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Glimmers in the Fog

Finding Glimpses of Divine Providence in Everyday Life
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Three Ways God Wants You To Use Your Imagination

4/25/2018

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Hint: Read this, and I bet you'll sleep better tonight!

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Every now and then, I stumble upon a great writer or orator from the past who seems to share my passion for seeing glimpses of God’s presence in ordinary situations. Although he was controversial in his day, the mid-1800s Presbyterian minister Henry Ward Beecher frequently talked about God’s desire for us to employ our minds in pursuit of Him. Perhaps my favorite quote of his is, “the soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.” In other words, we can only achieve our God-given purpose in life if we regularly engage our imagination. 

Beecher, who was a tireless abolitionist, went so far as to say, “the imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.” While I wasn’t able to find the context surrounding that statement, I suspect that he must have been inspired by the many stories in the Bible where God called people to take a step of faith off the ledge of life… to have the kind of courage that most of us can only imagine. Beecher spent most of his life risking everything to free slaves, so I am sure he found the strength to follow his calling through the stories of the Biblical greats who were called before him. Abraham had never been anywhere. Yet God called him to pack up his stuff and simply “go.” Where? “To a land I will show you.” Ok, translated into modern life, God basically said to him, “well, that’s for me to know and you to find out.” Romans 4 tells us that Abraham “in hope believed against hope.” And through him all humankind was blessed. 

In our quest to know God better, depend on Him more deeply, and see His glory radiate through our lives, the cultivation of our imagination is absolutely critical. I like to think of Ephesians 3:14-21 as the great “imagination manifesto” of Paul the Apostle. Sure, there are tons of other often quoted verses, like placing our trust in the unseen and betting the farm on future hope, and they are all useful and encouraging. But I love the passage from Ephesians because it directly ties the unwavering strength we long for and the deep understanding we crave to the use of our imagination. We have to use our imagination to even begin to fathom the breadth, length, height and depth of Christ's love for us. We have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable and humble in order to envision, or dream about, the glorious riches of God and His kingdom. The Message version of that passage describes God as “the magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth.” And this same mighty Father accomplishes more than we can imagine, “not by pushing us around, but by working within us His Spirit.” 

So how does God want us to use our imagination? I suppose the possibilities are as endless as God is, but here are three that came to my mind this week.

#1 — Imagine His promises being fulfilled in your life.
The Bible is packed with more than 3,500 specific promises. When God says something He means it, and He doesn’t discriminate based on your eligibility or desirability. He wants us to have wisdom, joy, peace and hope in every circumstance. There aren’t any exceptions. However, we often fail to see some of God’s promises come to fruition in our lives. And, I don’t know about you, but it’s when I am most desperate for His help that the promises seem to evade me. I’ve pondered this a lot through my years of faith, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am the problem, not God. When I am feeling like I am at my wit's end, those are usually the times where I don’t allow the Holy Spirit to come in and calm my crazy mind and fulfill the promise. When I flail about mentally, I am the equivalent of a drowning swimmer who doesn’t see the lifeguard reaching for her. Here’s the key: God is calling us to act on the promises we haven’t seen, felt or experienced yet. For example, if I am feeling anxious and pray for peace, God then wants me to call upon my imagination and envision receiving that promise of peace in full measure. It's that first step of envisioning the peace coming, which then allows me to begin acting like I’ve received it. And when we take action, our minds eventually follow. But it takes courage to believe that the peace is there, and we just need to stop future-tripping, over-analyzing, and pondering all the “what-ifs.” Philippians 4:8-9 clearly instructs us to stop thinking about the what-ifs and focus only on those things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and worthy of praise. That pretty much rules out future-tripping, because what you think might happen is not actually true yet. Period.  Proverbs 3:24, for example, is a promise about sleep (and there are several more!). "When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.” Now certainly there are times where extenuating circumstances may prevent us from going to bed. There may also be situations where God might be urging you to stay up and pray, but generally speaking, He wants to bless us with good rest. You know those nights where you’re lying there worrying or your mind is just racing about your to-do list? Those aren’t His will. Next time, try imagining what it feels like for the promise of Proverbs 3:24 to wash over you. Take the leap of faith and believe that He wants that for you. Envision His canopy of stars displayed over your bed, and as you imagine yourself looking into the night sky, meditate on the verse. Your imagination can help you commit to your belief and lead you to the action of trust. And, with a little bit of practice, the Holy Spirit will teach you how to rest more peacefully. 

