Ford = find on the road dead. Fiat = fix it again tony. ASAP = as soon as practicable. DOA = dead on arrival. SNAFU = situation normal all fouled up. And on and on the list goes. In the Christian world we too have acronyms like: FROG = fully rely on God, WWJD = what would Jesus do?, PTL = praise the Lord, and many more. The military is probably the king of acronyms with everything (almost) having an acronym. People should take a class called "Acronym 101" in high school just so they can engage society. When we move to texting, acronyms have a whole new level of application. I confess that I am lost in some of the world of acronym. So, maybe we need to come up with our own or better yet, go back to regular actual effective "words". Now there is a concept we can really use. Remember KISS = keep it simple stupid. That's the key; simplicity of communication in an effect manner designed to maximize interactions and function. Now doesn't that sound simple?
I like simple statements. They often convey all that we need to convey. Like, "I love you." or for men, "I love you man." Simple. Yet, not. Love has it's meaning that differs from person to person. What do you mean when you tell me your love me? Does that signal it's time for me to take out the garbage? Does it mean I've just given in to something you requested? Love is a very difficult simple word and misused concept. When I was a therapist I used to give lots of homework. One of those homework assignments (mostly for couples) involved a list of words (of which love was one). I would ask the people to define what they thought the word meant when they were between 8-10. After they did this to all of the words I would ask them to define the words again as to what they meant right now. Again, after they applied this to all of these words I would ask them to finally go through the list and once again give a perceived perfect definition of the words. After completing the assignment I would have the couples exchange their lists. Wow! You wouldn't believe some of the differences.
The kicker in the above assignment came when people realized that they were expecting the other persons behavior and understanding to be as they defined the word and not as their partner defined the word. The opposite was true as well. Here we find the problem most people have in their relationship with God. We take our definitions, expectations and aspirations and put them upon God. Since God created us he already has definitions that we can use to know and understand Him. What we get instead (from the pulpits and many writers of their own wisdom) is what we want God to be to us under our creation. Doesn't work that way and never will. Our world of magical thinking ends up a litany of disappointing results over and over. Our faith withers and dies when we don't see God doing what we want him to do. Perhaps we are the reason of the perceived failures we attribute to God. God cannot fail.
LGLG = let go and let God. Do we really believe this acronym? We often are so afraid of letting go that we don't bother to ask God what it is he wants us to let go of. What does God mean when he asks us to trust him? FEAR = false evidence appearing real. Satan is the father of lies and wants us to be in a state of fear. There is no love in fear; rather perfect love casts out all fear. That's one of God's definitions. TTFN = ta ta for now. Don't let your definition run your day. Allow God's perfect definitions run your life!
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