God’s Promises to You

When You Almost Miss a Blessing

Megan Breedlove June 8, 2015 0Comment

Last week, my three middle children—Kenny, Lindsey, and Jessica—and I went to see a baseball game at Globe Life Park in Arlington, where the Texas Rangers play. Although I can’t quote you any statistics or tell you much about the history of baseball, I do understand quite a bit about how the game is played, including things like strategy and rules.

So I found it rather amusing when my kids, who know virtually nothing about baseball, began to make comments and ask questions about…well, about everything.

“Mommy, why are those lights green?”
“Why are people clapping?”
“Do these guys get paid for playing this game?”
“Look at that plane flying overhead!”
“What just happened?”
“See those birds on the field? Whose team are they on?”
“Mommy, will the fireworks (set off when a Ranger hits a home run) kill any birds?”
“Mommy, why is there all that extra space?” (She was referring to the outfield.)
“Tell me if anybody hits a home run.”
“When is somebody going to come by selling food?”
“Aren’t we going to hit ANY runs?”
“I don’t understand much about this game. You’ll have to explain it to me.”

Or the “Who’s-on-First” routine between Kenny and Lindsey:

Kenny (reading the scoreboard): “Robinson Chirinos grounded to short.”
Lindsey: “He’s grounded?”
Kenny: “Short.”
Lindsey: “Why??”

After awhile, though, the constant, stream-of-consciousness comments and questions began to annoy me. Could we not just watch the game??? What did the kids think we were there for, anyway?

Apparently, they thought we were there for five trips to the concession stands and/or bathrooms. When the oldest kid you have with you is only 10, if someone has to go potty or wants a drink, all of you have to get up and make the trek.

Actually, to be strictly accurate, only four of those trips occurred in the first nine innings. Yes, you read that right: first nine innings. Because my kids got an unexpected bonus when the game went into eleven innings.

“Kids, the game just went into extra innings,” I said.

“Woo hoo!” shouted nine-year-old Lindsey. “I’m not even tired! I’ve had too much sugar!”

By the bottom of the eleventh inning, we were sitting in the very top row of the stadium, because the kids had noticed that nobody else was up there, and they thought it would be “really cool” to sit up so high. So when a Rangers player got a base hit, driving in the winning run, we had several rows to ourselves as we cheered and then jammed to the celebratory music playing over the loudspeakers.

It was a fantastic time, and the kids had a blast.

But I almost missed it.

It’s not that I wasn’t on time for the game. It’s just that after the first few minutes of questions and comments from my children, I began to perfect the fake smile and fake polite tone of voice that you only use when you don’t really mean it, and when people are around who might very well hear you. I was really annoyed. The kids were interrupting my enjoyment of the game. I wanted to share my love of baseball with them, and they were paying attention to all the wrong things. I had paid for our evening with extra money I earned from babysitting my friends’ son, and my kids were ruining it for me. Or so I thought.

Until somewhere about the sixth or seventh inning when I realized something: the kids were having a great time. As in, a really great time.

And all of a sudden, I was brought up short once again by my own bad attitude.

My purpose in bringing my children to the game was to show them a good time. And they were, indeed, having a great time. It just didn’t look the way I expected it to look.

I wanted them to fall in love with the game; they wanted to enjoy every minute of everything that was going on—the amazing immensity of the stadium, the crowds, the junk food, the sounds, sights, smells, and new experiences. The delight of being somewhere special with someone you love.

And I almost missed a huge blessing of enjoying it with them, of enjoying them, because the experience wasn’t turning out quite like I thought it would.

God was offering me something beautiful, but because it wore other clothing than I expected it to wear, I almost didn’t recognize it.

I wonder how often you and I miss out on God’s blessings because we’re looking for one particular kind of blessing, and that’s not what God has in mind.

How often do we hope things turn out a certain way, and when they don’t, we say, “Well, there’s nothing to enjoy here”?

Perhaps you’re facing disappointment right now. Is it possible that, if you could see the situation through God’s eyes, you would count it a blessing?

May God open our eyes to all of His blessings, not just the ones that look like we expect.

