Checking My Heart's Condition

My husband and I just had a wonderful weekend together. We went to a Joyce Meyer conference, and we were able to arrange for Joshua to be watched by a few family members while we were gone. This was the first time that my husband and I have had this much time to ourselves since Joshua was born almost 3 years ago!

Joyce spoke on the condition of our hearts. It's funny how God works, because the first half of the conference really touched my husband, and the second half touched me - although all of it was great teaching! God really pointed out to me this weekend that I get WAY too upset WAY too quickly! This is something that I've been aware of practically my whole adult life, but I have not really ever given it completely up to God. I can honestly say that I've been afraid of the route God would try to heal me in this area, so I've ignored it. Well, this weekend God brought it out into the spotlight like it or not!

We were on a very tight budget this weekend, so I made sure that I tried to plan in advance for all of our expenses. I checked with the arena online, and the website stated that parking would cost $5 a day with in/out privileges. All we would have to do is show our ticket later on in the day to get back in without paying. As soon as we pulled up to the arena, I quickly realized that we were going to be charged $10. This also was only good for one session. This meant $20 in parking for Saturday alone, which was not in "my budget". :) I became really upset, because we had just gotten there, and we were already going to be spending so much more money than I had planned. What I came to realize, was that the arena considered this a smaller event, so they did not open up the main parking area that was mentioned on the website...

The next morning we drove around and around until we found a parking area for $5. We parked so far away (I guess I needed the exercise anyhow!), but I fell going up the steps on the way. We still had so much further to go, and my knee was really hurting. Needless to say, I was miserable again. :) We got to the Friday night session a little early that night, so we could look around. As I headed to the bathroom, my husband was going to buy a drink. I saw that they had soft pretzels, so I asked him to please buy me one. After leaving the bathroom, I realized that I really didn't want the pretzel, because I've noticed that they make my blood sugar go way up. As soon as I found my husband, he said, "You better really like your pretzel, because it was $4!" His bottled water cost almost the same. Now I shouldn't have been surprised, because I know that food is so expensive at these type of events. Still, I decided to let it really bother me as I tallied up in my mind the amount of money we were spending over the weekend.

We decided at that point that we would like to go back outside before the conference started, because it was so nice outside. After going outside for a few minutes, we decided to go back to our seats. As we entered the auditorium, we were told that we could not bring in any outside water bottles with us, because they sell drinks inside. After explaining that we bought this water inside, we were still told to throw it away before entering the stadium. I told Kevin to drink all he could very quickly, since it cost so much! This upset me so much, even though I knew we weren't allowed to bring in any outside drinks. We just forgot and took his drink outside. When going back to our seats, I was still silently fuming about this incident. There was now a woman sitting at the end of the row where we had our belongings. I politely said, "Excuse me." to her to get through, and she wouldn't move! I told her that I was too big to get through the 1 inch that she was giving me to get by, and she just stared at me. At this point I was still upset at the water bottle incident, and this woman was not going to budge. I told her that she was going to have to get up, because I would not fit. (Her legs were almost touching the seat in front of her, and she had to know that no one would be able to get through.) After what seemed like forever, she got up. When Kevin and I got to our seats, I was so angry. I kept talking about it over and over again until the conference started. Kevin just looked at me and said, "There's nothing that you can do about it. What's done is done. You always let the devil walk all over you. Move on." This, for some reason, just made me even more upset. I just couldn't believe all of the irritating things that had been happening to me that weekend. :)

Well...Joyce Meyer spoke that session on our heart's attitude towards difficult situations. She began to speak about how God used to always have to deal with her about getting angry about situations she could not control. As I began to sink lower and lower in my seat while thinking about everything that had upset me over the last 2 days, I felt so convicted! Joyce then spoke about different tests that God will give us to show us the condition of our heart. I then realized that I had been given several tests over the last couple of days, and I failed them all miserably!

I have since been praying that God would show me how to react differently to situations that irritate me. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long process, but I thank God that it's started!

Oh, How Prideful I Have Been!

Have you ever felt slighted or felt that you were treated unfairly? Have you ever thought about a conversation you had that made you angry and you find yourself rehearsing it in your mind with a new ending of what you "should" have said instead? (In order to "get back" at the person who upset you?) Have you ever decided that you would stand your ground just so you could prove that you were right and the other person was wrong? (Even after you realized that the other person could quite possible be correct?) I've done all of these things in the past few weeks! It wasn't until this week, though, that I'm beginning to realize that God is trying to show me something!

God has been dealing with me concerning pride. I have never thought of myself as being prideful, but over the past couple of weeks God has shown me just how prideful I really am! This is a difficult post for me, because I'm still "stuck" right in the middle of this. There have been several situations in my life that I have been dealing with, off and on, and they all come down to one horrible word - PRIDE!

Prov. 16:5 states, "Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; Assuredly, he will not be unpunished" (NASB). There are countless other verses about pride in the bible, but it all comes down to one thing. God hates pride! One example of pride is when we think we know better than God does, so we take situations into our own hands and leave God out. He wants to show us our prideful ways so that we can change them and become more like Him. I've been noticing that my pride tends to rear it's ugly head when I feel insignificant. There is nothing I can do to change these situations that have come up, but I can change my reaction to them. Now that I've stopped blaming everyone else and have started to look at myself, I see just how prideful I've been. God wants me to find my significance in Him, not in other people or situations. God accepts me no matter what anyone else thinks about me. God knows my heart, even when someone else is always critical of me. God is proud of me even when no one else acknowledges me.

I've been really starting to pray about this and ask God to help me in this area, because I know that these same type of situations will always be coming up in my life. Nothing is going to change that. I still have a lot of clutter in my heart over this, but God is slowly but surely cleaning me out! This is a painful process, but it's wonderful to think that along the way, I'll be becoming more and more like Him! Thank you, Jesus!