Reflexes

God is in the process of transforming your reflexes because God has made you to reflect His love and grace to the world.  If you are too busy to slow down and to reflect on your response patterns, God has ways of slowing you down and teaching you.  If you’re in a hurry, come back to this blog when you have time for us to reflect together.   

When things don’t go your way, how do you respond?  If you have built your worry muscles, your anxious brain will begin to script narratives of all of the bad things that have disrupted your life and all of the bad things that are going to happen.  If you’re more prone to getting frustrated or angry, you will start blaming yourself and the people around you and will become critical or dismissive and project anger with looks or words or hurtful reactions.  If your reflex is to turn inward, then the people around you won’t have any idea what’s going on inside of you.  If your reflex is to turn outward and to tell everyone that you’re upset, people will start keeping their doors closed because they won’t want to hear it.  If you’ve built comfort reflexes, then you’ll just turn to your favorite comforter to make you feel better.  If you reflexively respond by kicking into “fix it” mode, you will quickly assess what’s happening and will decide what you need to do to solve the problem.  If you’ve become a pretender, you may act like nothing has upset you, but on the inside, you may not be okay at all.  If you’ve developed your “busy muscles”, you will just go to the next item on your to-do list, and maybe you’ll return later to deal with what went wrong.

As I live in the trenches with God and with His people, God has been teaching me to ask “What is Jesus doing?” when things don’t go my way.  Jesus wants us to turn to Him for help when things go wrong.  Jesus is our ever-present help in times of trouble (Psalm 46), and He wants to quiet us and fill us with His love until our responses are compassionate and gracious.  Unfortunately, we unknowingly shift from seeking God and trusting God to map our days and responses to taking matters into our own heads or into our own hands.  Instead of asking God what He’s up to when things don’t go our way, we create our own narratives.  Since we don’t like it when things don’t go our way, we usually tell ourselves why people mess up our days, and we inwardly or outwardly get upset.  Then we set in motion a process of making things worse instead of praying and asking Jesus what He wants when problems happen.

We may inwardly desire to become the kind of people whom anyone can trust, but oftentimes we respond in ways that alienate people around us.  We ignore and turn away from the people at home, across the street, or at work, and then we wonder why our relationships aren’t working.  We think that we love God and people, but we don’t stay close enough to them to really know what loving them means.  We become too busy or too distracted to stop and notice, to care, to pray, and to do something to help lighten people’s load and to display the love and grace of Jesus.  Although God’s love may be in me, it doesn’t always win when people and problems disrupt my life.

When do your reflexes bother you and disturb the people around you?  Have you intentionally engaged in a process of allowing the Holy Spirit to transform your reflexes into His responses?  God won’t leave me alone.  In fact, the Holy Spirit awakens me to His Word to encourage me, to convict me, to teach and to train me, and to transform me when my ways of thinking and responding are off.  The Holy Spirit orchestrates daily “practice sessions” by disrupting my life, my schedule, and my plans with God-ordained experiences to practice His presence and to trust Him as we work together to accomplish what’s more important to Him than things working out my way.

As I’m connecting and engaging with God and people, I’m being trained to see and to celebrate the work of God in people. 

In fact, the older I get, the more excited and crazier I become when I get to be around God’s children of all ages.  Instead of being the teacher and counselor, I’m asking people to reflect on what God is showing them.  As I’m developing deeper relationships by being attentive, transparent, and vulnerable, I’m watching people around me become more open and honest with God, with themselves, and with people.  I’m discovering that grace-based, relational reflexes make people want more of Jesus instead of being turned off to Jesus.  The more gracious, fun-loving, and deeply caring that I become, I’m watching God melt the hearts of people around me who may not even believe in Jesus yet. 

As God is retraining my reflexes, I’m becoming more flexible instead of rigid.  I’m becoming more understanding instead of critical.  I’m becoming more loving instead of hateful.  I’m becoming more playful instead of old.  I’m becoming more prayerful instead of insightful.  I’m becoming more dependent upon God and His people instead of independent.  I’m asking more for help instead of always offering my help.  I’m slowly learning to listen more instead of just speaking.  I’m learning from people of all ages instead of trying to being the intergenerational bridge-builder.  I’m learning to take breaks and naps when I need them instead of overextending myself.  I’m learning to make time and to be available instead of being too busy.  I’m learning to seize the moments at hand so that I don’t miss or misuse the opportunities that God gives me.