Today’s Lesson in Uncommon Love: Love Never Disappoints

Patience is not only a virtue; it’s a process. Our relationship with God takes patience. The development and growth of that relationship takes patience. What is patience? When we’re children, we think patience is eating your breakfast on Christmas morning before opening your presents while restraining yourself from diving into the sea of beautifully wrapped pieces of joy. Dictionary defines being patient as “bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint; manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain; not hasty or impetuous; steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity.” Living in a microwave generation where everyone wants everything done in two minutes, patience seems a lot to contend.

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So patience is therefore a response and a product of suffering, adversity, provocation, strain, opposition and difficulty. Can I be honest? Patience sucks! But patience is a necessity in the development of our relationship with God and our relationship with others. The foundation of patience is trust. I can make it through the adversity, the opposition, suffering and provocation because I know that God loves me and He’s with me every moment, strengthening, guiding and comforting me. Without his love, his presence, I’d cave under the pressure of the process of patience. 

Even when I falter at times under those pressure, like a child, my hope is awakened by God’s love for me. I know that no matter the adversity, opposition, delays and strains, God’s promises for me are assured. His love is real, relevant and trustworthy. Therefore I’m able to love others without grudge, envy or blame because I know they can’t control the outcome of my life. What keeps me intact is knowing that God, who is love, will never disappoint. So today and in the end, I win.

Today’s Lesson in Uncommon Love

Tonight, I was talking to a young man who I love like my own son. We were catching up on his college life, challenges and growth. I began to share with him what God had taught me this year about patience and living one day at a time. We shared lots of laughs as I got caught up on the well-being of his amazing parents and siblings.

Bout a few hours later, this hit me: When Jesus said, “…you shall be my witness…” (Acts 1:8), he wasn’t referring that we’d all become pastors and missionaries. He simply meant that when we encounter people facing life’s challenges that we share what God has done in our lives, reminding them that in trouble, he’s a present help. In sorrow, he’s a comforter. In sadness and loneliness he’s a faithful and loving companion. When we fall, he’s not there to condemn us but with mercy and grace, he picks us up.

Being a witness of Christ doesn’t mean an absence of troubles or pain. Just means we’re a source of hope, strength, and authentic encouragement. This is uncommon love.

Five Issues I Bet You Didn’t Know You Have

1. You hate pretty people

You won’t admit it, but you do. You hate good looking people. You know, the chick at work with the perfect skin, great body. She always get the promotion, though you work seven times harder. And that chick who everyone loves to invite to every party and event. Her only accomplishment in life is that she was born a blonde. Face it. You hate her too. We know. And it’s okay.

2. You’re still pissed at your mom

Yes you are. I know you send her flowers and Mother’s Day cards; you even take her out to dinner when it’s not her birthday, but you’ll never admit that you’re still pissed at her. For what? Only you, God and that hidden chocolate bar under your bed know. Maybe it’s because she nursed your brother and not you. Or she paid more attention to your sister than you. Perhaps her grounding you on the night of the homecoming dance when the hottest dude in school had asked you out and he ended up with another girl and 20 years later, you’re still single. But you’re not bitter. Yeah right.

3. You hate your life

So your guidance counselor lied. All those years in college didn’t land you your dream job or your ideal life. You hate your job and you often wish those hideous people you work with wound fall into a shallow ditch. Your overpriced apartment makes your college form look like the Taj Mahal. You don’t even make enough money to be broke. You hate your life. We know. And it’s okay.

4. You still have body issues

Since the age of 13, you’ve been trying to look like Barbie. You’ve tried every diet on the planet. You went to the gym for three days straight and you’re still not skinny. Hey Oprah has more money than three Continents combined and she can’t lose weight. You have body issues. We know. And it’s okay.

5. You really don’t want children

Everyone always go on and on about how cute their kids are and how much they love being a mother. You secretly can’t stand their little brats. Matter of fact, their children’s hyperactivity and addiction to whining have you quite happy you have zero children. Plus you’d rather buy a new CD than diapers. We know. And it’s okay.

Bonus Issue: You’re a secret stalker

You won’t admit it to anyone including yourself, but you’re a stalker. No one has taken a restraining order on you yet, but it doesn’t invalidate the fact that you stalk people’s Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts. You use your relationship with friends to stalk your ex’s page. You’re a stalker. We know. And that’s okay.

Love Deferred

Loving someone is a journey into the unfamiliar and the unpredictable. You’re in this vehicle call love and compatibility; then you run into complexities. There are always complexities when you love someone. Because when people change, evolve, grow, complexities arise. Should you then pull over and check the direction of your relationship or should you just keep driving through the fog in hopes of hitting daylight? No one really knows for sure because no two individuals are the same; therefore no two relationships are the same.

