I had 75% of this post done last night while I was waiting for Ben to cry himself to sleep. He got really upset so I went to check on him. He found a little ceramic rocking horse Christmas ornament. This ornament had a hole that the bottom, like some ornaments do. He was convinced it was broken and should be fixed. I could not convince him otherwise, so eventually I just hid the ceramic horse in my pocket. He was more upset and so we looked at his stuffed animals, talked to them, and then settled into bed. Read through my thoughts from last night and see how this story is connected.
"I need to be more like God and not try to make God more like me." I heard this idea 3 times today from 3 different sources. I'm not sure exactly what I should be learning from this, but since I heard it 3 times, I thought it important enough to blog about.
I 'heard' this first this morning when I was going through my Bible Study homework. In Me, Myself, and Lies by Jennifer Rothschild, she mentions Isaiah 55:9. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." From my notes this morning, "You don't have to and can't live up to God! He accepts your broken parts!" There is no way for me to live up to God. He is higher than me. I can't change that and I don't have to be ashamed by that.
The second time was in Stuff Christians Like this morning. He actually quoted the same verse. He spoke about wanting God to do things like he would. Wishing God would give him choices he is comfortable with and has gotten used to using. (BTW, I am doing a really bad job of summarizing this. Go read it for yourself, so what I'm saying makes sense.) Once again, I 'hear' God isn't like me. Don't try to make him like me. Let him do his job. You just sit back and let him.
The third time I heard it was at church tonight. Drew said it in his lesson about renewing your mind,Romans 12:2. Renewing your mind isn't something that is only for the recent converts. It is for all of us to continually renew our minds and be less like this world. We should not make God more like us, but make us more like God.
So back to the ceramic horse, how often are we like Ben convinced that we know the way something is supposed to look, the way it is supposed to work, etc? We know best and why isn't everyone listening to us!! Don't we sound like a two year old demanding our way? We yell at God and huff at the world because it isn't working like we 'know' it should. God tries to reason with us and maybe sometimes it works. We realize that we need to let him do his job because he is higher and we shouldn't make Him more like us.
What if we don't? Will God take that thing away from us because it is causing us too much strife? Will he get our mind off of it with something else, so we can settle down and rest? I'm not sure what the answers are, but I think the answer could be yes. Are you holding on to a ceramic horse? What might God be able to do if you let it go?
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