Sick and Tired

Has an underlying theme been making the rounds of your life?  I sure have been touched by one, for me, it is one on trust.  I seem to have a great deal of trouble trusting people!  In my lack of trust of others, I have then segued that lack of trust and brought God down off His throne and put Him into a box of my creation (humanness) and thought Him too unworthy of my trust.  It was pointed out in the devotional “Jesus Calling” that when I complain or appear to be critical, I am saying to God, that He is mismanaging MY world!  Wow, that stopped me in my tracks!

 I then went on to a different devotional, “Women’s Friendship Devotional” and saw the following phrases, look for them in quotation marks.  “Your family that you came from is important, but not as important as the family you will leave behind.”  Stop and let that sink into your mind!  The baggage we bring forward from our childhoods we deposit into our own families.  If you were compared to others growing up, your tendency with your own children might then be to compare them!  What if you weren’t good enough, do you then raise children who continually strive for, but never quite attain perfection?

This devotional then went on to share a phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous, “You have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired” before you will find yourself ready to change!  That I found to be pretty profound.  Edwin Lutzer said “Many refuse to develop a positive attitude.  The reason is simple: They plan to fail.”  It seems to me, as long as you are seeing results, even if they aren’t the ones you want, you will continue doing the actions that produce the outcome!  If the outcome of your desires is attention, and negativity is what produces that result, you are going to hang onto it.  A baby cries, the parent picks him/her up and feeds or offers other comfort.  Soon, the baby realizes that he/she only has to cry to get attention.  As parents we had to learn to differentiate between the baby’s cries!  It was one of the hardest thing as a young parent to listen to my child cry, but knowing he/she was fed, burped, clean and not in harm's way, I had to let them sometimes work it out themselves.

God is equally discerning to our cries.  God wants to be part of our lives, always, not just when we want Him.  When He designed us, He put in His needs and we have distorted that “button” and allowed our perversions to try to fill that which only He can fill.  He calls to us in our weariness.  Could the obstacles that stand in your way, the ones you are crying and complaining about, have been placed by God in His attempt to direct us back to Him?  I believe He is discerning for the cry of our hunger for Him, and ignoring our cry of frustration of our own ways!

Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired yet?  I know I am!

Looking up!~Barb