Stressed Out

Don't you just love the timing of God's lessons. I mean really, does He have to pick the point when you've been stuck in traffic for 3 hours and the truck in front of you is trying to cut into your lane to teach you about patience? Does He have to teach me about how to selflessly love my wife and give her a break with the kids on the night that I really just wanted to crash after a long day of work. I mean seriously God, can't You work around my schedule a little more??

This past week was one of the busiest and exhausting weeks Kaylene and I had ever had. Between her Mission Passport parties, youth group and elder meetings the only evening we were both home before 10 was Monday. Add to that a daughter who likes to wake up every 2 hours and you have the makings of a wonderful week.

After this lovely week we finally had some down time Sunday night. Both kids were in bed around 9:30 (George is with us for this whole week to start the transition to living with us) so I thought I'd do something I haven't done in probably 6 months - read a book. So I opened up Crazy Love by Francis Chan and this was the first thing I read.

When I am consumed by my problems - stressed out about my life, my family, my job - I actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances are more important than God's command to always rejoice. In other words, that I have a "right" to disobey God because of the magnitude of my responsibilities.

Worry implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives.

Stress says that the things that e are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control.

Basically, these two behaviors communicate that it's okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is somehow exceptional.

Ouch. All week I had been playing the "I'm overstressed and stretched beyond my limit so I have a right to treat you like crap"card. As if I had a right to not show others the love of Christ because I was too tired. And the funniest part was that I actually blamed my lack of patience and love on the amount of time and energy I had devoted to the ministries I'm involved in outside of my normal job. "God I have a right to be miserable to be around because I'm doing all these things to serve You." Pah!

It's funny how quickly we think that we are an exception to the commands of God. He didn't know all the stress I would have in my life when He put "rejoice always" in the Bible. He didn't know how many annoying people would cross my path daily when He told us to love others. He just doesn't get it. Yeah you get the point. And so did I. But why can't I read stuff like this on the week that everythings going great??