I have a list of projects that I am considering starting or am working on here and there. Some are just busy work that I use to hone my skills or because an idea tickled my fancy. Others are projects that have a wider reach. Of the two, the ones with the wider reach suffer the most from doubt. Would others agree on the usefulness of this site? Would anybody else get this? Am I just wasting my time? Those are just a sample of the questions that can run through my mind, and they keep me from focusing on the project.

Now, I want to make this clear, asking these questions might be helpful, but only in the proper context, which I usually do not use. I’m looking for reasons to stop working in order to feed a fear (that fear is based on pride, which makes the situation even worse). If I were asking these questions to clarify what I am doing and to check my work, then they serve a purpose.

Doubt rears its ugly head when we are trusting in our own abilities rather than in God. I am totally fallible, which means I could be wrong. God cannot be wrong. Who would be better to fully trust?

I have spent a lot of time hiding behind doubt and calling it humility. True humility admits my shortcomings, but recognizes that God steps in to bridge the gap. Doubt is the belief that even God can’t fix the problems. Father, help my unbelief. (paraphrase of Mark 9:24)

And now, a superfluous picture to illustrate a coming point.

If I were to say Psalm 34:8, that would not necessarily mean anything to you. Let me add what it says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good. How happy is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (HCSB). Now the picture will make more sense.

It seems to me that we try to approach the feast found in the Bible with a fancy pants attitude. We are too concerned with which utensil to use that we don’t ever get to the eating part. That is sad, and is even sadder for me because I am commenting on myself. Pick up the fork and dig in. Salad or whatever the other fork is called, soup or dessert spoon, use a ladle and pie server if you want. Sit there and gnaw on it if you want to. The Word of God will not nourish you if you don’t partake of it.

There are days that I have all kinds of things going through my mind, yet they add up to nothing. I either can’t settle on them long enough to do anything with them, or they are random pieces that don’t fit into any coherent pattern. I am far from what I would call thinking, but my mind is most definitely not blank.

To-do lists are the most common subject of these days. I may have things I need to do to get ready for something, or things that I want to do. Generally, I have a list of designs I want to work with on an ongoing basis. It isn’t like I have nothing worthwhile to do. Yet, I can’t get my attention to focus on even one of them to get anything done.

However, I also have random bits of information floating around for much of the day. I have a penchant for trivia, not something organized like sports stats, just random pieces of information that are only useful a few times a month. For example, an estimated 1/3 of the population sits on the toilet while they flush. Who cares? Obviously I do at some level.

To make the situation more complicated, you can add in stress, which I handle as well as a paper cup being filled from a fire hose. All of these things combine to make my focus drift in and out during the day.

If you’re still with me, congratulations. You might be doing better than I am. Hold on because I’m about to switch gears with very little warning.

Several verses in the Bible speak of meditating on God’s word. Through misunderstandings, it is often thought that we need to clear our minds and wait for God to say something. That is not the point, or the method meant here. We are supposed to dwell on God’s word, to ponder on it, think for longer than a few seconds on what it says. I very much mind saying that I have trouble with that. Read a verse, start to think about how it applies to me, then remember that I need to look into something later in the day. Chastise myself for letting my mind wander, then chastise myself for wasting time chastising myself.

I have a theory on this, though I can lay no claim to its originality. I have spent so many years compartmentalizing my life, (work, home, church, etc.) that I have tried packing God into just a few of those compartments. He can’t be contained in the universe, so there’s no way He will fit into poorly built mental compartments. God needs to be a part of my whole life, not just during Bible study, worship service, or Sunday School. That research I need to do later, He should be in that. If I’d be embarrassed to have Him see me do it, I had best not do it. I have heard it said that you should not do something if you would not do it with Jesus in the room. Since He is with us at all times, that should make us take a second look at what we spend our time doing.

My focus should be on God and doing His will. That will then let me have clarity to do what He has planned for me. I may very well never get to some of my wants, but I will most assuredly get the needs taken care of. If I have pleased God, and become that “good and faithful servant,” what more could I ask for?

You’d probably have second thoughts, and I don’t blame you at all. That is a tracing of a picture from a Vacation Bible School several years ago. I don’t look trustworthy at all. I look like a stereotypical hillbilly. Now, what about me looking like this?