#2 — Imagine what He’s calling you to do. 
When your imagination and a Godly purpose are combined, your motivation, courage, and understanding of God’s power are ignited. Set ablaze. Pumped up. Pick whatever phrase makes you excited about God’s adventure for your life. David had to imagine himself defeating Goliath. He envisioned putting the stone in the slingshot and felling the giant on the first try. (The story is found in 1 Samuel 17.) Queen Esther had to summon the courage to go before the king and beg for the life of her people. In that culture, people were put to death who dared go before the king without his request — especially a woman. With prayer and imagination, she envisioned doing what God told her do. Her imagination helped fuel her courage. Both David and Esther first had to see themselves trusting God and acting on what He asked them to do. So whether God is asking you to talk to the grocery store clerk, leave your job, or save your marriage, imagine yourself doing what He asks you to do, filled with His Spirit, and then walking onward boldly — all for His glory, and not your own. 

#3 — Imagine His splendor and majesty daily. 
When we ponder the greatness of God in a new way on a daily basis, many amazing things happen. First, we are humbled and our perspective shifts from our immediate world and our own agendas, to His grandeur and higher plan for our lives. Pride lurking in our hearts and behind our motivations, will always taint our imagination and turn it away from envisioning the Truth of God’s Word and what He has planned for us. Second, we become thankful. When we meditate on the power, love, and wisdom of the King of the Universe, we can’t help but bow in worship and gratitude that He cares enough to commune with each of us on a personal level. Third, taking the time to meditate on the splendor of God and praising Him for His attributes and character, will help you to develop more self-control and mental discipline. Using your imagination to envision what it’s like sitting at His feet or worshipping before His throne takes practice, but we are commanded to do it. How else could we “enter His courts with praise” (Psalm 100) or be creative enough to find a new way to praise Him every day (Psalm 96:1)? As believers in Jesus, we are transformed into sons and daughters of the King — and that’s not just in eternity. God is calling us to act like the chosen ones we are, here on earth, so that we reflect His glory in heaven to others. And if we are not spending time letting our minds explore the vastness of who He is, then how will we ever become familiar enough with our King to resemble Him? Next time you pray, imagine yourself sitting with Jesus in your favorite place. Listen for His voice. Ask Him to show you something new about Him today. And then believe that He will. It may happen right then. It might happen on your drive to work. It could happen in the shower. But the more you train your mind to focus on Him, the more likely your ears will be working.  
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How To Turn The Flywheel of Fearless Faith

4/18/2018

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When I was in my early twenties, I remember being afraid that God would ask me to be a missionary to some scary place where I’d have to eat bugs to survive and go without a hot shower for months. Maybe that sounds outrageous, but God has asked people to do even crazier things than that, even martyrdom. And because we all know that, untamed fear can really gnaw at our souls. Fear, closely followed by pride, is perhaps our number one barrier to trusting God.
Think about it for a moment, if you could completely remove your ability to be afraid, is there anything that would hold you back from any adventure, situation or challenge? When you ask God to change you or speak to you through the power of the Holy Spirit, how much of you do you actually hold back because you’re afraid that He might actually follow through on the request? How would your reaction change if you could become truly fearless?

