Love is More Important

I was sitting in a church pride LGBTQ service the other day, and they were singing appropriate and great worship songs.  Some spoke of God's ability to save and power.  However, most spoke of God's love, and that contrast was an important and helpful thing for me reflect on and write about.

I've noted over the years the various trials that I've had to endure.  Over those years, I wondered why God didn't come to save me from them.  In some cases God did by literally removing me from them or driving me to remove myself from them.  However, the powerful arm of God to save is something I've not often seen.  Indeed, the Bible writers also didn't see it often, as the Psalm writers begged for it, and the New Testament writers would endure many hardships and death.

However, God was present to care for them and me.  Even in my struggles... especially in them.. God's heart was very near to me.  That helped me remain steady and empower me over the years to keep believing.

As I reflected on this in the service, it occurred to me that it is much more important that God is good and loving than that God is powerful.  We often see power in bullies and those that control and use us.  It is a toxic situation, even if it can at times benefit us.  Having someone that doesn't solve your problems but loves you in them is golden.  My current romance with my fiancee is like that.  I think God choosing to die.. the ultimate physical weakness.. is the most needed and wonderful thing God could do and has much more effect than if God came in with power to dominate.

So, just remember as you go through your trials that it's less important that God saves you from them than that God loves you IN them.  Then, go and try to do likewise to others.

Made For Community

"You're the best, Devon! But when we're on the field, nobody hears you! They hear the band." Drumline

I am not an authority on much by way of academics, and I will begin directing you to check out what I say with your sources.  However, I have lived a life that has given me much personal experience and observations, which I believe does have value for consideration.  So, I plan to begin to do my blogs with my reflections and ask you to consider it for yourself or research.

One area of personal exploration over my life is the area of seeking to be independent minded and skilled at my own philosophy reasoning and writing.  I've often felt that my own experience not only gave me a good perspective but a responsibility to teach others, so they do not make the same mistakes that educated me.  At times, this has resulted in feeling ignored or to see others or society making the same mistakes, despite my warnings.  Or, I will make a very solid logical case for something or against something.  Yet, it would be disregarded by others following their passions.  Then, I feel that I failed in making a good enough case or in my warning.

Similarly, I will at times try to do this or that, and I often find myself feeling overwhelmed or exhausted by the attempt.  Then, again, I feel like I failed. This week for example, I was trying to solve a problem at work.  I am very good at solving problems at whatever work I happen to be.  Yet, this one was feeling particularly difficult, and I was becoming more and more depressed at not being able to make it work.  When I brought it up to my boss in a meeting, I was not met with criticism but with understanding and directed to reach out to others that would have more information to make it work.  It wasn't... just... about ...me.

So often, I think we do this.  We see something that needs to be done, so we set out to solve it, ourselves.  After all, we reason, I have a lot of education or skill or more to solve this.  My achievement and pride makes me feel like I should be able to handle it, myself. Yet, very often, it is something DESIGNED to be a team problem with team solutions.

Indeed, it is tempting to believe that we are made to be solitary.  We feel that God designed us with specific and unique skills or personality qualities, and we look at those things and say.... I should use these things, and we seek to use them to do things.  However, one thing that I have noted in my own blogs, for example, is that even if you write the BEST BLOG with irrefutable logic, you are just one person.  You MIGHT reach a small number, but that small number is considering your words as the words of just another person.  Yet, if a larger body speaks the same message, it is more readily received.  I can say to someone that God loves them, even with them being LGBTQ or another race or more.  Some might receive that.  They might even appreciate that you are saying it as a Christian or a member of a group.  Yet, it is just words of another human.   However, when I see a church say that God loves someone, that person is being presented with the words of more than just a person.  It carries more weight.  

I am not saying that you should use a religious body as a platform to push your individual beliefs.  Too many use that to use religion as a method of control, and it has been done for centuries.  However, when a church actually speaks and shows the words and actions of the love of Christ, it has powerful effect.  I think that is why the Bible specifically says that we are to be the body of Christ on Earth... all of us.

But, to return to my main point.  Whether it be as a member of a church or a family or a relationship or a band, we all have wonderful talent within us to do great things.  Yet, the God that made us a wonderful individual also made social bonding that happens between them. We were made to be individuals, and those individuals were made to contribute greatly to groups.  We are stronger, when we all have and receive a part in the groups around us.