John 1:16—From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. (NIV)

I Bless You No Troubles

Megan Breedlove October 29, 2012 4Comments

Usually I’m the one who takes Kenny to school in the mornings (he is temporarily enrolled in public school to work on some of his language issues). Each morning as he hops out of the car, I say something like, “I love you. Have a great day!” or, “I’m proud of you!”

The other day when Kenny got out, before I could say anything, he said, “I’ll make you proud today.”

“Aww, I know you will, Son,” I said.

Recently, however, Kenny has begun saying something different. Each day as he opens the door, gets out, and wrestles his backpack onto his shoulders, he says, “I bless you no troubles!”

After he’d said it a few times, we asked him where he got the idea of saying it. “Nowhere,” Kenny said, smiling. “I just thought it would be a nice thing to say, because I don’t want you to have any troubles after you go home.”

Indeed it is. It’s a beautiful thing for a barely-eight-year-old boy to come up with, all on his own, a blessing he can offer his parents each day. It’s beautiful that he even thought of doing something like this for us at this age.

You know what? I hadn’t thought of offering him a blessing. Sure, I always said something nice to leave him with that warm feeling in his heart right before he went into his school. But blessing him? Hadn’t thought about it.

Good thing God thinks about blessing me, His child, a lot more than I think about blessing my own children.

I’m not saying I don’t do kind, loving things for my children. I do plenty of those, and I’m sure you do too. But thinking of what I do and say in terms of blessing them? More than that, thinking specifically of speaking blessings into their lives? Haven’t really thought about it.

There are two things I want us both to make it a point to think about this week. The first is to speak words of blessing to our children on a regular basis. Before they go to bed would be a great time to bless them. So would before they go to school, when they return home, or when something significant happens in their day. Spontaneous blessings would be meaningful too.

How exactly do we bless our children? There aren’t any certain words we have to say. Blessings don’t have to sound a certain way. They can be something as simple as saying, “May you be blessed with a good friend to play with at recess,” or, “You know what? Today God wants me to bless you by buying you an ice cream cone. Let’s go!”

The second thing for us to think about is this: Let’s see how many of God’s blessings to us we can recognize. I’m not just talking about realizing that our house or apartment comes from Him, or that the clothes we wear come from Him (though they certainly do). I’m talking about realizing it’s a beautiful day outside and thanking God for blessing you with beautiful weather. Or having a conversation with a friend and thanking God for blessing you with a few adult minutes taken out of your chaotic, child-oriented day.

Not only that, but check out all the blessings found in your Bible from God to you, or from human beings to their families. Blessings are powerful things! God has given so many of them to us in His Word, and He continues to give us more each and every day. In fact, He says that He has given us every spiritual blessing—not just “a couple” of spiritual blessings, but every spiritual blessing.

In fact, God has had specific blessings in mind for us since before the foundation of the world. Let’s look for those blessings this week and see how many of them we can recognize. But let’s not forget to bless our children this week too—frequently, lovingly, and purposefully. Let’s do our best to bless their hearts the way God blesses ours.

Ephesians 1:3—Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

One Hand Only

Megan Breedlove November 14, 2011 0Comment

A few days ago, the kids and I were hanging out in the living room. I was sitting on the couch watching them all perform “tricks” for me, which appeared to involve various feats of balancing themselves on the furniture or the floor in some creative way. “Mommy, wook at me!” Jessica invited as she balanced herself with her head, both hands, and only one foot on the floor. She extended her other leg up behind her.

Immediately, the other kids tried to imitate her. Her trick wasn’t that hard for them, so I decided to throw in a little twist. “See if you can balance with only one hand on the floor,” I challenged them. “Not the other hand, and not your feet.”

They tried for about half a second before Kenny sat down on the floor and said, albeit cheerfully, “I can’t do that.”

“I’ll twy,” Jessica said. I watched her try a little longer before giving up and sitting down.

At that point, Lindsey, who had been trying the whole time, turned herself upright and looked at me. “I did it for a little while,” she said.

What a fantastic illustration of the responses we sometimes give to God when He asks us to do something. Take motherhood, for example. God asks us to parent a child going through a difficult time, or a special needs child, or simply a child who won’t sleep through the night. We try for half a second and then say, “I can’t do that.” We’ve failed. It won’t work, so there’s no use trying.

