Debbie Rodgers is a sixth generation Texan and a graduate from the University of Texas in Austin. She started DRodgersGroup,Inc. over 15 years ago with a focus on corporate training and development. Themes of her life message focus on inspiring individuals to live proactively, improving interaction with others through understanding, and living life on genuine terms.
CBN.com - One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century was carbon copying. The copier, more commonly referred to as the Xerox machine, enabled us tremendous efficiency by allowing us to reproduce material again and again. However, the copies, as everyone knows, were never quite as good as the original. As a matter of fact, the further away we got from the original, the lesser the quality.
What if God had a divine Xerox machine and He just duplicated, collated and mass produced the human race? But, He doesn’t. He seems to like originals. After all, He keeps creating people who are different and unique. It’s the human race that doesn’t seem to appreciate this concept. In this world there appears to be an on-going struggle between being one’s self and being a copy of someone else.
I have realized in my own life that I have often sought to copy someone else's thoughts, style, personality or even career, rather than just realizing my own. The further away I get from the original me, the more I lose quality of life. Everywhere I turn I am offered an alternative to being me.
Friends, media, or popular culture, all offer options to being ourselves and make it difficult to accept our own uniqueness. We end up comparing ourselves with others instead of being ourselves. I am convinced that inner peace is related to genuineness - which means accepting and loving our God created uniqueness.
Recently, I watched a program on PBS about new scientific findings related to the universe. What I heard amazed me and enlarged my thinking about God's creativity. Many of these experts had thought that the universe was sort of like an explosion where material was sent out through force, eventually losing power and coming back to the level it began; thus ending the universe. Scientists are now discovering that instead of the universe coming to an end, it is actually expanding by millions upon millions of miles per year.
The concept of a growing universe has given me a fresh perspective about God's creativity. A growing universe makes sense to me. Since I truly believe in an eternal God, I can also believe in eternal creativity. Simply put, God's creativity never ends. My faith level automatically increases as I consider the implications of how big God must be to create a universe that continues to expand. Through this effort to grasp how great God is, I find myself humbled that He, for some reason, cares about me. He is not only concerned about His creation; He loves what He creates.
I am finding that to become the original me who God created takes more time and focus asking Him for clarity and less time and focus asking others. After all, who better to define creation than the Creator? In the Bible, in the book of Matthew, Jesus says to come to Him. This becomes more inviting to me as I read on to the next verse, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I think whenever we strive to live someone else's life, we become stressed out by the difficulty and weight of a burden God never intended us to bear. I have personally decided that I have been spending too much of my life at the copy machine. As I let God take from me the struggle of trying to become a duplicate of someone else, I breathe a sigh of relief. You know, that darn copier was always breaking down anyway.
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Debbie Rodgers is a sixth generation Texan and a graduate from the University of Texas in Austin. She started DRodgersGroup,Inc. over 15 years ago with a focus on corporate training and development. Themes of her life message focus on inspiring individuals to live proactively, improving interaction with others through understanding, and living life on genuine terms.
CBN.com -Does everyone go through a phase when they long to do something “big” for God – you know supersized, Emmy award-winning, best-selling sort of big? And, in the midst of the whole desire is this conflict between the human definition of success and God’s view of it. Well, one day on my road to discovering how God defines “big,” I found myself in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. At the time, it was a town of about 12,000 people, which was much different that the larger market of Atlanta where I had just spoken to a large group of managers.
The hotel in Fergus Falls was much different than the Omni. The lobby was enough to make me concerned about the training room we would be in for three days. My concerns were on target. The room smelled like mold with extra furniture that was shoved up against the back wall. I went to the front desk to inquire as to when the training room would be set up, and their response was one that sent shivers up and down my spine.
“It already is,” they said.
As I reassessed the room, I realized if the tables just had tablecloths on them that would help a lot. I flagged down a housekeeper who told me that the tablecloths had been in the dryer for a really long time. The housekeeper returned with the well-wrinkled tablecloths in hand and an old iron. I found a place to set up and began the task of ironing tablecloths with a less than good attitude.
“This is not the place where careers are launched,” I thought.
I began to question what I was doing in this small town and dingy little room. I felt isolated and very insignificant. I could have lost the point of it all except that it was around that time the Lord decided to help me understand things from His perspective.
