Have you ever heard that song? The theme song in the Pampers Pull-Ups commercial. It is so catchy. I know. Lame.
But whenever that commercial comes on, I clap and sing to our little girl and think to myself “wow, Mariclaire will actually clap her hands and dance around with me one day”. But when I do this she pays me absolutely no attention. After all, she is only six months old.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg. I daydream about how she will look (with hair) and what extracurricular activities she will be interested in when she is older. And on a much larger level, during her bedtime prayers, Rodney and I have even prayed for whoever it is that will end up being her husband one day.
Sometimes it is hard to grasp that she will be an adult one day and make her own choices. That is the independence we give our children.
The hard part is accepting the fact that she is human, which means she will get hurt, have disappointments, and will mess up in lots of ways.
I think a lot of us like to play a little tug-of-war with God on this subject.
We become adults and we want to have everything under control. After all, if we can have everything perfectly under control, that is what “success” looks like. And success means that we have worked our way up our social, emotional or corporate ladder, and we are at the top of our game. We do not need anyone else because we have it all together.
However, when something in our life goes wrong (which it will) our inner “successful” control freak doesn’t know what to do. So as we climb down our success ladder a little bit to try and figure it out and get things right again, we try to rationalize what went wrong. And when we can’t find a reason, we pull out the God card.
So…
Success = I’m good without God.
Failure = Now I need you! God help me!
We have totally warped what God is there for in the first place.
A lot of us have a “boss in the sky” mentality of God. He keeps quiet while we are on our “A Game” and then when things start going wrong, we pull him out of our back pocket and start asking for prayers on Facebook. (Yikes, sensitive subject.)
Don’t get me wrong. God is there for you in the hard times, no doubt. But good grief, He wants to hear about and be involved in some of the good stuff too.
Can you imagine being in a relationship with someone that just talked to you about the negative in their life all of the time? Major buzz kill.
So what if you tried to share the good stuff with Him too? Because you know what? I think that not only does He want to hear about the good stuff, He wants to give input too. Ok, now we’re entering the twilight zone! He wants to “give input”!?
Take a breath.
There you go! You are still alive because God has a major purpose for you and He wants you to live out your purpose. So you need to be sure that when you are making decisions, big or small, that you are using your best consultant. And He won’t even charge you an arm and a leg to ask His advice.