Contrary to what we’re told as children and what we read in fairy-tales, there are no guarantees in love. Love promises no one anything. Love means what it says when it says it. But love often writes a check that the heart can’t consistently cash. What happens when the heart can no longer keep love’s promises? A wise man once said love is not a feeling. It’s a commitment. But what happens when the heart can no longer keep that commitment? Anyone who makes a vow he knows he doesn’t intend to keep is a deceiver. But one who makes a vow he commits to keep but the heart later changes, is simply human.

Don’t Live with Regret, Evict it

We’ve all done something that we wish we could take back; a day in our lives that weren’t our shiniest moment. Whenever we think about it, we stop living in our present and dwell on that mistake, that bad judgement, that failed accomplishment or relationship. Days, months, years later we’re still gripped by regrets, reliving a moment that should be behind us. If we ever want to live healthy and productive lives, we have to let go of regrets. We have to evict regret from your hearts.

Let’s face it. Regret is not a very good or useful roommate. If you’re living with regret, truth is you’re not really living at all. Regret is a whining, condemning companion always there to manipulate and remind you of who you were and not who you are. Regret wants to keep you locked in the prison of your past, depressed and helpless by what you can’t change. But you can’t let your past mistakes define your present or blur the hope of the future.

Someone asked Eleanor Roosevelt, “How did you accomplish so much with your life?” She said, “I never waste time with regrets.” Regret is a time and joy stealer that will leave you unproductive and stagnate. Regret and hope cannot coexist. You have to choose which you will reside with. Choose to live with hope.

My Beef with Republicans and Democrats

Every presidential election season, Republicans make pro-life the only issue, while Democrats want you to either profess that God doesn’t exist or you’re not to believe what He clearly says. Democrats want you to deny your faith to walk the line of the party, but who are we without faith in our Creator? Republicans claim to be the God party and morality police, but their hate for President Obama seems stronger than their love for God. Their commitment to deregulation at all cost and often disdain for those who don’t look like them or agree with then often nullifies their morality message.

Democrats want to be all things to all people all of the time. You can’t be all things to all people all the time. You have to put your foot down every now and then and say heck no. Democrats have become the white walls in a new apartment. Paint whatever color you want and when you leave, make sure it’s white again so someone else can paint whatever color he or she wants. That’s not reality. Republicans have become less pro-people and more pro-self and politics. Republicans have become the party who’s counting on voters love for unborn babies and hate of others to win.

But America is so much more than these two party. Watching the Democratic National Convention speeches, I’d noticed God was relegated to “God bless America,” but nothing more substantive. This morning when I saw the CSPAN video and read about Dems taking out God and Jerusalem from its platform, only to re-add  as of yesterday to the anger of most of its delegates, I was saddened. What can America be without God. Without faith in God, could a man by the name of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr have possessed the courage and strength to make our country a civil and more humane place to live?

Being pro God doesn’t make me anti-people or unintelligent. My faith in God allows me to hope in the midst of despair and to always choose love over indifference. Faith in God allows us to go beyond our limited intelligence, fleeting feelings and insufferable differences. Faith in God is the foundation of strength for a people and for a nation. Like a pricey car with no gas, when we leave God behind, we go nowhere. 

The Problem with What Others Think

A Recent criticism of Tim Tebow is that he turns every insult into a compliment. Yes, with all the anger and hate in the world, someone actually complained about that. The writer even compared him to Buddy the Elf because Tebow refuses to get offended, angry and reactionary because of what someone says about him. But Tebow knows that what others think doesn’t change what he does nor does it define who he is.

The problem with what others think is they think we should all care. They think what they think should therefore change who we are. For me, the only people whose opinions matter in my life are a small circle of family and friends. Even for those individuals, if their opinions don’t line up with the word of God, I have to respectfully throw their opinions aside.

The problem with what others think is they think their opinions are truth. I recently had to check my own self when my feelings about a particular situation tried to override truth. A wise man recently said, “You shouldn’t believe everything you tell yourself. Feelings arent facts.” So if I’m not holding up my feelings and opinions as God, I definitely I’m not taking the opinions of others to heart.

We now live in a world where popularity rules. Forget what we know to be true, we want to be accepted. So we go along with the majority, even when we know the majority’s opinions are way off. We try to be all things to all people. We stand for nothing; so we fall for everything, every fad, every new age philosophy. If you don’t share a popular opinion you’re labeled.

A commentator is born every minute in the media. Everyday there are countless talking heads and an endless barrage of opinions on television, radio and internet. Because there are more opinions and way less truth in the media, everyone thinks their opinions matter to them and therefore it should matter to us. Newsflash, it doesn’t and that should be okay.

The Objective of Terror

The objective of terror, whether home grown or foreign, is to ignite and create fear. The objective of terror is not to kill; though it uses murders and even mass murders. Terror’s objective is to use the dead to birth fear in the hearts of the living. Whether in the air or on the ground, in a tall building or the casual escape of a movie theater, terror comes to dispense fear, stripping us of sanctity and peace.