While I’m light years away from being fearless (truly, I think my brain is hardwired for worry), isn’t that the kind of faith we all desire, but are often too afraid to actually pursue? So many times, I think I have advanced my trust level to meteoric heights, and then life throws me a curve ball, and I find myself deep in a pit of worry rather than relying on God. Ok, so there might be a little bit of pride creeping in there as well, but as I thought about the mechanics of faith building, one concept kept coming to my mind over and over… the flywheel. Flywheels are notoriously difficult to get going. If you don’t know what one is, picture an extremely heavy metal wheel at least four times taller than you are mounted on an axle. Now imagine that your job is to push on it to get it spinning. Those initial efforts will be painfully slow. In fact, it may take you hours to make a single rotation. But after a while, it starts to get a little easier. Then, ever so gradually, the flywheel will begin to store up rotational energy, and the more you turn it consistently, the easier it becomes. Finally, momentum works in your favor, and although you are not pushing any harder, the flywheel is spinning at a rate you can hardly keep up with. 

Building a faith that becomes fearless is similar to the flywheel, with one gigantic difference: we don’t push it on our own. We can’t do it ourselves, but neither will God do it without our participation. In this symbiotic relationship, lies one of the greatest mysteries described in the Bible. How can we come to faith by grace alone, yet God asks us to expend effort “to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” in Philippians 2:12? The key is in the next verse: “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” We have to turn the flywheel, but God has to move in us in order to motivate us to turn it. I Corinthians 15:10 Paul talks about how hard he’s worked, but then he says “but it wasn’t I” that did it. That is the paradox of the symbiotic relationship. It is and it isn’t — all at the same time. We have to bend our will, which certainly takes a great amount of effort at times, to invite the Holy Spirit to take control of our lives, but then God performs the transformative work itself. John Piper once said of faith, “It is a doing, whose doing is the will to let another do all the doing.” Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

Time is the other key factor in the flywheel’s mounting energy. It can take a lot of it to get the flywheel going, but the effects last even longer. Unfortunately, time is not something most of us like to expend. We want a miracle now. A magic pill. Instant improvement. But the work of the Holy Spirit is more often slow and steady than immediate — and that’s to our benefit. When we have to invest ourselves for long periods of time, our knowledge is deeper, our experience more indelible, and our appreciation more enduring. The beautiful thing is that the more we move and operate under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the more we will desire to move and operate in under His guidance. The Holy Spirit magnifies our efforts and the flywheel turns all the more efficiently, producing even more for the Kingdom. 

How the Flywheel of Faith Works
The other reason the flywheel is such a great example of building faith, is because it is circular. It all begins with the first step of faith: trusting in a specific promise we find clearly stated in the Bible. Then, as we take God at His Word, we begin to act on stated commands in His Word, the scriptures. As our faith increases, we begin to learn how to trust the “still, small voice” we hear in prayer time. Once we’ve grown accustomed to His voice, both in the Word and prayer, we advance into hearing Him throughout the day, guiding us and asking us to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And with each small step, the flywheel gains more and more strength, focus and energy. It may be something seemingly small, like learning to obey when the Spirit whispers, "talk to that cashier at the grocery store. She needs encouragement today.” But each act of obedience builds up to the bigger steps that revolutionize our lives. With each step, you may think you’re not ready, but by yielding to Him, God will make you ready in ways that will astonish you. I often hear people ask, “how do I know God’s will?” The answer is: start with what’s been clearly commanded in the Word, obey consistently, and as your faithfulness grows, He will reveal Himself to you in greater and greater ways. Scoffing at the little things because we’re longing for God to give us something “grand” to do, is one of the surest ways to prevent the flywheel from ever turning at all. 

As the days and years roll by, we simply need to patiently keep repeating what He’s asked us to do, over and over. God’s work in us may be mysterious, but His directions are simple to understand. The difficulty comes in the following and the trusting. Each time we repeat a step of surrender and obedience, the boldness of our belief and execution increases and our consistency improves. Eventually, what seemed so difficult in previous turns, becomes remarkably satisfying. We become more joyful in the execution. And finally, we learn to trust in God's wisdom, what He provides, and in the calling He’s laid on our lives. When we surrender our wills to His guidance, He fills us so that we not only do it well, but we find immeasurable, deep, and inexplicable pleasure in doing the very thing we didn’t want to do in the beginning. Of course, as our faith flywheel ramps up, the things the Holy Spirit asks us to do get more and more challenging, but the amazing thing is that we are more and more ready for them. In time, when you look back at the trail of things that got your flywheel going, you come to realize that some of the most arduous ones are the very things you actually savor and relish doing now. 

