In Canada, we have something called the Code of Practice: Scanner Price Accuracy Voluntary Code. Companies that adhere to this voluntary code will typically display a plaque near the checkout counter.

According to the Retail Council of Canada:

1.1 On a claim being presented by the customer, where the scanned price of a product at checkout is higher than the price displayed in the store or than advertised by the store, the lower price will be honoured; and

   (a) if the correct price of the product is $10 or less, the retailer will give the product to the customer free of   charge; or

  (b) if the correct price of the product is higher than $10, the retailer will give the customer a discount of $10 off the corrected price.¹

What this essentially means is that consumers have the right to get an item at the price that it was advertised for or even for free if it was falsely advertised at a cheaper rate than it scanned for at the checkout counter.

By knowing that a particular store claims to adhere to this rule, I have managed to get several grocery and small consumer items for free or at a discounted rate. In order to get what I was entitled to, though, I had to speak up.

The thing is most cashiers won’t tell you that this Code exists. If you don’t know to tell them that you have the right to a free item, they won’t volunteer the information. In fact, they will often argue with you if they don’t know about the Code themselves.

You have to make up in your mind that it’s worth the extra effort because they typically need to speak to a manager, it takes longer to process your purchase, and the people behind you don’t always understand. But even with all of that, I will often go through the hassle because in the end, it’s worth it.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowd in his nation’s capital. His now famous I Have a Dream speech came exactly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”²

As I listened to the speech in its entirety for the first time, I couldn’t help but marvel at the passion and tenacity that his generation showed. One hundred years had gone by, but they still hadn’t truly received the freedom that they were entitled to. They had been ridiculed, spat on, hosed down, mocked and imprisoned, yet there they were submitting their claim.

I am a young, single, black woman living in North America in the 21^st Century. I grew up with the right to an education, a professional career and to go essentially where I please when I please. Subtract about 50 years and that all changes.

It’s very sobering to realize that people died for the rights and freedoms that I think of as commonplace. I take it for granted that I can be anything – so much so that I often don’t do anything at all.

I think about some of those men and women. How would they feel if they saw us today, if they saw that we were neglecting the liberties that they fought so hard for?

And yet, we do the same thing to God, who paid an even greater price for our spiritual freedom. He devised an elaborate plan to send His only begotten son to earth to die for our sin so that we could be reconciled with our Father and enjoy the privileges that come with begin a citizen of His Kingdom. Yet, we never file a claim.

I take what Christ had to suffer for granted. He says that he came to give us life and life more abundantly (John 10:10). But am I living that life? Are you? My honest answer is no.

The thing is, Dr. King Jr. had a dream, but so does our Heavenly Father. Every good parent wants to see his or her child succeed. God is no different. But there is a role we need to play.

First things first. We need to know what we’re entitled to. Otherwise, we won’t even recognize that there is anything missing in our life.

We need to do our homework to find out our inheritance. Here are just a few of the promises that the Bible tells us we are entitled to as God’s children:

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. (Ephesians 1:3, NLT)

If you listen to these commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. (Deuteronomy 28:13, NLT)

The blessing of the LORD makes a person rich, and he adds no sorrow with it. (Proverbs 10:22, NLT)

So what do you do once you’ve read and understood some of the promises of God but your life does not look anything like what they say? Submit a claim! Ask God for help and guidance through prayer.

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. (Philippians 4:6, NLT)

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:11, NKJV)

Warning: I feel the need to add a word of caution here. God and His promises are not like a jack-in-the-box. You don’t turn the crank and watch the blessings pour out like some kind of musical entertainment show. The Father’s heart is for relationship and He does not tolerate idolatry. God’s ultimate desire is to see us turn to him in repentance and humility. Because he is sovereign, he can and will do what is best for us as his children in the long run, even if that means withholding something for a season.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves (Philippians 2:3, NIV)

With that said, it’s not always enough to ask for something once and go along your merry way. Satan knows better than we do what we are entitled to, but you better believe that he has no intention of giving us anything without a fight. We need to keep speaking and declaring the Word of God over our situation.

When Dr. King Jr. said, “Let freedom ring,” he was prophesying over his nation. In Christ, we have the same authority to speak up. We can speak to the dead, dry bones in our lives and command them to come to life. How do we do that? Rehearse the promise, not your present circumstances. God doesn’t write bad cheques. You can take His Word to the bank.

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12, NKJV)

God has good things in store for his children. He is simply waiting for us to believe and keep believing. That’s the part that I struggle with the most. The great thing is that God doesn’t expect us to do everything alone. We have the Holy Spirit to help us. As the body of Christ, we can stand in agreement with fellow believers.

