Tag: attributes of God

Day 4 of Enjoying God: Peace

~ K ~ Leave a comment

Let it be known: I hate bumper stickers like that above. Mostly because I think they’re cheesy and ineffective, but sometimes it reminds me of a truth that tends to fall hollow with me.

You see, I know Jesus but I feel like I have no peace.

My head and heart are almost always spinning with busyness, noise, stress, and other things that crowd out any semblance of peace. I’m not talking external peace; I mean internal peace.

While I’ll tackle the topic of joy another day, I think joy and peace go hand-in-hand in some way. The idea of peace has always evoked an image of joy along with it (in my mind).

I’ve taken a vacation from paid work this week but still feel like I have no peace. I’m stressed. I’m nervous. I’m afraid that I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown and headed back to a psych hospital. (Maybe I need to visit once every six years to remind me how much I hate it?) I have all this spiritual static in my head that succeeds in clouding God out and making Him fuzzy around the edges.

The point of learning how to enjoy God is not that I’ll have arrived by the time I publish one of these posts but that it’s a process: I’m learning. An aspect of being able to enjoy God is also enjoying the peace that He provides.

Hopefully God will help me out in this area in 2011.

 

 

Day 3 of Enjoying God: Beauty

~ K ~ 1 Comment
A sample "before"---it truly looked worse than this!

I went to the hair salon tonight with my hair looking “a hot mess” (as the slang goes). I haven’t been taking care of it for the past month like I should because I’d been too busy working two jobs, kept rescheduling my appointment, and was too depressed to keep it up on my own. But my hairdresser knew none of that. All she knew was that my hair looked awful and was in dire need of repair. When she was done, my hair looked amazing. She did a job I could have never done on my own. I had to rely on her skilled hands to craft a disaster into something beautiful. (You know where I’m going with this, right?)

After!

 

God does something similar albeit on a much bigger scale and with more important things than hair. God sees the disaster of my natural heart with its sinful jealousy, strife, grumbling, and bitterness, and somehow takes that, cuts away the ugly layers of who I am to craft me into someone beautiful.

  • Someone who cares more about others than herself
  • Someone who thinks twice before gossiping
  • Someone who tries to do things for others because it means so much to them

In paying attention to the everyday, seemingly mundane things and moments of my life, I am finding ways to know and enjoy God. Who knew that God could use something as superficial as a well-coiffed hairstyle to remind me how supremely beautiful He is… and how only He can make me divinely beautiful?

Day 1 of Enjoying God: Quality Time

~ K ~ Leave a comment

It’s not on my previous list of attributes but I’ve discovered a way to enjoy God is to look for His image in people.

Today, I learned that the God of the universe is a quality-time God. Spending time with my husband, family, and friends is always a delight. I enjoy spending time with them even if I’m simply in their presence, not talking but watching a movie or performing some other task. I cherish the moments I spend with them and simply enjoy being around them. That’s the way God is. He wants us to draw near to Him as He draws close to us.

So, that’s one aspect I’ve learned about God: He loves quality time.