Welcome to the July 20th edition of Faith & Life Lessons.
You will see this email full of tidbits from my week. My goal is simple. I hope that from how I live my life, you can find a thing or two that helps you as you try to live a life that matters. I am always trying to do one thing - make Christ-focused decisions in love, work, and life. And this was my week.
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The Story of My Week.
One of the things that goes on in my head is how I can serve more with all I have been given.
During the week, I was ruminating over what I could be doing with the spiritual insights I have.
So, I thought, perhaps, I should start a weekly teaching series where I teach biblical insights and share them online.
They would follow the structure of a complete sermon.
I loved the idea, and I let it build in my head. Perhaps, evolve it into a podcast of its own so that it is easy to deliver to people.
All a nice idea.
Until I hit a “David, you cannot build the temple” moment.
Yes, I have the insights, but I am not going to be teaching them weekly as sermons.
Because that’s not part of God’s vision for me at this moment.
Perhaps, it may never be part of it.
This reminds me of something written by Bernard of Clairvaux. In it, he emphasizes the need for us to be reservoirs and not canals.
Let me quote it here.
“The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself ... Today there are many in the Church who act like canals, the reservoirs are far too rare ... You too must learn to await this fullness before pouring out your gifts, do not try to be more generous than God.”
I am continuing in my reservoir moments.
Things I Learnt
1-A Long Memory for Life: I have a fairly long memory. I have a recall of a lot of things in my life.
OK…not everything. My wife now and again has to remind me about some things from our past, which I don’t remember.
I guess my brain has its own idea of what it needs to have perfect recall on.
I am probably the reason for that. Years back, I told myself that I would use my brain more as a processor than a data storage center.
My brain took it as a license to only keep certain information.
One of those information is memories from my childhood. This has been helpful to me as a parent.
Recently, I was telling my wife that one of our kids did something to me that I remember clearly doing to my dad.
I still have a play-by-play account of what I did. I was probably no more than 9 years old.
My son did the same thing. After letting him know the folly of his ways, I decided to make it a teachable moment for him. We both did a post-event analysis of what happened.
This is a subtle reminder that the world goes round and there are very few new happenings.
In the words of the preacher, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
2 - Deliver Us From Our Fears: I’m in a season of life where I am seeing a new way of God delivering me from fears.
He does this by giving me a bigger fear - the fear of HIM.
God doesn’t remove the things I am afraid of by eliminating them. Rather, He wants me to make them irrelevant because of my fear of His ability to handle all things that relate to me.
It’s an interesting position to be in.
Not having what I fear for eliminated, but having a greater fear of God making them insignificant.
I’m kind of getting why God punished the people of Israel for being afraid of the people living in Canaan.
They were afraid of the giants instead of letting the fear of God make the fear of giants look insignificant.
A God that shamed all the Egyptian gods with 10 plagues and parted the Red Sea like nothing commands a greater fear.
That fear should have dimmed the fear of the giants to nothingness.
I am embracing the bigger fear.
Postscript
May your fear of God make you strong enough to face all other fears in your life. Amen
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Tola - The Everyday Disciple
I help Christians like you who want to live intentional lives incorporate their faith into everyday life so they can make Christ-focused decisions in all areas of life and truly live to make an impact and make God happy.
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