Unka Glen

Anonymous asked: How do I keep everything in my life balanced? I always seem to be elevating something above God. Really basic things too, like clothing, makeup, food, etc. It seems like everything I like either has to be in first or last place. I just can’t seem to keep everything where it needs to be.

Unka Glen answered: If you want something bad enough, you eventually get around to praying about it, and if you pray about it enough, you eventually get around to telling the Lord why you want this thing.

For me that always comes down to: if you gave me this thing Lord, I’d be happy. Then there’s the Lord saying: why don’t I just give you joy instead? Cut out the middle-man. But here’s the crazy thing— I don’t like that idea.

I think we chase after these things, these material possessions, these relationships, these career goals, because we want to get our happiness from them. These are the things that are under our control. 

Whereas happiness is an emotion, joy is a virtue. Virtues are elements of God’s character that only come from God. If you want joy, you receive it. It’s there, in infinite supply, whenever you want it, wherever you need it, it’s there. But you have to go to God to get it. And I think that’s the problem.

In John 15 Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches, apart from me, you can do nothing. And I think there’s some part of us that hesitates at the idea of depending on God so much. What if He stopped loving me? What if He stopped wanting to help me? I’d have nothing to fall back on.

So we turn to things like clothing and makeup to give us a shallower, smaller, and less certain sense of our selves, and we believe those things will cause others to love us, even though they cannot come close to the galactically huge love that God has for us.

You don’t want too much, you’re settling for too little.

If your life regularly seems out of whack, and you find yourself chronically unhappy, why not give up, and let the Lord take a turn? At the end of the day, relying on someone who is perfect, and all-powerful, and who loves you enough to die for you, well, that just makes good sense.