle traps like the mindset that nothing will change, addiction to mindless TV, busyness, or shopping . Horrible traps such as an adulterous affair, the use of or addiction to alcohol, drugs, or pornography. Whether subtle or blatantly horrible, private or public, the traps are designed to keep us from fulfilling God’s plan for our lives. When we do not live life the way God has designed we open ourselves to all manner of evil regardless of how subtle or horrible.
Do not live life from an inactive state and run the risk of falling prey to those things that can make your life ineffective. Do not allow Satan to distract and blind you from what God wants to do through someone who is willing to live life by His design. Get up and live life with the purpose for which you have been created, to love God and keep His commands. Then let Him lead you and guide you in what you must do to experience a deeper relationship with God and experience joy and peace and whatever you work towards. Nothing will happen if you lay around or sit around. If you do nothing, you have nothing, and you get nothing.
Don’t live life from bed. Get up and get to it!
Scriptures
Ecclesiastes 12:13: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man.”
John 10:10: “I [Jesus] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”
Do you live your life in bed? Maybe you live your life in a chair or on the couch. You get up, go to work, come home, and sit in the chair and watch TV until it’s time to go to bed and then you do it all over again the next day. While you are laying in bed, sitting in the chair or on the couch, do you think about the life you want? Do you think about having a more consistent relationship with God? A more satisfying marriage? A better relationship with your children? A more satisfying job? A physically fit body? A general attitude of being able to enjoy life? All of these desires are good ones but to have what you are thinking about you have to get out of bed, out of that chair, or off that couch and you have to do something about it. Wanting it will not be enough. You have to get up and get to it.
If you do not get up and actually live life, you place yourself in a vulnerable position of distraction. Thoughts simmer about what you want but an interesting dynamic happens when you do not actively pursue positive things…you tend to think about what is wrong with the things in your life that you would like to change. As you continue to brood on what is wrong, you can fall prey to all kinds of deception from Satan.
What kinds of deception can we fall prey to when we are not applying effort towards desires that are God approved? Subtle traps like the mindset that nothing will change, addiction to mindless TV, busyness, or shopping . Horrible traps such as an adulterous affair, the use of or addiction to alcohol, drugs, or pornography. Whether subtle or blatantly horrible, private or public, the traps are designed to keep us from fulfilling God’s plan for our lives. When we do not live life the way God has designed we open ourselves to all manner of evil regardless of how subtle or horrible.
Do not live life from an inactive state and run the risk of falling prey to those things that can make your life ineffective. Do not allow Satan to distract and blind you from what God wants to do through someone who is willing to live life by His design. Get up and live life with the purpose for which you have been created, to love God and keep His commands. Then let Him lead you and guide you in what you must do to experience a deeper relationship with God and experience joy and peace and whatever you work towards. Nothing will happen if you lay around or sit around. If you do nothing, you have nothing, and you get nothing.
Don’t live life from bed. Get up and get to it!
Scriptures
Ecclesiastes 12:13: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man.”
John 10:10: “I [Jesus] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”
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