James 4:13-15 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
Well, today is “fess up” day, and it is vent day! What should have been an enjoyable, barbecue, playing “Shang-Hi” (a card game my family loves) weekend was one of utter and total frustration and upset for me.
I decided I wanted to go from wordpress.com to wordpress.org…that was my first ridiculous thought. We all know with ridiculous thoughts come ridiculous actions…that means I TRIED to do it! I am a dinosaur when it comes to computer stuff. There is a learning curve to this thing and that is one “curve” I do not seem to have! If my whole body looked like the learning curve I have for wordpress, I would be “Twiggy” and a very happy woman! Why is it all the curves are in the wrong places??
I didn’t stop with thinking I needed to do this, I went on to “try” to do it. One night I was up until 4 a.m. with a particular company that said I was definitely in the right place and they could help me make this happen! I found out the hard way they don’t have the “curves” for it either! Google became my best friend/enemy that night. We have a love/hate relationship. If it gives me what I want and can use, I love it…if I can’t find what I am looking for then we have “issues”!
This all started to take on my, “I will NOT be defeated!” attitude Sunday. Once I decide on something and set my mind to it, NOTHING will stop me…except ignorance of computers! As I trudged through page after page of one “experts” advice after another (I wrote everything they said down because it was too complicated for me to remember) it seemed the further from my goal I was getting. One “expert’s” advice caused a problem another expert had to fix, and so on! Eventually the experts became frustrated with the problem and readily refunded my money! Now, it is pretty bad when a company gives up and practically begs you to take your money back!
About 2:30 that morning the thought hit me, “Maybe God doesn’t want me to do this.” I looked for the reason, and to be honest, I could not come up with one conceivable reason it SHOULDN’T be done! “No, that couldn’t be it” I decided and plunged into it again! Finally, at 4 a.m., after being up for almost 24 hours and working on this thing for about 12 hours of that 24, I hear the Lord say, “Go to bed and end this. You will have a new perspective on it tomorrow.”
I got a full four hours of sleep after that and up I got to dive in again. I was sharp with hubby (y’all know I tell you everything, almost!) and Gracie had to wait for her morning “love fest”. I was a woman with a mission and I would not give up! Hubby kissed me, which made me feel horrible for my sharpness, and went out to do yard work. The scripture that says, “A soft answer turneth away wrath…” is so on target! It wasn’t five minutes until hubby was standing in the doorway and said, “You know, Baby, if you can’t get it to work and all you are getting is frustrated maybe God is stopping it for some reason.” WOW! I had thought the same thing, but dismissed it! Yeah, I am shaking my head right now, too.
I don’t know why I didn’t snap to this before my entire weekend was consumed with frustration, tears, and the fact it is the hardest thing in the world for me to give up on something that I THINK is a good idea! It is hard beyond words for me to say, “I can’t.” but, sometimes the “I can’ts” let you know YOU are the one pushing it, and you did it all by yourself. You never even thought about asking God what He thought!
“I” is a very telling word! “I” means you have struck out on your own, you are independent of anyone or anything else in what “I” am doing! I had left the grace of God in this thing somewhere along the way and instead of listening to what God’s will was (it looked like a great idea to me) and I saw nothing negative about it, there must be nothing wrong with it! How many times have I done this? Without ever even considering something in prayer, I go ahead with a “great” idea and then cry out to God in disappointment because it failed. How many times have I put the “cart before the horse” and then wonder why I am getting nowhere and nothing but upset?
I can’t blame God for MY actions apart from Him. If I had kept MY thoughts in line with His thoughts, my actions would have been much different and I wouldn’t be frustrated and regretting I wasted precious time during the weekend with my family!! I find it perturbing when people blame God for everything under the sun. THEIR plans don’t work out and, somehow, it is God’s fault (according to them). Something bad happens and it is God’s fault He didn’t stop it (according to them)! It amazes me, so many times WE are the ones responsible for right where we are!
God DOES try to intervene, but we don’t listen. God told you not to marry that man/woman, through good counsel of your family and friends, but you got mad at them and stopped speaking to them for doing it and plunged right in! Is it God’s fault when you end up in a disaster of a marriage full of abuse and heartache? Is it God’s fault when we fail to listen? Or when something out of our control happens in our lives and we blame God. Why is it we never hear anyone taking responsibility for what they have done or blame the devil for the bad things we couldn’t control? It is like the devil ceases to exist to some people and God gets all the blame…how ludicrous!
So much happens because we act on our own accord instead of the wisdom of the Word. So much happens because we fail to pray first and act secondly, as I did! So much happens because we leave things up to “chance”, instead of taking our God given authority in Jesus’ Name to stop something and then we want to point our fingers at the very one we should be raising our hands to in surrender!!
I have learned a lot from this past weekend. Now I have to be sure I don’t let the enemy bombard me with time wasted in regret! When a door shuts, it isn’t a good idea to force it open. When a door shuts, it is a good idea to stop and ask God if I should even put my hand on the knob to turn it to see if it will open! It may mean there is a better door to walk through ahead, and I can’t be in two places at once. If I walk through “good enough” I forfeit the “greater” thing! Sometimes “failing to act” is actually a “successful wait”! We just need to be sure that “wait” is in the presence of the Lord, where He is waiting with exactly what we need at exactly the right time.
Thank you for sticking with my frustrated rant, dear reader! I feel better, and I learned even more as I wrote. I hope it has helped you, too! Blessings in abundance to you! Juliana
simplyjuliana.wordpress.com 