I am not just shadowboxing

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Why do adults always ask this question to little kids who are clearly going to change their minds plenty of times throughout their lives? Is it because we want little kids to plan out their entire lives? Or because we want them to build dreams? Why would we want them to have dreams?

I think asking kids this question is an empowering thing. It allows them to think about living a life with purpose. As kids get older, most of their answers to that question become more realistic. I know mine did. I once had dreams of being an astronaut (I despise math and am not good at science). I once had dreams of being a famous ballerina (I did ballet for 7 years and still have terrible balance). And now I am pursuing a business degree.

Here’s the thing though. It’s not what you do. It’s why you do what you do.

I’ll never forget Ron Quigley. When I was growing up, there were some Saturdays my siblings and I spent folding and stuffing church bulletins for Sunday services (Part of the territory that comes with being a pastor’s kid). I loved those Saturdays because my brother and sister and I would take little breaks and run around the church as if we owned it. We’d pretend it was our house and figure out what every room should be. My brother would always take the best spot of course, but we found some other pretty cool places…anyways…Ron Quigley. Part of spending Saturday at the church included running into Ron. He was an older guy. He was the church janitor. There was a part of me that always felt a little bad for him for cleaning up other people’s messes. I knew he technically got paid for his work, but it was gross. I wouldn’t want to clean up the stuff he did. I always thought he was the church janitor because he couldn’t find a better job. That was probably it. He had this caring heart that I could see and I just always wondered why he would clean a church. Surly he could have a better job if he wanted. Maybe he didn’t want…One Saturday I asked him why he cleaned the church and he said “I work for the Lord”. It wasn’t what he was doing. His diligence and servant heart came from God. It was how he did what he did.

Ron cleaned the church because it was his mission field.

In the same way, I am a business student because I believe my mission field is in the business world. I enjoy the management systems, human theories, and marketing techniques I get to study. I enjoy learning about ethics (and I hate it because of all the unethical stuff I have to hear about). Studying ethics has really shaped me as a person. I’m a business student because I like the “boring stuff” (boring stuff- accounting) that many people don’t enjoy. I’m a business student because I like people. I’m a business student because I live in a world that needs God and I, imperfectly, want to reflect Him in a place that people are challenged to be ethical. I aspire to be honest and to speak kindly and be quick to listen. That’s the person I ask God to help me be.

It bothered me one day when a student discovered that I have these desires to reflect God in my life. He was excited about a couple discussions we had about God and asked me why I wasn’t a ministry major. I asked him why he thought I should be a ministry major. He said that I thought on a deeper level than some people. I didn’t like that, at all. I didn’t like that because that is not how God created us to be. He made us ALL to be in relationship with Him. He made us to seek Him. We all should be aspiring to walk closer with the Lord. No matter where we are serving.

Mumford and Sons wrote a song, “Awake my Soul”. My favorite line from the song says “The way we invest our love, we invest our life”. That’s a profound statement.

I don’t want to go through life shadowboxing. Shadowboxing is a preparation sport where the person throws punches at no one in particular to exercise the muscles. Shadowboxing is meant for training, not an end result.

I don’t want to spend my life wasting, waiting, fearing. I want to live right here, right now. I want to run with purpose in every step.

Having a relationship with God means surrendering myself to Him and asking Him to establish me and make my life purposeful, even in the little things.

Living a purposeful life does include setting goals and working through difficult things. One thing I really love is running. When I run, I have to run with goals or else I won’t become a better runner. Recently I have been experimenting with different speed cycles. I started a routine of walking/running/jogging to try to improve my distances and just experience exercising in a different way. I’ll do two minutes walking, three jogging, two running, thirty seconds walking, five jogging, four running, thirty seconds walking, five jogging, ten running…Over the course of the workout this improves my running time. Some mornings five minutes jogging hurts, but I keep at it until I reach my goal. My purpose is to improve my distance and stretch my body to endure more. When I run without setting goals, I run shorter distances. I give up sooner. I get more discouraged. When I meet goals, I feel like I have achieved something great. Looking back, my goal could have sounded ridiculous “Make it to that stop sign at the top of the hill, Anna…Yeah Anna! You beat that hill! You hit that ground running! You rock” Sometimes I do that and then I just laugh and then I picture God laughing at me for encouraging myself to run .4 miles further than the spot I wanted to give up at.

Set goals. Strive to reach them. Keep looking up when you miss the goal. Live with purpose.

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Relating with God: Making the intangible tangible

Something that I'm passionate about is marketing. Through my marketing classes at school, I've been the most interested in the concept of target marketing. Basically, if a company has a good or service they are producing, they need to figure out the need for the good or service. A target market is a specific group of people that a company views as its potential customers. The goal is for the company to represent quality and status of itself to this potential customer to catch his attention, leading to the sale of a good or service. Everything a company does should be analyzed to see if it fits the target market of its potential customer.