The Flywheel in Action
When I first started tithing, I freaked out every time I wrote the check. But God was teaching me to obey, one week at a time. I wasn’t joyful or content about it in the beginning (and that’s an understatement!). But the more faithful I was, the more God increased the fruit of faith in me. Now, tithing is pure joy for me as I worship God in giving back to Him. This blog post would be a mile long if I told you all the ways I’ve seen positive changes in my life through the practice of tithing. Considering money —and the potential lack of it — is a debilitating fear and source of pride for many people, the flywheel of faith applied to personal finances could radically alter their perspectives over time. 

Perhaps the ultimate demonstration of faith fearlessness is Mother Teresa. I know she’s a bit of a cliche, but her flywheel was spinning beyond comprehension. It’s the only way she could’ve done what she did. Most of us remember her at the peak of her global popularity and admiration. People of all faiths around the world were awestruck by her sacrifice and would say, “I could never do that.” But there was a time when young Anjezë (that was her Albanian birth name) also had to push her first turn of the flywheel. And I bet it was hard for her too. She didn’t start pushing her faith as Mother Teresa. She began as an ordinary girl with an emerging belief, just like everyone else does. 

Lamentations 3:22-23 says that God’s mercies are new every morning. The Message translation says His merciful love is created new for us every day. In the same principle of the flywheel, God’s mercies will change, grow and multiply to suit the tasks He’s called us to do. As our prayer life grows, the requests get bigger, but so do the miracles. As the leading of the Spirit becomes more challenging and we obey, our fears become less and less. The mercies Mother Teresa received each morning in the streets of Calcutta, are different than your mercies, or my mercies. And we cannot store them up — like the manna God provided to the Israelites in the desert — we are only given enough for today. We also cannot “feel” the mercies of tomorrow. They will be given to us in the portion that we need them on the day they are needed. That’s what faith is all about. Trusting God that He will give you the wisdom, strength, endurance, hope, peace, and love for each day as it comes — and to be comfortable operating not on what you know or feel right now, but on what you believe God will do — is what is meant by Hebrews 11:1 when it says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  
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Why I Believe in Magic

4/11/2018

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We are all living stories, each hoping to see something miraculous

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Mark Twain once said that there is no such thing as a new idea. “It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.” Heroes versus villains, boy meets girl, good versus evil, the underdog making a comeback – these themes and outcomes are as familiar to each of us as the voice of a loved one. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an epic battle in space told in a 2018 movie theater or a child’s bedtime story told by a roaring hearth in the Middle Ages, humans are creatures of habit and a good story well told has been important to us since the dawn of time. 

In the same way, both amateur and professional storytellers are fond of incorporating magic into a tale to make it more alluring and exciting. Disney built an empire by weaving stories of magic. Seven of the top 10 best-selling novels of all time are from the Harry Potter series. Even CS Lewis, one of the most respected Christian writers of all time, used magic in his stories to explain the Gospel to children. He did such an amazing job, Disney turned it into a feature film franchise grossing over $1.5 billion worldwide. 

We are enticed by the thought that something magical could occur to rescue us, comfort us, and remind us that there’s more to life than meets the eye. That’s because we are created in the image of God, and deep within every human being is an innate sense that there must be something more. In their innocence and with trusting hearts, children find it easy to believe in the supernatural. Unlike adults, they don’t have anything to come between them and believing in the unseen or inexplicable. Their vision is not blinded by pride, skepticism, personal agenda, and arrogance. Children are like sponges, constantly exploring and stretching their minds. It’s almost as though everything they see has an element of magic to it. 

