The First Ten Things I’ll Thank God For In Heaven

1. His unimaginable grace.

2. Salvation

3. Everyone who’s there

4. That my earthly life is over and my eternal life has begun.

5. Complete and total unity and desegregation….finally!

6. That my ADD is cured!

7. That I can sing and dance.

8. That my lack of time management skills is no longer relevant.

9. That I now have access to the REALLY GOOD COFFEE.

10. That I’m finally at my ideal weight.

Think You’re Too Prodigal For God? Part One

As I’ve said in my previous post, “The Forrest Gump Of Christian Women”, I have been what seems like perpetually prodigal. I walk away, I slink home. I drift away, I crawl home.
Unlike the prodigal son Jesus told about in Luke 15:11-32, I didn’t decide at some point that I wanted to try life elsewhere from my Father’s house. Not once did I intentionally leave His side. It’s more like God and I were at WalMart, I wandered a few steps to look at something shiny and poof, “Where’s my Daddy?”
I did this so many times in my life that you would think I’d learn to stick so close that God Himself would trip over me. But, like I’ve said, I’m a slow learner.
Each time I returned, it was with deep shame and regret. Each time, I was overjoyed that the Lord welcomed me back into His arms. But each time, I was increasingly afraid that I had used up my second chances. Each time, I was more and more worried that God had had enough of my comings and goings.
I clung to verses like Romans 8:38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I hoped on promises like "Yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love" and "I will never leave you or forsake you".
I knew these words were real. I knew the promises were true. The problem was, every time I needed to return to God, I became less sure that those promises still applied to me.
Mind you, I’m talking about a pattern I repeated many times over the almost thirty years that I have been a living, breathing, redeemed, paid-for miracle. I’ve got a genius IQ but my common sense is developmentally-disabled. I’ve often wondered, “What’s the point of being so smart if I still have to live the life of an idiot?”, but what I should have been wondering was, “What’s the point of living like an idiot when you’re actually pretty smart?"
Fortunately, God has a habit of loving the dim-witted.

The First Ten Things I’m Going To Do In Heaven

1. Fall on my face before God and Christ in thanksgiving and humility too profound for my small mind to imagine.

2. Touch and stare at the face of my Savior.

3. Crawl into my daddy God’s lap and cry with joy.

4. Find my kids if we’ve been raptured or they’ve gone before me.

5. Find out where God keeps the really good coffee (the stuff the archangels have been drinking all this time) and have about six big cups (four extra shots of espresso, 125 degrees, four raw sugars……….. and full fat, ‘cause WHO CARES!)

6. Find my grandma and love her up one side and down the other.

7. Go find the guys from Third day, thank them, love on them and then jam with them, because in heaven I can SING, praise God!

8. Go find Steven Curtis Chapman, rinse and repeat.

9. Go find Beth Moore and take her back to the coffee shop for another six cups and a laughter-filled, girl to girl yammer. (Come to think of it, I’ll look for her there first. She’s probably already there, looking for her list.)

10. Make a list of my next ten things. I’ve got lots of time.

The Forrest Gump Of Christian Women

I am the Forrest Gump of Christian women; slow to learn, quick to leap, armed with a ton of good intentions and very little judgment.

Like Forrest, I’ve spent a good portion of my life wandering from one misadventure to another and have finally decided to go back home. Home to my Father, home to my faith. I have been a perpetual prodigal and I’m here to tell you-it’ll wear you out.

Like Forrest, I started my (Christian) life with a set of leg braces. His were made of metal, mine were made of sin. Unfortunately, it took me longer to realize that I could chuck ‘em. My braces weren’t made of the sin I bore when I first came to Christ-God yanked those off the moment I said, “Amen”. But, I fashioned myself some new ones, made of every sin I committed thereafter. The really strong parts were made of the sins and mistakes that I just kept repeating.

This would account for the fact that snails zipped right past me on the road to Christian maturity. It’s hard to get anywhere when you’ve got a few hundred pounds of metal attached to your legs. Oh, I tried to ditch the weight. Every time I flattened myself before God, recommitted myself and begged for forgiveness and revival, I’d get my screwdriver out and start to work. More often than not, before I’d even finished muttering, “lefty-loosey, righty-tighty”, I’d commit the same old sins, make the same old mistakes, toss the screwdriver and add a few more pounds to my burden.

As I said, like Forrest, I’m a bit slow to learn. I understood when the Bible said that Christ died to set me free from sin. I got that it meant I wouldn’t pay the price for my sin. I understood that it meant I was no longer a slave to sin, but had the power to escape it. What took me a while was understanding that when I did sin, I didn’t have to drag it around with me forever.

I spent too many years clumping along, not realizing that my legs worked just fine; I just had to ditch the braces.

Maybe you, like me, are a little on the Gumpy side. Don’t worry….God has classes for slow learners, too. He may even have a few things for us to teach.