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| Joel Osteen |
I love British humor. I actually love any type of dry, quick wit. To me it's a sign of intelligence. The ability to make a dead pan comment or see the insane side of a sane world without resorting to lowbrow words or situations is a sign of intelligence to me.
I'm not sure if I ever mentioned Joel Osteen Ministries before or not. I came across him for the first time a month or so back when I missed my regular church service and felt the desire (notice I didn't say need) to watch a Sunday morning TV sermon. Anyway, I stumbled across him and with a skeptics ear I listened. I say 'skeptics ear' because I'm a little worried about some televangelists...and there's plenty of reason to be such, but I actually liked what he said.
And by my limited knowledge of the Words, Joel's message's easily pass my personal litmus test on being biblically sound.
Today is Tuesday. That is six days ago I received the inflammatory letter from my wife's attorney, and you can guess by now I have allowed it to affect me at a very deep level. Thank goodness my ex can't see me because there's no reason I'd like to give her to know that she was able to get into my head so good and derail me for so many days.
But then today (albeit 6 days later) I felt the need inside me to listen to a Joel Osteen sermon online. I've never been to his website before. Today was the first time. I signed in and went to his podcast section and chose sermon #515 - "The Power of Letting Go" (which happened to be recorded May 27, 2012, just a few weeks back).
WOW!!
The message was designed for me to hear today. Maybe God wanted me to think about things the last 6 days before I was ready to accept something. That something was the "idea of 'Letting Go'". Joel makes a a great point towards the end of this 30 minute sermon.
"Why do we place a question mark, where God has put a period?"
Meaning, whether we understand things or not, we should tune in more acutely and listen to God's answer, and accept it for what the final result is. Instead, we sit and try to figure things out and wedge it conveniently into our own parameters so that we can understand things. Joel goes on to say that "we don't know all the answer, and nor do we need to." We need to create a new file drawer in our head...one that is labeled "I don't know why". That one is missing because we always try to create an answer for everything and justify things at the moment so that we can process it for ourselves and thus move on.
But sometimes things just don't compute.
And so we stew, and we think, and we analyze, and we play the tape in our heads over and over and over again....looking for that one clue....that one piece of information....that one hint....that we can say "Aha!!....That's why that happened."
But are we ever really satisfied with that answer...or non-answer? I know I generally am not, and thus begins the cycle of driving myself insane, and spiraling into depression, anger, frustration, and everything else negative that I tend to blog about.
When God just put a period on that chapter.
And then we turn the page, and a new chapter is about to begin.
I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to this, maybe even more so. For whatever reason, I was created to over think things to death. Even though I don't like to shoehorn myself into the stigma of being a pessimist, I do indeed tend to look at the glass as 'half empty'.
And who am I to question the Creator who knows everything where I no just a fraction of nothing?
I need to learn to "Let Go." All this thinking and worrying and making up answers in my head, is just what I alluded to yesterday...it all amounts to nothing, because I don't know the final answer nor do I have all the information. And maybe God just wants me to accept His period on it, move on, and not try to put my question mark at the end. The more I question things looking for an answer, the longer I wait before I can turn the page and start a new chapter, the chapter He is going to write for me.
It's me about getting over that mental hurdle and convincing myself I will be okay. You know that. My friends know that. My family knows that. God knows that. I just need to accept it and own it myself. That's the trick.
Once I have done that, I can move on.
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