By Doug Apple Manager, Wave94

How is it that my kids never heard of “Garanimals”?

We were joking around at the dinner table the other night, and my wife and I were laughing about Garanimals…and we had to explain ourselves.  What’s up with that?

Garanimals was a line of clothing for children that was coordinated according to different animals.  In other words, a shirt with a lion on it would go with the pants or shorts that also had a lion on it.  The idea was the children could dress themselves in the morning and still end up with clothes that matched.

We were laughing because the teenage boys at the table looked like they needed some Garanimals.

Believe it or not, psychological research went into the formulation of Garanimals.*  It was discovered that a child’s self confidence grows as they learn to pick their own clothes and dress themselves.  With Garanimals they could do it well, not because they had a keen eye for fashion, but because they knew that a panda top went with a panda bottom.

It is important that children learn to dress themselves properly, because they will be doing it for the rest of their lives.

This is something we all have in common.  Every day we stand there, staring at our clothes, trying to decide what to wear.  This is an important decision, right?  We think of what we will do, where we will go, and who we will see – then dress accordingly.

When you add it all up, we expend a lot of energy to properly dress ourselves.  That includes shopping for clothes, browsing catalogs and reading up on fashion trends.  That includes laundry and ironing and folding.  It even includes looking for sales and scanning the clearance racks.  A lot of effort leads up to that decision in the closet each day.

Now let me ask you.  After all that time and money and effort, are you satisfied?  Do you look at your clothes and think, “Wow, this is great!  What more could I possibly want?”  Or is there a constant itch you have to scratch?  You need a new this or a new that.  You’re not happy unless you have something new to wear.  How long can you wear the same old clothes before something inside you screams for something new?

What is that?  What is that thing inside of us, making such demands?

It’s restlessness.  We get restless without something new.  It’s almost like an addiction.

Now I am going to make a screamingly outrageous statement.  When we spend so much time and money, so much brain power and energy, simply to dress ourselves, I think we have fallen for a deception.  I think this is a deception to keep God’s people busy – busy doing anything besides God’s plan for our lives.

God has a plan for our lives, and we all know that.  He has given us raw talent, and He wants to teach us to use it for Him.  But when we are bounced around by our own restlessness, it delays the things He wants to do in us.  When we spend so much time thinking about dressing ourselves, it gobbles up time better spent on something else.

Jesus gave us some guidelines on this subject in the Sermon on the Mount.**  He said, “Don’t worry about…what you will wear.”  Then He said an amazing thing, “God will clothe you.”

Jesus pointed out that the “pagans run after all these things.”  It is the pagans, those who don’t believe in God, who make such grand pursuits in dressing themselves.  God’s people shouldn’t do this.

So what should we do?  Jesus said to “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.”  If we do that, He says He will take care of our clothing.

Are you ready to stop allowing restlessness to run your life?  It’s time to stop bouncing here and there, all in the pursuit of properly dressing ourselves.  Instead, we need to let God clothe us.

Does that mean clothing will drop out of the sky?  I don’t this so.  I think God provides in different ways for different people.  But this I know for sure.  Clothing ourselves should not be an ambition.  It’s not something we run after.  That’s a pagan thing to do, Jesus said.

No, we are to run after the Lord.  We are to pursue Him.  He is to be our passion.  We are to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.  As we do that our restlessness for new clothing will slowly disappear.  Soon what once was so important will seem sort of silly.

We talk about having childlike faith.  As kids we just trusted there would be clothes in the closet, and that’s what we wore.  Maybe we need to go back to those Garanimal days when all we looked for in our closet were clothes that matched – then forgot all about it as we ran off after something truly exciting.

Comments?

E-mail me:  dougapple@wave94.com.

May God bless you today!  With Apples of Gold…I’m Doug Apple.

* Garanimals History Link

** Matthew 6

Here is another great passage about clothing.  Even though it is targeted toward wives, I think we can all learn something about the importance of a gentle and quiet spirit over mere outward adornment.

1 Peter 3 – 1 Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. 3 Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. 4 Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. 5 For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

This article originally published on March 27, 2007,

Written by :

mkwestmark

 

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