Little Birdie

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So what about every man being a liar? In the context of the scripture, Paul argues against the fact that if the Jews are God’s chosen people, yet some do not believe in Jesus, it nullifies God. As if our unbelief or unfaithfulness somehow trumps God’s character. How presumptuous for us, the created, to make the claim that what we believe in our limited, mortal view somehow affects what is true about the Creator.

And speaking about lying, God takes that pretty seriously. Just read I John. In 2 Corinthians 6:9-10, slanderers are counted as part of the wicked that will not inherit the kingdom of God. But it goes on to say that those washed in the blood of Jesus, although they were slanderers, are now forgiven–so it all comes back to that promise.

That’s great news for me, because I struggle with lying all the time. It’s so easy for me to lie. That’s dangerous because it encourages a need in me to always present a good “face” to the world. But it goes beyond that because sometimes I just lie to make things more interesting.

I haven’t told one of those lies in a long time, just for the record. But the desire is always there. As I continue to grow in the Lord though, not only can I not get away with lying as often, many times I am simply compelled to either not lie, or come clean immediately, because it literally keeps me up nights. Lots of times I actively combat the need to lie by purposely making a fool out of myself by being blatantly honest, whether it’s to my boss or on my blog for the whole world to see…like right now, for example.

So yay, I’m seeing progress in my life

So in the usual fashion of traveling around my elbow to get to my pinky toe, I take encouragement from “Let God be true and every man a liar.” Because when all men fail, when all men lie, when I myself cannot be trusted, God can. He is faithful to His character, He keeps His promises, He never changes. Amen.

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This verse came to me today as I was pondering the recent events at my husband’s job. [Edit: What started out as a blog about my husband’s job has completely changed direction, so don’t expect some long-winded gripe about what’s happening there. Instead, I present a long-winded explanation of what God has shown me about this verse in the last hour.]

I did a bit of research on this verse–the context comes from Paul explaining to the Romans that Jews and Gentiles have the same claim to heaven, and that just because the Jews were God’s chosen people does not give them a “get out of jail free” card. God is always faithful to keep His promises, and that includes His promise that ANYONE who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ will not perish, but have everlasting life.

The definition of perish in this sense, from the Greek, means to destroy, or:

1. to put out of the way entirely, abolish, put an end to ruin
2. render useless
3. to kill
4. to declare that one must be put to death
5. metaph. to devote or give over to eternal misery in hell
6. to perish, to be lost, ruined, destroyed

Okay, so that’s God’s promise. If I believe in Jesus, none of this stuff will happen to me. If I don’t, it will. It has nothing to do with culture, religion, denomination, what have you.

To me, that word has an eternal context. My eternal soul is safe now. But what about life on earth? What about right now? Well, Jesus guarantees that we will have trouble in this world, but never fear, He has overcome the world. So believing in Jesus has benefits for this life too. And since God is true, and it says He will work out all things for the good of those who love Him and follow His statutes, He will.

This is getting really really long, so I am now concluding part I of my diatribe.

Recently I have noticed that I really get emotionally involved in my loved ones’ lives and situations. Sometimes it’s to the point where I’m the one losing all the sleep, and I’m the one holding on to old hurts even when everyone else has moved on…and sometimes, I’m only peripherally, if at all involved in the situation.

I know this is an integral part of my personality. I care deeply, and I value friendship and love above most other things. When I’m emotionally unhealthy, this spawns a deep need to please other people, often to the detriment of myself. This need clouds my judgment and often I can end up making things worse for everyone.

The bottom line is, when I see someone hurting, I want to fix it, especially if it’s someone I love. And I can’t always do that, so instead I just get all twisted up inside about the situation.

I was talking about this trait last night, and wishing out loud that I could just flip a switch to turn the anxiety off. But my husband reminded me that the same switch is connected to compassion, and once off, it’s really hard to turn it back on. I guess I’d rather keep it all on than turn it all off, but there’s got to be some middle ground in there, where I can keep the compassion but let God handle the anxiety.

Really, I’m not the one holding all things together - God is. It’s my responsibility to make known my requests to God through prayer and petition and trust Him to work it out.

Man, I am such a control freak.