3-0

Pseudonymous

Big 3-0. Sooner or later, everyone gets there. My time came this month. At first, I thought it would be fun to write about 30 life lessons, but knowing my tendency to be long-winded, ten is probably a more realistic goal. In no particular order, here it goes:  

1. Spend time with parents. Who do you think you are? Even the baddest-ass person must answer to his mom (I can just imagine the leader of Hell’s Angels muttering “yes mom” under his breath). Let’s face it—we’re nothing without our parents who brought us into the world. So whether you’re the prime minister of Canada or a humble barista at your local Starbucks—you were raised by someone. God demands that you show them respect, even when you don’t feel like they deserve it. Honor your parents; it’s the first command that comes with a promise. 


2. You can always make time. No matter how busy you are, you always have enough time to do what needs to be done for the day. Taking a shower, going to work, cooking a meal, listening to a friend cry over the phone: all of these are necessary. Some things like watching that TV show or checking email or facebook—unnecessary. Answering a phone call in the middle of dinner: unnecessary. So I pose to you a question: are you really busy, or are you just busying yourself?  
3. There’s always time for quiet time. Spending time with God in word and prayer is necessary (refer to point no. 2). When you start with God, you have the right perspective to face the day ahead. 

4. It’s not how much you make but how much you give away. In a culture that labels people according to job and salary, it’s easy to feel worthless when you don’t rake in the big bucks. Take me, for example: I’m unemployed, single, thirty years of age and live with my parents. By the world’s standards, I’m a loser. When I compare myself to my successful friends, I feel like a loser. But a wise friend once told me, “When you get to heaven, God’s not going to ask you what job you had”. In other words, God doesn’t care how much money I make; he’s more interested in how much I give away. Fortunately (or is it unfortunately?), you don’t need to make much to give it away. 

5. God has the bigger picture in mind. Let’s go back to the Old Testament, to the time of Moses and his following of desert wanderers. Forty years they were in the desert! Who could blame them for complaining about lack of water or the limited menu options. But alas, God wasn’t the least bit impressed by their lack of faith. Do you know why? The Israelites had it all wrong. If they thought they escaped Pharoh’s clutches merely because of God’s favor or because of God’s love, they were wrong. God had a bigger picture in mind. When he told Pharoh to let his people go, it was so that they may worship Him (Exodus 9:1). But I bet that worshipping God wasn’t ‘number one’ on ol’ Mathanuel’s to d’ list, or on the to do list of any average Israelite, for that matter. Instead, they were probably envisioning themselves swimming in a lake of milk and honey, or rolling around in a bed of wheat (anything but manna). No wonder they complained so much in the desert—their priority was comfort, not worship.

To be painfully honest, the Israelite’s actually sound a lot like me. I want to live “the dream” and when I don’t get what we want, I complain about how life isn’t fair or that God isn’t good. I am humbled when I remember that God’s purposes for me does not end in getting what I want, even when I get what I want. What I mean is this: God doesn’t bless me for my sake; he blesses me that I may be a blessing to others. Our familiar friend, Mathanuel, failed to see that his worship was intended to be a witness for the nations. So, whether or not you get healed from this sickness or receive acceptance for graduate studies—will you choose to believe that God is bringing all the elements of your life together so that He will get the glory? Your life then, doesn’t become a showcase of “look what I did” but instead, a display of God’s glory for the purpose of giving him due honor and bringing others to worship Him alongside of us.  

6. What a friend we have in Jesus. Everyone knows that beloved classic. It goes like this:
What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! 
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!

O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

I used to think this song was for losers. It’s sappy and oozes with sweetness. No thank you, I thought. Too much canned emotion for me. That is, until finally when one disappointment led to another, and I had no one else to turn to but Jesus. And then I realized that Jesus is faithful friend I’ve been looking for all this time. If you’re too proud to realize this, it’s your loss. As for me, now I love the song.   

7. Sometimes life sucks and God isn’t good. My fears and anxieties can get the best of me when I think about the daunting future. But then I think about how confident Jesus was that God had his back in Isaiah 50:7-9. And then I ask myself, what can I absolutely count on God for? So I made a list: I can count on God being glorified (everything He does is for his glory, see point no. 5), I can count that God will be faithful (He’ll stay by my side, see point no. 6) and I can count that God will provide (maybe not in the way I expect but God is full of surprises, see point no… okay no point for this one). So in light of all this, I can surely count that God will be good. God is good, all the time.   

Okay so there you have it. I didn’t quite make it to ten lessons, but only because it’s late and I promised to get this article in by the end of the day (I am not just long-winded, I’m also now a liar). In this crazy thing called life, one thing for sure is that we’ll never have it all together, but if you love God, you can be sure that our God makes things all right (Romans 8:28).