Friday, July 12, 2013

I just can’’t.  Those are three words, which I am really sick of hearing. I hear this said one way or another so often I wonder who programmed all these walking wimps. Yes, I know that sound terrible, even mean, but it is not meant to be mean at all. However, it is meant to be tough love. I am not interested in convincing you “you can’t” I am interested in convincing you that “you can” – do everything and be anything God created you to do and be.

This week alone I have spent hours upon hours dealing with various situations where the outcomes have amounted to people making more and more excuses for themselves and others.

I have heard…

a – “I just can’t. I was born with no luck and there is nothing I can do about it.” That is an exact quote.

b – We have to prepare ourselves because people just can’t control their feelings, emotions, and reactions.

c – They just can’t break the cycle they are born into.

Therefore, several days into the week and by the time I got to a conversation about social issues over pizza with a friend and protégé she most likely thought she had launched a rocket based on my reaction. However, I am grateful to her because our conversation was the linchpin motivation for this piece.

There does come a time when “reasons” become “excuses” and our attempts to help cease to be helpful.

Whether it is social issues, spiritual issues, mental/emotional issues – once you understand the “root” or the cause of the issue; the focus should then be moving toward change, not continuing to focus on the cause. This was my point, with my friend. We have long understood and we do understand and I do understand and society does understand “the cause” of many, if not most social ills, but we are long past the time and the need, to move toward making a change.

General speaking, people in various situations understands “cause” but there comes a time to move on to change. When “cause” becomes your/their excuse, instead of your/their point of understanding for change, that is when your/their situation becomes bondage and you/they are the individual who are no longer taking responsibly for your/their situation. Then you/they, meaning the individual[s] in question, begin perpetuating your/their own victimization and victim mentality.

Once the cause is understood and the individual is not acting on that understanding and taking responsibility, they become responsible for their own lack of change. Therefore, lack of change becomes primarily, note I used the word primarily, their own fault not the fault of their environment, their society, or anyone connected to their lives – they/we become a product of our choices at this point.

This principle holds true for others, you, and me in almost any given situation, whether it is relational, societal, spiritual, mental, emotional, etc.

I feel like I need a disclaimer here: Of course, this does not apply to every person on the planet; this applies to most people in general. There are some extenuating circumstances and situations but those are actually the “exception” [a small percentage] and not the rule [a large percentage] as our excuse-driven society tends to lead people to believe.

The closer we draw to God the more we can feel and understand not only His great love and compassion for His creation but also His Holy anger and wrath, which He has also felt and feels at times – as we read about in the Bible. When I sense that Holy Frustration, as I have this week, born out of a desire for people to grasp all God’s Truths, I am grateful to my colleagues who remind me as one did this week, ‘You have to remember there is a Remnant inside the Remnant.’ With that, we must keep leading the way and stop looking back.

Spiritual/Political Disclaimer:

This blog will not be for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It will not be in any way politically correct. It will make every effort to share the truth in love, [Ephesians 4:11-16], to a decaying and dying society and church. I share what I share not to hurt, harm, or offend any person[s] or group; I do it because Christ’s Standard and Truth is not being represented by enough of His Followers and I do it out of love. I love enough to tell His Truth.

Ephesians 4:11-16 NKJV

¹¹And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, ¹²for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, ¹³till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; ¹⁴that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, ¹⁵but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.