Unfortunately though, the definition of what’s magical changes as we grow up. As children, magic is as simple as following Kermit the Frog to the end of the rainbow. As adults, our fantasies become far less innocent and significantly more tainted. And the more we drown ourselves in them, the more extreme they seem to become. It’s one of the most ironic facts of this post-industrial age — the larger our appetites expand for consuming fantastical entertainment about supernatural things, the less we believe that anything supernatural can actually happen. Therefore, the very thing most people crave, is the thing that they will never experience in real life. Instead, many choose to gaze at shoddy counterfeits and lurid diversions until they feel numb and able to forget about their hard day at work, the fight with their spouse, or a looming financial problem. As Neil Postman prophetically said, Americans (and I’m sure the rest of the world) are "amusing ourselves to death". 

So as adults trying to survive in a hyper-stressed, seemingly crazy world, how do we not become jaded, hurt and bitter? How do we cultivate a childlike heart that’s trusting, open to the supernatural, and capable of believing what it can’t see? The answer is simple: humility. Easy to understand, but challenging to implement. Contrary to what many people think, being a savvy, brain-using adult doesn’t mean that we have to kick all notions of the supernatural to the curb. And being an ardent believer in the possibility of the miraculous doesn’t mean we are not called to think. God doesn’t want us to have an immature faith or to not use our intellect in the pursuit of Him. In fact, far from it, we are commanded to move on from milk to “solid food” in our spiritual growth. (Hebrews 5:14) And the Apostle Paul admonishes us to grow up in Christ in 1 Corinthians 13:11-12: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” Yet then why does Jesus seem to emphasize the need to be like children over and over? Because pride grows in us as we grow up. We become too proud to admit there are things we cannot understand. Jesus knew pride was the motivation of the disciples when they asked about being the greatest in the kingdom in Matthew 18:1-4. So he put a child on his knee and said they needed to be humble like her. I love the way Luke 10:21 in The Message version puts it, "At that, Jesus rejoiced, exuberant in the Holy Spirit. 'I thank you, Father, Master of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the know-it-alls and showed them to these innocent newcomers. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.'” Again, we see that the typical wisdom of the world can blind us to the real truth and prevent us from seeing the miraculous — whether it’s in the form of something truly spontaneous or something that is slowly transformed over time.  

John Piper says in his book Think, “There is no way to awaken faith or strengthen faith that evades thinking … the mind serves to know the truth that fuels the fires of the heart.” The entire book is a manifesto to truly using your mind as an integral part of your faith experience, and is based on Proverbs 2:3-5, "yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” When we have a mind that is seeking the True Knowledge, the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see God’s supernatural work going on everywhere. 

Since one of my greatest passions — perhaps even my calling — is to help people see glimpses of God in the routine happenings of everyday life, storytelling has become my lifeblood. It’s the reason I quit my job last year to make time to write a novel and blog about God’s relentless pursuit of us. And like CS Lewis, I think the careful, thoughtful incorporation of a kind of magic is critical to draw people in and encourage them to see more clearly the divinely-directed things that happen around us every day. When I write, I am driven to create wonderment for the reader of God’s glory, magnificence, power, and unending love for us. It’s a tall order in a distracted culture with a short attention span, but as Aslan the lion said in Lewis’ first novel, “there is a magic deeper still … before the dawn of time” and it will always triumph. Of course, Aslan represents the Lion of Judah, another name for Christ, who existed before the beginning, who reigns in heaven now, and who is to come back in glory. His light always burns, no matter how brightly other false lights try to outshine it. By following my calling to write, I am believing that God will do the miraculous, and somehow cause the messages He lays on my heart to find their way to the right people at the right time. 

We are all living stories, unfolding day by day. When we get out of bed each morning, the decision that awaits us is will we live out our story for ourselves or be willing to turn it over to God to write for us. Magic in a fairy tale is instantaneous, unpredictable and used as a means to an end. Miracles in our stories may be instantaneous like hearing God’s direction in your heart, or they may take many months or years to come to fruition, like the restoration of a relationship or the healing of a mental illness. Some miracles are as predictable as the sunrise if we have eyes to see them. “His mercies are new every morning…” Lamentations 3:22-23 Most importantly, God’s miracles are never just a means to an end. They are always part of His grand story. And the coolest part is that His believers know exactly how that story is going to end. 
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How to Keep the Fog of Familiarity from Sabotaging your Life

