Praying with my eyes open

I sometimes pray with my eyes open. It is usually when I don't feel like praying. When I think that I need to sort my mind out before bringing it before God.

It seemed a natural thing to do. God didn't want to hear my thoughts as a tangle of mess. Writing it down now, I realize how wrong I was. God is the one who helps me untangle my thoughts. Without him, I would be in a total mess.

Going further, isn't that my excuse when I read the verse "pray continuously" 1 thes. 5:17? I think, "God just heard what's happening in my life, I don't want to overload him with information!" Again, I am very far from the truth.

God loves it when we keep him in our lives always. When we keep him out, we aren't doing anything good for ourselves. As always, God knows better. With him in perspective, worldly things are given a shove from God down the ladder of importance. They aren't erased all together, but they become less stressful. This usually means we can get on and do whatever we thought was "way too hard", because now we understand, God is there for us even if we fail.

So, now I think I should actually pray with my eyes open. Because, I should be praying; talking to God; all the time.

Letting the real you out

I had to write a memoir for the first time. A whole page, anything I wanted, something I would look back on and think, "That was so me back then...". I wrote random thoughts that were in my head. Looking back, it was totally me.

We work so hard to be someone we aren't, and sometimes we cover ourself with so many lies, we don't know who we are really underneath. A little burst of random thought, uncensored by the barrier of lies, onto a piece of paper, something readable, keeps you sane.

Try it now. See what your real self is like.

It is also useful in your core beliefs too. Write down what you feel about God. Sometimes our mind is filled with doubts or worries about what we believe in. They crowd around us, hemming us into a corner, not letting us talk back.

I wrote, God is good! He has forgiven me! He loves me! He cares for me! It pulled me back to the reality of the amazingness of God's love. I feel like shouting for joy! Go God! I don't have to make it sound good, he knows what I mean.

Doing this is a good foothold in the midst of a sinking faith. Remember what God has done for you, and try and get that through your barrier of lies. Hopefully, that might free you from your chains.

Pause for a moment

You probably are rushing while you read this. I am rushing while I am writing this! I have so many things to do, to write, deadlines to meet, events to plan, that I just have to rush! But is that true?

When we rush, what are we rushing for? What are we going to do with the few extra seconds the speed of our actions will acquire? I walk fast to my destination, and end up waiting longer because I was early. I rush through writing a post, and just waste the time watching TV.

When I am rushing, my mind blocks all thoughts that are coming through my head. I just mindlessly complete the task set before me, be it walking faster, or thinking more. This is where it gets sad. The mind virtually turns off to any outside source of information. So when we rush, we won't notice any hidden beauty while we walk, or miss an idea that is trying to get through to our brain.

Is the extra seconds or minutes, really worth turning yourself off from the world? Rushing may get you from A to B faster, but just remember what you're missing out on. God created the world so we could enjoy it. Why would we want to miss out on that?

Letting God speak

Here's a bible verse.

"Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts" Colossians 3:16

Just looking at this bible verse, it reminds of the dream I used to have. To be able to stand up in front of many people, and just give an superb talk off the top of my head. This verse makes it seem a natural thing to be able to praise God, and to talk about him, but so often we labour over writing songs of praise, or explaining a certain part of the bible.

Is this because the audience has become more demanding now? We can't just have a simple conclusion that everyone knows and we just remind them, we have to dig forever deeper into the passage. What about ourselves? Will we let the bible passage dominate our talk? Sometimes I think we are too afraid of what the bible says that we labour over making it less harsh, or nicer sounding. We should unleash God's word for what it is, a life changing spirit.

Like for the verse above. It says that Christ should dwell in us. We might want to change that to, that Christ should be with us. But that changes the whole meaning. Christ should dwell in us, so be inside us, be the king of our lives, his will should be our will. If he is beside us, his will is just another influence, just like the media which is beside us all the time. He doesn't have the last say in our life, we do.

By surrendering my life to God, only then could I stand up and speak off the top of my head. Because I would not try and take away the power of the gospel, or diffuse it with my own words.

Next time I try and speak, I'll let God do the talking, not me. I hope you can to.

Wasting our breath

'Two young fish were swimming along, chatting about life when they bumped into a older fish. He said to them "The water is so nice today, isn't it?". The two young fish were shocked, and replied, "What the hell is water!".'

So many people today either don't know, or don't want to know, what they are swimming in. Living life on the surface. Imagine what those young fish were talking about at first. "The weather is nice", or "I need to get that new fashion item!".

So often we just skim across the surface of anything that we don't want to know. We just don't care! Instead, we put all our effort in figuring out things that are really pointless in the end. Like our faces. We learn to beautify our faces in any way possible, spending large amounts of money, but in the end, it gets washed away, and you become who you were anyway.

Why are wasting our breath, money, our whole life, on things that won't matter anyway? Why don't we start doing something that does have worth, that will make a difference? Just small things like, spending time with God instead of watching some TV, or donating money to charity instead of buying a coffee.

Don't waste your life just swimming on the surface. Go deeper. Use your breath for something useful.

When in doubt, believe

Everyone has doubts. Everyone has that nagging feeling that what they put their trust in might fail. Everyone has their vulnerable moments, where the supposably solid foundations they were standing on becomes sand.

Doubts are always pulling me down. Slowing me in growing closer to God, and playing with my mind. Fighting them off takes a lot of strength as I try and find the right answer. Sometimes my doubts are useful, to make me think twice. Like when I was thinking of buying another guitar. My doubts said "Do I really need one? Will I ever use it?", and in the end stopped me from making a rash decision.

When it is your core beliefs, doubts become a bit more complicated. Because, what you believe deep inside you will affect how you think about everything. So how you do survive when you are struggling in doubt? Believe.

Believe that you are in God's hands, believe that he will take care of you even in this patch of darkness, and believe God's love that smothers any doubts you might have. Remember the times you were joyful, the times you looked at God as your solid rock, and remember that as a rock, the foundation of God will never turn into sand.

Believing even in doubt might be a paradox, but it is a sure way of getting through those doubting phases. Hope for the day that you can look back at those patches and say "How stupid I was to doubt God back then".

Drifting in thoughtlessness

I was sick the past few days. A sickness that is very hard to diagnose, and to cure. The sickness was thoughtlessness. Drifting in the world, slowly making its ideas sink into your mind, letting the world take control. A very dangerous sickness, leading to nothing but nothing, and taking you away from what was meant for you.

It started with just a few incidences of neglect on things that I should have been thinking about. Like a snowball rolling down the hill gathering snow, those incidences quickly grew in number until I was always thinking about nothing of importance, and instead filling my mind with anything and everything of the world.

I got jolted out of my slide of thoughtlessness with this verse. "But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved" Hebrews 10:39. If I just let myself drift along with the river of worldly thoughts, I am heading for the dangerous waterfall. Even if we do nothing, we are still drifting towards the danger. We need to keep fighting the current.

As always though, God seems to know better than us. He knows that we are creatures that can think, to be able to determine right and wrong. He knows that worldly things have no real value anyway. Why would we want to sacrifice our thoughts on something worthless?

Thinking can get tired after some time, but the alternative, just drifting in thoughtlessness is much worse.