For any market to be reached, a company needs to figure out how to make tangible products and intangible services more tangible for the customer. The more tangible a product or service is to the customer, the more a customer is likely to make a purchase.

One example: a customer walks in to IKEA to see what kinds of organizational products exist. IKEA is designed to reach customers who care about three things: efficient organization, low prices, and the environment. In order to reach these people who value these things, IKEA has designed its entire store to show its products. There are displays throughout the entire store that invite the customer to see what products would look like in his home. Some of the displays are set up as tiny studio apartments, designed to show all IKEA products that improve space quality in the home. IKEA has a restaurant at the top floor. Every single item used in the restaurant is a product sold in the store: every item from the light fixtures, to the chairs, to the plates the food is served on. IKEA makes its products tangible by giving customers the chance to see how products work and could potentially benefit the customer.

One example of a service is the insurance office I work for. I meet with customers and talk to them about the quality of State Farm insurance. My coworkers and I sell policies that protect customers in future events. The challenge we have is helping customers assess their needs with the resources they have. We don't want to sell customers more insurance coverage then they need, but we need to make sure they are fully covered in the event of a claim. When we get done writing a policy, we hand customers a piece of paper that explains their coverages and outlines their premium plans. Something we encounter everyday is how do we show customers that we represent quality service and that we are trustworthy when we are talking about protecting them in future events? That's a huge part of my role in my office is thinking about the customers we serve and how to give customers quality in the present. Besides being efficient with payments and friendly on the phone, I find ways to represent quality with our marketing materials. Part of our budget allows for us to purchase products that we can give away to people who walk into our office. When clients come in with their kids, sometimes I'll give a kid a State Farm teddy bear. We give out calendars with my agent's name on them to our clients. Sometimes I'll order a bunch of potted plants and take them to customers who are in the hospital after a horrible accident or to their houses after a family member has passed away. Giving out free items to customers doesn't "make" a business, but it is a kind gesture that shows you care. It shows the quality of your care from a personal and a business standpoint.

Why am I so intrigued by this concept of tangibility? I think some of us are really, really good at seeing intangible things and figuring out what to do with them. Like numbers people. Like my dad, he is so good at sitting down with a whole bunch of expenses and numbers and creating budgets and plans for a business. I am the opposite. If I sit down and look at an accounting assignment, all I see is a bunch of numbers. They mean nothing to me. It's always been that way for me. I liked math in elementary school because my teachers would take physical things to describe math problems. My third grade teacher taught us math with using candy. We would act out the problems using the pieces. It made it tangible for me to understand the purpose of the assignment.

I think because I like tangible things, I have struggled often with the presence of God. Last year I really struggled with this concept. It was a day when I was down about something and I was praying to God. When I was in prayer, I asked Him why I couldn't just be hugged by Him. I know thats kind of a weird thing to ask. Whenever I pictured God, I always pictured this huge guy just sitting on this golden throne, unapproachable. In my mind, I knew God was loving but I didn't feel that closeness. I knew I couldn't just run up and hug God and for some reason that was really hard for me. As I was wrestling with this, I really started asking God for faith.

As I was asking for this faith, I was trying to listen to people who I knew believe in God. I remember sitting in chapel almost every tuesday and thursday of my sophomore year hearing people's testimonies. In almost every testimony, I heard the speaker say something along the lines of "God transformed me and I realized it wasn't about religion but it is about a relationship with Him. He started changing so much in my life for good and now I am living every day for Him. Let's pray". That's how just about all of the sermons would conclude and I was always left unsatisfied. I wanted to know more. What did this relationship with God look like on a day-to-day basis? What about the bad days? How does a redeemed person trust and relate with this perfect God every single day, even when sinful and bad things still come up? I started getting really bitter last year because I wondered why, even though I've always had so much faith and reverence for God, why I didn't feel physically close to Him.

As I've written about in my blog before, God really used this past summer in Colorado in my life. He gave me this gift of tangibility. I loved driving twenty minutes in the mountains on my way to work because I could see the creative and magnificent God reflected in the natural world around me. I loved hiking with my friend Tana on the weekends because we could just get so lost in this world. It really hit me the day I was hiking the fourteener (mountains in colorado that are taller than 14000 feet) Quandary. It hit me that I WAS relating with God. All of the time I was asking God questions in the car on the way to work and expressing my frustrations and my lack of understanding, all of the time I spend hiking and thinking about all of the things I was seeing, and all of the people God used in my life this summer who gave me hugs and talked to me about God's love for me when I didn't even believe He could love someone like me. God WAS relating to me. God WAS tangibly reaching down to me. He WAS listening to me and giving me this faith and deep desire to know Him. Through the things He made: I saw His beauty in the mountains, I saw His character in my good friend Tana and in the members of the family I lived with this summer.

