Matthew Costner

I hate that I haven’t written in so long. I have been so busy with church stuff and traveling that I haven’t had time to get on. My church kind of cut my hours by half though, so hopefully I will be able to start writing on here a little more. As excited as I am about being able to pick up more here, I am saddened about the loss of some money. So please keep that in your prayers…

As a matter of information: I am going to start making these blogs a little shorter. I think that will help me stay more accountable to these things, as well as not take up so much of your time. Hopefully you all will start reading them again that way. Ha!I wish I could say that I have been reading in Mark while I have been away, but the truth is I haven’t. I have been working on some other devotions that you can read at http://www.kairosdailydose.com/, and http://www.kairoschaos.com/. Check them out, and let me know what you think.

Now back to the book of Mark. It is interesting that I pick up here in Chapter 2. I re-read what I wrote the last time I wrote on here and the first part of Chapter 2 and my main thought process comes from verse 12. It says, “He (meaning the once paralyzed man) got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this!’”I hate that I am about to say this, but I don’t think I am like the people in the town of the healed man. Currently, I am a jealous Christian.

What is jealousy? Well, I just looked it up and the first definition of jealous (told by merriam-webster online) is this, “intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness!” Do you see that!? Unfaithfulness! I don’t want to be unfaithful, and I hope you all don’t either. Why are we jealous? Because we don’t trust the Lord. That is the bottom line.

I hope I can snap out of it, but instead of praising the Lord over the guys healing, I think I would have been sitting around mad that the Lord hadn’t performed such a great miracle in my life. Or worse yet, I would have hoped that the guy wouldn’t have been a success in life. Why? Because I want to be better than everybody else.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the Lord has done a lot of great things for me in my life. However right now, amidst my busyness and frustrations with a lot of stuff, I just want to feel like I matter. I want to feel like I am actually making a difference and that people can look to me and praise the Lord for how good God seems to be. Do you ever feel like that? I truly feel sick that I am writing this stuff, but it is true.The truth is we all matter. God chose us to be right where we are right now. So the question is what are we going to do about it? Not, why isn’t God working in and through us?

Like being in a bad relationship where we are so in love we can’t see all the red flags, living life is kind of the same way. When we get wrapped up in playing life, we don’t always see God standing on the sidelines cheering us on. All we see is the players around us on the field which may be currently playing a better game. We all are needed though. There is always going to be stand-out players on a team, but if the best team has one less player than the worst team, then the team that is supposedly to be the worst team will win.

For us to get through this time in our lives we must stick together and know that to stay in our pity party holes too long is not good. We must overcome. The only way we can do that is with the Lord. Skipping to the book of John 5, the way the paralyzed man overcame his lameness is because He met Jesus. I’ve met Jesus, but maybe I need to meet him again. I have said this before, but I am having to learn right now to get over myself. I’m trying, but it is a hard process for me.

To say the above a little differently, we can only get over ourselves together, but we can’t do it without God. This upcoming week, let’s try and make one change in our life for the better. I’m going to try and work on my attitude about my lack of money, among many things. After-all, God does love us and is for us and not against us! Therefore we don’t need to feel jealous. God doesn’t love one person more than He does the next. If we don’t believe that, then we have bought in to the lies of the enemy.

If we feel distant, we are the ones that have walked away. God didn’t leave us. I know, through my busyness, I haven’t spent the kind of time I need to with Him. I’m jealous and I’m not trusting God because I know I have walked away from my relationship with Him. It is easy to trust when we are close by, but when we wander off it is inevitably hard. This week, I’m going to try and change that distance – I’m going to work on getting close again.

Good luck with what you try and change. Know you have my support and prayers!