The "I wanna ....but I'm trying to live right" STARTER KIT

Let me set the scene: You slept through your alarm and are rushing to get ready for work. Running noticeably late you rush out of the house only to realize you can't find your keys. After several minutes of searching your room and tearing up the house and finding them in the most unlikely of places you arrive to work late. The first person who meets you reminds you of how tardy you are and proceeds to rattle off all of the things you need to have submitted by the pending deadline. Already disgusted by your morning, colorful words flash across your inner forehead and you form your lips to verbally dispose of this person.

Before you spew your serving of choice words on them, let me assure you we all have been there. You are not alone friend. Our humanity subjects us to a variety of starter kits (if you will) for living.

What's a starter kit? Let me show you a few examples.

A starter kit is a set of essential items and instructions for taking up a particular activity for the first
time. So here you see a starter kit for a college student. Essential items that define a typical freshman or sophomore? Netflix to pass lonely hours, water ...well because it's water; Ramen noodles because
there's nothing more healthy and cheap than a balanced meal, and of course a wallet starving for you parents' monthly deposit.

Here's my favorite starter kit:

Now, we have legit snow days once every blue moon, but these are truly the essentials for a snow day (or any day below 30 degrees in Houston, for that matter). All that to say, we all have our own self-induced or culture-taught starter kits. 

We have essential items we choose to implement when there's a problem looming in our lives. It might include curse words, retaliation driven by anger, aggression and hostility. Or if you're like me, the starter kit when your at your wits end might entail silent treatment, withdrawal, ignoring others and thinking rude thoughts as a form of  expressing my frustration. But the Lord offers a different starter kit and even cautions us against reaching for our worldly starter kits.

2 Corinthians 10:4-6 

"But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity." (Msg)

Paul encourages us to lay down our worldly starter kits and pick up a different set of 'what he calls 'weapons' (plans and methods). He goes on to suggest that Gods starter kit consists of prayer, faith, hope and Gods Word. These essential items (for the Believer) will destroy our lofty ideas about our plans for our lives, our rebellious attitudes towards Gods way and prevent us from becoming so vile that we interrupt people from experiencing Gods love through us. 

I'll end with this story. I gave His starter kit a try when I entered a new, unexpected season of my life. I'll be honest my first instinct was to reach for a starter kit that encompassed a critical spirit, negative mindset and lips of complaint. And I followed that instinct and activated that starter kit until I was convicted and the Holy Spirit reminded me that there is purpose in every season of my life. It was then that i shifted gears and picked up the starter kit from 2 Corinthians 10 and began to activate those items each morning. I prayed for wisdom, strength and favor, faithfully each day. I went into my day expecting those items to come from God in everything I did (faith). I anticipated results based on His promises/Word not my actions (hope). I decided to love those in my sphere of influence. In a short amount of time I began to see change in the situation around me, but more importantly change in my attitude and mind concerning the situation. 

Yes, we are human...but that isn't an excuse to use human methods to fight our daily battles. Gods mighty weapons in His starter kit are strong enough to face our human issues.