4/4/2018

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A friend of mine once told me that the mind is like a muscle. Let it wander however it wants and indulge in whatever it craves, and it will slowly atrophy. The most insidious aspect of this truth is that the decline happens so subtly and gradually over time, we can end up drowning in a pit of bad habits without even realizing how we got there. But stretching the mind, exercising it, and disciplining it will make it healthier, stronger and more agile. This is especially true for the more difficult disciplines, such as spiritual growth, creativity, innovation, or leadership advancement, which can be sabotaged by our minds as soon as our eyes open in the morning. My friend’s advice resonated with me so much, that whenever I get tired of pursuing a truly abundant life, I remind myself over and over that the muscle must be worked daily to stay healthy.
 
One of the most powerful “frenemies” (friend + enemy) of the mind is familiarity. On the plus side, familiarity gives us confidence in relationships and situations we’ve encountered before, boosts our efficiency and performance with routine tasks, minimizes distractions and annoyances, and generally makes us feel comfortable, more relaxed and secure. Thanks to biological familiarity, we eventually don’t notice a bad smell or an annoying noise if it’s consistently present for a long period of time. And thank goodness, we all get more comfortable with routine places, situations and relationships, so we don’t remain as nervous and inefficient at our jobs as we did on the first day of employment. As a vital coping mechanism, familiarity can lower our heart rates and stress levels. Certainly, there are some patterns and repetitions that are incredibly vital and helpful, such as the laws of the universe, rules of math, established traffic patterns and routine garbage pickup. Most importantly, we can rise each day counting on God’s consistent character and unchanging love for us.
 
But then, there’s the other side of familiarity – the archenemy to all the elusive things we chase after, like dreams, ambition, romance, achievement, creativity, innovation, and dynamic relationships. When familiarity runs amuck and crosses over from helpful into damaging, we end up experiencing boredom, complacency, laziness, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, contempt, and mental or emotional apathy. When familiarity takes over our hearts and minds, we can become blind to what’s right in front of us (hello? the glasses on your head or the “lost” keys on the counter) or numb to those who are supposed to mean the most to us, like our spouses, family or friends. There are times I get so bored with my routines that I don’t want to do them anymore, like brushing my teeth (don’t worry, I still do), and the same effect happens with people or situations we encounter on a frequent basis. In conversations, we start filling in the blanks in our minds when a familiar person talks, assuming that we know what he is going to say. With material possessions, we begin to devalue them as they become more familiar. A new piece of technology that you couldn’t put down last month, may not even be in your hands this month. And worst of all, familiarity can lull us into such a comfortable state that we run back to unhealthy situations over and over.
 
As I pondered how familiarity has overrun a few important things in my life, I realized that the following five “A’s” have been critical in helping me continue to chase my dreams, keep my relationships thriving, and not get stagnant in my pursuit of God. Oswald Chambers, the great turn-of-the-century theologian, once said, "Human nature, if healthy, demands excitement; and if it does not obtain its thrilling excitement in the right way, it will seek it in the wrong. God never makes bloodless stoics; He makes no passionless saints.” And that’s the essence of our battle with familiarity. As humans we can’t help but experience familiarity, but we also detest being bored and stagnant. So often, the biggest mistake we make in life is allowing the allure of familiarity’s comforts and false security, to keep us from the very adventure God has called us to take, and instead we fill our natural longings for excitement with counterfeit dreams or fleeting thrills requiring less personal sacrifice, character refinement, time, or discipline. So here are some safeguards to help us prevent familiarity from leading us to make one bad decision after another.

