The Next Right Thing

Related Episodes: Ebenezer: Marking God’s Victories in my Story, Facing the Red Sea, Identity: What You’re Not

• Like many parents during this quarantine, we have watched Frozen 2 several times. The lyrics of the song “The Next Right Thing” helped me realize that I needed to follow her wise advice.
• This stay at home order started on rocky terrain: sleep deprivation and a sickness of some kind set me up at a weaker state. It also turned me into what Becky Kopitzke calls “the momster.”
• I am a huge perfectionist, which is the socially acceptable way to say “control-freak.” Two of my top five strengths (found from Clifton Strengths) are “achiever” and “responsibility.” These are a great pair to have, except sometimes it can be incredibly overwhelming to balance them. My biggest issue: parenting.
  • I am terrified of making the wrong choice and therefore ruining my kids forever.
  • I can do all that I can to help, but I cannot make my kids’ choices for them.
• Parenting stress along with all of the other responsibilities and events in my life brought me to my breaking point. I finally realized that I just cannot do everything on my own.
  • When I put all of my trust in myself and my abilities, I have this bad habit of panicking. Responsibilities and emotions kept piling up and it took an embarrassingly long amount of time for me to realize that I couldn’t do it on my own. I was too exhausted, too weighed down, too human to be able to continue this way.
  • Halfway through April, I realized that I needed to do something: give up. I needed to stop trying to control everything.
  • I am a science person and I often look to specialists and their research data to make my decisions. These are great resources, but they cannot be the gods that we worship and trust for the success of our decisions.
• I am also a nurse, which had its own interesting elements. I work with oncology patients who had to choose between fighting their cancer or having a higher risk of Covid-19; we had to learn new ways of communicating as a team and with our patients; we needed to brush up on PPE skills and so many other protocol changes weekly if not daily.
  • It was only time until someone I had a relationship with would acquire the virus. The one I knew was a woman I helped train and orient to the hospital eight years ago. It was humbling to realize that I helped train her for the job that would almost take her life.
  • I had to make a choice: was I willing to continue my job as a nurse, despite the future risks that I may face?
  • In the same vein, as a Christian, am I willing to take the risks, to step out of the comfortable and safe, to help further God’s kingdom?
    • in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, two deadly plagues helped spread Christianity through Europe. When everyone was leaving the sick behind to die, Christians stayed behind to nurse them. This act of nursing helped increase survival rates! It also helped people realize what Jesus really meant in John 13:34-35, which was one of the important commandments Jesus gave just before the cross.
    • John 13:34-35 – So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
• I finally realized that part of giving up control meant that I needed to only focus on my next step. This brought another song to my mind: Thy Word.
  • Psalm 119:105 – Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
  • This verse paints a word picture in my mind of a path in the woods. The lamp, God’s word, gives us enough to see what we are standing on (are we on the right path?) and one step ahead.
  • Only God’s word can get us on the right path and let us know where the safest next step. It does not show us what 10 years, 10 weeks, or even 10 days ahead looks like. That’s God’s job to be concerned with, not ours.
  • Many of you have had even more nightmarish quarantines. Whether your issues were more emotional like me, physical, financial, abusive, or full of anxiety, Psalm 119:105 still applies.
  • Elisabeth Elliot knows what it’s like to live in a changing time amidst unknowns and deep sorrows. Her husband was murdered, leaving her in the jungle with jobs she had never done before. She then became a single mother, and then said yes to taking Jesus back to the very people who killed her husband. Later, she lost her second husband to cancer.
    • Despite all of the terrible things she had been through, she still believed God had a plan. When she was overwhelmed with everything in front of her, she also realized that she needed to just do the next thing.
    • In her radio show Gateway to Joy, she talked about her decision to “simply do the next thing.” She also made the old Saxon poem “Do the Next Thing” famous.
• Colossians 1:16 – all things have been created through him and for him.
  • I truly believe that this includes the things that we humans create. Not everything we create glorifies God, but I feel like He often shows Himself through our creations.
• Romans 2:14-16 – Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)  This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
  • I also believe that the law that God inherently writes on our hearts shows itself through even non-Christian creation. I see it especially in things like Disney movies where they explore good vs. evil, true love, and morality in general.
  • When Kristen and Robert Lopez wrote the song “The Next Right Thing,” God inspired them to show how people inherently search for Him, especially when they are overwhelmed and can’t cope.
    • So I’ll make the choice to hear that voice and do the next right thing.
• Psalm 139:23-24 – Search me God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.