As I sat deep in my own thoughts with my back facing the windows, I had the sensation that the sun was out and its warm rays were moving across me. This would normally not be unusual except that the sun wasn’t out. The day was overcast and snowy. Nevertheless, I felt a warmth pass over me felt as though it was penetrating deep into my soul. God wanted me to understand something, and He had my attention. As the sunlight moved across my back, I could feel the smile of God. There in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, ironing table cloths in a small, musty-smelling room… inside my soul, I felt God smile. In that instant, it was as though He was saying, “what you are doing right now makes me happy.”
My question of what big is to God began to be answered in that place on that day, and it wasn’t what I had expected. I wasn’t doing anything headline worthy, but the simple act of ironing tablecloths for others seemed to resonate with the Creator. This was a moment in time when just one individual all alone in one room, did something unseen by human eyes – something really small in worldly terms. That day I wasn’t alone after all. Someone was looking. God was looking, and what I think God saw in me was something of Himself. God is looking for fruitfulness not success, and fruit comes in all sizes.
God’s smile helped me to see what is really important in a world that cannot possibly understand these things without Him. His equation simplified the complicated and made “the big” a reasonable thing to accomplish everyday for everyone. When we use what we have to love others, good fruit is produced. That is when we build on a foundation that is already laid (I Corinthians 3:11). That is what makes God smile and that, is big.
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Debbie Rodgers is a sixth generation Texan and a graduate from the University of Texas in Austin. She started DRodgersGroup,Inc. over 15 years ago with a focus on corporate training and development. Themes of her life message focus on inspiring individuals to live proactively, improving interaction with others through understanding, and living life on genuine terms.
Susan Boyle, 47,unemployed, and not exactly the type that is expected to wow an audience, walked onto the stage of Britain’s Got Talent in April of 2009. She is not Hollywood glamorous and the audience makes no attempt to hide their opinion.
As with all contestants, the judges finished their inquiries and the “go-ahead” is given for the music to begin. Gripped on the edge of their seats, some audience members looked to be anticipating the worse - she would utterly embarrass herself and somehow them as well. Then came one of those moments that astound those of us who tend to prejudge; out of this ordinary vessel, poured divinely orchestrated sounds with angelic resonance.
But, then again, God loves to astound our worldly wisdom with His heavenly light. He loves to break man-made rules in order to show us a better way. The Message Bible puts it this way in I Corinthians 3:19,
“Don't fool yourself. Don't think that you can be wise merely by being up-to-date with the times. Be God's fool—that's the path to true wisdom. What the world calls smart, God calls stupid.”
Watching Susan Boyle reminded me of how often I have judged people by the package alone – looking at things from human eyes instead of asking God for His perspective. It reminded me of the prophet Samuel who went looking to anoint a king from among the sons of a man named Jesse. Samuel may have missed out on God’s best if the decision was left up to him because he was ready to anoint the first contestant that met his standard.
In I Samuel 16:6 it says,
“Samuel looked on Eliab (the eldest son), and said, surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him.”
But, as Samuel was looking on, God was looking in. In total, seven brothers were paraded before the prophet, any of which could have made a fine king if Samuel was making the call. But Samuel wasn’t doing the judging, just the anointing, and he could only see skin deep. There was one brother left for consideration named David, and he was out tending to animals. This ordinary boy was perhaps a potential embarrassment to the rest of his family since they never mentioned him until asked. After all, David’s closest associates were sheep. So, who would God choose?
Here we are at the pivotal moment, the lights go up and the music starts. We can see an unknown, long-shot on stage called Susan or perhaps David. Maybe we see ourselves. This is one who has always had a dream, even in the midst of persistent voices declaring that dreams are only for those who are deemed worthy by the audience.
Who will God choose to be king? As our man-made veil is lifted and the time of truth arrives, we witness God rejecting the idea that worth can be measured by merely “looking on” with our physical eyes. God chooses David, a man who others had not even placed in the running. He chose a woman whose total obscurity for 47 years was obliterated within the first seven seconds of a song. God chose a woman from a small village without celebrity pedigree to confound the way we view the world around us. Susan Boyle’s heart came pouring out in heavenly tones that changed the rules forever.
The final conclusion and example for those who long to see things God’s way and to be seen God’s way:
"Men look on the outward appearance, but God looks on the Heart (I Samuel 16:7).”
Debbie Rodgers is a sixth generation Texan and a graduate from the University of Texas in Austin. She started DRodgersGroup, Inc. over 15 years ago with a focus on corporate training and development. Themes of her life message focus on inspiring individuals to live proactively, improving interaction with others through understanding, and living life on genuine terms.
