Beg

“Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.” – Jeremy Taylor

Santa Claus is coming to town.

Forgive me for putting that melody in your head.  Is it the Springsteen version?  It is, isn’t it?

Santa may be coming in a few weeks, but God is already here.  And despite popular sentiment, God and Santa are not one in the same.

Why is it we spend the majority of our prayer time in ‘ask-mode’ and so little in ‘thanksgiving-mode’?  Or am I the only one who finds himself asking far more than thanking?

I’m getting better.  That’s not to pat myself on the back, because I’ve still got a long ways to go, but the more I listen and offer thanksgiving instead of always asking, the more at peace I find myself.  Funny how that works, huh?

These last few weeks I’ve spent plenty of time begging through Facebook, Twitter, radio and television.  At least I assume many have perceived it as begging.  My multiple Facebook posts nearly every day asking friends and acquaintances to donate money to the development funds of my current feature film could be perceived as begging.  They could certainly be perceived as annoying.

Contrary to what many of my Facebook connections likely assume after the last month, self-promotion is not one of my fortes.  I don’t like offering unsolicited updates about my career.  I’ve always said it’s better to let others do the talking.  Put another way:

“Boast not of yourself; if you’re as great as you think you are, others will do the boasting for you.” – J. O.

But this whole Kickstarter campaign has nothing to do with boasting or self-promotion.  It’s really just a project for which I’m passionate.  And it’s a project I sincerely feel is driven by a higher power.  And not a higher power in a red suit flying in a sleigh.

I’ve been begging God to simply guide me through this whole movie project.  He’s been faithful and true to His word, even when I get frustrated and pessimistic.

But in my begging, I have never been passive.  I love Mr. Taylor’s quote above.  Simply praying for God to take action while we sit on our butts is as productive as reading diet books while drinking a super-size Coke and a half-dozen Twinkies.

So that’s why I’ve been so persistent in my – call it what you want – begging, pleading, conjuring, imploring, urging.  I believe this is God’s project, but I also believe He expects a lot of hard work from me in seeing it come to be.  Posting a bunch of status updates is not hard work; that’s not what I’m implying.  But the behind-the-scenes efforts I’ve been making at the expense of sleep and free-time are where I hope to separate myself from the passive beggars.

To my Facebook connections frustrated with my bombardment of repetitious status updates, please forgive me.  I beg of you.