no rivals

Teaching moments!! I LOVE teaching moments.
I've been homeschooling for over 4 years now, I can't help it: my brain is just always searching for ways to educate my kids. It becomes a mentality, I suppose.  Can I get an AMEN! from my homeschooling mommas and poppas?!

Today's teaching moment happened in the truck ride home from the grocery store with my favorite little boy. We were listening to a song by Citizen Way.
(And now I'm going to go squirrel for a minute: A month or so ago, my kids and I had the incredible experience of seeing Citizen Way locally, in a very small venue. (P.S. My niece opened in worship for them!!) We had front row seats and got autographs and took pictures with the fellas and EVERYTHING! And even though all that personal stuff was super rad and amazing, the concert itself was truly touched by God in the best ways! So we bought t-shirts and their latest CD (2.0) and it is the only CD that plays in my truck.)

So we're listening to Citizen Way on the way home and the song "Rivals" comes on. And here's the chorus:
"When we look to the sun,
Our battle's already won.
We've got no rivals,
Cuz He's got no rivals.

No matter what comes our way,
We know we'll be okay.
We've got no rivals,
Cuz He's got no rivals."

Okay. So as I'm trying to come up with a way to explain this to my son, I start thinking of battles that we might fight and how God is on our side and we can't lose and blah-de-blah-de-blah cliche, cliche, cliche...

My sweet son is listening attentively as I try to paint this picture of who God is with words and then I explain it in a way that makes sense on his level and suddenly, the AH-HA!!! moment happens for me at the same time.

What is it about simplicity that makes things perfectly clear?

I know how cool it is that God is on my side. I know I'm never alone. But when I explained it to my boy, I painted a picture that made it clearer than the cliches that I had heard and said my whole life.

I told him to imagine that he was playing soccer and that God was on his team. No matter who your rivals are: you can't lose. Can you imagine playing any sport and God was player #1 on the team (because what other number would He be?!) - there is no chance that you're going to lose the game! It doesn't matter who is on the opposing team. In my brain, I pictured the devil and all his co-horts all dressed in red (because what other color would he wear?) coming up against God. It's completely laughable! It's like in the movie where Thor comes sliding in on lightning and lightning shoots out of his hands and Led Zeppelin plays in the background (pardon me, I just watched that scene on YouTube again... SO GOOD!) - ain't nothing gonna beat that!
(But let's not talk about Infinity War right now...)

And my son understood that God is big and I understood that God is SO big that I need to shoo away some fears and anxieties that continually swirl around my head. Because if we played soccer together, we wouldn't lose. So living life together: we're not going to lose. Even when it seems like we might be losing, God's got some trick up His sleeve to score another goal. He knows the game plan so He knows that we're going to win.

(Real life example in short: I had an anxiety disorder when I was younger. I thought my life was pretty much over. I learned how to deal with it, was able to move past it, and now I get to offer other people hope on the other side of an anxiety disorder. Talk about a losing game turned into a winner! All because God knew what He was going to do with me even when I thought I was losing.)

Teaching moment = learning moment for me.
Go figure.
That's typically how God talks to me.

KC