Finding Your Identity

Cleaning, sorting old files, I ran across a few things still seemingly true to me and maybe helpful to someone who stumbles across it. 

In a Psychology one paper from 1978, I wrote "Keep your mind fixed on what you want most in life, not on what you DON'T want." Someone said 'You are what you eat'. Perhaps more accurate is  "You are what you think". Fill your mind with complaints and self-pity. grievances and bitterness and you will discover plenty of valid justifications for this attitude.

"Happiness is not something you have; it's something you become. If you wait for something to be happy about before you become happy, you may never recognize it when it arrives."

Spoiler Alert: due to our being prone to the very basic, very human trait of "ME FIRST" , changing your life so drastically to this very foreign attitude takes time, like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a delicate butterfly.

I refer to a quote more recent:

"You are not what you think you are, but rather, what you think, you are."

Are You Ready? by Doris Lakey

Long ago when I was young I formed the habit of putting off as long as possible my daily responsibilities.  Mother would leave a list of chores for me every day—a short list usually, so I 

would enjoy my day with an eye on the clock so I’d finish up just before she got home. The 

dishes left in the sink all day would still be dripping on the counter when she arrived, and I’d be  slightly out of breath from the last minute rush. And yes, I knew well the old proverb of the  grasshopper and the ant.

This reluctance to do my best became so ingrained that seldom did I feel a twinge of conscience.           I knew there were things I should do, but grew to expect there would always be plenty of time –           in the meantime, there were things I’d rather do. Sound familiar? I suspect most of us prefer to procrastinate, but hopefully we outgrow or overcome this habit, which in the long run is really         more damaging than we knew. 

You see, I knew my Mother would come home every day. I knew when she would arrive, so I felt      safe in putting my fun before my chores. I hadn’t allowed any time to recover from any unscheduled accidents or delays; if the hot water heater had stopped working before I’d done the dishes, or if she   had called just before getting off work and added some urgent little thing I must do, I’d have caused her disappointment and displeasure. 

Continuing this habit into adulthood could risk job advancement or at least cause embarrassment.  Much more serious is putting off things the Bible says we should be doing to prepare for Jesus’s  arrival. You see, Jesus said He surely will come, but didn't tell us when! The Lord has been very generous with the amount of time he has allowed me to grow into His likeness, yet because I knew        I was safe, my past record will show I have failed to diligently pursue spiritual growth over much        of my eight decades.

Dear Ones, you have no guarantee you will have the time and be able and willing to get ready to      greet Him upon His return. My mother died at 62. My oldest daughter died at 38.  An uncle died           at 20. His twin brothers died before 10. The risk in putting self first in my life is (1) an early call homeward or (2) my lack of interest could grow instead of my spirit and lead me further into  separation from our Father in Heaven. Either option will leave me stricken with remorse, kneeling       at the throne, regretting my pitiful excuses instead of arriving with a clean spirit and clear conscience, with crowns of obedient service to our Redeemer who gave all for us.

About 1/3 of the Bible talks about Heaven and in many scripture also warns us to be ready.

            And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take
            you to be with me that you also may be where I am.    

                                        John 14:2

He's working NOW for our arrival; shouldn't we be preparing for that day?

Boldness or Timidity?

  

I remember when I was a small child in church that a preacher often got so excited, so filled with passion, that his voice rose to a shout as he paced back and forth with such urgency in his voice, such emotion, that even so small a creature as I was could not ignore what he was saying. In fact one preacher (J. Frank Norris, a local fire-and-brimstone preacher) inspired such emotion in my own father that his strong feelings led to rebellion and he rose mid-service, grabbed my hand and dragged Mother and me out of that church, never to return.

My dad rebelled at hearing the fate of a sinner described so vividly and darkly. His view of God was purely love toward mankind. So far as I know, Daddy stayed away from church services for the next decade. Years later, he said he couldn’t sit and listen to someone talk about a God who said He loved us and condemn sinners to such am eternal, infernal fate. Yet Jesus spoke of Hell three times as often as He did Heaven. If God the Father is real, so is God the Judge, who will sentence any who refuse to accept His pardon, given at the expense of the Perfect One, who sacrificed Himself, accepting the death penalty our sin requires. Both Heaven and Hell are real or Jesus was not who He said He was and there is no Heaven, indeed no God!

I wonder whether as time went on many pastors had trouble explaining away this truth and began to avoid this aspect of God and rather began to emphasize in their teaching discipleship, a form of self-improvement intended to bring us closer to a loving Father. Even while telling us we were saved by God’s grace through faith He planted in our hearts, I wonder if we listeners hear only that we need to improve to be acceptable to our God. We often seem to think of Holy God as dispenser of Good things, a doting Parent and less often remember He is a Judge who hates any sin and who dispenses final judgment. One day His patience will end and His invitation will be withheld, Heaven's gate will be shut, leaving us to our choice: an eternal future without Him and an eternal penalty to repent, without hope.

A precious few preachers now seem to sense that time is short; there is a boldness in their message which demands our full attention. Self-improvement is not why God left us here in this sin-filled world—if we loved others as we do Him, we would be shouting about the dangers ahead for those who deny Him as Lord. This is not the time for timidity, tolerance of evil around us.

One has described our behavior as that of a surgeon who can heal our disease but doesn’t offer the cure or even tell us there is a cure, and lets us limp forward with a prognosis of sure death. Or a fireman sitting in the firehouse, ignoring the blaring alarm which signals imminent death for some unknowing victim, or a highway repairman failing to signal a collapsed bridge ahead.


The one thing we can do today which cannot be done after we leave this world behind is to share God's love and warning to those around us, whose coattails are already smoking.