The Art of being Uncool

How cool are you? I guess it depends on your definition of cool, right? When I was younger it was a death sentence to be uncool. I wore the latest fashions and used the latest lingo and watched the hippest shows. It permeated everything I did from the glasses I wore to what car I drove.

Now that I’m a Christ follower, I realize that working so hard to be cool detracted from my focus on God. After all, do you think when you die their will be a line for cool people and another for uncool people? No, there will be one line going up, and another going down, and it won’t make a bit of difference at that moment if you had cool rims on your car or the latest hip hair style.

If you spend your life trying to show people how young and hip you are, you probably haven’t spent enough time showing them how Christian you are. If people focus on you, they won’t see who is supposed to be living in you.

Christ spent his life hanging out with the uncool people. Who are you hanging out with?

“Jesus, thanks for loving us no matter how uncool we are. Thanks for seeing what’s inside us, and help us to understand that that’s the important thing. Amen.”

Ask and you shall receive... sorta.

I’ve been in Corpus this week on business. I tend to watch a lot of TV when I’m on the road, and last night I was watching the movie “Evan Almighty.”

I hadn’t seen it before, and wasn’t sure it would be worth watching because it’s a comedy employing the story of Noah and how a modern day man is visited by God and told to build an ark. These types of shows usually make fun of Biblical beliefs, so I don’t watch them. However, I decided to take a look at this film and I’m really glad I did, because I learned a really important lesson.

There is a scene where Evan’s family thinks he’s crazy and has left him. His wife is sitting in a restaurant when God visits her in the form of Morgan Freeman.

Side note: does anyone remember Morgan from back in 1977 when he was on the show “The Electric Company?”

Anyway, he said something pretty profound to her: “When people pray for patience, do you think God just gives them patience, or does he give them an opportunity to be patient? If someone prays for courage, do they get it, or does God give them an opportunity to be courageous?”

Wow, that really had an impact on me because it’s one of the clearest truths I’ve ever heard about how God works in people’s lives. We all know that God works in mysterious ways, and it’s because he doesn’t just want to hand us things, he also wants us to learn and earn. He knows that humans are fickle, and if you give a kid a dollar he doesn’t learn anything, but if you make them earn it, they learn the value of money.

God does this with the things we ask for. Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward, like healing a sick friend. But for the most part people get what they ask for in ways they weren’t expecting. They may even complain that they’re praying for something but God isn’t listening, when all along He's trying to give them an opportunity to find it themselves. He produces circumstances and situations that give us exactly what we’ve been asking for while learning the value of it.

Don’t overlook the opportunities that God has put in your life today.

“God, thank you for being such a wise teacher, for answering our prayers with wonderful lessons that help us grow, and make us wiser. Amen.”