Sometimes life happens. This episode was recorded just before Christmas. Also 2 days before my computer crashed taking all of my files down with it.

Fortunately, the recording was already uploaded to YouTube, so I was able to get my hands back on it. It comes in handy to have some extra episodes laying around when vacations and life keeps us from recording as often.

I hope you enjoy the irony, considering we’re about as far away on the calendar from Christmas as we could possibly be. But Jesus is the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!

Every hour of every day, we face the decision of doing things our way, or God’s way. With so many opportunities to make the wrong decision, we are inevitably going to miss a few steps. But the more we practice walking with the Lord, the more instinctive it is to choose His way over ours. His Word teaches us, His Spirit guides us, and when we forget to rely on those, His Grace sustains us.

There’s a great quote from one of my favorite movies: “Good judgement is the result of experience, and a lot of experience comes from bad judgement.”

Certainly, God wants us to develop good judgement. But we get frustrated that He allows us to have bad judgement along the way. Free will isn’t always convenient, but it is part of His plan. When we make mistakes, or things just don’t work out the way we hoped, we have a choice in how we can handle it.

It’s so easy to fall into blame, regret, and guilt. But when we remember God’s patience, grace, mercy and faithfulness, we can find joy and gratitude in how God will use them for growth.

One of the threats to our walk with God is becoming so hard-headed and rigid that we forget there are two sides of every coin. Work needs to be done, but we also need rest. We show patience and grace to others, but there’s a time for discipline and hard truth. The joy of God’s love should never leave us, but neither should the fear and awe of His power.

Sometimes we try so hard to figure out God’s magic formula for our lives that we forget He created all of these concepts and intended for us to have a healthy blend of them. It’s Ecclesiastes 3 in motion. But how do we decide where the line is and exactly how much of each we need, and when? Simple, we don’t.

The solution to the magical God formula comes from accepting that He is the only One who knows it. Being humble enough to submit to His will when you don’t know what His will is, that’s peace. Because He doesn’t usually give us the answers the way we want them. He tells us it’s time to rest by taking away our job unexpectedly. He tells us we need to be more patient by sending us people to test it. And if He decides you need a little more humility, well, I’ll be praying for you.

But the only way He can truly teach us how to stop leaning on our own understanding is to send us situations beyond our comprehension. That’s how He develops the one thing we can never have too much of: Trust in Him.

It’s easy to forget that God can hear the subtext of our prayers. We can pray “not my will but Yours be done” until we are blue in the face, but if we really mean “God, I think this would be great so please give it to me”, He hears that part too. So, it does us no good to say the “right prayers” that we don’t really mean (I wouldn’t suggest praying “God, I don’t care what You want, I know what’s best for my life” to the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of all things either).

Every hour of every day is a constant choice to choose our path or God’s path. Both will involve heartache, disappointment and struggles. But God’s path uses those struggles to grow us closer to Him, and our path uses them to compound our problems and distance ourselves from His love.

But when we ask for His will and mean it, our anxiety fades into peace, because we know His ways are better than ours anyway. We don’t even have to worry about what that means. We can just live in gratitude for what He’s given us, and is giving us, even when we don’t yet know what that is.

The W.W.J.D. bracelets give us some words to live by, but I agree with Ben’s take on this; it is a tough question to try to answer. The fact is, we are not Jesus, and we cannot possibly expect to know how He would handle every situation we encounter in our lives. For one, we create scenarios He didn’t face because we sin, He didn’t.

A more important question we can answer is what DID He do? It won’t give us the answer to every situation we face, but before we even begin to try to guess what He would have done if He had faced a situation we are in, we should at least do our homework and use His actions as a reference to build on. But we often skip, or forget that step.

What was important to Him? How did He encounter sinners? Who did He challenge the most to change their ways of thinking? What were His commands?

Jesus didn’t tell us to know what He would do. He told us to do what He told us to do. But when our pride tells us to take on more responsibility than He asked of us, we may find ourselves breaking His commandments in the process.

