Isaiah 42:5-9
“This is what God the LORD says – He who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it: “I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols. See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”
I watched the movie 300 with Owen on Halloween night. It really blew me away that these men believed their life’s purpose was to be warriors – to protect and uphold the city they came from, and would give their last breath fighting for that city. What an amazing conviction. As I watched these 300 men sweep through millions of their enemies, it made me wonder if perhaps this was what the armies of the Lord were like in the old testament. So many times God would annihilate enormous armies with His small but mighty army of His chosen men. I wish they would make movies like this about Gideon’s 300.
I went into the kitchen to get a drink, and God spoke to me. I’ve never understood, and part of me never even believed, that God could still speak to people in this day and age. But I heard Him, and what He had to say was very inconvenient, considering the emotional state I have been in for the last week or so. Owen was fixing a snack and I was afraid to tell him what God had told me. I was afraid he would think I was crazy. I was afraid he would make fun of me. My pride was bigger than the message God had just given me. So I told him that God had just told me something amazing, and I was afraid to tell him about it. He encouraged me that he would never make fun of me or tease me about something like that. So this is what I told him:
I really connected with the Spartan women in the story. They had a tough life – their babies would be taken away and examined – if they weren’t good enough they were tossed over a cliff. If they were good enough, they were brutally trained and taken away from their mothers at the age of 7 to become the most brutal warriors anyone in their time had ever seen. Then they had to support their husbands as they went out to fight, knowing they likely wouldn’t come home. They had to believe in them and give them the support and encouragement they needed to go off to war. Many of the men drew strength from the women they loved. Every person, in every time, in every culture, in every walk of life, has a job to do. Whether their job is to be a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, or a king, they all have a calling on their lives. We all have the choice to either live that life to the glory of God, or live it essentially in vain. Every decision we make in our lives – in cutting corners or doing our jobs to the best of our abilities – either gives glory to God, or it doesn’t. He gives us that choice – to live for Him, or not. This is why He asks us in Colossians 3:23 & 24 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
On a side note – whether we glorify God of our own accord or not – we will, in the end, glorify Him. At the end of this world, when every knee is bowing, and every tongue is confessing, we WILL all glorify God. Our reward for accepting Christ’s salvation and living our life to glorify Him is an amazing place in heaven with Christ, for eternity, with whatever wealth we have accumulated in heaven during our breath-in-the-wind life on this earth. Where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.
Every time we do our jobs to the fullest of our capabilities – even things like, for me, cleaning the house when I feel like going on the computer, or not getting frustrated with the kids when they do something wrong, but taking the opportunity to teach them a little bit about Jesus in the everyday moments – we are glorifying God. When we continue to glorify God in every decision, in every obstacle, in every word that comes out of our mouth – we are living IN Him. We are living in the Spirit, and we are bringing glory to God and pleasing Him. We are storing up our rewards in heaven. This is why He says that when we do things for the thanks of others here on earth, that is all the reward we will get. It wasn’t actually FOR Him.
My calling is to be Owen’s wife. My calling, and what will glorify God the most, is to stand by him, as his helpmate, and be a living example of Christ to my children. Owen will be the first to admit that he is difficult to live with. He is struggling very deeply with being bi-polar. He is struggling with a dependency. He is struggling in a very dark place right now. God knew what Owen was going to need in a helpmate. He needed a woman who would love him through thick and thin, who would stay loyal to him in every way. He needed a positive, encouraging, cheerful woman who could pull him out of his funks. He needed me. And I have been falling farther and farther away from the calling God has laid on my life. I have been making the wrong choices every single day, in all the little things, and I have not been glorifying God. It has been harder and harder to live with Owen, because I’m no longer living in the Spirit. I no longer have the fruits of the Spirit in my life. I used to radiate them to everyone around me – ask anyone I went to high school or college with. I was the happiest person most of them had ever known – I literally shined God‘s love. The farther from God I drifted, the dimmer that light got. The harder my calling was to handle. The burden got heavier. The load wasn’t as light. I wasn’t sharing it with Christ anymore. I really believed for a very long time that it was Owen’s job first to do the right thing. I hid behind the fact that he was the spiritual leader of our home – that he was supposed to set the example first. I watched him struggle and then I blamed him for not being stronger. I wasn’t doing my job. I was doing the opposite. I was supposed to be his helpmate, his rib, his other half, and instead I was resenting him and blaming him and discouraging him for his struggles. What a poor excuse for a wife I have been.
