Does God Ever Annoy You (part 11)
Note: If you are not a long term reader to my blog, allow me to share with you that I started what became a series of "Does God Ever Annoy You" posts back in February 2006. I would have never dreamed that 5 years later I'd still be adding to this. Actually, this is the first entry into this series in 2 years... but yesterday, God really got under my skin. (Don't get upset with me for saying that God annoys me. I'll bet if you read them you'll find out/admit that He annoys you too!) If you are interested in the series, I'll add the dates of all the previous entries as a comment following this post. You can find them in the archives to the right of your screen.
And now, chapter 11...
If you attend my church and were there yesterday when I preached, you got a glimpse into this. I shared yesterday in my sermon that prior to the church service, I had quite an attitude. The previous week had been a tough week. Problems were crawling out of the wood work like cockroaches and my stress level was off the charts. I won't go into great detail here, but suffice it to say that sheep bite each other. Then there were people who really needed some time with me, and my life was so busy that I could not find time for them. I had a wedding to put together with 3 days notice. There was also a funeral thrown into the mix. Things that needed to be done had to be not only put on the back burner, but some taken off the burner until a later date. People were being people, and that ought to say enough. And of course, this week our worship leaders were out of town, which meant I had to get music together and teach our praise team this stuff... and time was just not there. Ah, life can be so pressing some times.
Saturday, I made a post on Facebook about how I was glad the week was over and behind me and I was looking forward to a new week and time in worship the next day. I went to bed thinking, "It's behind me."
Yeah, right.
When I got up on Sunday morning, before 7:30 I already had several text messages and a missed phone call and messages online and the battle was raging. My 'tude was getting sour. When we got to church to run over the songs we would do in worship, the sound board was going insane and kept adjusting the volume of the music up and down and I'm thinking, "Great, not only are we going to have to use 'canned music' but it's going to be BAD canned music." Things just kept going from bad to worse, and I knew I had to get it together or I was NOT going to be fit to preach. I headed back to my office to pray and deal with my attitude, but before I could even get to my office, someone ripped into me because the toilet paper roll was getting small and I should have changed it. (Yeah, this one just about caused me to blow.)
Now here is where the crux of this whole annoyed at God thing comes into play. I went into my office and began airing my grievances to God and asked him to help me with my attitude. As clear as can be, I heard God speak into my spirit, "You fix it. I didn't give it to you."
Now, I don't know if you've ever had this happen... but my prayer became a whining session as I said to God, "Do what? Have you been paying attention to anything going on in my life for the past week? Have you seen any of this stuff going on this morning? Do you get that I'm ready to blow?" And God said to me, "Yeah... what are you going to do about your stinking attitude?" Honestly, for a minute I was dumb founded. I sat down in my chair and was trying to figure out how I could explain to God that my stress was through the roof, I'd had about all I was gonna take and I needed help... NOW. As calmly as can be, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit say, "What does all this have to do with YOUR attitude?"
I began to realize that I was trying to "fix the world" and in my Superman complex I was allowing other people's stuff to come in between me and the Lord and our relationship.
My lesson learned.. and my does God ever annoy you point?
I discovered that God is much more interested in my attitude than He is about what caused it.
The really cool part about all this? When I asked God to forgive me for my attitude, I walked out of my office feeling like 500 pounds had fallen off my back. Nothing else mattered but going after God in worship, and we had a tremendous worship service, and people were blessed. God's anointing was so tangible and real that there was a freedom to preach the Word like I had not felt in some time. The problems of the week? Literally before the day was out, many of them were suddenly resolved, and I was not involved in any of the solutions. God just did what He does best. Amazing.
