Possessions: Day 22

It has been a packed weekend! This is the “end of school year” season. Church this morning… well let’s just say… God knows when I am trying to NOT listen to something He is trying to get through my thick scull, so he starts presenting it in all forms and presentations.  Our church is currently going through The Story. It is basically the Bible laid out in chronological order.  If you are looking for a way to read the Bible, I highly recommend it.  Today we were talking about King Solomon and how his wealth consumed him.  The question was asked : Do our blessing come before God?  Well… God gives us all of our blessings, so why would we let the things that He has blessed us with come BEFORE the one that has blessed us? It is an excellent question. It seems very simple in theory to say, “God gives us everything we have, so everything belongs to Him.” So why is that so hard to live out? Because we are human.  That is my boring, strait forward answer. We are human and it is human nature.

Here is the thing… I don’t want to be that way. I am tired of being consumed with “stuff” and all the baggage (pun completely intended) that comes with that word. I want to be what God wants me to be and live how He wants me to live. Don’t get me wrong… I don’t think God is telling me to selling all I own and move to a third world country with all of my children (though He does call people to do this… just not me… today anyway ;)). But I do think God is using this month to show me how my life is so cluttered. Cluttered not only with “things”, but with commitments and people that are not important for my purpose here on earth. 

Solomon let people in his life that that let him sway (another great point from this morning’s sermon).  It got me thinking about all the people in my life.  There are the people that help you and build you up, there are people that you are put here to help and build up, and there are people that let you sway.  Now my initial response to this is, “get those people who cause me to sway out.” But as I am sitting in my seat with my head bowed praying for clarity on who I should be “cutting out” I got that little voice saying, “hold on high and mighty little missy… maybe you should think about who would be cutting you out.” Yikes! That hurts. What am I doing that is causing others to sway? Am I living how He wants me to be living? Am I living in a way that would cause people to be encouraged to follow the strait and narrow, or am I the one that causes people to sway in their walk with the Lord? This is something I will be praying about. I know there are areas of my life that I am weak, and it is easy to just bring people along with you in the sway than to try to fight the pull, but that is not God’s intent… for any of us.

I am three weeks into Possessions month. I have gotten rid of literally hundreds of items so far, and there is still so much to go.  We live in such excess…to the point of tears. I can not tell you how many times this month I have either just started crying or been sick to my stomach at the amount of excess I am living in.  So, just as King Solomon asked for wisdom, I am too asking this of God.  I am praying for the wisdom to decipher between the clutter and the important stuff. But even more important than that, I pray for the wisdom to raise my children to know the difference and not be at the point I am.

Our closing song this morning, “I Surrender All to You”. I cried through the whole dang song.  I long to be able to do this… God is working some wonderful things in my heart. I am just a terrified little chicken on some things that I am called to do. I love the Lord, I want to do what pleases Him, but sometimes that takes some big time courage. I am terrified that I might be misreading the signs and doing the wrong thing. I would prefer God communicate through a post-it on the fridge: ”Cassie- I want you to ________. Thanks for obeying. –God” Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually work that way. So I will continue to pray and ask for the wisdom to decipher between the clutter and the important stuff.

Purge for the day: About 45 t-shirts to Goodwill. Between Eric and I, there are a lot of shirts that we don’t need from numerous events over the years. So they have been purged and will be dropped at Goodwill in the morning.

Best Effort... He was super proud of this one!

Giving his brother a trophy.

Proud Mommy Moment of the Day: Brayden had his Pinewood Derby Race today.  Brayden picked the design of the car himself and painted it himself. This was very obvious when viewing his car. :) This is a very hard thing for me to do… letting him do it on his own, especially when I know that the other cars there are going to be much faster and much more… well…. less like a kid thought of how to paint this car in his head and then attempted to carry it out. But I (we) did.  Brayden placed 6^th out of 7 places, but he also got Best Effort (because they could tell he did it himself I am sure… it was very obvious). Landen was really cheering Brayden on today, even though he really wasn’t racing very well. So when Brayden got his second trophy today, he gave one to Landen. He said, “He was a good encourager, so I will give him one too.” That kid has a good heart! Can’t wait to see what God has in store for him.