“What’s the price of a pet canary? Some loose change, right? And God cares what happens to it even more than you do. He pays even greater attention to you, down to the last detail—even numbering the hairs on your head! So don’t be intimidated by all this bully talk. You’re worth more than a million canaries.”Stand up for me against world opinion and I’ll stand up for you before my Father in heaven. If you turn tail and run, do you think I’ll cover for you?
“Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me.
“If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.
“Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut” This is what I meant yesterday by faith being disquieting!!
“If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me”. That’s what I need to remember when I’m looking into careers etc., not what would be the most lucrative/ secure, but where does God want me?
“So don’t be intimidated by all this bully talk. You’re worth more than a million canaries.” Going to try to remember this when doing a presentation to lots of scary doctors and nurses tomorrow!!!
The bit about cutting through relationships etc… what does that mean? Is it that we can be distracted from God by our family? I always find bits like this really hard to get my head around.
Hi Jen, For me it’s been all too clear. When I first “found Jesus” at about 18 years old, my mum HIT THE ROOF. She was screaming at me and trying to ban me from going to prayer meetings, and saying it was a load of ******** and that I was obviously going to some sort of “cult” and that the next thing, I’d be “turning Catholic” and we couldn’t have THAT in our family…. etc. It was PAINFUL. None of my family understand my faith and they think I’m an over-religious nut (I hardly EVER speak about my faith to them). They simply are on the outside and I’m on the inside and the gulf is almost tangible. My sister has echoed my mum’s words from 20-odd years ago quite recently. I can never have a spiritual closeness with any of them like I can with my Christian “family”. It hurts, but I HAVE to choose Jesus. Also, I know a woman who IDOLISES her only child and I mean IDOLISES. God is very very definitely in the back seat and if it came to the choice – she has already stated that God would be out on the hard shoulder. It is, I know, difficult ….when your child is say, being bullied at school, to get so angry that you say the wrong things to him/her about the bully … not Godly things. That’s another example of making sure you put God before your Child’s feelings, choose HIS way of dealing with it, which may take longer, than instantly soothing your child by pointing out the shortcomings of another…… just some examples, I hope this helps!