The Parade

Posted: Thursday, April 29, 2010 by Michael Elkins in
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When I think of a parade I think of this beautiful array of colors, and activities, extremely tall guys on stilts, and huge Mr Potato Head balloons floating high in the sky.  I think of this organized, yet chaotic event.  My thought always is, "Someone had to organize this.  Someone had to make sure all this happens and orchestrates it to the second."   Life is like this parade.  We try to structure it and run it, but yet it is chaotic all at the same time.  Things happen. Romans 2:27-28 says, "Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith.  So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law."  
Another version words it this way, " So where does that leave our proud Jewish insider claims and counterclaims? Canceled? Yes, canceled. What we've learned is this: God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does.  We've finally figured it out. Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade"  So many times I try to run my own parade and I go crazy in the process.  I seem to live like everything depends on me and on what I do and the more I look at that way of thinking the more I see that it is selfish.  When Paul talks about the story of Abraham he makes it clear that God's promises were not dependent on Abraham, but they were dependent on God.  I was at a conference recently and a guy said, "Ministry is what we do for God, it is what God does to us, in us, and through us"  We have made it so much about us and everything we do, or don't do, and have not really made it about God.  Even though we put the front up that that is why we are doing what we do.  For me this relates to stress.  I stress out because I try to "make it happen" when in reality God makes it happen and that relieves all sorts of stress for me. My mentality is is, "God you can have this if you can get it out of my death grip"  My hope is I can release that death grip and give it to him.

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