Do you feel trapped and like you are wasting your life? Read this!

Last night I got really depressed.

Why?

I had gone to the Library in an effort to get some work done before the end of the night. I had spent many hours of my day waiting around at a Food Stamp office to see if I could qualify for food stamps again after having spent more time the day before as part of the same process for requalification.

I had barely sat down at the Library and had started being somewhat productive when the time went by such that I absolutely had to leave to go to bed once again. I resisted the need to leave until I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open in a childish attempt to resist the necessity of going to bed!

While at the Library I met a friend there who talked to me a bit about what he is doing on the internet. This friend makes money over the Internet. Lots and lots of money. More than I will probably ever make on a monthly basis. Many thousands of dollars per month.

But this friend has no qualms whatsoever about copying other people’s work, rewriting it a bit, and then putting it out as his own. He has no qualms about violating this or that Terms of Service for a given product and using it in ways that suit his fancy even if he is not technically allowed to do so. He has given himself to the god of money. To make money in whatever way he can without any kind of moral guideline overseeing his money making.

That’s when I started to get discouraged. I mean here I am wanting to do the right thing by God, to live with a clean conscience before Him and man…and no matter what I try, one thing or another seems to always come up to prevent me from achieving any kind of real financial success. Not to mention the ever present need to fight the usual human failings like laziness, fear of success, and other such things. I have a deep seated sense of failure from when I was a kid that undoubtedly affects me still to some degree and causes more failure in my life than would otherwise be the case.

But here is my friend. Who has thrown all right doing out the window and is doing whatever he can do, whether right or not, to make money! And successfully so.

It made me feel like such a failure. As if my effort to do the right thing by God was just not worth it. It’s not just in a financial sense but spiritually too. I have been a voice crying in the wilderness of Christian hypocrisy and deception. That we need to get back to what the Body was meant to be by the Lord and to get away from a whole host of Church traditions that hinder the work of the Spirit.

To no avail. The Christians have ears but are unwilling to hear. They have eyes but they don’t want to see.

If felt as if I was destined to fail at everything no matter what I did.

In the last month or two my time has become so constricted by my needing to go to feeds around the San Diego area to eat (I lost my food stamps through a dumb mistake of my own) that I have had little time to do any significant work.

So I have not only been homeless by choice but in the last few months, also by force of circumstances that have prevented me from putting in the time at work to really improve my situation. I have literally had to spend a good 8 or more hours per day just to survive as a homeless person (taking time to set up and tear down my camp, showering at the gym, drying things after rain storms, going by bus and trolley to various feeds to eat, etc.).

I went to bed that way and woke up still depressed mixed with some anger in the morning.

But on the way to get some coffee at McDonald’s to allow me to stay awake in the hopes of getting more done today…I sincerely asked the Lord to speak to me while there. As I read the Word.

And He did!

The Lord led me through the Spirit to read various passages in various books. Each one seemed to point to something that I needed to hear but I kept struggling in that no one passage really broke through to the discouragement I was still suffering through.

Until I was directed to read this…

Act 3:24-26

“Indeed, beginning with Samuel, all the prophets who have spoken have foretold these days. And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.’ When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”

And was reminded of what happened yesterday at the Food Stamp office when I had a chance to share extensively with a lady who had been sitting next to me in the waiting room. About how God’s love helps me cope with my circumstances and how the knowledge of His forgiveness lifts my heart in the midst of being homeless (which despite my depression of last night is generally true).

Tears had welled up in her eyes. So much so that she had had to turn away and wipe her eyes as I talked. The Lord really used me to encourage her heart in Him.

My depression and discouragement broke and I was able in turn to share what the Lord has shared with me with someone else I know at McDonald’s who had told me a few days prior of his own struggles with feeling that everything he touches fails.

You see God wants to use me (and every Christian) to bless others. That can happen all over in the everyday circumstances in which we find ourselves. Most days I have opportunity to share something of faith in God with others. Significantly so. I do not set out to do that but it happens nevertheless as a natural part of my conversation with others where I talk about my relationship with God as readily as one might talk of a wonderful relationship one has with a spouse.

One such instance of sharing about God to another to encourage, exhort, challenge, or otherwise pursuade someone to turn away from sin and toward God is worth more than all the money making success one may have on any given day.

My successful friend who will do anything online to make money…in the end…will have accumulated little more than pieces of green paper otherwise called money that will burn up on Judgment Day anyway. Whereas I will have been used by the Lord to spread the fragrance of His Presence in every place and in every way within the contacts that I have every day.

The other day I had a chance to venture into a conversation about the deception of Yoga respecting the underlying religious beliefs inherent in that practice with a woman sitting a couple of seats away from me at McDonald’s.

Another day I spoke to a man sitting on a computer next to me who was severely depressed and suicidal that his decision in life (I have had previous dealings with him) was between killing himself (which he was talking of doing) or surrendering to God and His ways for him.

Just a couple of days ago I had a chance to stand up for righteousness by standing firmly against the showing of a lingerie show on the public televisions of the gym I go to.

God wants to bless others through me with the greatest blessing being had when one’s turn from sin toward God and enter into real and intimate relationship with Him through faith Jesus Christ.

I may never realize some of my financial goals in life. I may ever be the financial failure I have always been. Perhaps I will never have the time to work on the things I would rather be working on and will have to continue to focus on the mundane tasks that are necessary to survive in this world.

Eating, sleeping, keeping myself clean.

But whatever I do…every day presents new opportunities to interact with others who are in desperate need for forgiveness and love. Who are headed for hell and who could be saved through the good news of the Gospel message.

God wants to bless these others through my life. And He is teaching me a great deal about taking advantage of natural opportunities I have to share about Him with others.

It encouraged my heart greatly to be reminded of how God wants to use me. To bring the blessing of Himself and of relationship with Him into the lives of others.

Maybe the Lord will use that to encourage you too if like me, you find yourself feeling trapped by circumstances beyond your control. Where your life seems to be wasting away as you get older by the day.

If you are a Christian God wants to use you too! To bless others. Right where you may find yourself. In the very circumstances that you would wish to get out of. Someone in those circumstances needs God! Someone needs to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe through you. Someone needs to know that God lives and that His love is not confined to being found only on Sundays inside church buildings.

We cannot always control our circumstances. It is a far greater thing to learn to live in circumstances you have no control over. To face such circumstances with faith and grace and to allow the Lord to use you to bring the fragrance of His sweet Presence to others through your life than it is to change your cirscumstances at the expense of a clean conscience doing anything and everything no matter what to get out of circumstances you don’t like.

Mind you if you can change bad circumstances…by all means do so. But if we find ourselves in circumstances not to our liking that we can do little of anything about…we might as well buckle down and live out the life of God within us right where we find ourselves.

You never know whose life you will touch today. God in us doing what He does best as we interact with others.

Carlos

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