Beyond Sunday-Crazy Things Smart People Believe: God just wants me to be happy.

…by Michael Switzer

I don’t really subscribe to the idea of God just wants me to be happy. In terms of joy, I’m definitely lacking in a deeply rooted foundational joy. Some part of me believes that through enduring suffering, joy and happiness will come about on their own. I’ve tended recently to over-commit to projects, work, and school expecting to be in a ‘better place’ with my life after overcoming. There doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel and I’m cluttering life with more inconsequential stuff that’s not adding value to my existence. It’s a crazy thing to think that more and more work will bring about joy. Working has taken on an identity of selflessness, as if virtuous to pour all my efforts into. At this point, working has become anything but selfless. It’s caused friction in my friendships, a lost sight of who I am, unhealthy eating and sleeping habits; it’s chipping away my energy and distracting me from centering joy. It’s crazy to think this mess I’ve created will lead to anything deeply rooted.

 

So, in a mirroring way but opposite side of the spectrum of Sunday’s message, I’m not seeking the fleeting feeling of happiness as much as I’m implicitly seeking an overworked lifestyle. ‘As long as I fill my time, everything will be ok,’ similar to ‘if I could only have…’ Both thoughts are toxic and misguided. Unfortunately the harm caused by believing either idea isn’t obvious until we’re so far away from where we thought we’d be with unmanageable credit card debt, broken relationships, and next to no joy.

 

It’s my objective over the next several weeks to be hyper aware of unnecessary things not adding value to my friends and my life. Breakdown what’s good and healthy to do while reducing clutter.

Beyond Sunday: Crazy Things Smart People Believe-It Must’ve Been God’s Will

…by Randy Parish

Have you seen the new Volkswagen commercial that shows different people singing what they actually believe to be the lyrics of the Elton John song, Rocket Man? The premise is, with the new VW audio, they can clearly hear what the lyrics actually are and they have a “lightbulb” moment.  Here is the clip if you missed it.   It’s a trivial example, but that’s the kind of crazy things smart people believe.  We assume we know, right?  We go for years singing the wrong lyrics.  We create our own sense of false reality.

When it comes to faith, we are no different.  We have things we believe and I am sure we have our reasons, but we probably couldn’t be sure where or how they started.  We just believe them to be true.

Our Sunday teaching was on the topic of “It must have been God’s will”.  We hear those words thrown around particularly in times of tragedy.  Can we really use these words to describe what happened on 9/11?  More recently, can we use it with the recent news coming out of Penn State university?  It becomes something that provides a blanket excuse for things that makes no sense to us. 

This broken world gives us the story of competing wills.  There is God’s will and there is our own competing will.  Our plan vs. His plan.  I use the word competing because we want to find out what God’s will is then compare that to what we want, and then make our choice.  That could happen.  What we can’t see is the big picture.  We can’t see the big vision for what God has for our lives.  We see something narrow focused and decide, no thanks, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.  Then it goes bad, and we stumble or fall.  When we are laying there bruised and bloodied by life we ask God, how could you let this happen? 

People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord.  Proverbs 19:3

Our realization has to come when we decide what choice we are going to make.  Are we going to continue and make our own choices or are we going to go all in and trust God to lead us down the path He has prepared for us?  How long are we going to sing the wrong lyrics?