The Trials of a Disciple

Hello.

I’d like to share a few thoughts with you about a song.

For some reason, this morning, a song is running through my mind as I try and study. There must be a reason it is, so I want to write a little and perhaps in doing so sort it out in my own mind.

My dad has cancer. Eventually, it is going to take his life, as cancer has a habit of doing. He’s been trying to fight it for a significant number of years. The cancer and the treatment thereof has consumed the past 8 years of his life to the best of my recollection.

This has all been in pursuit of extending life. His goal has been to stay alive for as long as he and the doctors through their medicines and treatments will be able to make it last. Regardless of the cost to him, his well being, his family and all that he has or had in his life, he will keep going on trying to say alive using any trick in the hat the doctors can concoct.

Agree or disagree, he is trying to get what he wants.

It’s here the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” song has been going through my head.

I’d like to pen a few thoughts on this because I was reading the end of John 21 when Jesus is talking to Peter. In that chapter Jesus forecasts some to Peter what is to come. He let’s Peter know that the end of his life isn’t going to be a lot of fun.

If you don’t know; Peter, like Jesus was crucified. It’s rumored that Peter was not only crucified, but he was crucified upside down at his own request because he didn’t feel worthy enough to be crucified in the same fashion as Jesus.

"You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need"

So says Mick Jagger in one of the Stones MANY famous songs.

I can attest to the fact that we can’t always get what we want. I don’t get what I want a lot of the time. If not most of the time.

I, like everyone, scheme and plan and manipulate to try and make everything work out the way I want it to work out. I want my way, and by God I am going to make it the way I want it, regardless of it’s cost to me.

I may find my way to scripture and I might even convince myself that this is what the Lord himself has directed and it’s what he wants. In truth I find out later, it’s not what he wants, it’s me scheming to get what I want while at the same time attempting to manipulate it and frame it to sound like I am really doing the “Lord’s work”.

Often, God then has to let me know that I am wrong in my pursuits and he has other plans.

Best, then, for me, to get on board and go along with him. I’ve been playing this self delusional game for far too long.

If you want an insight into how angry God gets when we don’t listen to him or gripe and complain about what he has given us that we need, spend a few minutes in Psalm 78.

In John 21, Jesus says to Peter

“Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”

John tells us that “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.”

I am confident that Peter didn’t want to live out his life in this way. I am not sure anyone would enjoy such a forecast being spoken over them. Yet John says that this was foretelling a death that would “glorify God”.

Did Peter attempt to then scheme and manipulate to get his way? Maybe. He’s a man after all. Of course, we don’t have a daily record of everything he did moving forward. We do, however, have plenty written down about him in the book of Acts along with 1 and 2 Peter. Peter was one of the most fiery, direct speaking apostles following Jesus’ ascension to heaven.

No one wants to die a miserably painful death. I would say that most would do just about anything they can to get out of it. They are trying to get what the “want”.

Yet, God knows what we need.

Like it or not, we are going to get what we need. There is no scheming, manipulating, lying, denying, defying that will win out over what God has decided we need.

It’s then our choice to decide what we are going to do once faced with it.

For me, my test, right now comes in the form of not having a back up plan.

I sold my flower shop and now…I have nothing to do. I don’t know what I am going to do. But I have to do something.

Right?

We have to have an income.

I don’t right now.

My family has a few flower shops. Over the years, they have not invested in them or kept them up to par. They have let them deteriorate in every conceivable way.

There’s a “legacy” and reputation in Lansing, MI, but it’s been significantly degraded and harmed over the years.

There are plenty of reasons for this, none of which I need to get into here. This is simply stating fact.

My dad and mother both have wanted me to take over their 2 flower shops by purchase.

I have been working through the emotional process of convincing myself this is what I want to do and it’s what God wants me to do. I have been scheming and manipulating various truths to make it justifiable in my head it’s the way God’s pointing me.

Why?

Because “I’ll always have that to fall back on”.

Sure, Joelle and I can hit the road for 4 to 6 months doing photography and video and if/when that doesn’t work out, well, I then can begin rebuilding the Anthony family flower business in Lansing Michigan.

I mean, I’m a great photographer and an excellent, passionate and inspiring speaker, all gifts directly from God…but it’s going to fail miserably and horribly. (see my level of trust and faith at work there?)

This is my rationale and how, in my mind, it’s okay. It’s okay to fall back, right?

The trouble is, I have no peace with it.

I am 54, going on 55. My kids aren’t involved with the business at all. This is one of the ways I’ve been justifying the takeover. I’ll do it for my kids. Give them some kind of inheritance later on. Sure, they want nothing to do with it now, but some day…some day…they just might.

While up in Lansing a number of months back to talk with an architect about a plan to rebuild and make one of my dad’s flower shops more work/production friendly, I simply was totally overwhelmed with how much there would be to do to get the business up to my standards from every and all angles.

I would have 5 years of work that would be difficult for me even in my early 30’s “back in the day”.

There’s so much to take on, so much to tackle at every level imaginable that I have been nothing but exhausted every time I think about it.

When a business and it’s structure has been in essence ignored for decades, well, it breaks down and deteriorates. There’s simply no getting around it.

This back up plan, while there, doesn’t appeal to me. It tires me out. It is exhausting me to even think about.

I suspect it’s not what I am supposed to do. But damnit, I will convince myself of it being the right thing.

In fact, in the current situation, I know it’s not.

So I have a choice to make.

And it’s not an easy choice.

Do I continue attempting to “get what I want”?

OR

Do I try this time to find, I “get what I need”?

I am called to a life, like Peter, which glorifies God.

We are all called to a life, in the end, that ultimately points others to Jesus Christ.

Our faith and our demonstration of our faith (how we live this out) is the way in which God is glorified. Scheming and manipulating of circumstances to fit my desires and wants is not faith in God. It’s faith in me. We won’t do it with our words. If our WORDS do NOT line up with our life ACTION, we shame Jesus Christ. In fact, if I am saying one thing, and doing another I turn people away from God. I don’t want to have to answer for such nonsense on the day I come before the throne to stand for my final judgment. I do not want to be found to be lacking. I certainly don’t want to be found to have lived my life as a lie and in so doing turned people away from God as they are disgusted by my life and how I have demonstrated Jesus to them. I don’t want to be a fraud to my fellow man.

I am hating, yet actually embracing this story from Jesus.

Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Matthew 19:21-22

As I have thought about this today, God has brought his Son’s story to my mind and this position is exactly the one in which I now find myself. I do not want to walk away sad, like the ruler. Here I have a real life opportunity to take Jesus’ instruction and actually apply it to myself. I was telling one of my closest friends today on the phone that this particular passage has been one I have found the most terrifying in my life. Here it is now staring me right in the face.

As I think forward, what I want more than anything is to be able to point to my life with my children and say to them without even uttering a word, “I made the hard choice here when I couldn’t see the end plan to stick with God. Through that faith, look what he has done for our family”.

I want the legacy that I leave behind to be not the flower business. The legacy I leave behind should be one of leadership in faith and commitment to the Lord.

No more Cognitive Dissonance for me. I know what I need to do, I just need to do it. My actions must no longer be in conflict with what I’m saying. As a reader here, I have a responsibility to you. I know others are watching me. My words must meet my actions. It’s too important that my wife or my kids do not pick up any inconsistencies.

That’s what I not only want…it’s what we, in my family, under my leadership….need.

rob out

PS I could certainly use your prayers for clarity, confidence, moral purity and internal determination to NOT QUIT out of fear of failure.