I live in the Southern California desert, so summer is definitely not my favorite time of year. And yet, if I'm going to be faithful to the Scriptures, then I must line up my thinking with Philippians 4:11, which declares, "I have learned in whatever state (condition, circumstance, season) I am, to be content." Easier said than done when the thermometer is well into the triple digits! Yet if I spend my entire summer grumbling about the heat, I'm certainly not going to enjoy the blessings that God has for me during this particular season.
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Second Timothy 4:2 instructs us to "Be ready in season and out of season." Each time I read that I realize how often God gives me time to prepare for the situation I'm in--and how often He doesn't. Sometimes I have the luxury of getting my ducks in order before being called upon to obey God in one way or another; other times I just have to take a deep breath and let God carry me. (Isn't that the best place to be anyway?)
Obeying God doesn't always mean that I have to walk through fire for Jesus. Most of the time it simply means "renewing my mind" according to Romans 12:2, which explains that our thought processes must be changed to conform to God's Word rather than the prevailing trends and mindsets of the world.
When I became a Christian in 1974 (yes, I was one of the "Jesus freaks" of that era!), I immediately realized that everything I had ever thought or believed was wrong and that I had to relearn absolutely everything from God's point of view. I knew nothing at the time about the instruction in Romans 12:2 to renew my mind, but that was exactly what I set out to do as I opened my Bible for the first time and began to study.
Kathi Macias (www.kathimacias.com; http://kathieasywritermacias.blogspot.com) is an "occasional radio host" (www.blogtalkradio.com/communicatethevision) and an award-winning author of more than thirty books, including her popular Extreme Devotion series from New Hope Publishers and Valeria's Cross from Abingdon Press. A wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, Kathi lives in Homeland, CA, with her husband, Al, where the two of them spend their free time riding Al's Harley--hence, Kathi's "road name" of Easy Writer.