When we think about the guidance the Bible offers us, it can be really easy for me to focus on the judgement of God. “Do this, or else” might be the way of thinking about it. And if you are defiant, yeah, it can get pretty ugly. But I don’t think that’s God’s preferred message.

He guides us, developing us to be more like Jesus, who was perfect. And it’s not just so we’ll be better people and make Him happier. It makes our lives better too! He knows it’s best for us. That’s why He tells us to do it!

Honor and treasure your spouse, and you’ll be more likely to avoid an expensive painful divorce and enjoy a happy marriage. Treat others the way you want to be treated, and you’ll spend less time fighting and probably have more friends. Don’t stay out drinking until 2:00 in the morning and you’ll feel better the next day and not have to ask your friends to fill you in on what happened.

Some of God’s plans to develop us aren’t quite so obvious to understand. That’s where we have to trust Him and remember He knows a lot more than we do, and whether we see it yet or not, He’s right.

A couple of weeks ago I had my first physical in about 10 years. I hate going to the doctor. Most of all, I hate having blood drawn. Judge me all you want, but I hate it. I don’t mind shots, but I can’t stand them taking blood. I started to dread it, and after a day or so I realized that the process that would take 3 minutes was another week away, and it was stupid to turn 3 minutes of misery into 168 hours. I tried not to think about it too much, and when the time came, I held my breath and survived the 180 seconds of horror.

That was dread. I knew it was going to happen. I just dreaded it. Worry is an even dumber emotion. When we worry, we don’t even know the thing we are worrying about is going to happen. But we still let the possibility of something bad happening rob us of days, weeks and months of the joy and peace that God intended for us to have. Maybe that’s why he told us not to do it.

We dread bad things we know will happen and worry about bad things we think might happen. But if we believe in who God says He is, we should be able to remember that God already has the future covered and He didn’t forget about us in His preparations for them. If the bad happens, He’ll give us peace to get through it and ultimately use it for His good.

We can believe that and enjoy His peace or trade our joy in for the pain and fear that accompany doubting God. It’s a simple choice. It’s just not always easy.

One of my favorite Episode titles that we’ve had is “He Loves You the Way You Are, But He Refuses to Let You Stay That Way”. I liked the line at the time, but it has grown to mean more and more to me over time.

As a non-believer or maybe even a new believer, I think the first half of that line is important to remember. God doesn’t expect us to clean ourselves up. He loves us as we are and that’s how He wants us to come to Him. But make no mistake, He wants us to come as we are, so we don’t have to stay that way.

I loved Ben’s analogy about giving his dog a bath. The image that came to mind was Simba fighting his momma trying to give him a bath in The Lion King. We don’t always realize that we need a bath, and most of us probably fought them when we were young. Christian often asks me to smell under his arms in protest of the process.

But God knows we need it. And like our kids, the process isn’t usually worth the fight we put up to prevent it. Yeah, some soap might get in our eyes once in a while, and a little water might go up our nose. But more often than not, God uses “gentle correction” to steer us toward the path of righteousness. It’s having to correct your nine-year-old for doing exactly what your eighth-grade basketball coach ripped your hair out for, but you still do every day. Or your 12-year old’s Bible test being on your favorite verse, the one about not worrying, when all you’ve done for a month is worry. God has His ways.

As we grow in Christ, the second half of that line starts to become more important to remember. We already know He loves us the way we are. Why wouldn’t He?! But no matter how much we think we’ve grown, He still sees work to do. As “mature Christians” we’re awfully grateful for the work God has done in us, as long as we think He’s finished. But when He breaks the soap back out, there we are, asking Him to smell our arms in protest.

It’s so easy to overcomplicate spiritual matters, and yes, I realize I’m the extreme example. But I don’t believe that’s God’s intention. God went to great lengths to drive home the simple truths He wanted us to anchor to in our lives.

