Better

I am so much better today than I was yesterday, aren't you glad?! The day got better, then it got worse. I started to read some of What God wants for your life, the book I have to be done with by the end of this month for my spiritual direction class, and it really started opening my eyes. We seem to think that there is only one right answer when Dr. Fred says there really are a lot of different right answers. I for one want to always pick the best answer and I will ponder and try to prove to myself which is the very best one and hope I have picked it. I like to think this is discerning the will of God for my life. Dr. Fred differs with me and I'm sure with a few more people too. He states that there are a lot of good answers and God is basically fine with all of them. He doesn't want to calculate our every move. If He did he would not have given us the choice to choose Him or not to. God wants us to step out and live the life He has given us. To listen carefully for the movement of God's spirit in the world and to act on it. 


Couple this with another thought from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Isn't that what Jesus was getting at when he said things like, take up your cross and follow me. The cross is an instrument of death! If I am hearing Jesus right, he is saying, die to your stuff, die to your way of doing things, get out of the way so that you can let me live in you. It always amazes me that the Kingdom way of doing things is so upside down to the way we do things! 


So this is what I read in Dr Fred's book last night that started putting things together for me:
We can finally put aside yet another way in which we might have misunderstood what is meant by proving the will of God: we are not here to prove ourselves, to probe and discover our own needs. Instead, we are invited to ask: What do God and others need of us? To find the answers to that question is to find and do the will of God. 
God and others... not Kim? Others equal orphans! So if I have to repeat my mantra that I can't have anything, does that mean that I'm getting close to selling what I have? It's not being sold, but I am giving what I have so that others might know the love of Christ. If I give of myself so that others would be able to live in a peace that surpasses all understanding and to know the kind of love that doesn't come only when you are good, is that the gospel? I'm listening to the spirit of God and I hear let the little children come to me. If we are to die to self so that Jesus lives through us, doesn't that mean opening your home to the orphan? Even when every little selfish cell in your body is yelling "What about ME?" It isn't about me, it's about Jesus and finding and doing the will of God.


I don't have it all figured out, but I know who does. In all reality, that really is enough for me. Alex and I have room and we have love and I guess that's as good as any place to start. We know it won't be easy, but Jesus didn't call us into comfort. If we can help some people find Christ, I believe that would make God smile! I love to make God smile!