Put Me In God: The Coffee Shop Sign and Being Chosen

The Fix, sitting on the southwest corner of McKellips and Higley in Mesa, Arizona, is a simple shop – more closely resembling a stand because it has no indoor seating. There’s more locations than this one, but the McKellips and Higley one is my spot. There’s not much of a difference between The Fix and the other local joints, but one major difference is it’s farewell sign staring at you on the way out with your recently concocted Cold Brew, Americano, Latte, or Red Bull infused energy drink:

We know you had a choice

Thank you for choosing us.

When my eyes first connected with this catching slogan like a freshman boy spots his high school senior crush at his high school dance, I immediately time-traveled back to the years God placed a recurring thought in my brain that I spent multiple decades finding the words to explain.

 

Growing up, I liked to call myself an observer of others, staring intently at them as they lived their lives. I am too stubborn and protective of my reputation to admit that part of me is strange and creepy, but it likely was. Like a 10-month-old baby, I would stare probably too long as if I was just learning to be human. Anytime I had a moment or two to myself, this profound thought would enter into my mind like the sunset paints the entire sky purple and shades of red and orange – it was an unavoidable, yet beautiful thought. I began to wonder what it would be like for God to decide someone else would fill my body, which meant my personality, hobbies, habits, downtime, and choice of friends, religion, attitude towards school, and daily decision making would belong to someone other than myself. Additionally, I would sit on the sidelines waiting for God to choose me as bodies began getting filled by other identities I had no control over.

 

If this explanation is too depressing, let’s focus on it from another angle:

 

The internet says approximately 250 human babies are born around the globe per minute. This means from the mere standpoint of how long the Earth has been around and will be around compared to the amount of babies being produced by eager and often surprised parents, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be in charge of one of those bodies in life if 4.3 babies are born per second, and there’s evidence I beat the extraordinarily low odds of me being born. However, the more you learn what God is capable of and can do, especially in a short window of time, the more humbled you become that you were not permanently put in the batter’s box or dugout watching others receive a body to live in on Earth. You were chosen to play in the game.

 

While God had every right to create me to be controlled by someone else (meaning, somebody else makes my friends, someone else makes my decisions and chooses how I spend it, someone chooses my hobbies and how I spend my money, etc.), he didn’t. He chose me to fill my body. The alternate Josh, if he were born, might like hitting the greens with his golf bag, watch Tik Tok videos with a 20 oz cup of Tapioca Boba Tea, while skiing on the water – all things this Josh – the one who beat out all of the other sperm and all of the other possibilities – does not like.

 

Even if God did have other possible Josh’s ready to exist in my physical body, God only followed through with the Josh sitting on the master bedroom bed writing this very paragraph. Better yet, God doesn’t bench me because my batting average is low or I don’t hit well against left-handed pitchers. He keeps me in the game of life as long as He wants to, and I am grateful he chose me.

It's not an accident God chose YOU to be born for this time, for this moment, and for the daily situations you live through. At any moment, God could have decided he didn't need to share his creation with you, and pre-selected you to be on Life's team. But he wanted you. He wanted to draft you into this world, and nothing stopped him. He wants you to live it with purpose because he purposefully chose you!

This is why we worship Him! He chose us when he gave us parents or guardians to raise you, he chose us when he sent his only son to die for our sins, and he is choosing us now to be involved in what he continues to do through you and those around you.

What a blessing!

*See Genesis 1 & Psalm 139:14

How to Zoom Out of Our Struggle

It was the beginning of the one of the many school weeks throughout the year, the students were at PE, and I knew I had 35 minutes free to grade, check e-mails, lesson plan for the following week, and/or even clean out my personal desk drawers that symbolize my neglect to organize.

Instead, on my way back from dropping the students off at the gym, I found myself in the Dean’s pocket-sized office that comfortably fits three, but is often used as a therapist center for up to six students at a time. Aside from dean of K-6 students, Heather wears many hats between 7:30 and 3:30 including, but not limited to, school counselor, 504 extraordinaire, cross walk duty aid, morning drop-off and afternoon pickup monitor, and teacher evaluator.

At approximately 1:35, she becomes a crutch for a teacher to lean on when he is limping through the week on a Tuesday.

That teacher is me.

I drag myself into Heather’s office, wearing a button-down patterned shirt with purple sharks on it for no other reason than the hope that throughout the day, I would look down at the shirt I chose to wear and think, “I am wearing a shark shirt! What could go wrong? Only bright, shiny moments are ahead for me!” Unfortunately, the shirt did nothing to save me throughout the day, and my body language showed it.

Upon entering the small office, I stare at the two chairs on the left, neighbors to one another and pressed against the wall facing her desk like they would in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. I slump in it because that was all my energy could afford me. I didn’t have the time nor the energy to properly sit up as if being interviewed for a position at EDUPRIZE for the first time. Heather knew me well, having taught 5^th grade on the same team as me five or six years prior and seeing me step in and out of her office for a variety of reasons since she became the Dean of Students several years ago. Therefore, I no longer felt I was meeting her as one professional to another, but as a friend needing a fresh dose of encouragement and some good wisdom in order to move forward through the grueling school year.