It also hit me one day when I was on my lunch break. I was eating lunch in one of my favorite places: a mountainy park with all this beautiful red rock. There was this spot that I liked to hike to that had this perfect rock to sit on and dangle me feet over. I was talking on the phone to my best friend Joy who lives in Chicago, way too far away! I've known Joy since I was four years old. We've seen each other grow and transform in so many incredible ways through the years. This summer was really hard being so far away from her when we both had a lot going on. There were many times when we were talking that I just wanted to give her a hug and I couldn't, but I knew she was there. And my gratitude for my friendship with her just grew immensely this summer. God was giving me this friendship that I had known since just about when I can start remembering. God shows his character through Joy Dean because He is consistent and her friendship has been consistent in my life.

So I've had this realization that God has created people and things to represent Himself. We are called to love one another and treasure one another because we represent God's love to each other. Of course we have to be careful about depending on these things. If I get disappointed in people, I have to be careful not to get disappointed in God too, and man I struggle with that because I am so focused on tangible life.

But that's kind of when the concept of relationship with people makes sense to me. That's how it makes sense to me that God blesses me with roommates and friendships and perhaps a certain guy ;) ...Relationships are blessings that God gives us to bring us all to Him. We have to ask for the faith to see Him even in disappointment and to see Him through His creation. We have to choose to worship the Creator for these blessings, not His created things.

When we ask for that faith and spend time with the people we are thankful for and ask Him to show Himself to the people we encounter, we are relating with Him. God wants our hearts. He created our hearts and wants us to express the things we love to Him.

In the past year, I have developed this deep desire to have stronger faith even when I can't point to things and say that's why I want to believe more. I just do. And the only explanation I have to explain that desire is that I was created for it.

I'll leave with this last thought that comes from a story in Matthew. It's a story of darkness and a father with a heavy heart for his son. A father who loved his son in the midst of such a desperate and heavy situation and a father whose faith still led him to ask his hearts deepest desire. It's a story about a God who uses his people to heal and give, but about a people who have little faith and a lot of doubt. It's a story about a God who takes compassion and gave this man faith and healing in the situation, even though there was sin and unbelief present. It's a story that shows us how to ask for healing, but even more how to embrace faith and trust the Lord in every single thing we do in faith:

When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him.  “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”

“You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.

Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Matthew 17:14-21

"You can have all this world, just give me Jesus"

I'm the character in a movie. I'm walking down the city street. My surroundings are blurred and I'm just walking. I've experienced something that I can't shake. I'm changed while all this normal goes on around me.

I've heard stories from friends before who didn't like going home because of family issues there. I've never known what it was like to have an incredibly heavy issue when I went home until recently.

I've felt this heavy disappointment and darkness. When I feel this heaviness, sometimes God seems far away, but what I have had to come to realize by the end of this week is that when we are disappointed in the world, we are really disappointed with sin, not God.

To understand the hope I have in Jesus I have to first look into what sin really is.

Sin is seeing our current situations and making some sort of justification for our behavior. Take the story of Adam and Eve. They justified their sin of eating of the forbidden fruit based on the fact that they were tricked by the devil. When we sin, we justify our actions. We can believe anything to be okay. A friend could betray another friend, telling a secret promised to be kept in confidence. A man could beat up another man because he was wronged in a financial situation. A husband or wife could cheat on his or her spouse because he or she feels there was a lack of affection from the spouse. A lonely man could drink himself sick because he feels he cannot cope in the situations life has brought him. But when we justify ourselves there is no end to what we'll do.

Take the story of Cain and Able. One brother was jealous of the other. He made a justification for his behavior that was so strong it lead to him murdering his brother.

And the thing is once we justify the "little things" like telling white lies or cheating on taxes or eating the forbidden fruit, we can justify just about anything  like betraying our most loved ones or murdering someone.

That is indeed why Christ's sacrifice was so incredibly immaculate. We, humans, justified to the point of murder, so He saved us by taking all of our darkest sin upon himself to justify and purify us.

And that is where the hope is found. We can't do it on our own at all. All we do to fix our problems is to justify and justify our ways. But his love and Holy Spirit inside of us are strong enough to lead us to complete surrender and love for Him.

