Joy Dare: 3 Gifts Round

I have decided to do Ann Voskamp's Joy Dare.  

It is a challenge to look for extraordinary gifts in ordinary days.  I am starting late, (yesterday was my first day), but I think it's going to be great!

So here was yesterday's gifts: 3 gifts round.  

I guess this could mean literally finding round things, but I went with finding three things that were the same.  And I found 11's.  

Now, first I should explain about the 11's.  In 2011, I was struggling with the idea of whether or not God was actually in control. Is He really sovereign?  In this time, I started to notice 11's everywhere.  Every time I looked at a clock it was something: 11, I caught 11:11 very often.  This made me realize that if The Spirit could be in control of when I glanced at a clock, so that for months it was always something: 11 o'clock, then He could be in control of everything.  Since then 11 has been a symbol to mean "God is in control."  And those of you who know me, know they show up everywhere.  I know that Jesus has used this over and over and over again in my life.  So much so that there is no denying that a higher power must be in control of it.  

So yesterday, the first day of my Joy Dare, I put the little print off calendar that Ann offer's on her website (see) https://s3.amazonaws.com/a.voskamp/BlogFiles/JoyDareCollectionFinalRevision.pdf  on my computer screen and just as I was taping it up I glanced at the clock, it was 11:11am.

 I realized that I had already noted 9:11am.  Three gifts round... Three gifts that are the same... To show faithfulness, to show consistency, to show unfailing love, to show that I don't have to be in control.  I went on to find two more 11's in unexpected places, and the day, though hard and boring and long... Was not bad, but good, because He was still in control of it.  

 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.  -Jeremiah 29:11

Third Confession: I am a User

Over the past few months I have been struck by the idea that we should not use God.  That WHO He is and who we are to Him is so much more important than just someone or something to make us feel better or look better or even be better.  

I wrote this in my journal yesterday: 

(Praying) 

"I want You to be more than just 'useful' to me, to make me good, to make me successful, to make me free, to make me healed, to make me beautiful, to make me safe, to make me fed, to make me clothed, to make me happy.  I want You to be my reason to get up in the morning and why I fall asleep at night.  The reason that I breathe.  I want You to be my True Love, not the world, not myself, not anyone, but You."

I realized that I have been using God as a way to feel better, be good and be successful, but that's not what this life is about.  That's not the reason that Jesus spilled His blood and tore His flesh for us, not just so that we could be good little girls and boys with pretty straight teeth, and pretty straight lives, all in pretty little worlds with the newest cell phone... He died not even so that we could be free, (at least in the Americanized "happy" version of freedom). He died so that I could be with Him and He could be with me.   All those things, He will give us, (True Freedom, Joy, Goodness, Safety, Beauty), but He will give it through Himself... They are not His purpose.  Jesus and I are not so different in that... He wants to be loved for WHO He is not what He can give.  

Jesus is not a commodity, either.