God told me, in my kitchen on Halloween night, that Owen’s choices, whatever they may be, were not my choices to make. MY choices, my response to God’s calling on my life, were the ones I would have to answer to Him for. I’m not living for Owen – I’m living for Christ. And in living for Christ, He will enable me to be the wife and mother Owen needs. God created me for a purpose, and He will be glorified in me when I obey his calling on my life. He will use me to help Owen in his struggles, and when Owen is glorifying God in his struggle, in his fight, in the Spartan war going on in his mind, God will be glorified, and Owen will become the husband I need, and the father his children need. And if Owen chooses not to glorify God in his life, I will still glorify God by obeying his calling in my life. I’m not responsible for Owen. Owen is responsible for Owen.
I understood all this, and it shook me to my core, but I didn’t know if I wanted to be up for the challenge just yet. It was so much easier to throw a pity-party and feel bad for myself for being in such a difficult marriage. I wanted to feel sorry for myself just a little bit longer – to rally support for my selfish cause. I saw Jonah standing on the edge of a dock. A ship is loading its last cargo. The sun is setting and the wind is calm and slow. He is on the run – for anywhere other than Nineveh. He can’t wait to get as far from that place as he can possibly go. The ramp is in front of him, and his bag is slung over his back. He feels that quiet whispering in the crevices of his heart. Jonah. Don’t go. I need you in Nineveh. He steps onto the boat. And he ends up in a whale.
Owen and I were in the whale. We weren’t obeying God’s calling for our lives, and we were just going to keep going in circles and ending up in the belly of that whale until we decided to step up to the task and glorify God with every decision, every day, in every moment of our lives. I had just watched Pinocchio with the kids the week before. When Pinocchio finds his father, he is in the belly of a whale. They can’t get out, they don’t know how. So they board a little raft, and set their ship on fire. They smoke the whale out, and he sneezes them out. I begged Owen to burn our ship. I wanted to light on fire our life until October 31st let the whale spit us out, and get our butts in gear and go to our Nineveh. I asked him to marry me again, I asked him to start over our marriage and start over our life. Miracle of miracles, Owen said yes.
So this is our struggle, our fight, our calling. We are simply to glorify God in everything we do. We aren’t doctors or presidents. When we introduce ourselves to people, we can say Hi, we’re Owen and Amber. We live to glorify God. We sat on the couch in the front living room and talked until the wee hours of the morning about this calling, what it meant to us, what our new life would be like. We talked about free will, and heaven, and knowing that humanity’s soul purpose is to bring God glory. We refreshed each other, we opened up to each other, encouraged each other, and most importantly, we fell in love with God, and with each other, all over again. This is where we stand. We are Owen and Amber Chudy. We are living our life together to bring glory to God. Our son will say someday, “I learned how to be a good husband from watching how my father treated my mother.” Our daughter will say, “I know how to be a wife of noble character because I had my mother for an example.” And our children will do amazing things for God because of a lifetime of watching their parents glorify God in their daily lives.
This is our war, and our struggle. This is our calling. I think we’ve got it pretty easy. I look at people like Paul and wonder how difficult it was for him to glorify God. I look at people like Noah, and Daniel, and wonder how I could have been so selfish to deny God in the everyday decisions. He isn’t asking for much. I don’t have to climb into a den of hungry lions, or build an ark and live through the flood and clean up after and feed all those animals every day on a tossing ship. But I serve the same God, and if He can enable those men and women to succeed at their callings – of course He will enable me to succeed at mine. His yoke is easy, his burden is light. When you make the decision to glorify Him, He will never leave you or forsake you.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” – 2 Corinthians 5:17
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