The only way to defeat terror is with hope and love. Hope says though today was tragic, a new day with new life and possibilities awaits me to grow and get better. Love says I will not hate the one through whom terror comes. But I will combat his actions with the most winning and rewarding response: forgiveness.

Congrats! Five Things A Degree Can’t Give You

As children, we’re told to go to school so we can be somebody. So in a quest to be somebody through kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school, then college, we believe a piece of hard stock paper now makes us, “somebody.” Who that somebody is and is suppose to be, well, we really have no clue. But we think with it we’re entitled to a six figure salary, a Benz, a home and a hot spouse. A degree may provide access to opportunities, but it doesn’t make you whole and it guarantees you nothing. The following are five things a degree will never give you:

A Degree Doesn’t Give you Happiness

You may feel good about yourself now that you’re matter than your 80 year-old Aunt Berta who dropped out in the third grade, but a degree doesn’t give you happiness. It can provide you access to things that may make you smile, but if you want happiness, you’re on your own! At 80, Aunt Berta maybe more happy than you are because many years ago with her third grade education, she discovered that you want joy over happiness. Happiness is external, based on outside conditions. Joy is internal. Not given nor taken away by external conditions.

A Degree Doesn’t Make You Wise

Smart is knowing what something is. Wisdom is knowing what it’s not to be used for. Because you have a degree doesn’t make you wise. Wisdom is character based and God given. Wisdom is not just knowing the right thing to do. Wisdom is knowing the wrong thing is not an option. No class teaches you that. That’s a decision grown and learned in the heart. After all George Dubya graduated from Yale. ‘nuff said.

A Degree Doesn’t Give You Peace

I know the more you learned in school, the less you feel you need God. Schools have a way of trying feverishly to discredit faith in God, as if a degree is the god that makes all things possible. Schools teach you to live life from the outside and God reminds us to focus on the inside, our relationship with him. Getting degrees without a connection with God is like venturing to a new place with a working GPS but no location or direction in mind. Only faith in God gives us peace because when all hell starts to break loose (oh, a degree doesn’t stop hell from breaking loose), and positive thinking turns negative, you need faith in a loving, faithful and all knowing God to let you know it’s going to be okay.

A Degree Doesn’t Give You a Spouse

A degree doesn’t make you more physically attractive unless you consider a six figure student loan debt hot. If you want to be physically fit, you still have to eat right and burn some calories! Many people say they met their spouses in high school or college. That’s great but acquiring a degree doesn’t mean you’ll be married within three years. Stop thinking you’re going to meet Mr. Right at your first job which pays a whopping six figures. It’s delusional. There are a lot of lonely educated folks.

A Degree Doesn’t Make You Somebody

A degree says you have mastered a certain information, skill, or intellectual level. Never does a degree provide an identity. You were somebody from the day you were born. These years, their ups and downs are helping you to discover who you really are. Your identity should be rooted in the one who created you. No, not your parents. They’re nice but they’re limited. Your identity should be rooted in the one who created, shaped and wired you internally. You are who He says you are, and you can do what He says you can. The value of a degree may fluctuate, but God’s wisdom and plan never changes and his grace is always available. When we know we are who He says we are, we know we can achieve far greater things than what’s on a college degree.

SURVIVAL NOTE: The key to post graduate success is knowing real learning and growth never stops.

The Closer You Get to God, The Closer You Get to People

“How good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” (Psalm 133:1). Never has this verse felt more real that yesterday as my siblings, our families gathered to celebrate my mother. It was a late Mothers Day celebration that was right on time. We sang. We danced. We hugged. We asked each other for forgiveness. We cried. We reminiced our past and delighted in memories of God’s faithfulness while embarassing our children with childhood memories of life in Africa and life on the road as missionary’s kids.

“The closer you get to God, the closer you get to people,” my brother Gabriel said. That has stuck with me. For the past few weeks, our pastor has been teaching about the importance of relationships, our relationship with God and each other. I’ve always known it’s vital to have and maintain our relationship with God but people, well that’s a whole different ball game. See, God is consistent, faithful and loves without condition. People? Well not so much. You start off loving a family member, a close friend, but when they betray or hurt you, you walk away from that person and that relationship. But God doesn’t want us to do that? When we continue this pattern, we isolate ourselves and live a lonely existence because people, including ourselves, aren’t perfect. We make mistakes. We lie. We steal. We cheat. Loving others means going through the character development process together, not using their flaws as an exit door. We are to use those moments to examplify the same love and forgiveness God bestows on us DAILY.

God isn’t interested in how many Bible verses we can quote or how many commandments we can keep. He measures our love for him by how we love and relate to others. We can’t run away from pain and disappointments. Loving others brings pain , discomfort and disappointments. But if this doesn’t prevent God from loving us, it shouldnt prevent us from loving others. Truly the closer you get to God, the closer you get to people.