If we Really Believed

It’s really easy to believe in God when everything in life goes the way you want it to.

We have this mentality that we can have it all…do it all…be it all…and as long as we feel like we are living up to that, then we don’t really have much need for God. Likewise, us “Christians” are the first ones to doubt God’s goodness and His Character and who is really is when things are working like we think they should. It’s a common misconception that God does what we want, when we want to earn the pleasure of our company.

I’d like to point out that that is a really big lie.

Have you seen Bruce Almighty? You know, the one where Jim Carrey gets the chance to play God for a bit? He first tries putting the whole entire worlds prayer requests on post-it notes. When that very obviously does not work, he sets everything up on a computer data base. He spends what the movie depicts to be a lengthy amount of time answering prayers before realizing that he hasn’t even made a dent in what’s there. The more he answers, the more the requests come in. Finally he just does a bulk Yes to All! and apparently rectifies the whole situation.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to conjure a guess that God doesn’t have our prayers coming through via email. I’d also venture to assume that it doesn’t take him nearly the amount of time that it took Jim Carrey to get through just a handful of those either, but I digress. Answering YES! to all of the prayers all over the world, wouldn’t really fix anything.

According to Tony Robbins, we all have Six Basic Human Needs. Which means that at any given time during the day, someone somewhere is probably praying a prayer really similar to mine. It may not be the same in terms of content, but the context is likely identical. We all want security. We all want variety. We all want to feel significant. We all want to feel love or appreciation. We all want to make a difference. And we all want to be growing in some form or fashion.

Now imagine if EVERY prayer prayed by EVERY person was fulfilled….
This world would be in a bigger mess than it’s already in.

The fact of the matter is simply this:

We don’t NEED all of the things that we pray for.

Do we want them? Yes. Of course we do. That’s our nature.

I would love an Apple watch or a new iMac. Do I need either of those things? Not at all. I would also love to snap my fingers and look like either of the fabulous trainers over on Tone It Up. It just doesn’t work that way. When we get what we want immediately, we haven’t earned it. We don’t appreciate it. We can’t truly reap the benefits of what we’ve just gotten hold of.

Things with God are often the same way. We often don’t fully grasp the greatness what Jesus did for us on the cross. Because if we did, we’d be living completely different lifestyles than most of us live right now. If we actually got it then we’d be more like the people you see on the streets with their JESUS LOVES YOU signs…unable to slow down long enough to do anything but tell the world about our God and who He is.

If we really believed that Jesus was who He said he was…then there would be no shutting us up.

That’s why I decided that for our next book study, we would give Jennie Allen’s book Anything a go. I read this book a few months ago and it has completely changed my life…changed my outlook on things and how I approach what I believe and why. It’s what led my husband and I to pray the same prayer which took us stepping out in a big way with our adoption journey and placing that whole thing in His hands.

My heart here on this blog is to see more women fall in love with Jesus. More women surrender wholeheartedly to the plan that He has for them. We will be exploring through this book fulfillment in Christ and where our worth really lies. There is a study in the back of this book that you can do as you follow along and I’ll be posting weekly like I did with our Fervent study. I’m aiming to kick this off on March 28 (I had initially said the 21 but that will give you guys an extra week to snag the book). I can’t wait to dive in with all of you!