The hard thing is that we all have choices. I'm feeling the heaviness of a situation I have no control or choice over, but I know He is good. I don't understand why some choices have been made. I wish they weren't. I wish it didn't affect me the way it does. I wish I didn't feel as displaced as I do in going home, but that's when God reminds me of another truth: He is my home. He is my hope, my desire, my faith, my rock and cornerstone.

In my weakness and inability to do anything in this situation reminds me of His strength. I have to depend on Him and fully rely on His wisdom in every way I respond to a situation I have no control over.

And again, the heaviness I feel is the sin of the world. The inconsistencies I see are people who choose ways that are not His. God consistently loves us and consistently hates our sin. And praise Him! Because He is consistent. Praise Him because He is always, always good.

And He is good weather He heals or not.

"Even if the healing doesn't come and life falls apart and dreams are still undone, you are God. You are good forever faithful one. Even if the healing, even if the healing doesn't come" -Kutless

"The Lord is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in Him" Nahum 1:7

Are we doing or being?

I was challenged tonight to think about who I am becoming and where I have been. And I just keep thinking about how I have trouble slowing down. I'm always doing something and that's where I often find my identity. 

I see that in relationships sometimes. Especially this one I'm processing. If I said the right thing or was supportive enough then I was a good girlfriend. It hit me though one day that as i was focused on doing doing doing he appreciated me for things I did but didnt exactly appreciate me for who I was... 

How often do I do that to God? How often am I praising him for who he is rather than what he has done? And how often have I had the mindset that I have to earn his grace by being some kind of perfect... Being God's is not about earning a place in his kingdom or making it look like I'm some kind of good Christian. It's all about grace and humbling myself to see this is not about me. It's about him and who he is.

May we remember that today as we have things to get done. May we remember to seek him in what we do so we may learn to love him for who he is not just what he does.

Dream

Love Me- JJ Heller

He cries in the corner where nobody sees

He's the kid with the story no one would believe

He prays every night, “Dear God won't you please 

Could you send someone here who will love me?”

Who will love me for me

Not for what I have done or what I will become

Who will love me for me

'Cause nobody has shown me what love

What love really means

Her office is shrinking a little each day

She's the woman whose husband has run away

She'll go to the gym after working today

Maybe if she was thinner 

Then he would've stayed

And she says…

Who will love me for me? 

Not for what I have done or what I will become

Who will love me for me?

'Cause nobody has shown me what love, what love really means

He's waiting to die as he sits all alone

He's a man in a cell who regrets what he's done

He utters a cry from the depths of his soul

“Oh Lord, forgive me, I want to go home”

Then he heard a voice somewhere deep inside

And it said 

“I know you've murdered and I know you've lied

I have watched you suffer all of your life 

And now that you'll listen, I'll tell you that I...”

I will love you for you

Not for what you have done or what you will become

I will love you for you

I will give you the love 

The love that you never knew

Midday prayer

I did not write this.
One of my favorite midday prayers:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

You failed me

There’s that cliché phrase I’ve seen on quite a few facebook statuses saying something along the lines of I’m not a perfect person or I’m hard to love.

Hard to Love- Lee Brice

Listening to that song I think of things I do that make me hard to love. I think about people I love and what makes them difficult to love at times.

So what do we do with disappointment or failure?

That’s something I struggle with. I see in almost everyone I know, including myself, the tendency to get angry with people when they’re disappointed.

The book of James defines righteousness is to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. (James 1)

Okay, easy enough. Listen. Shut up. Calm down. Then what?

I think that’s the moment we have to take time to look at who God is. In the moments when we recognize weaknesses (ours or others) are the moments when we can choose to recognize God’s strength.

Jesus lived in order to give grace. He challenged people a lot. He challenged His disciples to walk authentically with Him. They said they loved Him and would always be by his side, but they disappointed Him. They fell asleep when Jesus asked them to keep watch. Judas denied Jesus. He sold Him out. Peter denied Jesus. But Jesus didn’t quit His mission. Jesus took nails to his wrists and bled to the most brutal of all deaths. And then He returned. He revealed Himself to His people and disciples He loved. He extended His grace. Jesus gave grace so we could give grace to each other.

Who am I to withhold grace? Think about that situation when someone asks for forgiveness and you just feel frustration welling up inside you. You just want to say why it upsets you more. And then I think what am I trying to accomplish? What am I expecting out of people? Perfection? Who am I to demand perfection?

I love and sometimes that love gets rejected, but I see God taking that love someone else rejected and accepting it Himself. And He’s holding it as treasure.           

The treasures He gives are hope for brokenness, peace and forgiveness, blessings and honor. The victory is the life God blesses His imperfect people with. The victory is the way we can look at the life of Jesus to see the opposite of the world. The victory is seeing treasure when we experience failure.That’s the sweet victory through identity in Jesus.