Wednesday, May 23, 2012

My Elephant

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes. -Matthew 6:34 (MSG)

It sounds so simple.  I thought I was doing this in my life for the most part, until I heard Keith speak at our church on THAT. If you weren't there on Sunday, you missed a good sermon that is totally worth listening to and that I have embedded here for you.  Honestly, watch it.




Just to sum up, we all have our THAT.  THAT is the thing that we carry around everywhere we go.  We pretend it isn't there.  The regular public often has no idea that it's there because they only see the person we show them.  I like to refer to my THAT as my white elephant.  You know, that thing that your closest friends and family can see (sometimes because they know you so well, and sometimes because you've told them) but they continue to pretend along with you that it doesn't exist when you don't want to talk about it?

Your elephant can be any number of things.  Keith brought up the need to be cool and the need for financial security as some ideas in his talk.  And by the end, I knew what my elephant was.  I knew what God was asking me to leave behind.  And again, I thought I had left it.  Too bad when I turned around, there was this huge elephant sitting there staring at me. 

So, Sunday morning, as we sang, I gave my elephant back to him and walked away.  I told a friend about giving it to him the next day.  We talked about it a bit and then that afternoon, it got challenged.

Seriously???  Already?  I've barely finished gift wrapping that giant thing and already I'm being challenged on whether or not I'm serious about walking away from it.  But, while I won't be revealing exactly what it is here, I will tell you publicly that I meant what I said on Sunday AND Monday!  I am walking away from that darn elephant!! I am putting it down and I refuse to carry it one more foot! It's dragging me down and keeping me from doing all that God wants of me.

So here's my challenge for you and me:  Find your THAT, your elephant, and figure out how you can walk away from yours too!  Have a great week!