Colossians

4 Steps to a Wise Mind and a Spirit Attuned to God’s Will

September 1, 2013 By Michelle

“…we haven’t stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works.” (Colossians 1:9-14)

I’ve been thinking about this verse for a few months now, ever since I read it in The Message last spring.

Right next to that verse, I wrote in the margin: This is a good prayer! You need to pray this for yourself!

I knew the instant I read it that I wanted exactly that: a wise mind and a spirit attuned to God’s will. The problem was, how to get there?

After thinking about it long and hard, I came up with four steps I think are key in learning to discern God’s will. Granted, this isn’t magic. You won’t be blessed with instant clarity and conviction. But I do think these steps offer some guidance or a framework as we navigate the often-murky, always circuitous path of faith.

1. Pray It – Just as Paul and Timothy prayed this desire for the Colossians, we need to pray it for ourselves. Ask God to give you a wise mind and a spirit attuned to his will. Ask him for clarity, for the ability to recognize his will for your life. And keep asking. His answer doesn’t always come right away.

2. Practice It – Recognizing God’s will is tricky business, if you ask me. It’s not always clear – God doesn’t use sky-writing or billboards to convey his message. And so we need to practice it, daily, hourly, sharpening our ability to hear and see.

Maybe practice means stopping and being still for five or ten minutes a couple of times a day. Busyness and distraction drown out God’s quiet voice.

Or perhaps it means being more diligent about studying God’s word. Paul says, “As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work.” (Colossians 1:9-12) And how do we learn how God works? It’s all right there, laid out in the Bible.

Or maybe it simply means listening to your instincts. I’m a big believer in the Holy Spirit nudge. When I get that tell-tale feeling in my gut, prompting me to act, it’s often God speaking to me. Of course, whether I follow through on the gut-nudge is another story … which brings me to the next step…

3. Brave It – Sometimes we recognize God’s will, but we don’t want to heed it – out of fear, awkwardness, inconvenience or plain laziness. Sometimes our hearts are attuned to God’s will, but our heads chicken out. As Francis Chan said, “The Spirit of the living God is guaranteed to ask you to go somewhere or do something you wouldn’t normally want or choose to do.” The choice is ours. Will we be brave enough to say yes?

4. Repeat It – I wish I could say the previous steps have become second-nature and that I now walk with God in perfect sync. But the truth is, I’ve fallen off the God-will wagon more times than I can count. I’ll be diligent with this practice for a while, and then I’ll forget about it, inevitably left wondering why God’s will seems foggier than ever. The only solution, I’m afraid, is to start at step one and begin the process again.

Pray It. Practice It. Brave It. Repeat It.

It’s not foolproof. It’s work, for sure. But it’s good work. It’s rich work. It’s work that will yield contentment, peace and true joy. The key is to stick with it.

Questions for Reflection:
Do you feel like you’re pretty adept at discerning God’s will? Or are you often caught in the fog, never quite sure if you’re hearing from God? Which of these steps do you think would be most helpful for you?

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Because Sometimes It’s about Oreos … and about Staying in the Race

July 3, 2013 By Michelle

I ran the same trail this morning that I’ve been running a few times a week for the last 12 years. Actually, it wasn’t quite running, per se. I’m more of a jogger than a runner, really.

Real runners are not passed, like I was this morning, by another runner six months pregnant. People, I saw her belly passing me before I saw the rest of her. She was carrying another human being inside her body, and she passed me on the trail, all light and breezy on her Nikes, chirping out a happy “Morning!” while I lumbered and panted in the midst of jogging-induced Lamaze.

Real runners do not burn more calories rearranging their too-short running shorts than they do actually running. I tell you, I’ve eaten sub sandwiches longer than running shorts. Why, why, why do they make running shorts so short? Like we don’t have enough to do just to get through the run itself, without tugging at our shorts the whole way? Can someone please invent Bermuda-length running shorts?

Real runners do not get passed twice by the same woman on the same morning. She’s the size of a cricket, and I swear she lurks behind my backyard hedge every morning, timing her run perfectly so she can pass me twice on the trail.

Yet despite these humiliations, I keep on jogging. I plod. I lumber. I lurch. I pant and heave and tug at my shorts. Why do I even bother, you might ask? Four reasons:

1. I jog so I can eat six Oreos at a sitting with a glass of red wine while I watch House Hunters on HGTV. I know all the magazines say that exercising so you can eat greater quantities of bad food is absolutely the wrong reason to exercise, but I’m telling it like it is around here: I jog so I can eat multiple Oreos.

2. I jog because I battle depression. Even though I take medication every day for it, an endorphin high on top of my daily Cymbalta makes things that much better.

