Living In the Presence of God: August 2011

Finding Satisfaction in Life

Three small children bounded out of bed at 6:30 am. I groggily pulled myself out of bed after a night of nursing the newborn at 11:30 pm, 2:30 am and 5:30 am. It seemed unfair to be forced to get out of bed while the baby was finally back to sleep. As I made my way down the steps, I heard screams coming from the two-year old, "He pulled my hair!" she exclaimed. Her brother, four years older, stood above her as she laid writhing in pain on the floor. As I began to interrogate him, I was interrupted by a teary-eyed four-year old who whined, "Mommy, I'm hungry, and we don't have any milk." Distracted from the two in conflict, I searched the pantry for food. "Hmm," I said to myself, "I guess I need to go shopping today." How I dreaded the shopping trip to Walmart. After nursing the newborn, getting the kids fed with the scraps left in the pantry, and making sure everyone had clothes and shoes on, I finally had everyone strapped in car seats by 10:30 am. I knew I only had an hour to fit the shopping trip in until the next feeding. Could we make it through the store in time? I can do this, I thought. As I walked through the isles searching for enough food to last us a week, my kids, under threats, held tightly to the cart. After the first 10 minutes, the oldest child realized that holding onto the cart really wasn't all that fun. He reached out and pinched his brother, provoking a squeal and making him let go of the cart. This got his little sister giggling, and she let go too. Soon, the whole group was pushing, pinching, and screaming as I scrambled to throw food in the cart and corral my kids back to their positions. This scenario repeated itself several times as we trudged down the isles of the store. I could feel the fatigue setting in. The sleepless nights were beginning to take their toll. I felt tears of anger creeping up behind my sleepy eyes. Then a sweet little old lady approached me. "Are they all your kids?" She asked. I was sooo tempted to say something bitterly sarcastic, but instead, I said in my sweetest Christian voice, "Yes, they are." Finally, we made our way to the check-out line only a couple of minutes before the baby's feeding time. As we inched our way toward the conveyor belt, the two-year old decided to show everyone she was wearing big-girl pants...only she took off both her pants and her pull-ups. The boys started squealing in laughter. At that moment, I looked straight at my two-year old and said with all of my wisdom, "You know if a policeman sees you doing that, he will put you in jail." At that, the boys starting laughing even harder, and the two year old started crying at the top of her lungs. It was at that moment that I realized that being a perfect mother was an unachievable goal.

As I look back over the sixteen years that I have been a mother, I know without a doubt that this incident was not my first failure as a mother, and it certainly was and will not be my last. My failure over the past 16 years has become a sweet reminder to me that perfection is not the goal. Complete and total surrender is. Surrendering my goals to be a good mother, a spotless homemaker, a loving wife, and a superb homeschool mother with stellar children, to a loving Savior, who has a much better and more effective plan for my life. As I miserably fail at each and every one of these goals, I am reminded that God WILL use my failures to bring about his purposes. For God's power is made perfect in my weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10 Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

If I recognize my weaknesses and leave behind the goal of maintaining the image of perfection, then God's power will be perfected in me. I don't have to struggle in my own strength to maintain the image of perfection because it is not me who is doing the perfecting. It is God.

Philippians 1:3-6 ³ I thank my God every time I remember you. ⁴ In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ⁵ because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, ⁶ being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

I Thessalonians 5:23-24 ²³ May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴ The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

He is the one who began the work. It is he that will bring it to completion. There is nothing in these verses about me bringing about my sanctification about me keeping my salvation in the balance. It is God who is doing it in me. So, when I sin, fail my kids, my husband, or my friends, instead of becoming devastated and impotent as a Christian, I look at these times as opportunities to learn the lessons that God is teaching me. They are simply course corrections, times in my life that God is molding me and shaping me into the person He wants me to be. God uses my failures as a mother to make my kids into the people he wants them to be. Wow! That takes the pressure off my shoulders. I don't have to trust in my own strength to keep it all together. It is God's strength and His work in my life that brings about His perfect will.

If I believe in a God who is Omnipotent (all powerful), Omnipresent (everywhere present), Omniscient (all knowing), Omnibenevolent (perfect in goodness), then I will believe in a good God who can and will work all things in my life together for His glory and my good (Romans 8:28). "All things" includes even my failures and mistakes. It includes even the trials, disappointments, and struggles I am faced with. When I read verses like Philippians 4:4-7, I can say with confidence that I can rejoice in all circumstances knowing that my good, all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere-present God is working in even these circumstances for my good and His glory.

Philippians 4:4-7 ⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Being used of God no matter which path he takes me on, whether it looks like failure in the world's eyes or not, is my goal. Fulfilling His purposes in my life is the only truly fulfilling path I can take. All other side trails will only lead to frustration and discouragement.

Laura Story's song Blessings reiterates this truth. She says that God brings all the circumstances in our lives to bring about good. She underscores that even the hardest trials that we go through are brought to us by God, who has our good in mind. Instead of trusting in a good God that has brought about all of these things for our good, she sings to God, "We cry in anger when we cannot feel you near, we doubt your goodness, we doubt your love." She goes on to explain, "When friends betray us, when darkness seems to win, the pain reminds us that this is not our home." She sings, "What if my greatest disappointment and the aching of this life is a revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy." If we could come to the place where we realize that our greatest accomplishments, the money we make, the toys that we buy, the people we are friends with will never satisfy us, and instead realize that our only satisfaction can come from laying down our lives and surrendering our will to the one and only God of the universe. It is only then that our failures won't devastate us; our wrong decisions won't cripple us; and our unrealized hopes and dreams won't bring us crashing down. When we get to a place where we can truly say like Jesus, "Not my will, but Yours, be done," (Luke 22:42) because we trust that God's plan is good, it is infinitely better, and it is the best plan for our lives. It is then and only then that we can truly be satisfied.