I think it is important to share some context. First, about me. I am married with three young adult children and one grandchild. I believe in the God of the Bible, and I am His child. Those are the basic things that define my life. I realize that now. I was allowing my life to be defined by a lot of unnecessary stuff.
I've noticed that more and more men are choosing to be buried with mementos from their favorite sports teams. God bless you, if that is your plan, but I hope my family doesn't see me that way. I was drifting along, and, looking back, I was angry. About what, I don't know. I don't think you have to be angry at anything significant. I think it is sometimes just an emotion that you can stir up, so you can feel better about yourself in comparison to someone else. There is a lot of anger in modern culture. Or, rather, if you want to get angry, there are a lot of ways you can vent. But, it is not my purpose to criticize things I can't change. When I say I was drifting, I am thinking about a story my dad once told me.
My dad was in the livestock exporting business. That meant that sometimes he got to escort cattle to various places around the globe, often by plane, but occasionally by boat. He was on such a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, when the sailors told him of a previous journey with thousands of sheep for their cargo. People like to say that sheep are not intelligent creatures. I don't know if that is true, but I know they have a strong instinct to follow the other sheep. One of the sheep on this voyage found an opening in the barrier that kept them on the deck. It pushed through the opening and fell down into the water, below. Another sheep followed, and then another. More and more sheep pushed, nose to tail, through the opening. Before the sailors discovered what was happening and sealed the opening, hundreds of sheep were floating in the middle of the Atlantic. He asked, "What happened to the sheep? Did you try to get them back?" The sailors said there was nothing they could do. They just kept steaming along toward their destination, leaving the view of white heads, bobbing up and down in the water, behind them.
No sheep were harmed in the writing of this blog.
I used to think about the sheep a lot. What happened to them? Was there really nothing the sailors could do? Recently, I stopped to consider that I had become one of them. I thought I was headed in the right direction. I got sidetracked, going along with plenty of other nice people heading the same way. By the time I looked up, I was isolated, cast aside, without purpose. Maybe not yet in a crisis. Like I said, drifting.
We like to affirm that God is love. But do we really know what that means? If you, God forbid, were ever lost, like Elizabeth Smart, or the young women who were abducted in Cleveland, who are the people who would never stop looking for you? There might be community search efforts. You might be in the news. No matter how intense the concern, eventually everyone would go back to their jobs and their lives. Except, maybe your mother and your father. There is a good chance that they would never stop looking for you. And, even if they ran out of places to look, they would always have one eye on the door, hoping you would just walk through it. They would scan every crowd for your face. I know, because that is what I would do. Even if you don't have anyone in this world who would never stop looking for you, you have God. And if you are lost, He is looking for you. If you don't believe it, sit down and read Luke chapter 15 right now. That is what I discovered, that God had not cast me aside, even if I might have cast Him aside. He was still looking for me. But that is another story for a different time.
That brings me to the context of the promise that Jesus gave to do what I ask of Him, which is the framework for this blog. If you have children, you are aware that it is your heart's desire to give them everything they both want and need. The same applies to God, as my Heavenly Father. Does that sound wrong? When you were a child, who did you ask for ice cream money? Your mom, or a stranger? This is the context that leads me to believe that it is not heroic for me to refuse to ask God for anything. It is just proving that I don't know Him that well.
A major part of what I am doing, here, is holding myself accountable for pursuing God's promise. There is one major request that I am making, but I am not sure that I can share it, yet, without "contaminating" the answer. I welcome comments or questions. I am doing this, not only for me, but because it might be an encouragement for someone going through the same things. Also, I am hoping to gain some encouragement from your story, too.