Values Talk

If you want to know what you really value, listen to your thoughts and your stories.  Pay attention to how you spend your time and your money.  Notice what repeatedly captures your attention.  If someone watches your rhythms and if they study your behavior, soon they will discover that you love…

We’re not very good at hiding what we love.  Our values and feelings are displayed throughout each day.  People know what and who we care about.  They also know what and who we don’t care about.  Although we’ve been mask-wearers for quite some time, they don’t really work.  Our values, beliefs, convictions, and passions get repeated exposure. 

We were not designed to hide love, nor were we designed to camouflage our values.  We were designed to love God and to love people with our all.  If you watch how our values talk and work, we only have peace when each part of our lives is simultaneously working in harmony to love God and to love people. 

Wholehearted.  All in.  Completely engaged.  Loving.  Totally invested.  Holding nothing back.  Do these words describe you?  How would your family members describe you?  If you’re not sure…ask them.

Through the process of God healing, restoring, and reforming my life, I have developed a conviction that God cares about and values every part of our lives.  He doesn’t waste a hurt.  Each part, story, chapter, and season of our lives could become tools in the Master’s hand as He’s helping and healing His beloved sons and daughters across this land. 

God doesn’t just use the good parts or good decisions or good stories of our lives.  He also uses the painful, broken, and messy parts to communicate His love and grace and encouragement.  I often tell people that God can only use the parts of our lives that we’ve surrendered to God to use for His glory in someone’s life.

The problem comes when our values collide with one another.  We can think and say that we love God and people, but if we’ve been hurt, we may worry more about protecting ourselves from being hurt again than loving God and people with our all.  If we care most about our image, God and people have only limited access.  If we care most about what people think about us, we hide parts of ourselves from being known.  If we care most about avoiding failure or rejection, then we’ll shrink back from growth-producing changes because they involve risk.  If we care most about making money, we won’t be investing our lives in making disciples of Jesus.  If we value structure, control, familiarity, and consistency, we won’t be opening ourselves to the leading of the Holy Spirit who calls us to trust and to go with Him into the unknown.

I think God and Disney’s Frozen characters sing the same songs.  “Let it go, let it go.”  “Into the unknown, into the unknown.”  The stories from Scripture, movies, and our lives convey the tension, collisions, and challenges that we feel and face when we must trust God and trust people with our lives.  When safety and surrender collide…who wins?  In order to be free to love God and to love people with my all, I must let go of something that I value more than God’s great commandments and His great commission. 

If God’s Spirit led you to read my blog today, He’s probably inviting you to let go and to follow Him into the next faith-building adventure that He’s staged for you.  If you would like to launch some of your own value-driven conversations with your family during this “stay-at-home” season, please send me an email at [email protected].  I have developed 31 decks of discussion-starter cards to initiate heartfelt conversations to deepen relationships and to talk about what matters most to you.