Take my Legos, take my toys

It was a moment that parents love to stumble upon, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.

When our boys were young, their job every Saturday morning was to clean their room upstairs.  It didn’t matter to us how long it took them, 10 minutes or 7 hours, they were free to do other things in the rest of the house once the room was cleaned.  But they were definitely not quick about getting it done.  I can’t recall a time when the job took them less than an hour.  They would clean, get distracted, play with their toys…and we didn’t mind, really.  The longer they took, the more peaceful our Saturday mornings downstairs tended to be.

They had a small CD player, and they loved having music going while they “cleaned” their room.  At this point in time, they were all into a Jeremy Camp album, called “Stay” – and they especially loved a song called “Take my life”.  It had a rock anthem beat and guitar riffs on the last word of each line – right up a little boy’s alley.  Here’s the chorus:

Take my life (riff)
take my mind (riff)
take my soul (riff)
take my will (riff)
As I am yours and I give it all to You!

They played this song all the time and always sang it at the top of their lungs.  On this particular Saturday, my parental timing was perfect.  I passed by the bottom of the stairs at just the right moment to hear our oldest son call out to his younger brother:

Hey, hey, wait…check this out:
Take my Legos,
take my toys,
mumble,
mumble,
As I am yours and I give it all to You!

You could hear the pride in his voice as he was coming up with his own lyrics to match the beat of the song they loved so much.  Taking all this in, I stifled a surprised chuckle – not wanting to ruin the adorableness of the moment – and quietly walked away before they realized I had overheard them.

Jeremy Camp’s song was based on Jesus’ answer to the question: Which command from the law did God consider to be the most important?  Here is what He replied:

Mark 12:30
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Jesus was pointing His audience back to one of the nation of Israel’s primary lessons about God. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means that you love Him with all your best, all of who you are.  Jesus’ Jewish audience would have picked up on the importance of the connection Jesus was making.  While I’m certain Jesus didn’t add any guitar riffs to the end of each line, the addition of them by Jeremy Camp certainly got the attention of my boys. 

Changing the lyrics to “Take my Legos, take my toys”, demonstrated that our oldest son got the point – that we offer our best, our all to God – and his favorite thing in the world at that point in his life was Legos.  He loved to spend hours creating, playing, and dreaming with his Lego builds.  For him to offer his Legos to God was a pretty real sacrifice, at his young age.

Do we pray similar prayers?  When was the last time you offered your house, your car, your career, or your favorite hobby/toy to God?  We can’t leave them off the list if we’re going to love the Lord your God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.  

Keep Pressing,
Ken

How to have a peaceful mind

I have a lot on my mind. 

Not just today.  Not just recently.  For pretty much all of my life – I’ve had a lot on my mind.  I’m blessed (cursed?) with the ability to think over and through multiple things at once.  And while that means my mind is never a dull place, it often means that internal peace and quiet are hard to come by.

Our minds get cluttered so easily, don’t they?  The pace of life makes it feel like everything needs our attention and must be immediately considered, like

What should we have for dinner?
How are my kids doing?
Am I teaching them the right things?
Am I in good standing with my job?
Is this what I want to do with my career?
How’s our money situation?
Can we handle this unexpected expense, or are we going to be in trouble?
How long until we have to replace a vehicle?
Why do I feel like this?
Should I get this checked out by a doctor?

And on and on and on goes the list…with news items, political topics, social media fights, and the onslaught of advertisements only adding fuel to the fire.

Maybe your mind doesn’t swim with questions…instead your struggle might be with negative thoughts or anxious worries or negative thoughts about having anxious worries (I’m not kidding here, either). 

I think it’s safe to say that we all have a lot on our minds.  And I don’t think we can fix that.  At least, not entirely on our own.

Near the beginning of a song found in the book of Isaiah, we find this hope-filled line:

Isaiah 26:3
You will keep the mind that is dependent on you in perfect peace, for it is trusting in you.

Go back and read that again, but slowly this time.  Try saying it out loud as you do.

Perfect peace sounds, well…perfect, doesn’t it?  But it gets better.

The phrase perfect peace is actually a paraphrase of the original Hebrew text.  The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, and in this case it is stated twice:

Isaiah 26:3
You will keep the mind that is dependent on you in shalom shalom, for it is trusting in you.

In Hebrew, if you want to emphasize something, you repeat yourself.  So what Isaiah is really saying here is that the mind dependent on God will have complete peace, a safe peace, a prosperous peace, a content peace.  The words complete, safe, prosperous, and content are all potential translations of the word shalom.  The language translators for the Christian Standard Bible did a good job by paraphrasing shalom shalom as perfect peace.

In order for us to have our mind in perfect peace, Isaiah tells us that our thoughts must be dependent upon God.  Whatever question, worry, or accusing thought comes across our brainwaves needs to be examined in light of our dependence on God.

When we’re trying to make it all work, when we believe that “I am the one who must shoulder this alone.”, we’re focusing on ourselves and also giving up on our reliance on God to see us through…and by doing so we give up the way to perfect peace.  

But what does it mean to be dependent on God?  I’ve heard many Christians say they just “give it to God” or “let go and let God” – and while they sound very spiritual when they say those kinds of things, there’s not a lot of substance or guidance there for us to work with.  Thankfully, Isaiah gave us a better explanation.

Notice that in Isaiah 26:3, he equated being dependent on God with trusting in Him.  Practically speaking this means:

I trust Him when I’m feeling indecisive.
I believe that He wants a relationship with my kids, just like He does with me.
I trust Him when I’m worried I’m not a good enough parent.
I do my work for Him and trust Him with the outcome.
I include Him in decisions I make as to where my career goes.
I trust Him in my finances by spending to His priorities.
I trust that He knew the crisis was coming and will show us a way through.
I trust that He knows how to provide as we manage what He’s blessed us with.
I tell Him how I feel.
I trust that my good and His glory is more important, even if the doctor gives news I don’t want to hear.

Trust God like this, and we’ll have perfect peace – even if life around us isn’t perfect.

This holds true for our anxious thoughts, our scared thoughts, our lustful thoughts, our depressing thoughts, and any other type of thinking that tries to consume us.  We must run them all through the lens of our dependence upon God.  Get help to process as you need to, we’re certainly not expected to do all this alone.  A trusted friend or counselor can be a tremendous help, but after processing with them, we must still make the choice to trust God with life in the here-and-now. 

Keep Pressing,
Ken