Day Thirty

Day 30

Shaped for Serving God

NEVER LET YOUR ZEAL LAG

Can I see God planning each day of my life ahead of time? Or do I just see Him knowing it ahead of time? I can’t see Him planning my sinful life for me because that would just be wrong. But I can see Him planning what He would use it for. I am sure He didn’t say ahead of time “I am going to make Michael a Junkie and have him shoot speed for most of his life just to make him able to speak to other junkies for the rest of his life. Or I am going to give him a father that hurts him and leaves him so he can minister to other boys in similar situations that he will meet along the way as he grows up. But I will use those experiences he is going to have and give him a heart that feels passionately for others that feel the way he did. I am going to save his life time and time again just like he is going to ask me to one day to prove to him that no matter where he is I was and am always listening to him and to give him every desire of his heart because I know that at the end of the tunnel that will seem so dark to him at times, at the end of it he is going to feel and experience so much joy and happiness that I know he will praise and thank me and serve me with his whole heart. Just like a diamond cutter has to apply a lot of pressure to make that diamond faceted and beautiful, so was the pressure that God put me under to take me from a diamond in the rough that I was to the jewel that I am becoming. He knew it wouldn’t be easy on me, or Him having to watch, but He knew the end of the story, where as I didn’t, He knew the joy that was coming, He saw the end result before the story ever began. So when I begin to develop this same kind of faith, even though I don’t know the future of everything that is happening in my life, it is because of the past experiences of my life that I can trust in Him and know that the end result of everything is going to be for His glory and be just what He has planned for my life. IE: no worries about the ending.

So what are some of the things that I know that I am passionate about? You might ask, what are some of the things in life that I love and care about, passionately? People! People that are hurting, or those that are different. Different than what? We are all different this is true. But as the world sees things, there are those that are acceptable and there are those that are less than acceptable. It isn’t right to put people on a scale like that but it is done every day. It goes by weight, looks, color of your skin. Where you live, what you drive or don’t drive. How you dress, whether or not if you work or if you work, if you have all your mental faculties or if you don’t. Let’s face it, people that are different that you don’t usually get attention from you. Most people don’t think to put out their hand to someone that looks talks or walks to a different beat. But in my case, I know I am that person that doesn’t look talk walk or move to the same beat as others, so it’s up to me to speak up. I am glad God has given me the ability to be able to do so without being too intrusive and to be able to have a sense of humor to get the party started as they say. Conversation comes easy for me. A quick wit and a smart come back used in the right way can be very useful to me. I enjoy people, I enjoy making them laugh. I have been called many times “A HAPPY PILL” for others when they are feeling down and depressed. I have had friends cry to doctors when I was being moved from one floor to another in a psychiatric hospital because they didn’t want me to leave. I have had friend on the phone from other states tell me how important my friendship was to them because of the way I made them laugh and how I made them feel just because I was able to life their spirits in a phone conversation we had. The gift of encouragement is definitely one I know God has blessed me with. Hospitality is another one I know He has given me. I love taking care of my friends and serving them when they visit. Serving them when I visit them it doesn’t matter. Making people happy was a way I made friends in the past and making people happy just because it makes me happy that they are happy now is a blessing to me. To be able to know that they are happy because of something I said or did is a wonderful feeling. To know that I was responsible for making their life a little better today and that I was able to do something to put a smile on their face is a great feeling. I thank God that He made me so sensitive also. I can hear things is peoples voices and in the words that they use or the word they are not using to express themselves that allows me to understand what life has done to them. Especially to the young men and women I meet everyday. And example of this would be a boy named Alex a month ago telling me he never knew his real mom but that it didn’t matter any more. Why would he tell me that and at the same time say it didn’t matter any more. IT DOES MATTER OR HE WOULDN’T HAVE SAID IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I can put myself into the story of a 13 or 14 year old boy in a split second when they tell me their dad is gone or their family is in jail or they don’t even live with their parents. Instantly my heart begins to ache and cry on the inside because I hear God saying to me “Mike here is another one that I have placed in your life for a reason” And it makes everything that ever happened to me as a child have meaning. Better than that is when one of those kids or even an adult says to me “Mike why are you in that wheel chair?” Now every moment in my adult life begins to have meaning. It was my whole adult life that put me in this wheelchair. If I wasn’t in it, who would ever think or have a reason to ask me anything? No one ever walks up to someone and says “tell me about your life twenty five years ago.” And they never think they are going to get a Novel when they ask me that question either. But I am really good at deciding just how much they can handle and what they will be ready to hear and not hear. I think the best story I ever told and the best reaction was about 10 years ago sitting with another kid named Alex, it was about forty five minutes to an hour into the story, and he was wiping his tears off with the sleeve of my t-shirt. Not just a drop or two, but a river of them while his arm was around my shoulder holding on for dear life. When he left my home he was still in these tears all the way to his house and when he walked in to his house his mom was on the couch watching television and she told me a few days later he came in crying and just fell into her lap and cried for over fifteen minutes without saying a word. Later after I met his friend Oscar, he told him “be careful, Mike will make you cry when he tells you his story” and when I told Oscar the same story, He cried too. It was never my goal or my intentions to make teenage boys cry, but I do want to make them think. Both Alex and Oscar were no strangers to the drug and sex life already as fifteen and sixteen year olds. I at least waited until I was twenty one. Oscar said the one thing I did after telling him my story was I ruined his MACING skills. MACing is his Flirting and his ability to pick up girls for sex skills. Well every time he had the opportunity he thought about my story and my life and my unfortunate circumstances and thought twice about what he was about to do and changed his mind for the moment. I had left an impression on him. How long that lasted I will never know but it sunk in for the time being and that was what mattered. The seed was planted. So I guess you can say that any of us is like a farmer planting seeds of our lives into the lives of others every day. Our, my experiences are all like little seeds that God uses to plant later on into the lives of people we meet to share with them what we have learned and what we have gone through. I have never met so many young men that are fatherless or motherless as I have in the past two months. I have never met so many that have so many drug addicted parents as I have theses past few months. I see it in their eyes, I hear it in their words and in their stories about their lives, they are missing so much. Very few of them ever mention the word GOD. Today is the first time I heard that one of them say he has a grandfather that is a preacher. His dad is not in his life and his mom has had three different men father her five children but this is his life. He is fourteen years old.

All in all, whether or not it is a teenager that has a history like mine, an adult that suffers with a mental condition, or anyone with a drug problem, my life has meaning every time I meet them. Where ever I go, no matter who it is, I am comfortable in my own skin because I know who it is I belong to and that is all that matters to me. I am not out to impress anyone, live up to anyone’s standards, or try out for the next audition. But I am out there to just to be out there because that is where THEY ARE, that is where Jesus was, OUT THERE ON THE STREETS with THEM, the public, who ever they were. Not the rich or the pretty or the famous, just the ones that would listen or speak with him. He had a gimmick, it was called Miracles. I have one too, they are called SERVICE ANIMALS on a WHEEL CHAIR. We each drew a crowd in our own way. But either way, the message was delivered.

Everyone, every Christian’s job is to get the message of Christ out to the world. How you do it is up to you. You were made in a special way to reach people in a special way. If you are not, find it. Don’t let your light grow dim. NEVER LET YOUR ZEAL LAG.