Friends
As an avid listener to country music, there is a song called “Find Out Who Your Friends Are”. Some of the lyrics go: “Run your car off the side of the road,Get stuck in a ditch way out in the middle of nowhere, Or get yourself in a bind, lose the shirt off your back, Need a floor? need a couch? need a bus fare? This is where the rubber meets the road, This is where the cream is gonna rise, This is what you really didn’t know, This is where the truth don’t lie”
We have all been there. I am proud to say that I have 378 friends on my facebook. Each person I know and have lived moments of my life around them and with them. During this present time in my life I have experienced the wonderful joy of many of them committing themselves to prayer and words of encourage for me and my family. I am blessed.
We each have our own degree of life struggles and conflicts, but things become especially difficult when people ask us to get involved in theirs.
Over this past week I have had to call on many friends who have known me and been around me and in my home to speak truth to their experiences with me and about me. I was very specific in my request that they only speak truth and only about me. I was awestruck and deeply humbled by many of the afidavits given of what people knew and thought of me. Asking people to get involved is a challenging thing, and was an issue that I wrestled with, and even felt guilt for asking people. It was especially challenging when a few people refused my request. When the first denial came, I quickly found that I was in need of a quick spiritual checkup. The way the response was written, it challenged me as to the nature of my heart in asking for help.
For several hours I had a wrestling match with God. You see, I am a very independent guy by nature and willing to give my time and effort to most anyone, but seldom ask for help. It was difficult for me to send out the requests. And then to be rejected! Why God? Do you want me to lose my children? Then came that heavenly right hook, “Do you trust me?”, “Do you want your will or mine?” of course I replied, “Mine!!!!” Then He gave me an uppercut, “Do you believe in me or your own efforts?” I was down for the count!!
As I pulled myself up, God reminded me of a couple of things, first was that my kids are not mine. You see, as each one of them were babies my wife and I stood before our church and committed them to Him and made an oath to God we would care for them. We promised to love them. This was a something we both have joyfully and fully done all of their lives. So I must trust God. I am weeping as I write that. It is easier said than done. I TRUST GOD! Wether my children live with me or their mother. They are His and He will watch over them when I cant, as He has always done. I trust God. If I lose custody of my children to my wife, I am not out. My daily efforts at work will continue to provide the funds in which they live by. My love and counsel will always be available. And my encouragement and life example will be visible to them, even when I am not in front of them.
Now that is not me giving up, just me leaning more into Him and realizing that what I want is not always what He has in mind (but still hoping it is!). I love the way the Psalmist says it in Psalm 37:3-6 (New International Version) “Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”
Secondly he riminded me that I am limited. Yea, limited. I don’t know all He knows. He has plans and great things in mind for these four kids, even greater than anything I could ever dream of. I have watched each of them as they have had to walk through the consequences of this failed marriage. I have seen how their hearts have broken and their lives have been forever altered as a result. I have begun to see things shapping in my older in particular, that at moments make my heart leap from my chest as I have seen him search deeper into God. I don’t know God’s will, and don’t presume to. I am going to do all I can, to do what I beleive is right, but if my faith has any sense of genuiness to it, then I must believe His will superceeds mine.
One of the verses says “Everybody wants to slap your back, wants to shake your hand when you’re up on top of that mountain. But let one of those rocks give way then you slide back down look up and see who’s around then”. The song goes on “This ain’t where the road comes to an end. This ain’t where the bandwagon stops. This is just one of those times when A lot of folks jump off”
So yea, this is a jumping off point for some of my friends. It has also been a dig in deeper with quite a few others. Thank God for friends. Especially those that challenge you!
Ecclesiastes 4:10 If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!
John 15:12-15 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
