Today's sermon thought: (not word-for-word, but paraphrased heavily by me! Sorry, Rev. Parks!)
In the book Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion, authors DeYoung and Kluck come down on modern evangelicals, who are, in their words, addicted to happy endings.
You know, happy endings. The kind we've been sold by Disney?
In modern church-speak, it goes like this: we prayed and (insert one blessing* here) happened and isn't God so wonderful?
*my husband got a job, we sold our house, I found my car keys, my child was healed, etc. etc.*
Except.
Except that sometimes your husband stays unemployed, your house goes into foreclosure, you have to have new car keys made because your toddler flushed the old set, your child is not healed, but dies.
Except that sometimes, the happy ending is only in heaven.
And all the time, God wants us to find our happy ending not in what He can do for us, but in who He is.
Psalm 16:2 says, "I say to the LORD, You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you."
In the words of my dear friend Cindy -
I just need more Jesus.
May it be ever so.
2 comments:
Recently the Lord worked something out for me. He kept telling me in prayer, through friends, 3 friends speaking the same thing in fact...the joy of the Lord is my strength....how easy it was for me to forget that my strength comes from Him and in His strength I must find joy. That's so hard to do when we're not feelin' that happy ending! Thank you for sharing :)
Thanks for that comment, Tina. It's so true, isn't it?
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