Are you spoiled?

Last night as I sat on the phone with a mother as she recounted how her child was acting....it made me think about how we as adults act at times and how God must view us.

The mother was discussing how the child had all these expectations of her but was not accountable for any of her own actions/decisions and was using her home as a revolving door.

If we stop and think about our own lives, how many times have we made promises to God if he intervened in a certain situation, we would do this or that from now on.....having ceased our promise to God very early in the process? How many times do we even forget to pray until something happens and then we remember to pray at all? Why do we expect so much from God and so little of ourselves? Why do we get angry because we feel he doesn't answer us or we don't understand a certain situation so we say, "God couldn't be a God of love" or this wouldn't happen? What???? When you make a tough decision that your kids' don't like, do you love them less? No, it is out of the pure love that you made the decision...how when we don't get our way we immediately decide we aren't loved?

Many kids are so spoiled today they push all their failures off on their parents. They don't want accountability, they just want us to fix it and give it back to them. They don't want to learn. Why? We have spoiled them and have taken away their consequences because we couldn't stand to see them go through the pain of rejection or fear, etc. So this has become our expectation of God. We treat him as the King of Kings when we want something and invisible when everything is going right. How many times has your son or daughter walked up and it seemed so loving at the time when they wrapped their arms around your neck, "oh momma or daddy, I love you so much"....you just melted until after they showed all this wondrous affection and followed it up with, "can I go to ________, please, please, I'll love you forever".......you laugh because it is you who are made the fool......

Just as we have to make the best decisions for our children, make them clear and concise and hold to our word....the Lord does this for us through his WORD. We often fail to hear because we want it our way. We always think we can do it on our own. The Bible says, "lean not unto your own understanding" but yet we rack our brains trying to understand why something has to be the way that it is or why it is the way it is. Sometimes there are just no answers. We have to accept no answer as the answer. It may come to us later...it may not ever be revealed.

I had another call from someone last night who was distressed and trying to find answers. I told him that his continual unhappiness was a result of seeing everything half empty and focusing on the "empty". He had so many blessings in his life but he was unhappy in 1 or 2 areas and that was ruling his focus. So many things in life are incremental. As Warren Buffet, the richest man on the planet or was, says that he earned his billions "one penny at a time". He didn't go out and make money immediately but he made one good decision at a time and kept looking for right financial decisions. He started when he was 6 years old. He made a decision to make money and he held firm as he looked for opportunities.... one decision at a time.

We are so spoiled, we want it our way and now! Believe me, if I could be spoiled and immediately be healed and not have to go through chemo....I would be first on the list. However, I have to accept it is not that way or not yet. Our financial markets are in crisis and we have to do something. Do we panic, freak out or do we make a logical, calm decision and do what we feel is best? We have to hold on because this isn't all going to go away right away as we would all like. It makes us uncomfortable to have so much unrest. However, you learn the most when you are out of your comfort zone.

I'm preaching to the choir here.....I'm in a very uncomfortable zone, I want it to go away right away....yes, I want to be the spoiled adult that I'm speaking about.....but my plans are not to be so I have to accept the journey in life is not my own right now.....lean not on my own understanding because I don't understand it but accept that I'm serving an awesome God who knows the score and will fill me in when the time is right.

So I say the same to you, please hang in there, don't get depressed and know that we will all look back on these times and say, "remember when?"....."we are so much smarter or better as a result of what happened"

No matter what your circumstance, God will get you through.....have faith, focus on all your blessings and pray that God's will is done in your life. Don't be so spoiled!!

Love,
Leah