Just Love Mom

Life with the mom of a missionary family

Tag Archives: God

God Rigs Football Games

The Broncos won a football game on Sunday. I didn’t get to see it, so I “watched” it on Twitter. The tweets went some thing like this:

Pittsburg vs The Guys who are going to lose

Wow! Broncos are doing well!

Oh my goodness! OT!!

and then the internet errupted

TEBOW

and then.. one person juked the entire interworld.

30,000 children died of preventable diseases, but God cares about a football game. Sure.

Shhhh… Don’t be like that. God does care about football. Just maybe God rigged that game.
Why?
Because 30,000 children died of preventable diseases.

Follow my reasoning:

The Broncos win the game and then
people want to see the winning pass so
they Google Tim Tebow and
they find out about The Tim Tebow Foundation which
has just partnered with CURE to
build a hospital in the Philippines and
is now taking your donations so
children won’t die of preventable diseases.

There.

Tim Tebow Announces the Tebow CURE Hospital from CURE Video on Vimeo.

One Word 2011 Review – Waiting

If I were to sum up 2011 in one word it would be

WAITING.

It seemed like we were always waiting. Waiting for Scott to come home for the weekend. Waiting for our approval from Thailand. Waiting for funds. Waiting (and waiting and waiting) for our visas. Waiting to move to Bangkok.

So it was fitting that one of the last church services of 2011 was spent WAITING.
Church starts, is supposed to start, around 10:30. At 11:00 Alyse calls out “While we’re waiting, I have a game for everyone to play”
um, what are we waiting for?

 

While we’re waiting, why don’t we sing some Christmas carols? Sure the kids can play the drums. We’re not really doing anything. We’re just waiting.
Why are we still waiting?

While we’re waiting, Beth has something to share about what God is speaking to her.
Do you know what we’re waiting for?

 

While we’re waiting, why don’t we see some cool dancing?
Church “ended” ten minutes ago. Are we still waiting?


WAITING. We spent the whole time waiting. From 10:30 until almost 1:00.

We talked, we sang, we ate, we shared. We laughed at babies playing the drums.

What were we waiting for? We were waiting to realize that even while we wait, important things are happening.

And I realized, while I spent 2011 waiting, things were happening. While I was waiting for Scott to come home, I was becoming independent. While I was waiting for our visas, I was learning to trust God for my future. While I was waiting to move, I made some wonderful friends and spent time with my family right where I was.

Some of the most important things happen while we wait for something else.
Are you waiting?

Honoring God vs Avoiding a Sucky life

Last week I may have given a friend some bad advice. This friend is miserable right now. Life sucks and she is having to make some hard choices. My bad advice was, “I’m sure God doesn’t want you to be unhappy

Even though we both know better, our conversation (and my advice!) turned God into a Heavenly Sugar Daddy who would spoil us rotten and give in to our whims just to keep us happy.

This week my daily Bible readings have been full (of course) of God’s advice for someone living a miserable life, facing miserable choices.

That advice is: Honor God. Do things and make choices that glorify God.

Sometimes the choices that honor God are the suckiest choices. Sometimes those choices cause us to give up what we think we really want. Here are the verses that really hit home for me this week.

Honoring God vs Avoiding Sucky Life

1Peter 4:19
So if you are suffering in a manner that pleases God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you, for he will never fail you.

Phillipians 1:10-11
For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation- the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ – for this will bring much glory and praise to God.

Mark 8:34-35
Then Jesus called the crowd to him, along with his followers. He said, “If people want to follow me, they must give up the things they want. They must be willing even to give up their lives to follow me. Those who wan to save their lives will give up true life. But those who give up their lives for me and for the Good News will have true life”

Romans 8:17-18
And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

An addition: notice that all these verses start out with suffering or hard choices and end in hope.

Please don’t misread this post. I would never suggest that someone put themselves in harm’s way and stay in an abusive situation. Abuse doesn’t honor God. Pouring yourself into a dry marriage honors God. But abuse, or tolerating abuse, can never bring glory to anything.