I'm trying to feel a little overwhelmed by Cynthia Shroyer

A friend shared this say­ing with me a while back. It came to her by way of her ele­men­tary school-aged daugh­ter. It sounded vaguely famil­iar, but right off the bat I couldn’t fig­ure out why.

Here it is:

“I’m Burger King and you’re McDon­alds. Gonna have it my way and you’re gonna like it.”

Yeah. Read that one again. And maybe a third time or fourth.

I laughed at first when I read it. Then it wasn’t so funny. I know I’ve heard that phrase before, but the part that struck me hard­est was I can remem­ber say­ing some­thing sim­i­lar to God.

“I’m in charge of my life. I’m gonna do things my way and You’re gonna like it.”

Oh yeah, you know what I’m talk­ing about. As my kids would say, “I smell what you’re step­pin’ in.”

Stinks, don’t it?

Here’s a verse for you:

“He brought them out of dark­ness and the deep­est gloom and broke away their chains.” (Psalms 107:14)

Now you would think we would have a lit­tle bit more respect for Some­one who did all that, wouldn’t you? And yet day after day, week after week, year after year we tell God where to get off our life’s highway.

“Uh, yeah, that exit right over there is Yours. See it? The one right before I head on over to spend the night on those porn sites.”

You can feel free to replace “porn sites” with what­ever your vice of choice is. It might not be porn. It might be drink­ing too much, abus­ing other sub­stances, your­self, or your fam­ily. It might be lying, cheat­ing, steal­ing. It really doesn’t mat­ter, it’s all wrong. Segue­ing from preach­ing to med­dling I can men­tion all the other things we all do — speed­ing, not actu­ally stop­ping at that stop sign, writ­ing that check a lit­tle before you know money is in the account.

What? Yeah, that stuff is wrong too. It is break­ing the law of man, some­thing Jesus instructed us to keep unless it goes against the laws of God. I don’t know of many man-made laws that go against God’s and the ones most of us break pretty much should be obeyed.

The truth is we just don’t think about this stuff. We get up in the morn­ing after going to bed when we darn well please. We eat what we want; talk how we want; read, watch and think what we want with lit­tle or no input from God. Pretty gutsy to think we’re out here on our own. To think we can do what we want with no repercussions.

And when there are reper­cus­sions for going about life with­out con­sult­ing God, what do we do? We blame God, like He had some­thing to do with our poor deci­sion mak­ing. Also pretty gutsy, or stu­pid, or arrogant.

Think about the kind of dark­ness God brought you out of. How deep was your gloom? How many chains did you have wrapped around your heart and soul, maybe even your body?

Even a brief glance at the answers to those ques­tions should be an impe­tus to change how we act and react in life.

So what keeps us in that per­sis­tent state of disconnect?

Pas­tor Bob Coy put it this way, “We are over­whelmed with emo­tion and stuff instead of being over­whelmed by Jesus.”

That mer­its some thought. I get over­whelmed by my finances, my school work, my job, my fam­ily dif­fi­cul­ties, by the “change oil” light flag­ging me down when I start my car up, find­ing time to fit in all the stuff that my life includes. But do I get over­whelmed by Jesus? Have I ever?

Oh, sure, I get emo­tional when I can feel the bless­ing of God, when some­thing seem­ingly impos­si­ble works out and I know with­out a doubt God’s hand has been mov­ing in my life. I react to wor­ship expe­ri­ences with more than a cur­sory singing of a set of songs in church. Some­times I do get over­come, com­pletely undone by the good­ness of God and all He has done for me.

The the­saurus lists these words for “over­whelmed”: dev­as­tated, over­pow­ered, bro­ken, rav­aged, tri­umphant, sav­ing, defending.

Do you feel any of that when you think of Jesus and what he has done for you? Are you dev­as­tated by your life sit­u­a­tion? Or are you dev­as­tated, ruined by the love of Christ?

Wait a minute. You don’t see how you can be ruined by the love of Christ? When you really take time to think, pon­der, med­i­tate, to take an hon­est look at all the love of Christ has gained you, how can you help but have your heart lay in ruin? Destroyed and not fit for the things that once were good enough? Is your heart not bank­rupt, are you not a pau­per? Do you not find your­self want­ing, drained?

At that point we find our­selves with no choice but to stay at the feet of Jesus in des­per­a­tion, no choice but to fill our bank­rupt souls with His over­whelm­ing, tri­umphant, sav­ing, defend­ing grace.

Rather than tell God “this is my life, butt out,” we should post promi­nently this quote from Henry Ward Beecher.

“We are always in the forge, or on the anvil; by tri­als God is shap­ing us for high things.”

Life isn’t fair. A fair is where you go to ride car­ni­val rides and look at 4-H projects. Life is some­times not fun, not happy. But in the midst of the all the junk, the ham­mer­ing we take on the anvil, the heat we’re sub­jected to in the forge, we can be com­pletely over­taken by God. It just takes a change in the atti­tude of our heart.

“Let us exam­ine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.” (Lamen­ta­tions 3:40)

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Aug 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.