The Five A's to Master Familiarity Before It Masters You
 
Awareness – When we exercise our minds daily to cultivate a fresh experience and perspective regarding the most important people and frequent situations in our lives, we train ourselves to ask more questions, listen more carefully, operate less on previous assumptions, and perhaps most profoundly – to simply become more observant of the little things. One of the biggest dangers in relationships is thinking that you know how someone will behave or what they will say based on your experience with them. Challenge yourself to truly listen to them like you would a new acquaintance. Look at the world around you on your way to work and push yourself to see “stories” in everything. If you woke up having a story to tell (about that dream you had last night, or why you’re not feeling well, or that idea that won’t leave your mind), then remember that everyone else you encounter has one as well. Make it a goal every day to get people to tell you their stories. Watch the rain fall or the clouds move across the sky just to hear God tell you His story through creation. He’s talking if you’re listening. "Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” Jeremiah 33:3
 
Appreciation – When we have a posture of being thankful for every situation and person – after all, even the challenging ones give us an opportunity to grow – our perspective radically shifts from being complacent (the evil twin of familiarity) to being open and receptive. When we are hopeful, science proves that we are more likely to be creative, innovative, and adventurous. If you want to take on the world, you have to appreciate it, warts and all. “Give thanks in all circumstances…” 1 Thessalonians 5:18
 
Acclimation – I was reading a blog about marriage recently and the author, who is a psychologist, said that familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, but poor acclimation does. In other words, getting more familiar with your spouse (or any other relationships) is a good thing because you’re more likely to be yourself. But as you become more familiar with him or her, you can choose to acclimate in ways that are honorable or dishonorable. Habitual responses to things we don’t necessarily like don’t have to be unhealthy, but it does take work — one decision at a time – to build the right pattern of responses and behaviors. This is how we acclimate well. Familiarity that increases alongside the hard work of love, respect, openness, communication, prayer, and appreciation, prepares us for rewarding adventures with the people we love. "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32
 
Authenticity – Familiarity can often lure us into doing something over and over out of habit, not because we actually want to do it. Checking in with yourself about repeated behaviors and routines to see if you authentically want to do them is crucial. Are you being authentic with others, or are you just going through the motions? Familiarity can also cause us to transfer our own perceptions, status, abilities, and beliefs onto someone else we’re close to, making us utterly blind to who they really are. Such was the case with Jesus in his hometown of Nazareth. At the beginning of his ministry, they received him warmly. Who wouldn’t like a hometown hero who turns water into wine? But when he proclaimed Himself to be God and that He was the fulfillment of the Scriptures, they were incensed and threw him out of town. Why? Because they transferred their own life situation onto His. He had been one of their own – like them in so many ways. They were so familiar with his parents, his upbringing, and his socioeconomic status that they assumed he was just like them. So they wholeheartedly and instantly rejected the idea that one of their own could be the long-awaited Messiah. They did not even give Jesus a chance to be His authentic self. When you practice authenticity and not conformity, you are less likely to project yourself on others. 1 Chronicles 29:17 says that God searches and tests hearts for integrity. The Message version puts it this way: "I know, dear God, that you care nothing for the surface—you want us, our true selves—and so I have given from the heart, honestly and happily."
 
Activity – Sometimes we can spend so much time talking about our lives, that we don’t end up doing anything to move them forward or change things we don’t like. Just the habit of talking without action can become overly familiar. Building in a pattern of activity – even if you implement only small steps – to pursue life improvements and spiritual growth, helps prevent you from becoming stagnant or drawn into negative self-talk and gossip. The Bible clearly indicates that a lack of activity and fruitfulness in our lives can lead to gossip and wasting time. "Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not.” 1 Timothy 5:13 Plus, if you don’t actually practice doing anything, then you certainly won’t get anywhere.
 
Most of us wake up every day hoping that something will pleasantly surprise us. But many of us miss those surprises because our eyes are fogged in with familiarity. Inspiration doesn’t just appear on the mountaintops of life, it more commonly dwells in the ordinary valleys and typical conversations we encounter on a daily basis. We only need to train our eyes to see it.
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    Every life is a story, so the big question for every person is: "Who's writing your ending?" Majesty, mystery, and miracles are waiting for us to discover in the most ordinary days if we have the heart to see them. Glimmers in the Fog offers hope and inspiration with spiritual musings, heartfelt confessions, and timely encouragement from a hungry soul in pursuit of the One who set the stars in place yet calls me by name. 


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