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How backwards we think of it. God doesn’t punish us for our mistakes. Our wrongdoings create their own punishment. Our own faults are bricks comprising the wall between us and God. We lay each brick ourselves as we construct our own personal Towers of Babel. But as we shove each brick into place, Jesus stands ready to tear them all down if we only ask him.

I get it. It’s not fair! Those Matthew 20 laborers who sweated in the field all dang day made not a penny more than those who labored a mere hour. But this is a tale of God’s great mercy. Truth be told, not a one of us can earn God’s forgiveness, much less his blessings. They are poured out upon us from the rich depths of his enduring love not from any merit on our part. God’s grace is offered freely to us all.

The kingdom of heaven is a turned around, upside down place where the “first will be last; and the last, first…” where all the rules we’ve learned in this physical world do not apply. The rich, the elite, the popular, the beautiful don’t rule the kingdom of heaven because none of those things are important there. The kingdom of heaven is a world of soul and spirit. The greatest treasure in the kingdom of heaven, and in our own muddled up world, is Jesus. And he is FREE to everyone who wants him.

Everyone experiences pain and hurt and sickness no matter how rich or how smart they are. Things are going to be unfair. We aren’t going to always get our way. That is just the truth. Trying to deny this truth is only a bandaid on a bloody stump. We can get away with it during good times. But some day, some how, life is going to get difficult and that false tower of denial is going to come crashing down. We’re much better off confronting this truth and dealing with it now instead of from the underside of a tragedy.

We live in a cursed world. We all WILL suffer in one way or another eventually. Nothing happens that God doesn’t allow. Jesus tells us to forgive each other, but can we forgive GOD? Only when we consider all of eternity, can we understand that our sufferings in this life truly are “light and momentary afflictions that are achieving for us an eternal glory that outweighs them all.” (2 Cor. 4:17)  Only someone with eternal vision can respond to suffering with worship as Job does.

Any power or control we think we wield is all illusion anyway. We truly are those helpless children whether we understand it or not. Pride is the biggest delusion we could ever entertain. But guess what… we can also believe in MAGIC. When we shift our focus from ourselves to our heavenly Father and depend upon his care and direction rather than our own, our lives truly become magic indeed.

So HOW do you trust in the LORD with all your heart and acknowledge Him in all your ways? How do you let God guide you? How do you HEAR God’s voice? Here are four suggestions…

It all comes down to our attitude. Two people might behave identically but one is motivated by law and the other by freedom. The first person is trying as hard as they can to do all the right things and obey all the rules using their own willpower. The second person enjoys a deepening relationship with the Creator of the Universe. Outwardly, they may both act exactly the same. But the first person is miserable and the second person is full of joy. The goal is not learning how to be perfect. The goal is learning how to walk in FAITH.

I choose freedom!

We just can’t do it. Perfection for us wicked, stupid humans is impossible. That is the whole point. It was the point of the 10 Commandments and the Mosaic Law. It was the point of the whole Old Testament. It was the point of the Sermon on the Mount. God knew when he dictated his laws to Moses that the Israelites could never measure up. Jesus never intended for his followers to gouge out their own eyeballs or chop off their extremities. That’s obviously not what he meant…