And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— (John 14:16, NKJV)

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. (Ecclesiastes 4:9, NLT)

In other words, we’re in this together.

1. Scanner Accuracy, Retail Council of Canada: http://www.retailcouncil.org/scanner-accuracy
2. The Emancipation Proclamation, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/

What do you do when a friendship ends? Oh, it’s not so bad if you don’t have to see the person. It seems easier to forget the fun times you’ve had, the phone calls, the shared moments and tears. All of a sudden, the slate has been wiped clean. You can continue on as if nothing has changed.

But what happens when you have no time to work through your thoughts and feelings? Perhaps you run into them at the grocery store or church. You may see them at a BBQ or be forced to endure an awkward moment at a friend’s wedding. The longer they’ve been around, the harder it seems. Everyone knows you, but not everyone knows that your relationship has changed.

Friendship breakups are worse today than ever before. People were easier to avoid prior to Facebook and Twitter. Should I remove my ex-friend now that it’s over? If so, how will I know what they’re up to? I used to opt to keep them, secretly hoping that things would get better.

Why isn’t there a ‘No Longer Friends’ Facebook status? Everyone knows the deal when you suddenly go from ‘In a Relationship’ to ‘Single’. They may ask how you’re doing out of feigned interest or genuine concern, but your intended meaning is clear: Don’t ask me where so and so is going to be on Saturday night. I no longer know.

Somehow, ‘Unfriending’ someone doesn’t have the same effect.

So I’m left with my original question. What do you do when it’s over? Well, perhaps that isn’t the right question. Maybe the issue isn’t really what to do, but rather, how it ended in the first place.

Many of us have seen the Reason, Season, Lifetime poem. Instead of learning to avoid our ex-friends at all costs, we need to be mature enough to recognize when it’s time to move on.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the pain of a broken friendship will vanish immediately. These things often take time to heal. I’m merely suggesting that we tend to not turn to God until the situation is out of control. That’s if we turn to Him at all. Sometimes we forget that Jesus cares about everything that concerns us, including our friendships.

Would we feel the need to run and hide if we had talked and prayed through our issues? If we had dealt with the situation in a mature, Godly manner, would it still be a source of torment? Probably not. In fact, perhaps some of those friendships would have been spared along the way. So what should we do when a friendship ends? Make sure that it ended well.

Post Script: I’ve had this post ready for a while but never felt like I could post it for some reason. After re-reading this today, I see that it’s because I had a couple of wrongs to right in the area of friendship.

 

I couldn’t understand why this was happening. Why was my schedule going awry? I didn’t have anything abnormal planned. Get up. Catch the bus. Go to church. Go to a meeting at church. Go home. I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything that He didn’t want me to do. Because I know I have a tendency to be attracted to everything and wander all over the place, I even specifically asked God to order my steps. And then this! I was livid. Not at God, really. Just in general.

Here was the chain of events: I woke up later than usual, so I missed my first bus (my fault). Then, I waited extra-long for the second one and stayed on it too long (again, my fault). I walked to a nearby hotel, wondering if I should call a taxi. Church became a distant memory. At this point, I decided it would be safer to just head home. The subway terminal should be the easiest way out. Only, it wasn’t. Apparently there were scheduled track upgrades and I would need to take a shuttle for the next four stations.

I was frustrated, but I was finally on the train. Looking at my phone, I suddenly realized that I was going to get home at the exact same time I always got home from church on Sunday. As I thought about the roughly four and a half hours I had just spent doing nothing, the light of illumination slowly dawned.

You see, I was anxious, upset, frustrated and angry all because this comedy of errors had been a colossal waste of time. But I now believed that God was trying to teach me something. A question formed in my heart. I was starting to think that my recent misadventures mirrored far too many Sunday mornings.

How much time have we wasted at church?

Designer suits, platform heels, blingin’ jewelry and air kisses from sister so and so. After a while, church can start to feel like more of a fashion show and top 40 gospel jam than like a service. Funny, because we call it a service but then we often forget who we’re there to serve. Just like I did that morning, we are wasting our time. And that should make us angry – at the enemy for stealing our fellowship with the Lord and at ourselves for not putting a stop to it. If we’re not going to church on fire, expectant, ready to praise and to see God move, then we might as well pack up and call it a day.

Is God pleased when we show up to a building to greet everyone except Him? We call ourselves Christian but is Christ welcome to rearrange our agenda? Does He truly have free reign to take over the service? Can He make it longer or shorter? Can it become all praise & worship, or a time of only prayer? Are we really there to meet Him or are we doing a whole lot of nothing?

