If God had facebook, and then I failed...

Last Friday was a sad day for South African citizens. yes, our beloved national cricket team, the protea’s, bowed out of the Cricket World Cup. They failed. Even thought they promised us that this world cup would be different. They choked! again

Straight after cricket I went on facebook. yes, of course I did. We love posting our reactions to sport on facebook- most status's looked something like this:  “CHOKERS. YOU SUCK PROTEA’S”... “That is why I don’t support South African Cricket”... “worst captain ever! We can’t even win an easy game!”... Now I’m not getting into those reactions, because, we all know how I feel about what it means to ‘support’ your team. Something else interested me in all of this...

One of my friends wrote a similar status. I challenged her with it and she made an interesting comment:

“I didn't give up on them, I am saying they aren’t performing and it upsets me- like when i sin, even tho God loves and forgives me, it still upsets him!”

Wow, suddenly a status about cricket has brought up an interesting debate about God’s grace ! Love it!
I thought about this long and hard, and what she said was true. We do mess up, and God is disappointed in our sin, because he loves us.

But lets just say God had a facebook account. His name is GOD. and he has something like 3 billion friends. He loves me and supports me. and I fail. what would he make his status?

Would he say, ‘JORDAN YOU SUCK!!’... ‘CHOKER!!!’... ‘so typical! one moment you promise me you wont mess up again, and the next moment you do! Ha! its pathetic really’.... ?

My opinion? ... Thats not what he would say. When people let us down, our initial reaction is anger. bitterness. and yes, disappointment too, but this disappointment turns in to anger anyway, we cant really escape it. because we’re human.

But the amazing thing about God is that his disappointment is out of love for us. He is saddened, but always loves us anyway, and doesn’t resent us for turning our back on him. He forgives us. and takes us back immediately, even though he knows we will fail again. and again. and again.

That is what makes God amazing.

Hebrews 8:12 says “And I will forgive their wickedness,
and I will never again remember their sins.”

As human beings, there is nothing more awesome than the fact that God won’t hold our ‘chokers tag’ against us.

this is the beauty of grace!


(Special thanks to Caryn for posting that comment, and encouraging me to blog about it . )

Hi, God...

The world is consumeristic. We are selfish beings. We want. we need. we want more. we need more. We always have more than we need... and then we get more. ‘I have something cool, but I want whats cooler.’ Our consumeristic nature has become a rash on our generation, and has entered the very fibre of our society. On top of this, I think we unknowingly and far too easily slip into this consumeristic mindset with God...

Lets be honest for a second. Everybody prays when they need/want something. Whether its help in a situation, or supernatural intervention. I totally understand this, because, I do it too! Its all too easy to pray when you’re desperate. Sometimes we see God as a lifeline. A genie in a bottle. A wish-granter that is there to make our lives more comfortable and easy. And then if God doesn’t answer prayers, we get angry at him. Pretty normal cycle for both Christ followers and people who don’t consider themselves ‘practicing Christians’.

Since Friday, when the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, #PrayforJapan has been a trending topic on twitter. (If you’re not on twitter, you should be. get with it. its awesome) That means that a VERY large percentage of the Social Networking world (literally millions of people) are tweeting about praying for Japan. I’m sure you’ve seen it around: every celebrity, president, and commoner has said something about ‘our thoughts and prayers go to Japan’...

This got me thinking... something terrible happens and suddenly the world in interested in prayer? I sometimes wonder what God is thinking in all this. I actually have no idea. But if I was God, listening to the voices of a world that loves to beat me down and hate my people, I’d probably say something like, ‘oh. So now you want to speak to me???!’... Thankfully, I am not God.

We give God so little of our time, and yet we expect Him to answer our every plea and fulfill our every desire.

Instead of making myself feel guilty about being a consumerist and ‘not praying enough’, I've tried to counter my consumeristic-ness [yes, I just made that a word]. IDEA: Every time we feel the need to pray for something out of ‘God I need this’ or ‘God, please’ (whether its personal or for something like the people of Japan or New Zealand) try spend more time in prayer than just asking for things. I started to realize how much I ask of God, and how little time I actually give him.

Don’t misread this: My heart really does go out to those in Japan, and prayer is HUGE in this situation! All of us really should be in prayer for them as often as we think about it. God answers prayer, but he also loves spending time with us. (as weird as that sounds)

I believe that our relationship with God could be so much more if we gave him more time than the 30 seconds it takes to ask him for help!