1 Choose God
2 Choose to Stop the Chaos
3 Choose Community
4 Choose to Restore Order
So this week in the video, Angela was describing me. I sat there as I prepared my notes just sobbing as she continued to describe...me. I expected her to peg me as a teenager, I mean I knew I was a wallflower teenager. But then she began to talk about what happens when life comes at you fast...she says how she began to retreat into the spirit of a wallflower where you show up and do all the things you're supposed to do, looking all cute like you're supposed to because you're supposed to but you look around and you feel lost. Even though you are there, in your heart you feel like you are just dying. Jobs didn't work out, friendships were broken, relationships are jacked up, kids just making you feel crazy and you keep putting yourself out there only to keep retreating back in, feeling hurt and you decide that it all hurts too much so you start separating from it. Building up your walls. Stepping back. Separating from the heartache and rejection. Finally hugging the wall. So when you do show up, you are there and you look great but you are just a shell, on the outside looking in. You have separated yourself so much for fear of rejection that you completely miss out on the very thing God has called us to do...to love each other.
John 13:34-35 tells us
"A new commandment I give you that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
If we are retreating, how can we do this. If we are separating from each other, how can we love them?
We do become numb, in areas we used to be so confident and decisive in, we are just kinda...blah.
Ecclesiastes 7:10
"Say not 'Why were the former days better than these?' Fir it is not from wisdom that you ask this."
We tend to think back and see the memories of before the craziness of kids or before the horrible job or before the divorce or before the friend betrayal and think things were so good...how did I get here? A lot of times we forget we left yesterday behind for a reason. What the verse Ecclesiastes is trying to tell us is we do have options. Even though we may not be able to change our circumstances, we can change the way we think about them. It's not smart to compare between then and now. Yesterday will always have an advantage because you tend to remember it selectively and it's kinda like griping when we do that. Remembering fondly is good but remembering selectively in this negative manner with regret is not good.
We tend to moan and grown like Naomi in the book of Ruth. If you recall, Naomi went through a big famine and lost her husband and two sons and then sent her two daughters in law away...although one of them did refuse to leave her.
Ruth 1:20-21 tells us how she was feeling...
"They Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full and the Lord had brought me back empty"
She was looking back remembering the good life and what did she do? She retreated. She pushed her daughters in law away. She wasn't choosing community like Angela talked about in the video. She didn't seem to be choosing God at the moment either. She seemed pretty bitter towards God.
But in the end what did she do? She did choose community. She did what God wants us to do and God blessed that. But doing so her family was redeemed through her daughter in law Ruth's marriage to Boaz.
Just like she made choices, we make our choices every day. We make choices to do things that will connect us or disconnect us. Bring us closer to God or further away. Make us more godly women or not so much.
We don't just decide we are gonna follow Christ and then wake up the next morning and we're glorious godly women. We have to choose to be that way and keep choosing it every single day.
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