Playing By The Rules

“Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

Galatians 4:6-7 The Message

Playing by The Rules

Remember growing up? Remember how our parents told us to do our homework, to make our beds and to feed the dog? Remember how they warned us against smoking and how they told us to show respect to friends and neighbors? Our parents taught us that life had rules, and that we’d be happiest if we followed the rules. Life seemed so simple back then.

But today, the list of life’s do’s and don’ts gets more complicated. As we get older, we tend to become more sophisticated in the way we interpret and apply rules to our life. We become more subjective, and less inclined to follow rules without questioning them. We adjust the rules or make new ones of our own when we think it’s necessary. We think we know what is important and we want rules that give us better control over our lives. Don’t we?

What are the rules you have been living by? I bet they include planning for the future, investing diligently, paying your bills, working overtime, and getting promoted on occasion. You go to the gym. You are smart and you are determined. You put up with all kinds of crap, and you treat others with the respect you think they deserve. Perhaps you follow the most important rule of all, you go to church so that God will bless your efforts.

Most of us have done a pretty good job of playing by the rules. We’ve been good boys and good girls and we've expected life to be good to us in return. But life doesn’t always play fair. Life does not play by the same rules that we do. Sometimes, it throws an unfair curveball at our heads... so to speak. There are times when life defies our best intentions and our best efforts. In some cases, our creditors hound us without mercy. Some of us have lost our homes. Others have experienced divorce, the death of a loved one, a paralyzing addiction, or a devastating act of nature. Many of us have lost our health insurance and some of us have even lost the health we worked so hard to insure. Hardships and difficulties assault us, bruising, battering, and proving just how small and powerless we really are.

Questions! Do you feel sad about the condition of your life? Are you mad about how things have turned out for you? Have you tried to get it together, hoping to get yourself together at the same time? Have your expectations been satisfied?

Let’s be honest with ourselves because there is something to be learned from all of this. The feelings we feel express an inner longing that we need to get in touch with. From the mansion to the ghetto and from the country club to the back street bar, everybody experiences this inner longing whether they realize it or not. Our longing shows there is another kind of life to be lived that far exceeds what we can experience through the five senses of our bodies. This other life is the spiritual life. And, it is more real and more human than the physical lives we have known up till now. Think about this for a moment. Don’t we all want and need more out of life than what we can provide for ourselves?

There is a message being sent your way. Don’t miss out on what your hearts has to say to you. Listen. Listen to your longing. It reveals what you truly want and truly need as opposed to what has just held your attention captive all these years. If you listen to it, your inner longing will guide you to a place that only God can reach. This is not a religious place. It has no walls, no rules and no obligations. It is an intimate, personal place where God’s love will cause you to change and grow in ways that you cannot do on your own. Together, God and you will build a spiritual marriage in this intimate personal place. And, as a spiritual marriage is built, God will bring balance and perspective to the way you live your life in your physical body.

No matter what rules we have been living by up till now, there is one ultimate question that we all have to answer. Are you willing to trust God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself?

Be honest! There is no reason to ignore you longing anymore.

copyright 2009, David Zailer