It's another "Sorry Saturday" (and almost a "Sorry Sunday") but this time it's not entirely my fault. We were camping this week and the campground did not have their internet working on Friday evening. I know, I know, I could have scheduled a post on Thursday when it was working or maybe even could have had one ready to go before we went camping, but this is the best I can do for right now. Today we had a group of kids and sponsors from our youth group come to the campground and we had fun boating, swimming, and cooking at the campfire. What a great group!
So, it's a "Sorry Saturday" night and I need to post this before I go to bed. We have to get up at about 2:30 a.m. so we can get our daughter Erin to the airport by 5:00 for a 7:20 flight. She's going to be doing daycare on a military base in Germany this semester. I'm sure I'll tell you more about that in a future "Focus Friday" sometime.
I had lots of themes swimming around in my head this week for Focus Friday, but I finally settled on one at about 10:00 p.m. Deleting.
You see, at about 9:30 I sat down to play one game of Mahjong tiles on my iPad. "I'll just play one game before I update my blog," I thought. I didn't complete the level in 5 minutes so I had to try again. Missed it. I have to get those three stars for finishing in less than 5 minutes. Tried again. Missed. Realized I just might have a problem with self control. Tried one more time. At 10:00 I looked up and decided that was enough. I held my finger on the app and hit the X to delete it.
This has been a long time coming. I had been spending more and more time on that game throughout the day, even as I thought about other things I could be/should be doing. It was time to get rid of it once and for all. My kids were starting to tease me about that being my new "Candy Crush." I noticed that too often someone in my family would be talking to me and I would keep my eyes down, frantically trying to find matches to click on and get rid of those dumb tiles.
Now, Mahjong Tiles is not a bad game. If I could just play it once in a while for a few minutes that would be fine. But when it starts to get out of control it's time to delete.
As I look at my life, I realize there have been times where I've had to delete something in order to follow God more closely. Sometimes it has been a hobby that got too time consuming, sometimes it has been a television program that was feeding my mind too much garbage. As I think about it, there are some thoughts and attitudes that I need to keep deleting whenever they show up.
Negative thoughts about myself, judgmental thoughts about others, pride, shame, insecurity, fear, anxiety...all of those things need to be deleted. I have a great big God who loves me completely and that love frees me up to feel good about myself, show compassion to everyone I meet, stay humble, have good self-esteem, have confidence, be courageous, and have trust that God is in control.
He really is in control. That's why most things in our lives that get out of control need to be deleted.
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off [Delete?] everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us," (Hebrews 12: 1 NIV - my question in brackets)
Is there anything in your life that is a bit out of control? What do you need to delete in order to focus more completely on God?
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