Something that I'm constantly reminded of is how busy life can get. This year, we've got an extra reminder, as we have 4 kids on 3 different baseball teams, and I'm coaching one of them. I see the weight of this on the other parents on our teams, also. It's easy to get distracted when you feel you're being pulled in several directions, and it's out of control. Some days, we have two games and a practice at three different cites, and we don't really know how we're going to make things work! It's frustrating, we're tired, but we're seeing growth in our kids, and getting to know people we may not have known otherwise. In all of this, I'm reminded of one thing: I asked God to place me in my community to tell of His glory. Each of our circumstances is there for that purpose: to draw us back to God's presence that we may glory in Him. Some of us are hurting, some of us are suffering, some of us are uncertain of what we should do, but I think, when this happens, we fall in to a trap: we focus on ourselves, instead of the One who leads us. When we focus on ourselves, one of two things happens: we delve deeper in to our pride, or we dive deeper in to depression, and, I will note, it is easy to fall in to either of these. Every circumstance we are given, good and bad, is meant for one thing: to draw us to God in His glory. Everything should either demonstrate our weaknesses, an thus our need for God, or show us God's blessings, so that we may give Him glory. Either way, if we focus on ourselves, we become more and more lost as time goes by, but as we turn our eyes to Christ, we find Him, and thus HE conforms us in to what He always intended us to be. We are either being drawn to or away from His glory, and the only way to get closer is to turn all of our attention to Him. Romans 8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
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