What If....

It is crazy to think about all that we can do for others then out of no where...have it all taken away. What do I mean by this, I mean when we have a big idea of wanting to do something for someone then we think of the negative that may come with it. The way I see it is that we have to stop living this way, which way do I mean, I mean the ‘what if’ way. I may not make a lot of sense at first, but hopefully reading through more of this note, it will become clearer. When I say that a lot of us live the ‘what if’ way I mean for example; we have full intentions of doing something nice for someone then we may think of something negative that may come from it, so instead of doing something....we do nothing. I understand that I may be repeating myself a couple times throughout this note but it’s just my thoughts. One experience that has drawn me to thinking a lot about this is that we do a lot of this ‘what if’ thinking when it comes to giving money to homeless people. I don’t want to say we all do it, but I know a lot of people who don’t give because they don’t know what the person will do with that money. One of the many excuses that I hear from these people is this “I would give them some money, but what if they use it on booze or a pack of smokes” I do understand that, because lots of people don’t want to be that person who helps them get the booze or smokes that they ‘may’ want. Just because they’re homeless...doesn’t mean they automatically drink or smoke. They may genuinely need the money to get some food. So one thing I want everyone to think about is this: “what if they use the money for booze or smokes....but what if they don’t”. We put so much thought into wanting to help people at times, but let the smallest things get in the way. I hear the saying “we are blessed to bless others” I for one, completely agree with that, but one thing that I am seeing is that, yes we are blessed, but we want to bless others the way we want to and not the way we we’re made to. What do I mean by this, I mean that there are times when we will only give if it’s convenient to us, and not give when we don’t want to give something up? What is the meaning of ‘sacrifice’? Sacrifice- a giving up of some cherished or desired object. Jesus sacrificed His life so that we could be with Him in Heaven one day. But think about this...imagine if Jesus lived the ‘what if’ life. Think about this...if Jesus lived the ‘what if’ life would he of done all the things he did with serving and healing. All the people he served, what if he thought “what if they don’t care what I do for them” but he didn’t think that way. He served because he loved. I want to challenge all of us to respond first in love. So if you run into a ‘homeless’ person out on the street, and they ask you for some change, I’m not saying, give them everything you’ve got, if you do, then thats awesome, all I’m saying is that you think about how Jesus would respond to them. Don’t always jump to the negatives, give people the chance that Jesus gave them. There are a lot of different situations where the ‘what if’ way applies. One with the giving I just talked about, but another specific topic is with relationships. What I’m getting at is that there are some people who choose not to get into any relationships at all because they are afraid of getting hurt, within good reason because there are plenty of bad situations that people go through that make people this way. I completely understand and I don’t stress this at any one. I just want to say that we need to step outside of the boat and have some faith. With my all of my relationships I do not regret anything that may have happened. I think I might have seen a Facebook bumper sticker that says “no regrets, just lessons learned”. I couldn’t agree more with that statement, we can’t keep living our lives regretting each mistake we make. If we do this we will never be able to truly grow. You can’t grow and make progress if you keep stepping back into the boat. I know I may sound like a huge optimistic person but I just want everyone to know that there are always going to be a negative side of an opportunity but also a positive side. I just know from experience that if we always decide to not do something because we may be scared of the outcome. For example, we may want to help someone with something but maybe they don’t want help, but you would never know unless you asked. Even if they didn’t want your help it is a kind thing to do. One of the biggest experiences in my life that made God so evident in my life was at a dinner one night at Swiss Chalet. One night about a year ago my girlfriend and I went out for dinner at Swiss Chalet. We had been there for a good hour or so and we were just finishing up our meal and then a lady came into the restaurant and she went to sit down all by herself, at first I didn’t think anything of it because lots of people go to dinner waiting for someone else. So after about 20 minutes I just noticed that she was still alone, so I started thinking a lot and well...couldn’t stop. I thought...I would hate to spend my time at dinner all alone with a bunch of other people around me enjoying themselves with friends and family. There was something in me that wanted me to do something for her but I didn’t know what. It felt like there was something in me that was totally leaning me towards her. So it finally came to me, I was going to pay for her dinner. It wasn’t much but I wanted to do something that would let her have something to smile about. So I talked with the waiter and he informed her about 5 minutes later. She then came over to me and Jenna with smiles all around, she came and sat with us for a couple minutes and we started talking. She had then told us that she just came back from the hospital because her husband just had surgery and had to stay at the hospital for a couple more days. She told us that because I paid for her meal that it made her just so happy and it let her know that there are people out there that care about her. I tell you this story not to boast but to make clear that God gives us continuous opportunities to serve Him and the people that He loves. God loves us all so very much and He didn’t think about the What if, because He knew that we would sin and He knew that some would choose to not follow Him, but because He loved us so much He sent His one and only son to die on the cross for us. There has been a change in my life because of this controlling ‘what if’ way. I have changed a lot because I no longer listen to the ‘what if’ in the back of my head, I will do what I believe is right and I will go where God sends me. If you think you should do something for someone, why not doit.

On a complete different idea the whole ‘what if’ I never did this...we like to think of these things in specific situations for losing someone or something bad has happened to someone else. For example... “What if I did this though, this wouldn’t of never happened” we can’t keep living this way, everything happens for a reason, I believe it, but sometimes it’s hard to truly believe that. We want to know why God lets some things happen to us, to our friends, to our families. We have all been given the chance to come to know God. Sometimes a certain situation may be what someone needs to point the towards God. Another example from this idea is that someone may get into a car accident and may live, but may be paralyzed for the rest of their lives, may be the reason they were in the car in the first place was because they had to get a child who was in trouble, and then the child finds out that their parent got into an accident and they blame themselves for it. Usually saying “what if I only did what I was told, then they would’ve never had to get in the car in the first place” I want everyone to know...We can NOT live this way. Living our lives with ‘what if I only did this’ or ‘what if I only did that’ we can’t dwell on past situations because of mistakes that may of been made. Things happen, and us as human beings aren’t capable of understanding Gods wisdom and why some things happen and why some situations turn out the way they do, it may not seem fair to us but was it really fair for God to have to give up His sons life for those who He knew would never Love Him the way He does. It may hurt us so much and dwell inside us for the rest of our lives but we have two choices with this...choose to dwell with the pain or we can choose to move on and grow stronger in our relationship with our creator. The whole idea of “it hurts so much” when we lose someone is so common, and I totally understand. I am not saying that it is not normal to feel this way. If you are dealing with a loss in your life...I am so sorry for your loss and I pray that you and the ones who have been affected by it for strength and comfort. We can’t let ourselves be racked with guilt with certain situations that our compelled out of our control. I want to just say sorry for all of these random thoughts crunched into one note. I have so many thoughts in my head and I just want to get them all out.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this note, I have a lot of thoughts to share (unless you haven’t noticed) I hope and pray that you may have learned something from this note. I pray that you will let God into your life and let Him lead you where He wants you to go. I hope that you will come to know Jesus and all the love that He gives. That you will come to know that He came to serve and not be served.
“We must go, live to feed the hungry. Stand beside the broken; we must go. Stepping forward keep us from just singing, move us into action; we must go.”

We are so extremely blessed and we have so many opportunities to serve God and those He loves, may our first response be in love instead of jumping to the negative and trying to convince yourself that we don’t need to give and help those who are in need. I hope and pray that you will give with a genuine heart and not just do it to get it off your back. If you are giving just out of obligation then God doesn’t want it. He wants your true love what you really want to give not just a couple bucks that you gave because you felt like you had to. I hope and pray that we will all learn to love and forgive like Jesus. That we will never forget that God loves us all so much.
Grace and Peace Jordan Jones