Life May Not Be Fair, But It Can Be Good

Posted on by davidwfelts

“It’s just not fair!” the boy cried, “Why is this so hard?”
The father stood there in silent anguish wishing he could remove the pain he heard between the sobs. However, he knew the truth and knew no words he could convey to his child would help.

“I do what’s right and good father, and what do I get for it? Nothing!” Balling up his fists, the young man began pounding the pillow under his head. “They’re all out to get me! That’s what this is, they want me to fail!”

Laying his hand gently on the boy’s head, tears forming at the corner of his eyes, he said a silent prayer willing some of his own strength towards his upset child. Tensing up at the touch, he flopped over onto his back and pulling his head away from the hand screamed, “Aren’t you going to say anything? Aren’t you going to do anything? Why are you taking their side? Why do you hate me?”

With compassion in his eyes, the father said, “Son I love you more than anything. I have given everything for you. One day I hope you realize how much I sacrificed in order for you to have the life I want you to have.”

“Whatever! Get out, just leave me alone!”

Looking over his shoulder as he left the boy’s room he said, “Son, I do love you.”
How many times have you been the young boy in this story? Have you ever screamed at God about life not being fair? The truth of the matter is this; life isn’t fair, and it never has been. Since the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, life on this planet has been hard . Yet for some odd reason, Christians feel they are entitled to an easy life once they accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And nothing could be further from the truth.

In John 16:33, Jesus said, “In this life you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Jesus said this to his disciples, not to the sinners of the world. If he tells us we’re going to have trouble, then why do we act so surprised when it shows up? Could it be because in our efforts to add numbers to our churches we fail to tell them the whole truth? Are we guilty of painting this rosy picture of life as a Christian and in the process set up people for failure?

Being a Christian doesn’t mean living a carefree, easy existence. It means bringing the light of the Gospel to people in dark places. People are watching us; they face the same challenges we do, and notice when we overcome them. I’ve been asked numerous times, “How did you do it when things got hard?” And my answer is always the same, through the Word of God. The Bible is the solid foundation upon which I stand. This doesn’t mean I always understand how, but I don’t really have to understand how God works, just that He does.

Having a good working knowledge of God’s Word will help lead, guide and direct you when life gets difficult. It’s like having a bank account; if you want to use your debit card to buy things, then you have to have made some deposits into your account. You wouldn’t whine and complain to the bank about not being able to buy things, if you had never made a deposit at the bank. Then why do you complain to God about how tough things are when you never put anything into your “spiritual” account?

Listen, life is going to be tough, get used to this fact. But no matter how tough it gets, you can overcome everything life throws at you with the Word of God. But you will have to make an investment by reading your Bible every day and doing what you read in it. With the Word of God firmly rooted in your heart, you will be able to face the challenges of life and overcome whatever it throws at you.

What Will You Do?

Posted on by davidwfelts

“What will you do when they catch you?”

“What will you do if they catch you?”

“What will you do if they break you?”

These three questions are lines from the upcoming Star Wars movie Rogue One; due out in December. (I am so excited!) But this morning as I was contemplating some things at work, they came to mind. In life sometimes there are things which happen outside of our control, and it is what we do when presented with these challenges that make or break us.

Each and every day we are presented with challenges; either at home, work, with our friends; no one is immune. Problems are like wolves chasing us down; we all have to deal with them eventually. But the situations we face aren’t really the problem, they are common to us all. The real struggle for each of us is how we deal with the problems when they show up; do we fly off the handle and go ballistic; looking like a fool, or do we passively just take it, only to gripe about the situation later to our loved ones? This is where the real battle lies; in how we deal with them.

“What will you do when they catch you?”

” What will you do if they catch you?”

“What will you do if they break you?”

Troubles are coming for you, do you have a plan to deal with them when they arrive? I must admit I usually don’t and end up regretting the responses I make when I’m presented with a challenge. I think one of the reasons I have such a hard time with this is because they mess up my routine. And who among us wants our routine to be upset? Humans are creatures of habit and when something interferes with that, it upsets the apple cart so to speak.

We have to work on being able to step outside of ourselves when these moments come and look at them objectively. For instance, I know at work when given the opportunity to add some more to my workload, it is not because my boss has decided to hurt me. On the contrary, it is because there is a situation which needs to be handled, and he has come to me because he knows I can get it done. Of course sometimes it takes me a minute to remind myself of this and make sure I keep my attitude in check.

These wolves which are nipping at our heels do their best to catch us and eventually break us; this is their job and they are good at it. What we have to do is stay one step ahead of them. And doing this requires the ability to keep a good, positive attitude when you can feel them breathing down your neck. 

As loud as they are yapping, you’ve got to be louder in voicing your positive attitude to yourself. And it can be hard, because a lot of times the other voices around you aren’t so positive and it can feel as if you are fighting a battle on two fronts.

The one thing I know, but have to remind my self daily, is I have what it takes, there is more to me than meets the eye and I am destined to do great things. Regardless of what any other voice is trying to tell me, these things I know are true for me and they are true for you as well. You just have to believe them and remind yourself daily.

So if these problems of life catch me, I’ll just not let them break me, because I’m better than that and so are you!

 

 

 

Dave Done Made Me Mad This Morning

Posted on by davidwfelts

Have you ever had one of those days at work? You know the type; you get up and your day is going great and everything, then something happens and the proverbial shit hits the fan. Before you know it, your great day goes to hell in a handbasket and you didn’t even see it coming. Yesterday was one of those days for me, let me tell you about it and what I learned from it.

I seem to have inadvertently made someone angry yesterday morning. Funny thing about it is, I had no clue I’d done anything wrong, or for that matter even what my crime was. 

As I went to the wash bay to find out what the problem was, it was brought to my attention that while I was washing out some pipe we had loaded on a truck earlier, the rust and dirt from inside the pipe had completely covered one of our loaders in the debris.

At the time I was just trying to get my job done and had no clue what had happened. Once I realized what I’d done, I set about to rectify the situation. I’m not sure why I was getting a cussing to go along with it; after all it was just an honest mistake and I jumped right in to rectify the problem.

My first reaction was to rail back and act a fool about this injustice in my life, but instead decided to take it like a man and just fix the situation. 

As I’ve studied on this today; I first decided I would not let someone else’s poor attitude affect mine. I would take the high road so to speak, I didn’t do this thing maliciously, it was just an accident and accidents happen. Secondly, I’ve been working to figure out if I do things like this myself and what I can do to change this behavior too.

The bottom line was I had inconvenienced someone, which had happened because of something I did. I heard them say later in the day, “Dave done made me mad this morning.” which gave me a chuckle. I thought to myself after hearing this, “I didn’t make you mad, the situation presented you an opportunity to get mad and you jumped in with both feet.”

We are all going to have times where things don’t go like we want them to, but what we need to do in those moments is step outside of ourselves and look at the situations for what they are; distractions to get us off of our game and make our days worse. If we will stop, take a breath and face the challenge with a better outlook, it will not only shock those around us who don’t do this, it will cause us to rise to the top and make our days so much better.

No one can make you mad, you may be presented with an opportunity to get mad, but the bottom line is this; if you get mad, it’s because you chose to.

Now you know what I think, tell me what you think.