The meeting was mostly about one particular child’s behavior irritating me because I simply could not transition through each subject smoothly with his distractive behavior from time to time. I wanted to stick to my mission statement by loving him like Jesus does, being a light to him and supporting him with unconditional service to his needs. The more I tried, the more worn out and bitter I became. Is trying to be like Jesus supposed to be like this? Draining? The thoughts I had were barely identifiable because of the fatigue I felt just thinking about the ways I needed to improve my approach to this student. I was zoomed in on the problem so much, I could hardly sit up straight enough to think of good solutions – every scenario that could help this child fell flat over imaginary worst-cases that would come out of it. Since I was zoomed in, any big picture opportunity to help the child grow was blurred out by the fear that all the strategies would leave more doubt and frustration.

A lot of words and strategies were exchanged that day in the meeting with Heather, bearing resemblance to those past meetings where you walk out so overwhelmed with all that was said, you don’t even recall the topic of the meeting. Yet, one thing Heather said rang in my ears louder than those ridiculous fire alarms that causes everyone to have severe hearing loss:

“Try to focus on the good things happening in your classroom, even if they don’t always come from him.”

Suddenly, I felt I didn’t need to hold on to every word, strategy, and encouragement Heather calmly spoke over me; that was it.

Did it dramatically change the way my school year went? Did it turn this child’s entire year around? Did it completely change the course of my entire career? No, and I would argue isn’t even the means to an end with this student. Ignoring the child’s struggles won’t redirect and lead him in the right direction. Still, it gave me something to work with, because Heather’s point was simple:

Don’t become so narrow-minded on the problems in front of you when so much good is happening, including the current struggle.

Yet, my struggle is common, and not exclusive to my profession. When we see an obstacle in front of us - whether that be a sour relationship, a mental struggle where you question your value, a workplace situation, or issues out of your control – we tend to zoom in on that problem and lose sight of what God could be doing through the circumstance; he may even be providing a way out!

In my Heather meeting, my way out was to see my classroom with a bigger scope while allowing the issues with the one student a chance to work itself out with the current strategies I had in place.

When we think of the Israelites of the Bible, the ones freed from bondage of the Egyptians, a word comes to mind: Complaining. The Israelites were constantly zoomed in on their problems and refused to see the good things around them – namely, God’s provision and protection!

Isaiah 43:18-19 speaks of God’s perspective, despite Israel’s constant complaining and remembrance of the old times in Egypt (Numbers 20:5 – “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!”):

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

In other words, stop focusing on the problems and start living within God’s blessings.

Allowing God to take care of us by providing solutions – “making a way in the wilderness” – is how we can partner with Him to solve are greatest problems! We can see the good happening through the struggle and after it – “I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up…” We cannot see God’s provision today by dwelling on yesterday’s problems.

This includes going through the struggle too! As I continued to press in through the struggles with the student, I began to shift my perspective by trusting that God was creating a new thing in the midst of my troubles. If I continued to receive the struggle as an irredeemable dilemma, I wouldn’t be able to zoom out enough to perceive the new thing God is doing through me and him.

In fact, we can have hope in the struggle, because even if we don’t see the fruit of our labor now, 2 Corinthians 4:17 promises us this nugget of good news:

“For our light and momentary struggles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

From a zoomed in perspective, where our problem takes up every square millimeter of our mind, we can’t make room for the Holy Spirit to give us a fresh perspective and even minimize our problem in view of God’s sovereign power and authority.

It is imperative that we partner with God to help us see what he sees in the middle of our storms and momentary struggles.

Do not waste any of your time trying to overcome your battles on your own. You may be able to temporarily wash away the struggle with a worldly lens, but eventually it will only keep you zoomed in to the problem more down the road; possibly even more than you were before you tried to sweep it under the rug.

The key is to hand over your struggle to God so he can adjust your lens and empower you to see the situation through his eyes. When you do that, you begin to entrust him to zoom you out so you can see the bigger picture of what he’s doing with that moment and through you.

Another way to describe God adjusting your lens is found in Romans 12:2:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Let God transform your perspective of the problem even if it is likely he won’t remove the problem. When you partner with him, though, it is guaranteed He will transform – adjust – your lens to see the problem differently; from his perspective.

This should be the first step towards conquering your daily obstacles: partnership with God. Declare it, too. Speak life over your partnership with God. Prioritize his voice in your life, because when you do, God will give you peace that cannot be found anywhere else on earth (see John 14:27).

Paul wrote a letter to the believers in Philippi, and in it, he gave the church the solution on how to replace anxiety and fear with peace from God. These verses, found in Philippians 4:6-7, are what partnership with God looks like:

“…in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Pray. Praise. Present. Partnership with God means praying for his perspective to be made clear to you, praising him for all he is doing through you, and presenting your problems to him so he can take of you through them.

This is what zooming out looks like. When we pray, praise, and present, we not only partner with God through our problems, we also focus on the good through it, similar to me focusing on the good happening in my classroom. The best news is that this “good” is not limited to classrooms – this good is God, and he is our ever-present help in time of need.

And he is doing a new thing in and through you.

Do you perceive it?