Community Pool

The world often teaches us to repay evil with evil, or an eye for an eye. But God tells us to “pay them back with a blessing…and to not repay evil with evil [or] retaliate with insults when people insult you“ (1Peter 3:9).

I try to teach my boys how to talk to and treat people respectfully in all situations. Do I model it well? Not always. I sometimes fall short of being a good role model. This is when I pray for God’s redemptive power.

Over the summer I took my boys to the community swimming pool at their father’s apartment complex.  After seeing other kids playing with their water guns in the pool, the boys wanted us to go get theirs too. My oldest, Ian, asked to stay behind while my youngest and I head back to the apartment. Though the walk to their Dad’s place wasn’t far, I still asked Ian to get out of the pool until we return. Nearly 11 years old, I felt comfortable with him staying at the gated pool, with other people around.

Google Explains It…But You Need Faith to Believe It.

Some of the most precious moments I have with my boys happen in the car while running errands, driving to an activity, or going on a trip. We laugh, we talk, we sing, we argue and apologize, and we have many thought provoking conversations.

When they were much younger, I felt I had to answer every inquisitive question their young minds came up with–after all, I’m a mom and mom knows everything. As they get older, I still try to answer their thought provoking questions, but I also encourage them to “google” it or talk to God about it and see how God would answer their question.

Recently, my oldest (11) asked, “How can God be all three: Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit? It just doesn’t make sense.”

No, it doesn’t, even for an analytically minded person such as myself.

Days later my youngest (9) asked, “Everything the Bible says is real, right? Why didn’t God mention the dinosaurs in the Bible? Dinosaurs were from millions of years ago and the stories in the Bible aren’t millions of years old.  So, is what the Bible says real or what science says?

Yowzers! Where was a Bible scholar when I needed one?

These legitimate and inquisitive questions came from these young minds. But even I, after being a Christian for many decades, am still dumbfounded by similar questions.  I, too, have questioned God’s existence and His workings because of unanswered questions?

My sons’ questions reminded me of the time when I accepted Jesus as my Savior.  I didn’t fully understand who God was or how to describe the Trinity relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I am glad I didn’t wait until these “roadblocks”–these questions–were clearified before accepting God for who He is and what He can do. I would have missed out on experiencing God’s goodness in my life and being a witness to the powerful workings in the lives of my friends.

“The LORD our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us, so that we may obey all the terms of these instructions” (Deuteronomy 29:29 NLT).

So, I did try my best to answer my boys’ questions. With my oldest son’s, I explained using water as an illustration. Water occurs in 3 forms: liquid, vapor, and ice. It’s still water but in 3 different forms just as God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He still couldn’t make sense of this abstruse concept. Finally, I said –

Even I still don’t understand. I don’t know if I will, and that’s ok. God says not everything is for us to know. We simply have to believe and accept, by faith, that God is who He says He is.  

In Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I Am has sent me to you.”

The only answer I could give my youngest regarding the dinosaurs was –

God’s time is not our time. Our definition of a day consisting of 24 hours is not the same as God’s definition of a day. God doesn’t operate by our idea of time and space. Even I still wonder about the dinosaurs, but I’ll ask Jesus when I see Him in heaven.

We shouldn’t discredit the validity of God and His Word based on unanswered questions, just as we don’t question but trust that oxygen can keep us alive even though we cannot feel, see or taste it. Likewise, we take medicine, trusting in its’ ability to heal though we know not how it’s made or how it works within our bodies.

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I may not be a Bible scholar, but I will continue to choose (with God’s help) to believe by faith even though I have not seen and have no answers to my kids’ questions or my own. And my prayer is that my kids, though they have accepted Jesus as their Savior without fully understanding the theology, will not allow these roadblocks to hinder their walk and talks with God.

It’s okay to question and doubt God.  It’s okay to come to Him with our questions, whether spiritual or academic.  God is not the least bit surprised by them.  In fact, I think He welcomes it.  Just as I enjoy having my kids come to me with their questions, God wants us to come to Him with our questions.

“Then Jesus told him [Thomas-one of the disciples], “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me”” (John 20:29 NLT).

What roadblocks are you facing?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dancing Through the Storm

What or whom do you love the most? What or whom do you want more than God?

I should want and focus on God more than my husband, my marriage, my children or my desire for the divorce to stop, but that hasn’t always been the case. For the past 8 years, my focus has been on fixing the marriage and stopping the divorce.

It’s not that we shouldn’t devote time, prayer, and energy into fixing a problem, especially one that is worth fighting for.  My problem was that I took my focus off God in the midst of my marital troubles and divorce.  I was living to fix the marriage and to stop the divorce instead of living for God. Though I relied on God at times to walk me through the storm, the absence of answered prayer and changes in the divorce left me angry and frustrated with the Lord.