I am very much an introvert.  However, I am starting to get out more and communicate more with others.  I am seeking out more ways to bring what I have to the larger groups that fall in my social circles.  I believe that is a part of what I was .. as an individual.. made to be.  So, I would challenge you to consider my thoughts here and to consider what groups you have been given with which to share your gifts, and ask yourself.. am I giving to those groups what I was made to provide, or am I pridefully keeping all that to myself, where no one can hear me beating my drum and make little effect.  You can have a much bigger effect in the world when you join your drum to the chord of what is already being played in the world.

 

Signs and Wonders

"A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign..." Matt 16:4

You have heard me at various time talk about the benefits of darkness or trials.  One of those benefits is in the area of revelation of truth.  I have had many bad and toxic relationships over time that I thought were good at the beginning.  However, it was in times when conflict or obstacles happened that the true nature was revealed.  I'm seeing that in much fashion on the positive side in my current relationship, and it is very healing.  However, it wasn't meant to be healing.  It is just truth being revealed in those moments.. truth that it is more than my fears and a wonderful good in my life that I didn't have to create.. worthy of honor and attention.

I titled this blog with that name, because I think that it is in those moments that the truth is revealed to be one or the other.  Disagreements and differences are revealed, over time.  That is just the nature of being among other humans.  Either someone will see those that say.... "AHA, I KNEW it was not going to work, and this is a sign."  Or, they will look at the differences to say... "Huh.. this person is an interesting wonder to me, and I want to learn more about them and how best to love them in a way that they need and will appreciate."  Being yourself is not a bad thing, ever.  I only wish that in those prior toxic relationships that I would have known, early, that being myself was something that they wished to change and could not love as myself.  

It doesn't mean that the person that is with you will be like you.  You may have many differences, and some of those differences may seem to be very different than what you expected.  It may require you to change how you naturally interact, if they cannot receive it in that way.  THAT doesn't mean that you are incompatible.  What makes people incompatible is when you cannot find a way to love them in a way they can receive or them love you in a way that you can receive.  If you can learn their language of love and communicate in it, LOVE can still be shared.. and isn't that the point?

People are either looking for a sign something is going to fall apart, or they are looking for the wonder to love in another.  Real love is revealed in conflicts, as is love that is only there for themselves.  Don't use fear of the outcome to change who you are, or you will be changing who you are forever.  Rather, be yourself, and love their self.  Then, nothing can shake that foundation. 

Challenge and Growth

I've noted at times my hesitation in posting blog posts, because invariably I tend to face a challenge to what I say in my personal life.  However, I've noticed that the good in my life tends to be challenged, even if I don't post about it.  I've noted this at times in blog posts, as I reflect on it.  I noted how in a George Lopez episode the grandmother didn't want to acknowledge good too loud, because it would draw the evil eye to come and bring it down.  Many feel this about acknowledgement of good, actually.  They feel that they should not say good things, because there are so many that don't have those things.  Yet, there is no such restriction on saying bad things, so people have more examples of negativity in public upon which to base their expectations.  So, good IS important to note, as well... even if it draws the doubts of others or even those that would seek to undermine it.

Any type of activity that would improve you is also subject to resistance.  Most people that begin New Year's resolutions will abandon them in the first few weeks of the year.  If you join a gym, you suddenly have a lot of reasons not to go.  If you would find a job that funds your life, it is usually among co workers that spend hours talking about how bad that place of work is to have, even as they get paid from it.  

However, Scripture says that challenge is good...

" so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." 1 Peter 1:7

That is about faith, but the concept is the same.  What God gives, God tests.  No engineer would trust something that is not tested.  It is a part of the process.  Further, testing provides information to make things work better in the future.  Failure is not the end of something, if that something is desired by those that have it.  it is a step towards perfection.

I have a great relationship with my love, but that relationship has grown over time.  We learn from it and grow and will continue to learn and grow.  I have many work skills in several ways, and EVERY ONE of them was perfected and built up by experience with failures.

So, this blog is simply to say this.  Do not fear failure, and do not let it stop you from trying.  Trying is the only way to move forward, and progress only comes through refinement.  All we need for greater success and happiness is to have is the commitment and the ability and willingness to accept and learn from errors along the way.