3. I jog because it fuels my creativity. I didn’t realize the connection between exercise and creativity until I heard molecular biologist John Medina speak at a writers’ conference at Laity Lodge last year. I don’t remember all the scientific reasons for how it works, but John instructed us to exercise for 40 minutes or so and then write immediately afterward, even before showering, even before the sweat has dried to salt.

When I heard this I was skeptical. After all, I figured, what does a molecular biologist know about creativity? Turns out, a lot. So now, before I leave the house, I plant a verse or an idea in my head – something I think I might want to write about that day – and then I run four miles, dash back in the door, plunk into my chair (I sit on a towel) and write. John Medina is brilliant. He talks a mile a minute, like he downed six Mountain Dews right before he stepped up to the podium, and your head will spin in circles like the Poltergeist girl when you listen to him, but the guy is a genius.

4. I jog because it reminds me how to be content with second (or third, or fourth or 400^th) place. When I run, I’m not out there to win it. I’m simply out there to put one foot in front of the other, to keep the process moving in the right direction, to keep focused on my own personal goals – not the pregnant lady’s, not the cricket lady’s, just mine.

“Be content with second place,” Paul tells me in Colossians (3:12-14, The Msg. ) “Be content with obscurity.” (Colossians 3:4, The Msg). Running – lumbering, plodding, tugging, lurching – reminds me that it’s not all about being first or famous.

Mostly it’s simply about staying in the race.

So what’s your favorite form of exercise torture? And why do you keep on doing it?

When You’re Yearning for a Place in the In-Crowd

June 28, 2013 By Michelle

It began with a rejection.

A guest post I’d submitted to an online community I admire was rejected. This is standard, I realize, for the writing profession. Not every article, not every book, not every blog post will be accepted. But still. It hurts. Rejection always makes me doubt myself and my abilities. It always makes me feel less-than. And it always fuels the hot flames of comparison.

Turned out, though, the rejection itself wasn’t the real problem. The real issue was that I wanted to belong. I wanted to part of the “in crowd.”

You wouldn’t think there’d be an in-crowd in Christian blogging, would you? But there is. There’s an in-crowd everywhere – in every school, in every office, in every church, in every community. Like every in-crowd, if you’re part of it, you may not even realize it. But if you’re not part of the in-crowd, you know it.

I scrolled through the names and photos listed on the contributors pages of that online community. I read the bios, many of which I’ve read before, more than once. I wanted my picture there. I wanted my bio there. I wanted to belong there. I wanted what everyone listed there seemed to have.

If I belonged there, it would be enough, I thought to myself as I scrolled. I would be fulfilled. Satisfied. Content. Confident. Being a member of that group, that in-crowd, would fix everything.

I know this is baloney. Intellectually I know this isn’t how it works. Even if I were a member of that group, or that community, or that in-crowd, I’d still be clamoring for more. My head knows this. But my heart does not.

“Do your best in the job you received from the Master. Do your very best.” (Colossians 4:17)

Paul wrote that advice to a fellow named Archippus. I don’t know who Archippus was or what his job was, but it sounds to me like he might have been feeling a little down, a little frayed around the edges, a little defeated. It sounds perhaps like Archippus might have been clamoring for a little more; that perhaps he was straining against the job he’d received from the Master, wishing for a different, better job. Paul was reminding a disgruntled Archippus to focus on the job God gave him – not on someone else’s job, not on what everyone else was doing, but on the job given especially to him.

I made myself a picture with the words of that verse. I drove over to Hobby Lobby and bought a spool of red ribbon to match, and Brad fixed a strip of it to the back of the frame. When the glue dried, I hung the picture on a hook right next to my desk. I can see the words as I type.

Every day, every hour that I’m at my desk, I come back to those words, repeating them like a prayer. Those words refocus my heart and my mind on my role, the one God has especially designed for me.

I think, if we’re honest, that we all yearn to be part of the in-crowd at one time or another. Maybe you’re lucky and you haven’t felt that desire since the eighth grade. Maybe, like me, you’re feeling it right now. Maybe you’re looking at those moms in the super-cute platform sandals and the perfectly flat-ironed hair, or those colleagues who seem to be climbing the ladder and in-like-flynn with the boss, and you’re thinking, I want that. I want to be there. I want to be one of those people.

Please, though, do yourself a favor. Give yourself this gift. Remind yourself that God has a job especially designed just for you and that your mission is to do that job to the very best of your ability. Every day. No matter what anyone else is doing or accomplishing. No matter what everyone else’s job is.

God has a job with your name on it.

Remind yourself of that truth again and again, every hour if you need to, until you believe it. Not only in your head, but in your heart.

Colossians

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