My gods

This morning I finished my latest bible study by Kelly Minter, “No Other Gods.” 

For those of you that are like me and are headed toward 70 looking back on 65 years of age, you probably find housekeeping to be a chore that takes two or three the times the amount of time that it took before.  Also it seems easy to overlook the little things like dust and put them off for another day. 

For me this study was sort of like housekeeping.  Looking inside myself to find where these gods are in my life and removing them to make room for The one and only God was like house cleaning.  It was hard and I was tired and I just didn’t want to see all that dust under the top of the tables.

I was shocked when I realized that there were dragons hiding in my heart.  There is a TV on the front of the study book, and the words,” confronting our modern-day idols,”  My pious heart said, “Ah Lord God that is no idol for me.”  I made room for you several years ago and with your help removed this idol in my life.  However, what did I replace it with?

As the study progressed it was really difficult for me to see idols in my life, so it was a real shock to find that the biggest idol in my life was myself.   Then to find that my children were my idols, this rocked my world.

In order that this might testify to someone other than me I will need to explain my idols.  I have enough knowledge and have lived long enough to feel that I know the way things should be.  In reality I am a fool to even think I remotely have a clue to the way things should be.  I know scripture and that it is true and I also know that we cannot take scripture and make it fit our lives but we must let our lives fit scripture.  My problem begins when I judge others as if they do not know how to live and are not living the way God would have them to live.  It is God that matures us in the faith not Lillian Turner.  Oh! When I look back to when I was 20 or 30 or 40 and see where I was and where God has brought me from it absolutely makes me want to crawl in a hole and pull the dirt over me and never show my face again.  Yet it is when I look back and see how mighty, faithful, powerful and wonderful God is and what he can do with such a sinner as me, that I can share his amazing grace and can know that He can fill these empty spaces as I try to in faith remove these existing idols.

Sunday morning God showed me myself in living color as I made my usual critical judgment of an individual that in my eyes wanted to run up and down the ilse of our church, flipping her beautiful hair, shaking her beautifully shaped body and seemingly flaunting herself time and time again with little precious children as her excuse.   As I sat there contemplating what I could say to her that would let her know she was interrupting the services all the time, the Lord planted his foot right in the middle of my heart and I remembered how I wanted attention at that age.  I remembered how I wanted to know I was loved and that I was worth something to someone.  I wanted to be admired, cherished and adored, because we are all selfish and think only of our needs and desires at one time or another in our lives, but it is God that changes that focus and not some, well meaning, person.  I asked God to forgive me of my critical, condemning heart and to help me pray for this young girl.  God does not always give answers immediately and when he does it just blows my mind.  Sunday night that girl never left her seat.  All I did was pray for the Holy Spirit to convict her heart to be still.  Every service she will be in my prayers from this day forward and I will ask God to show her His ways and not be critical of her.  Such a small thing maybe to some but to me it was a heartfelt conviction for my thoughts.

This study did not bring about conviction that my focus was Cyclopes’ on the lives of my children,  I already had this earlier in my life,  however I never thought of them as my little gods.  This has brought about and even stronger desire to lay down my will and reach up to God to perform His without any help from me. 

This morning I had an exercise in this direction and I cannot reveal the self control and prayer it took for me to just overcome my desire to control in this situation.  Eddie had gotten up earlier and came in to turn off the alarm.  He said he was up and not planning to come back to bed any time soon and would get Alex off to school.  If I rose up once I rose up a half dozen times to go advise him or her.  I did fail and called to her to doctor her chin.  The victory was that I did not get up and remind him of the money Carol had given me to give her for lunch money.  It was like I had to put chains around my feet to lay there and not get up and go get the coat from her back pack and spray the coat and her back pack with Frebreeze because the night before I had noticed her bag smelled musty.  And her papers were still there and not removed to stay at home.  Now why I didn’t do it at the time is a mystery, because after all I am the fixit of all times.  I had gotten up and literally threw myself back on the bed and said, “please God, let me stay here and let Eddie handle it.”  I knew he could without my help but to let him was the challenge of the day.  Once again prayer was answered.  I know prayer brings faith and faith brings action, therefore I am looking for my faith to increase as I see God working in my heart and life.

Now we face a new challenge and one that is most likely the one that will take all the faith that God has given me in my lifetime.  Carol has developed health problems.  She has no will to leave to provide her last wishes to be performed.  Unfortunately verbal wills do not count in law.

We all have our weaknesses.  Mine has always been lack of self control which I thank my report card for self fulfilled prophesy.  I will always wonder if that report card had not had the words “does not use self control” written across the citizenship remarks would my life have been different.  Unfortunately our children pick up our failures and run the extra mile with them rather than our victories in life.  Eddie has more self control than an elephant has strength, so why did our children not take after him?  If Carol can control her diet and get exercise she may increase her chances to live out her life at least to see Alex grown.  If the Lord does not come back and take us all home then it is my greatest desire to see Alex have her mom until she is grown.  The challenge for me will be to trust in God to take full control of the situation and accept the results of whatever His will is for the life of Carol and Alex.  I cannot force her to make a will.  I cannot prepare meals and nag her to eat right and lose her weight and do the things she must do for her health.  It isn’t even my right to do those things. 

Last December I literally gave Alex up when she moved to Gilmer to be with her mom.  I gave up Carol to be the wife of Marcus and no longer be my focus in life.  Once I was able to get past the grief and trust them to God to take full control and let them go the burden was lifted and I felt free.    The circumstances of being an hour and fifteen minutes away certainly helped my endeavor to resist the temptation to be a major part of their lives as before.  My girls were now no longer mine to take care of and only God could take care of them.  I learned to pray more earnestly, yet at this point in my life I still did not realize Alex and Carol were idols in my life.  Then in May my idols moved back home with husband and son to enter my realm of needing to help.

I made this commitment earlier in the study but it has been confirmed even more vividly today at the end than before.  My prayer is that the Lord would give me the faith and enable me to completely surrender my loved ones to his care and I knew all the time that it was He that had the power to do anything, but I was misguided into thinking if I said the right thing, or provided the right care that it would make a difference.  Now I pray that God will let me take my hands off and simply live an example before them and continue to pray for them.  I have said enough words to last my entire family for a life time.  I have given enough advice to paint the earth. 

My grandson told me exactly how I have been able to get away with all this help and their lives show the results of all my good intentions.  He said, “MeeMaw me and Jesse always knew you meant well.” 

This is the saddest commentary a person could ever have in her life to come to the end after giving her all to her family in trying to be certain they were trained up in the way they should go and do everything possible to insure they knew the need of salvation, and their need to live right and just before the Lord, to be told we always knew you meant well.

If nothing else this confirms they were my gods and my need to be their god was greater than my faith in the God to be their God.   My greatest desire is that God will allow me to live long enough to see his work performed in their lives and from just one of them to say, “Thank you, I just wanted to share with you that God has brought me where I am today.”

I have every intention to watch and wait for them to come to the Lord and serve him with all their hearts and it doesn’t really matter if I ever hear those words, what matters is they heard His.