Or perhaps we’re willing to try a little longer. Perhaps we don’t mind attempting to parent three kids ages three and under. “I’ll try,” we say, but we soon find it difficult, and we give up and sit down. “This is just too much,” we say. “God’s going to have to lighten my load.”

The third response is the best. We simply get to work, and we try to the limit of our endurance. When strength is gone, we say, “I did it as long as I could.” Not “I failed,” but “I succeeded for awhile.”

Make no mistake about it. We all will come to the end of our endurance. God knows that, and He doesn’t count it as failure. Failure is when we look at the evidence in front of us, and we don’t try, because we just don’t see any way it will work in the first place. Or failure is when we give up too soon.

That day in my living room, I didn’t help my kids balance as I told them to. Had I helped, they would all have succeeded. That’s the point. When God asks us to do something, He will help us. Why then do we ever refuse to try, or ever give up? We know we have His help. God never calls us to do something He won’t help us to perform. So knowing that we have His strength and wisdom to get us through, why would we ever consider doing something other than availing ourselves of the help He has stands ready to give? Then, like Lindsey, we could try to the limit of our endurance. The only thing is, our endurance would go a whole lot farther, because we would be operating in His strength.

In whose strength are you fulfilling your calling as a mother? Are you taking advantage of God’s strength, or are you relying on your own?

Parenting is hard and exhausting at times. Believe me, I know. But when we call upon God instead of trying to balance on one hand and our own strength only, we will make it. Not we might; we will.

Psalm 28:7—The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.

At Rest

Megan Breedlove January 10, 2011 0Comment

My mom was a nurse for many years. Now, in her retirement, she works at Kmart a few hours each week. She enjoys the contact with her customers and would much rather be out interacting with people than sitting home with nothing to do.

Mom once told me of a time when a young couple came through her checkout line. The mother was pushing the cart, and the couple’s young son rode inside. The father held their daughter in his arms. She was sound asleep with her head on his shoulder.

Mom said she thought about how we who are Christians can do the same thing with God that the little girl was doing with her father: be completely at rest, knowing that God loves us and will take care of us.

Indeed. God’s promised over and over in His word that He will meet our needs. His willingness and ability to take care of us are boundless. The only problem is that our trust has definite limits. We don’t see Him providing the way we think we should, so we think He’s falling down on the job.

But sometimes we have a very different idea of what our needs are than God does. We think our needs are anything we deem essential for living the way we think we’re supposed to live—or the way we want to live. God defines our needs differently. He says the only thing that constitutes a need is something that is necessary in order for our lives to fulfill His purpose. In other words, maybe we don’t need a good night’s sleep like we think we do. Maybe what really need is to be awakened by our baby enough times in the middle of the night, enough nights in a row so that we’re driven to our knees in prayer. Or maybe we don’t need the smooth sailing we think we need; perhaps our greater need is to show forth God’s glory by allowing others to see how we make it through stressful circumstances on His strength alone.

I’ll always meet your needs, God promises. Not the ones you think you have, but the ones I know you have. And not necessarily in the way you think, but in the way I know is best.

It’s easy to say, but hard to live. I’ve heard it said that the longest 18 inches in the world is the distance between a person’s head and heart. It’s easy to give intellectual assent to things like God’s goodness and provision, but much harder to rest emotionally in the things we know to be true.

How do you know if you really believe in God’s provision? If you really trust Him? By your reaction when hard times come. Put simply: if you’re not at peace, you’re not trusting. I don’t mean that you’ll be happy all the time. God doesn’t expect you to like every circumstance that comes your way. But He does expect you to continue to trust Him.

Don’t let temporary circumstances cause you to doubt the eternal God and the truth of His unchanging word. When the wind is blowing and the waves are threatening to knock you down, keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Don’t look to your circumstances; look to Him. Circumstances can look pretty bad, and emotions can change. But God’s promised you many times and in many ways that He’ll take care of you. And He’s kept every one of His promises to you. Every single one.

Matthew 14:29-31—Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

Joshua 23:14—You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.