Older, Wiser, Less Inept

Tomorrow I will have the very strange, yet exciting, opportunity to teach the older, retired ladies class at my church. I've been ignoring the lesson all week, because lately I've been feeling very distant from God and I didn't know how I was ever going to pull off teaching these extremely wise and wonderful women. But today being Saturday, the day before Sunday, I hunkered down and pulled out the lesson book and my Bible, hoping that God would be kind to me and make all of this very easy.

The result? Well, He certainly has been kind to me, but this lesson is not easy. The title is Will You Remain Faithful. According to the book, this lesson can impact your life by teaching you how to "commit to follow God's will even when it is difficult, and discover resources that strengthen you as you follow His will in difficult circumstances."

They weren't lying. I only wanted to share a couple of things from the lesson that really got me thinking.

The first part of the book talks about Jesus praying right before he is led away to be crucified. He goes back to God again and again saying the same thing: If there's any way you can do it Father, please take this cup away from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will. I'm so blown away that I've never noticed that Jesus knew exactly what God's will was, but he still struggled with it, so much so that he was sweating blood. Yikes. I think I usually deify Jesus to the point where I forget he was ever human at all.

One of the hardest parts of following God is trying to figure out what the heck he wants me to do in the first place. But more difficult than that is knowing exactly what God wants you to do and wanting very very much to NOT have to follow through. There are various reasons for this: the results of following his will are difficult to deal with and might even by painful, his will just doesn't seem as much fun as other options, etc. What is better? Obedience with difficulty, or disobedience with consequences? Of course, the correct answer is obvious, obedience with difficulty! Hooray! Good church kid answer. Well done. But why? Why is that better? Sometimes disobedience to God doesn't come with immediate consequences, when obedience sometimes, and usually, brings difficulties along with it that are scary and seemingly unpleasant. The reason obedience with difficulty is better than disobedience is because when I willingly follow God's plan, even if it's into the deepest pits of the earth, I can benefit from God's infinite knowledge and resources.

One of the points that this lesson brings up is that difficulty in following God isn't anything new and we definitely shouldn't be surprised by it. I love this verse in 1 Peter: "Dear friends, when the fiery ordeal arises among you to test you, don't be surprised by it, as if something unusual were happening to you." It makes me laugh because I'm always surprised when following God is hard. Oh crap, I think, what a strange situation I'm in. Dear God, shouldn't life with you be easy? I mean, you are God and everything. :D There is a funny thing about following God's will though. Even if it sucks, it is so comforting to know that I'm doing what I should be doing....and it doesn't hurt that I'm stacking up rewards in heaven either. (God knows us so well. He knows we wont love Him and other people just because, so he gives us an incentive.)

So anyway, this lesson rocked. And at the end there was a little list, Five Principles for Dealing with Trials. I love lists. And this one is especially good. And since I'm so nice I will share it with you. Here goes:

Five Principles for Dealing with Trials as found in 1 Peter
1. Anchor your hope in God by faith (1:1-5)
2. Accept trials as God's way of preparing you for eternity (1:6-12; 4:12-19).
3. Authenticate your relationship to God by holy living (1:13-2:12)
4. Appropriate Jesus' attitude of humble submission to others as God's will toward government (2:13-17), business (2:18-25), family (3:1-7), church (3:8-13, 4:7-11, 5:1-7), and society (3,14:4:6).
5. Affirm your absolute confidence in God (5:8-11)

(Did you notice that all five of those start with an "a" word? Pretty clever, huh?)

There it is! The lesson that kicked my butt and that I will be teaching to older, wiser, less inept women. I'm really expecting them to whip me into shape....in a loving way of course. I'd be quite disappointed if they didn't.