Things I'm Tired of but Can't Do Anything About

OK, I really wanted to get these two in. I know a lot of good can happen in small groups and I have changed over the years, but I think I have changed because some people in leadership really began to look at this whole thing and made questions a little more reasonable. Many times in small groups you are asked your greatest fear and I answer small groups. I don't like weird prayer time either. Every time I have been involved in weird prayer time I start laughing. If you are with a legalistic group you have to use that laughter to sound like fake crying. That is the only way you can get compassion from them. Years ago when I lived more as a cynic, I went to a women's retreat and once again they put me at a table with people who didn't know each other. We did our prayer time all wrong and when the leaders found out, they made us re-do our prayer time. God must have thought I just heard that from y'all and I told Him while we were in our re-do we were expressing the same prayer in a different form.

• Forced small group discussion- this usually happens at a women's event where you are put at a table with people you don't know and then are asked to answer questions that you haven't ever discussed with your BFF. A couple of months ago I was put in this situation and I entered in with a good attitude. I think we were supposed to find a picture that said something about how we wanted our life to look. We went around the table and you know the odds are there will be at least two weird answers to the question that makes everyone uncomfortable. You just hope to God that there is someone sitting there who has the gift of mercy and can smooth over the rough places. So we had our obligatory crier...which meant I never understood a thing she said cause she tried to cry and talk it. And the other is what I call a whooooo glory type person. I love whoooo glory types, they bring an interesting slant on things...but sometimes they are tooo whooo glory and over the topidy. We had one of those. I shared that my life would look like a tree, rooted and grounded in love, roots deep by the streams of water etc... Well, the whooo glory girl had something to share with me, a verse about a tree, but she couldn't find the verse. I named all my favorite tree verses in the Bible...no not any of those...so I thought oh wow, she probably has found some obscure reference to the cedars of Lebanon or an olive tree... and then she finally finds it and begins reading it to me. It was Psalm 1... I named that Psalm when she could not find the verse. And she read it to me with a pause at the end of the sentence for effect. Now I have to tell you, I wanted to say, everyone knows that Psalm. Don't be acting all spiritual and reading like I have never heard the Psalm...but I didn't... I just sat there and looked at her with my interpretation of acting all wowed over something spiritual and told her I received that Word. I looked at some of my fellow forced small group discussers and it was all they could do to muffle their laughter.





• The Holy Voice- this is the voice used when the conversation can and is not limited to these words, Lord, quiet time, heard, read, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit... The person is talking in their normal voice and suddenly the inflection changes.The holy voice comes in mid sentence or paragraph and it goes like this
  
  

Me- Hey, what did you do yesterday?

HVP (holy voice person)- I went to Target and then the grocery store but then I came home and had my quiet time with the Lord and I read my daily devotion and prayed. Then we went swimming.

You do not have to soften the voice if the conversation turns spiritual. Please talk in your normal voice. Don't make others lean in and tell you that they can't understand a word you are saying. Now I know there are times for the Holy voice, but don't do it to sound all spiritual.

We are funny people. We do so much by rote and we miss out on so much fun and joy that the Lord has for us. He knows our hearts. We are so easily annoyed when we think we are going to have to do something out of our ordinary routines or that our plans are going to get messed up if we stop a moment to do a kindness. I am reading...you guessed it a book that says, don't be like the Israelites and make the journey that God has meant as life for us into a death march like the Hebrew children did in the wildereness. There is so much that God has for us in the moments and in between the moments. It is up to us when we see a "burning bush" to turn aside from where we were going to investigate. That is when God speaks.