I look pretty spiffy, don’t I? This might make you more inclined to consider me. However, despite the fact that I am snogly gear’d, no one is going to see me when the best looking people are chosen. I am fine with that.

My point is, I don’t really look capable of anything out of the ordinary. Oh sure, the tux makes me look somewhat professional, but that isn’t going to make anyone hire me. I seem to have done an about-face from what I just said, but stay with me for a little bit. My intangible features: skills, passion, knowledge, heart, they will be what people consider. These things can be demonstrated, but not actually seen.

How often do we look at someone before we make a decision about them. You see a person in ratty clothes, do you stop there, or do you take the time to know them on a deeper level? All people, even long time Christians, tend to have a pause when they first see someone they don’t know. The length of the pause can vary from person to person, but it is there. We keep looking at the outside and using that for our valuation of others.

We need to look at people’s hearts, and proceed from there. This doesn’t mean that we can avoid the jerks, we need to show the love of God, the love that He gives us freely, to all people we meet.

We do the same when it comes to God. We get a taste of His goodness, but then reject it because of the inconvenience we will suffer. We know that God will expect us to do His will, and we don’t want that “burden.”

Therefore, we will talk about how good He is only to disavow Him in our daily lives. I am not immune to this problem, I am guilty of doing this more times than I want to admit. When we do that, what does it say about our beliefs?

In the days following that discussion, I started wondering about how that attitude is applied in other aspects of life. It is obvious in brands. In rural areas, you often hear of people using one brand of tractor because their family has always used that brand. But, it is not always as benign as choosing one type of equipment over another.

There are people that use violence, anger, belittling, and a host of other wrong things because that is what they know from their history. Parents, classmates, friends, co-workers, they all have some influence on our personality. They aren’t going to make us mean or nice, but our reactions to them will. Here is where I wandered a little off from the original discussion.

If you are around someone who is a jerk seemingly all the time, you become faced with a decision: will you reciprocate, or will you pay them back with kindness? We often go with the first option, but it is wrong. Jesus had that same choice, yet He was kind when threatened. The people who accused Him of all sorts of wrongdoing were still covered by one of His last requests. Jesus asked God to forgive them (that covers a broad multitude of people) because they didn’t know what they were doing. Those people who act like jerks may fall into that category. They might be waiting for you to show them a better way. How are you going to do that if you act like a bigger jerk to them?

There are two quotes that come to mind here. One is, if a dove hangs with crows, its feathers remain white while its heart grows black. You do have to watch how you react to others. The other quote is, remember, a kite rises against the wind, not with it. You can rise above adversity, and show people that they can do better, too.

Now, don’t feel discouraged if you are nice to mean people, and they don’t change. You are not responsible for changing them, you can’t do it anyway. God will take care of that end. You are to be nice and love them. There will be times that niceness has to be replaced with firmness, but the love must still be there.

What kind of welding helmet, tractor, car, shells and cheese, or anything like that you use does not really matter. God isn’t going to turn you away because you used a red tractor and not a green one. He wants to see you love one another. Are you going to do that? A word of warning that applies to me, as well, running from the problem won’t fix it. That, and two jerks don’t make for good relationships.

I have nothing against dreams, but goals are easier to do something about. Though most people freely interchange those two terms, I have decided that they are decidedly different. I didn’t come up with that thought on my own, but I do like the questions it raises.

A dream happens when you sleep, or are not fully awake. Goals require work and mental coherence. In other words, a dream will always be a dream unless you wake up and do something about it.

For example, dreaming about the perfect job doesn’t really help. Even if you were to wake up to that job offer, they still expect you to work at it. OK, enough silly stuff for now.

There is an old saying that says, “if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans.” I think mine rated more a head shake than a chuckle, but I get the meaning. We are so quick to tell God what we intend to do, and so slow to see what He has in mind. Oh, we ask for His approval of our ideas, but to actually stop and ask before we plan; that’s crazy talk.

Proverbs 19:21 and Proverbs 16:9 say that men have a lot of plans, but only God’s will stand and people plan in their hearts but God directs their steps. We aren’t going to outmaneuver God, so why do we keep trying to? Pride. We still think we know better than the Creator of the universe.

