Out Of The Mouths Of Babes...Or Teen-agers

Let me just take a few sentences here to say how much I absolutely love my high schoolers, all of them, not just the seven many of us have been praying for over the past three years. These are an amazing group of kids who really do love God and really do work on building a growing and thriving relationship with Him. My homeroom class has 11 students in it. Four days a week I have the privilege of having devotions with them. On Fridays, they each share something they learned from God that week and they all have something to share. A lot of the times it is something they have learned in chapel that week or in their respective churches, but many times I hear, "while I was reading in my Bible..." or "during my devotions, God showed me..." How sweet to hear these kids are choosing to spend time with God, on their own, outside of school. I love to hear what they have to say, and occasionally, God uses one of them to challenge or help me as was the case recently.
     One of the boys had been reading about prayer. He has a dog that he loves very much. Several months ago it was diagnosed with cancer and not given long to live. He said he and his family have been praying for the animal ever since. Recently, they took her in to the vet who told the family he was shocked the animal was still alive. Animals with her type of cancer do not live long and he couldn't believe she had lived three months longer than he had originally given the family. Of course the boy attributed that to their family prayers. He told his classmates that they needed to believe God's promises for answered prayers because God had answered his family's request. Okay, so you may be thinking what I was thinking then, this is an animal, when it dies, it goes into the ground and that's it, but the boy was right about God's promises.
     There is something I have been praying about for a few weeks, something, that in the grand scheme of eternity, really doesn't matter, it's just a desire of my heart. I've been reading in James, always a dangerous thing to do, about prayer requests and why they often go unanswered. I've read these verses I don't know how many times in my life, but God shed some new light on a few of them in particular. One, often we don't have things because we don't ask. Often, I want to ask God for something and then think, nah, it's selfish, God won't answer that, but my student asked God for the life of his pet and God answered. The verse following says that often when we do actually ask, we don't get what we ask for because we only want it for our own selfish pleasure. God has really been working on me about why I pray for what I do and to make sure the things I am asking for and the things I am doing will glorify Him somehow or at least open up an opportunity for Him to be glorified. God sparing the life of that dog may seen frivolous to me, but it was an answered  request that has definitely brought glory to God. This boy has testified to his classmates of God's ability to answer prayer a few different times. Sparing that dog's life has helped this young man to experience God's graciousness in his life and he has shared a few times how he knows God has done this...this is why God answered his prayer, it wasn't just for his own selfish pleasure, but a chance to bring glory to God.
     This teen's testimony has really reinforced what God has been trying to teach me in James. Ask, the answer is definitely no if I don't. It's okay to ask for our desires even if, in the grand scheme of eternity, it makes no difference. If it truly is important to us, it is important to God and He can use those situations to bring glory to Himself...just ask my 15 year old student who is at home holding his dog tonight.

A Reason To Trust

Tonight as I was praying about Tebow's visit, I told God that I couldn't even begin to imagine all the things that He needed to do in order to make this happen. Think about that for a minute, all the things that have to go just right just for Tebow to even found out we've been praying for this, much less all the scheduling that will have to be done for the visit...that's a lot folks. I couldn't help reminding God that these kids were now seniors...in January...of the year of their graduation...we're running out of time here, God!!! And then He pointed out through Creation's story just what a master planner He is and how quickly He can get things done. I teach chemistry and right now we are struggling through how molecules bond, a rather complex event, and God created that in just one day of creation, it's taken my kids two days just to kinda', sorta' get what's going on!!! The laws of physics, the orbits of the planets, the ocean animals, land animals, man...each created in just one day and everything together in just six days. That's a lot of work in a short time. Not only did He do a boat load of work in a short time, His timing and planning of the days of creation was impeccable. Everything was created in a timely and orderly fashion...light first, land before animals, animals before man, He scheduled everything and nothing slipped through the cracks, it all happened just as it needed to.
     Really, when you consider God created the entire complexity of the universe in six days...and He took six days only for our benefit, it could have taken Him only a second really...5 months and scheduling who sees what and when for a visit from Tebow really is nothing. Creation just gives me another reason to trust that God is capable of doing anything, no mater how big, how vast or how much (or little) time He has.

Yeah Us!

Nothing really profound in this blog, just God shedding a new light on something I already knew and realized. Over Christmas break God really began to work on me about making my salvation and my relationship with Him personal...that this is something between me and Him. It is so easy to generalize salvation...Jesus died for us, our sins put Him on the cross, God wants us to have a relationship with Him. All these things are true, but if I only think in those general terms it takes a lot of responsibility of me. I am not solely responsible for Jesus' death, I solely am not in need of salvation, I personally do not have to build a relationship with Him. The truth is I myself and only me is responsible for all those things. God saved me, Jesus died for me, God wants a relationship with me regardless of anyone else. So I find myself in this new year once again taking steps to build up my relationship with God. As I was praying tonight, I thanked God for not giving up on me, especially when we've travelled down this road of spiritual improvement before and failed. As I was doing this, I began to think how I would react if I were God. I would look at me with a raised eyebrow, thinking 'is this for real this time' and 'we'll see how long this time lasts.' But that's not what God is thinking at all. He's thinking "yes, let's do this!"  and "yeah us, let's go" or in the words of my volleyball girls, "we've got this!" God doesn't look back at all the times I've tried and failed and use them as a standard for success, He looks at this new determination as if it were the first time and sees success. This thought gave me a whole new appreciation for David saying God is for us...He is.
     As my prayer continued on into Tebow territory, God reminded me He felt this same way about my prayer commitment over Tebow. He still sees success in this commitment; He's not using past failures as the standard for success this time.
     There's just something about knowing God is for us...that He's in this with me 100% with no memory of past failures...that He is probably in heaven cheering, "Yeah, Us!!"