This past weekend my daughter graduated from high school. Friday we rehearsed, Saturday we did pictures and graduated, and Sunday we had the Open House. Sounds simple, right? A nice little three-day operation…
NOPE!
It was a good two weeks in the making as we painted the house, did a bunch of yard work, decorated a barn, bought a bunch of food, and took care of a lot of other details as well. We had some much needed and appreciated help from our parents, and our friends, and without that help, we would not have been able to pull it off. We cannot thank them enough for how they all came to our aid by making food, helping with set-up and tear down, filling bowls, running grills, and so many other things I cannot even begin to remember them all right now. On top of all of that, things were very busy at work for both of us.
In a word, we were stressed. I don’t mean just a little bit, I mean staring at the ceiling at 2am stressed because you are wondering if you have bought the right amount of relish to feed a couple hundred people that you think are going to show up, while you are hearing some of them say they aren’t going to be able to make it, and wondering if you have hedged your bet just right to come out okay between those that can’t come and those that you didn’t expect to come! Throw a national holiday into the mix and that makes it even more unpredictable. See! I’m twitching just thinking about it right now!
I hit a wall last week on Thursday and reached out for help from my friends for some prayer support. They came through for me, and I wrote a little about that here. Friday was a better day, but even though we were in a pretty good spot by Friday afternoon for the open house, I still went into the weekend feeling the after-effects of too much anxiety over all that we had needed to get done.
I began my day today feeling tired, wishing for a day at home. I just wanted one day to be able to catch up on a few things that I had to let slide while we did party prep, but I had to go to work. Not long after I got here I got a notification on my phone from my Bible app (learn more about that here) that a friend had posted an image. I looked it up and found this:
Yes. That was a good thing to see. A promise of God’s peace that I can claim. A simple statement of faith in God’s power to get us through the times that the stress dial is turned ALL THE WAY UP! Keep your mind focused on God, and you will be able to face things around you with His perfect peace, not because the problems will necessarily go away, but because that trust in God just makes them pale in comparison.
I wish I had experienced more of that over the last couple of weeks. I probably would have been nicer to my wife and kids, and I definitely would have been nicer to be around at work. I might have slept better too!
You see, as wonderful as the promise of Isaiah 26:3 is, there is an unwritten opposing promise in that verse as well. Allow me to paraphrase the verse to show what I mean:
“You will allow a stressful turmoil into the one whose mind is not stayed on you, because he does not trust in You.”
That’s kind of the spot I was allowing myself to live a lot of the last couple weeks. My mind was not on God, but was on the stuff that I had to do. It wasn’t necessarily that I did not trust God, but I definitely was not seeking His help in keeping my head right as I dealt with the stuff that had to be done under my power alone. There is a word for that kind of thinking, and I think the Bible likes to use the word “foolish.” Yep. That word works better than any other I can think of.
Relentless Living means disciplining myself to look at my circumstances through the filter of God’s presence in my life. There are days that I lose that perspective, but it is imperative that I don’t let my mind wander from Him, my trust in Him, and His perfect peace.
Relentless Growth 