The 66 books of the Bible tell a lot of stories and provide a lot of wisdom in a lot of areas. But the common themes seem to keep repeating. God loves us. God is perfect. God is there for us. God is patient and forgiving. Far from an exhaustive list, but when we remember these things, the minor details of our lives fade in significance.

When we cling our hope to things of this world, we will be hurt. Money can be lost. People can hurt us. We can get sick. There’s no limit of things that can go wrong in our lives that may be out of our control. God knows that when our joy is determined by these things, our lives will be emotional roller coasters. But His love never leaves us, and His power never fades. He knows that the only true peace and joy are found in our relationship with Him, which is why He gave so much to prove His love and provide us a path to it. It’s up to us each day to decide which path we are going to walk.

Followers of Christ are called to follow His example, showing His love to others to encourage them to follow Him as well. But it doesn’t work as well when we forget to follow His example. The world has a lot of misconceptions about Jesus and what Christians really believe today, and the enemy loves confusion. But our countermove in this battle is simply to be more like Jesus and let His Spirit and God’s word guide us.

We tend to give ourselves more credit than we deserve for the things we do in life. When you woke up this morning, what was your contribution to the process? Setting an alarm, and getting out of the bed when you heard it?

What was God’s part? While you rested, God kept your heart beating, brain functioning, lungs working, with oxygen in the room at a comfortable temperature and made sure no asteroids fell on your head (and helped your ears hear the alarm clock when it went off).

Our growth with God is the same way. We read the Bible, we go to church, we pray. But it’s His Spirit that enables us to understand and actually grow in Him. Otherwise, we are just going through the motions. You can know the Father and know the Son, but if you don’t know the Spirit you’re really missing out. That’s how the stuff you hear and read about starts to come to life.

I’ve always known that God could do anything. I think the big difference for me has been realizing I can’t do anything without God. It’s all Him, simple as that.

We can be awfully entitled in this country, and that includes, maybe even especially Christians. We start off knowing that we need God. Then we seek Him, we find Him, and His love changes us. We start walking by the Spirit and seeing Its fruits. Then something bad happens and we start wondering what we did to deserve the misfortune.

Here’s a question: what did we do to not deserve it? Christians aren’t somehow exempt from suffering. But it’s so easy to slip into thinking we are owed some cosmic and divine favor thanks to our faithfulness to our Creator. But here’s the thing: God doesn’t owe us anything; He’s already given us everything.

Our relationship with God does provide us with one advantage over non-believers. God provides His children with His comfort and peace in our struggles, and it surpasses all understanding, far sufficient to get us through them. But our complaining fills up the room with enough of our own hot air to fog our view of Him, getting in His way of providing this peace.

We’re going to have bad days, struggles, failures and heartbreaks. And sometimes God’s love may feel like the only thing we have going for us. But if we’re not careful, we can get so wrapped up in our own feelings that we block our only source of comfort.

What a waste that must feel like to the One who paid for our privilege.

Nick Saban has won 7 National Championships, more than any other college football coach in history. How successful would his career have been if he let every player pick their own position, let them play their way, patted them on the back after every play, and helped them blame others for their failures? How many titles would his teams have won? How many of those players would have gone on to professional careers in football, or any other endeavor for that matter? How much more knowledgeable, righteous, and loving is God than Nick Saban?

It’s easy to shy away from God’s instruction. Sometimes His lessons are difficult. Sometimes they make us uncomfortable. Sometimes they make us recognize our imperfections. But they are always intended to grow us and draw us closer to Him.

In order to accept His instruction, we have to first admit that we need it. And that can be a lot harder than it sounds like it should be. We seem to naturally think that we know best and think we have to rely on ourselves to grow, even in our relationship with God. We forget that that’s His job. Our job is to admit that we need Him and then listen to (and obey) His instruction. That’s all. He doesn’t need us to figure out the plan. He just needs us to follow it.

Nick Saban won 7 championships, but he also failed to win 21 times. But God doesn’t fail. Ever. He just needs us to remember it.