Jesus and the disciples healed and preached the gospel whenever and wherever they could.

If we stay home and have an amazing time in prayer, that’s church. If we invite people over to our home to discuss what God’s doing in our lives, that’s church. If we pass an impoverished person on the street and give them a helping hand, that’s church. We are the Church. Christ goes where we go.

So the next time we get up and get ready to go to church, let’s remember who we are and who we serve. We ain’t got time to waste.

I was on my way to work, and as usual, the train was packed. Nevertheless, I wasn’t willing to stand. It was time to look for a seat.

I walked. I saw nothing. The aisle was littered with commuters who had resigned themselves to standing for the duration of the 40-minute trip. There wasn’t a seat in sight.

At one point, I silently asked, “God, should I stop? But my heart kept saying, “I believe, I believe.” I would find a seat if I kept trying, no matter how long it took. Faith without works is dead, so I kept moving.

A few minutes later, I saw a seat up ahead with no person in it. Just as I reached that section of the train, a lady sitting nearby said, “Someone spilled coffee on it.” I sighed dejectedly and walked away.

Just as I was deciding what to do next, I had a sudden thought. Wait a minute; this is what I asked for! I had asked for an empty seat and this one was. Did I have a napkin? I dug excitedly through my purse. I walked determinedly towards the seat, firmly gripping a plastic grocery bag in my hand. I had been walking around prepared for my blessing and I didn’t even know it.

Once I made the best of the seat I had been given, a better seat opened up right in front of me.

Here’s what I learned:

1) Don’t settle. If everyone around you is standing around, change your surroundings. Get around people who are sitting in their seat of authority or moving along the path of their destiny.

2) Keep moving. Don’t be intimidated/frustrated by the people around you who seem to be stagnant or even impeding your progress.

3) Look again. Sometimes your blessings don’t look like blessings because they’re shrouded in weeds. We need to ask God to open ours eyes to see the blessings in our life and to show us what we are supposed to do about them.

Nail polish: Yet another thing that I have not mastered. I can get it to go on pretty smooth but I inevitably smudge it somehow. I think it’s dry, but then I go to the washroom or zip up my boots for church and find out how wrong I was.

It was another Sunday morning and I was willing my nails to dry as quickly as possible. This did not work. Sure enough, my nail polish was ruined and it was time to leave for service. For once, I had planned my outfit ahead of time. My hair was freshly washed, and while not perfect, it seemed to be more or less tame. I wanted to take the nail polish off because it looked horrible, but I felt like the Holy Spirit said I had no time. So I didn’t bother. Off to church I went.

As the drive progressed, I started to worry more and more about my nails. What will people think? I’m going to lift my hands and the person behind me is going to be in for a rude awakening. What if someone thinks that I’m disorganized?

I continued to reflect on my nail polish woes until I was interrupted by this thought: What does your heart look like?

I paused, slightly taken aback. I thought about the unforgiveness and resentment that I’ve been struggling to overcome. My mind recalled the harsh tone with which I had responded to my father and the disagreement I’d just had with my mom in the car and my face fell.

We pulled into the church parking lot and I got out to the sound of yelling. It was like God was trying to drive the point home. I heard a car door slam. A woman stalked off towards the church doors. A man, perhaps her husband, emerged from the driver’s seat and walked in at a distance.

Why is it that we are so often consumed with our outward appearance, but spend little time thinking about what our hearts look like before the Lord? We go to a building and call it the ‘house of God’. But if we really see it that way, why do we care more about what other people think than we do about what God thinks of us?

My heart was suddenly grieved. Sometimes we think there isn’t a connection between the way we treat others and our relationship with God. However, Jesus would beg to differ.

Here are some of the scriptures that came to mind:

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7, NLT)

If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. (Psalm 66:18, NLT)

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift (Matthew 5:23-24, NIV)

If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? (1 John 4:20, NLT)

“And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’ (Matthew 25:40, NLT)

The good news is that when I mess up my nail polish, I don’t have to try and chip it off a little at a time myself. My trusty [acetone free] nail polish remover will do the work that I can’t do. The same is true of the gospel, the real good news. When we confess and turn from our sin, the ugly, hidden places in our hearts can be cleansed thanks to the blood of Jesus. It’s a daily struggle and we can’t do it alone. In fact, we aren’t meant to. When we let Him, the Holy Spirit will point out the areas of sin in our lives and empower us to change by the grace of God.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, please help me to allow you to cleanse me of my brokenness. Please help me not to turn away from the truth of who you are and the holiness that You are calling me to. I pray that you will give me the grace to love you as I love others. In Jesus’ name, amen.