This doesn’t mean that we should wait until God outlines every single step we need to take. It doesn’t mean that He is going to hand us a road map to the end goal. He might just point us in a direction and tell us to walk. What it means is that we need to listen to Him so that we know when He speaks.

Is it wrong to dream? I don’t think so. What is wrong is when we think that God will hand us everything we want on a silver platter. I’m still not rich, I’m still not famous. Should I be angry at God for not taking care of that for me? Not at all. He didn’t promise that to me. Which is good; I’m sure I would have found a way to mess both of those things up if He had given them to me.

There will be rich and poor people, famous and unknowns, big and small, tall and short, and you get the idea. Another old saying is that it takes all kinds of people. It does. Short people may not play basketball much, but they have a lot less head injuries walking through doors. Don’t get caught up in chasing dreams that are just dreams. Set your goals on following God’s will. It won’t always be easy, but the retirement plan can’t be beat.

Here is how I picture it (you can use different imagery if you want). Someone walks into God’s office and tells Him about what they owe. They ask Him to forgive the debt, which He gladly does. Now, this person, instead of being thankful, begins telling about the repayment plan. “OK, thanks for that God. Here is what I had in mind. I’ll give You an hour each week in church, and I’ll try to work up to giving You two or three hours as time goes by. I’d rather not get too crazy right off the bat. Also, I’ll add 10 or 15 minutes each day. I should be able to carve that amount out easily enough. So, with that, I’ll be giving back… let’s see, add those two, multiply here, carry the four… 113 hours a year in the beginning, and working up to 247 hours. I think we can round that up to 250 with special services at Easter and Christmas. How does that sound to You, God?”

I’m not sure what look would be on God’s face at that point. If it were me, I’d have my head in my hands and be making sighing noises. God is a lot more patient than I am, though.

What makes this worse, if that’s possible, is that we would admit the absurdity of it if someone were to ask us about paying God back. We know it can’t be done. Yet, we think a few hours a week in church and a quick prayer in the morning is all that it takes to be in step with His will. Jesus ransomed each one of us. He gave His all, why do we think He is only worth 2.85% of our time?

I realize that four hours of formal prayer a day is not going to happen for most people. I know that distance and work can get in the way of being at every single service your church has. But, these “formal” times with God are just parts of being in communion with Him on a daily basis. I’d like to have everything figured out on this, but this whole post was as much for my benefit as anyone else who might read it.

If we were able to pay our sin debt off, Jesus would not have had to lay down His life. Does that mean we don’t have to spend time in prayer or with other believers? Nope, it means that we shouldn’t view these as ways to pay back a loan from God.

Let me share a practical, though somewhat disgusting example. I had a sinus infection last winter that was kind of strange. It was worse at night, and got better after I got up and got moving. That may not mean much to you, but it allowed me to function better during the day when I had work to do. I was still sick, but wasn’t laid up in bed the entire time. That was something to be thankful for.

I won’t pretend that every bad situation is going to have an easy to spot good thing, but it will be there. We may not see it until years later, but we can trust God to bring good from bad.

One big example I like to use is technology. Computers became popular when I was in second grade. However, only the school had them at first. We got a family computer eventually, but we remained analog for a while. I still am analog in some areas. Give me a hard copy of a book over an e-book. I like to feel the book in my hands, and no technology can replace that.

Growing up, I was mainly around people older than I was. At church, we only had a handful of kids. At our store, it was usually adults that came in. I went to school with kids my age, but rarely spent a great deal of time with them outside of school.

Today, the church I attend sings both contemporary songs and hymns. I like contemporary songs, but I still prefer the hymns. I grew up listening to them, and they still have a place in my singing.

With this somewhat odd way of growing up, I gained a perspective that not everybody gets. I can better understand differences in how two “worlds” view things.

Before Christ, we grow up in the world, the selfish, greedy society that has developed as people rebel against God. Accepting Christ puts us into a light. Having been there, we can relate to people who have not accepted His grace. We will still have to travel to them to share the gospel. We are called to be in the world, there isn’t any other place we can go yet, but not of the world. Those selfish desires should not hold sway on us. We know what the world without Christ is like, let’s share what the world with Christ is like.