Sometimes I get so tense but I can't speed up the time

My best Axl impression. I should have
made a GIF so you could see
me swaying.

Talked about bravery and courage...or my lack thereof the last couple of days and this morning I got hit with Psalm 27:14 being the YouVersion verse of the day. Normally, I would get excited and be all like that's my jam because well, Psalm 27 especially verses 13 and 14 have got me through a lot hard days. But today, not so much.

In the New Living Translation, the verse reads: Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Wait. Patiently. For. The. LORD. Be. Brave. AND. Courageous. Sigh. Couldn't the verse I am going to see a million times today be anything but this one?

As I have been packing and preparing for my move, I am finding that every box, every room, it unearths feelings that I thought I had dealt with. It stirs up emotion that led me on a half hour driving prayer this morning that would make you swear that Sam Kinison is my guardian angel. Patience. Meh.

By and large this chapter of my life has been going on for three long fucking years. It shatters me to the core of every belief that I have about prayer. And as I write this it isn't lost on me how peculiar it was to flip on the tele at 3am and the episode be about Daniel and how God heard his prayers but had to fight through things in the heavenlies to answer. What a strange coincidence, huh?

I get that. I do. Despite what my Baptist friends think, I do know and understand the Bible and Biblical principle. And I have, to play on Psalm 27 some more, I have seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I know God isn't a magic genie. I know that sometimes the answer is no because not everyone need a pony. I know the power and the presence and the oneness. Ah, but patience...

Right about now, someone usually brings up Job. I had the pleasure of a deep and meaningful study of Job last year. I know folks bring it up because we have that phrase in our vernacular, "the patience of Job" but if you were to read Job 26-31 these are hardly the words of a man patiently biding his time. All the back and forth between Job and Zophar and Eliphaz and Bildad and Elihu before finally the Lord booms out in his Samuel L Jackson voice leaving Job with only this:

“I’m convinced: You can do anything and everything.
    Nothing and no one can upset your plans.
You asked, ‘Who is this muddying the water,
    ignorantly confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?’
I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me,
    made small talk about wonders way over my head.
You told me, ‘Listen, and let me do the talking.
    Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.’
I admit I once lived by rumors of you;
    now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears!
I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise!
    I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.”
(Job 42:1-6 The Message)

Then BOOM! God restores Job. "So Job died, old and full of days." (42:17) I want to die old and full of days but friends, I feel so stuck right now. I want to believe so much that what lies ahead is greater than what lies behind, I do. But I can't seem to stop asking when, when, when, when. I have never prayed for patience nor would I ever put that sort of asking for trouble kind of prayer into the stratosphere. Although, my recent propensity for uttering "I want what You want" may be a bigger Pandora's box than I ever realized.

I do want what God wants. I get that His ways are not my ways. Maybe I need to spend less time grumbling with my Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad. Relax and enjoy and fight hard to live in day-tight compartments and be present in the present. Perhaps I could be more patient if I didn't have expectations about how this story should go.
When I was attending Grace UMC in Dayton, Bryan Palmer-Smith was at the helm. I always enjoyed his messages, especially his knack for admonishing us to "make that spiritual." I do that a lot. Biblical knowledge is worthless if you can't practically apply it. So, I am going to round this out with a little ditty called "Patience". I like to pretend as of late that God is singing this to me. Hey, if Cal Naughton Jr. can picture Jesus singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd, then Jenny can picture God using Axl to deliver this message.

Getting What You Ask For: An Exuberant Declaration of Faith

A tad over a month ago, I posted on Facebook that I was in search of a vehicle under $4k and that I wasn't really picky about make and model and honestly what was important to me was sunroof, leather seats and a stereo system good enough to drown out everything mechanically wrong.

I got what I wanted. Isn't she a beauty? Sunroof. Leather Seats. Stereo with cassette AND six-disc CD player. Bonus, nothing mechanically wrong. Yes. Yes. It is a Lexus. It's irrelevant. Just more icing.

I am grateful that I got everything I asked for in this vehicle. I am astounded at how it all happened.

There are some very specific challenges in my life that I have been leaving off the blog because I really don't want to give them anymore life than they already have taken on. So that being said, the night that I met with the bankruptcy attorney rather than get down about the long and the short of things outside of my control, I decided to kind of poke around and see what vehicles would be under the exemption limit. This popped up on a search on the high end of the criteria. A few other things that caught my attention as well but then I just sort of filed it all in the back of my head. I had a number of things to do before I got to that point.

About three weeks went by before I sold the vehicle I needed to sell. The check hold gave me a few days to really do some legwork on what was next. At the time, I still had another vehicle but not one that was going to last long-term. This car was still coming up in searches. Being on the high end, I dismissed it. Well, at least I tried too. A strange chain of events caused me to be on the phone with my insurance agent. So, I figured I would ask for a quote and that would end the fantasy of this vehicle. My jaw dropped. About the same as I had been paying.

Hmm, okay. Then, my thought was this Lexus RX300 has to be a teaser car. Emailed the dealer. Nope. So I scheduled a test drive that night. She's not perfect but she's better than a lot of what was out there in my range.

I need to back up. Around the same time that I met the bankruptcy attorney, Psalm 27 started popping up all over the place for me. In whole and in part. For those of you not familiar, Psalm 27 is titled in the New King James Version as "An Exuberant Declaration of Faith" and goes as follows:

An Exuberant Declaration of Faith

A Psalm of David.

27 The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?
² When the wicked came against me
To eat up my flesh,
My enemies and foes,
They stumbled and fell.
³ Though an army may encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me,
In this I will be confident.

⁴ One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
⁵ For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock.

⁶ And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me;
Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle;
I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

⁷ Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice!
Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.
⁸ When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”
⁹ Do not hide Your face from me;
Do not turn Your servant away in anger;
You have been my help;
Do not leave me nor forsake me,
O God of my salvation.
¹⁰ When my father and my mother forsake me,
Then the Lord will take care of me.

¹¹ Teach me Your way, O Lord,
And lead me in a smooth path, because of my enemies.
¹² Do not deliver me to the will of my adversaries;
For false witnesses have risen against me,
And such as breathe out violence.
¹³ I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.

¹⁴ Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord!

Back to the story at hand. After my test drive, I made an offer and while I waiting I noticed the number on the dealer plate that they had slapped on for my drive. 2710. So, in an effort to not worry about what was being done with my offer I pulled it up. The second verse jumped out at me...then the Lord will take care of me.

I am by no means a prosperity theology person. I don't believe that obedience brings material wealth or some other ways Biblical truth has been twisted to justify less than Biblical gains. But I do believed that God provides. And on April 7, He provided me with exactly what I asked for: leather seats, sunroof and a kick-ass stereo. I am grateful, so grateful for the way it all worked out.

As for the fact that it's a Lexus. I am pretty sure that can be filed under the way He uses the foolish to confound the wise. Or maybe it really is that He contends with those who contend with me and a little something about living well being the best revenge or something like that. I don't know. I am not bragging. I just want to encourage you to not settle. Don't let your circumstances dictate your choices or your critics get in the way of you receiving your blessings. Playas gonna play and haters gonna hate but a little faith and the right intentions who knows you could be driving a Mercedes Benz and get that color TV and your night on the town.

Don't think, just believe.

And be careful what you ask for you might just get it!!