It's Always Time to Love

Today, I have been in a very weird mood.  The beginning of the day was rather low, getting up early and frantically driving to a new job.  Then it went on, very slowly, as I trained for CPR.  Then, as I sat in my car in the rain, I recognized the wonder and beauty of the Lord.  Coming home from a full day of work, I felt exhausted.  I sat on the couch and didn't even want to play tetris!  I was that tired.

Now, as I have come to notice in the years past, summer is a very exhausting time for me.  My job usually requires me to "go, go, go!" and be up and alert in every situation.  Then, once I return home, I either hurry to another job or hurry to go and hang out with friends.  Either way, I exhaust myself.  As soon as I become exhausted, I seem to back away from God.  I'm too tired to invest my heart and mind in His word.  I'm too exhausted to pray and think about the troubles that I don't want to think about.  This usually begins on the first day of camp, and the whole summer goes down from there.

Today, on the first day of training, I already became exhausted when I got home.  I just wanted to eat.  I just wanted to watch television.  I just wanted to sleep.  Yes, I considered getting in the Word.  In fact, I kind of wanted to, but I just was too tired.

Only through Christ did I choose to read my Bible tonight, and the story I read gave me a very interesting and odd realization.

The passage that I read was Matthew 14:1-21.  The first section talks about the death of John the Baptist, and the second section talks about Jesus feeding the five thousand.  Now, both of these stories are pretty familiar to me, and I really did not expect to glean anything different than I already knew--but of course, God had something different in mind.

What came to my attention was this verse:

"Now when Jesus heard [that John the Baptist had died], he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.  But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.  When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and had compassion on them and healed their sick." -Matthew 14:13-14

Jesus went to be by himself in a desolate place, because he was mourning the loss of one of his best friends.  He was sad, and wanted to be alone.  Yet, the crowds came and followed him.  Okay, lets put ourselves in that position.  Your best friend dies, and a bunch of people come up to you and want you to give them advice or help them.  What would you do?  I can tell you what I'd do!  I would get very annoyed and angry, ignore them, and go anywhere that I could to get away from them.  But lets pull out the WWJD!  What would Jesus do?  He had compassion on them and healed them.

This summer, I am going to be tired.  I am going to have things that are distracting me from camp.  I am going to have issues.  But, I have a job to do.  Not only a job at camp, but a job for the Lord.  My job is to put Christ before my feelings, my issues, and my wants.  My job is to have compassion on the kids at camp and those around me that need the love of God.  My job is to stay fervently in the Word, even when I feel so tired.  My job is to be a strong spirit in Christ, even if my body is weak.

Give me strength to do Your will and stick it out this summer.

"I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law."

Today's reading was Psalm 119...all of it.  It's been something that I've been trying to read all day, but it's so long that I hadn't quite had time.  I finally just read it and it was definitely worth it.

Now, many people may say that Psalm 119 is quite redundant.  There are so many repeated phrases, concepts, and words, but in my opinion this repetition is necessary.  It took those 50 million repeated things to get the concept of what God was saying and that wasn't even the first time I have ever read it!

One verse that stuck out to me was, "I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law" (Psalm 119:163).  Of course, we would all say that that is true.  I mean we hate murder right?  We hate when people lie to us?  That's falsehood right?  We love God's word?  We love the encouraging verses?  But is that what this verse is referring to?  Hating when people wrong us and loving encouraging verses?  I think it's more than that.

We, as God's people, are supposed to abhor falsehood, hate evil, be disgusted with sin, whatever you want to call it.  Sin is against God, and we are supposed to hate it.  That means we are supposed to hate sinning, hate when others sin, and hate anything that has to do with sin (this doesn't mean hate people that sin, God loves us sinners and we are called to love each other).  If we hate sin, than why would we choose to do it?  We like to lie; it gets us out of things we don't want to be involved in.  We like to steal; we get things without paying for them.  We like to make fun of others; it makes us feel better about ourselves.  We like to commit adultery; it makes us feel good.  We like these falsehoods, these sins, this evil.

And what about the law?  Do we honestly love the law?  I mean I can flat out say to you right now that the main reason that I have ever tried to follow the God's law is because if I don't I'll get in trouble, because I know that is what I am "supposed" to do, or because people will look down on me if I don't.  Certainly I have not been following God's law because I delight in it.  Certainly I do not give my whole heart to following God's law.  Instead I have found God's law to be boring, restricting, and often times annoying.

Wow.  Now the verse seems to appear a bit different, huh?  Following what Psalm 119 is much more difficult than we thought.  If we loved God's law and abhorred falsehood, it would be so much easier to say no in those tempting situations.  Yes, we would still be tempted, but there would be a strong longing to do what's right, not just choosing to follow a rule that we grudgingly follow.

So how do we go about following this verse?  Even just reading Psalm 119 helps to show you how awesome God's word is.  It's not just the commands that God calls us to because He loves us, but it's also    encouragement, testimonies, and wisdom.  It's God's communication with us.  We should treasure it.  As for learning to abhor evil, we just have to get to know God better and better.  If we're besties with Jesus, we don't want to disappoint him or hurt him.  This takes time, but keeping these things in mind can help us to seek God out even more.

Ah, I love him.  Shout out to Jesus!