Why Would I Go There?

I started a new job this week. For the past 19 years I've been self-employed, and that means that everything I've done to earn money has been done in the ways that I've wanted them done. Sometimes that worked out good and other times not so good, but that was how it was. Now I work for a company which makes, threads and coats pipe in a variety of sizes and lengths for the transporting of fluids of various kinds. (I'd tell you what kinds, but I'm still in the learning stage of my new job and don't know them all.)

found myself yesterday thinking about the men that I was meeting there and how they are really quite a bit different than the men I've been surrounding myself with for the last several years. And I don't mean different in a bad way either, everyone of them that I've met have been great, and I'm really excited getting to know them all. What I mean, is that for the past 20 plus years I have surrounded myself with men (and women for that matter) of like minds, you know Christians like me. (Well maybe not exactly "like" me, there really aren't too many people that are "like" me.)

I have been asking myself why did the people in the Bible like to be around Jesus? And would these men that I've been meeting want to be around me like that? And if not, why? And while I was thinking about these questions that led me to wonder what these guys would think about my church? Would they feel comfortable there? Would they understand what even was going on in the service during praise and worship, the teaching or the offering time? Would they understand the terminology that we as Christians tend to use? You know, those "christianeze" words we adopt into our vocabulary the longer we follow Christ?

This is not to say that I am embarrassed by my church or the people in it, because I'm not. I just think that maybe we are looking at the people in the world through a very different set of eyes than what the world looks at us (as Christians) with. One of the things that I have noticed in this new job environment is a different way of talking. The use of profanity is prolific to say the least. Now I'm not a prude, and I won't lie and say that I've never used any profanity, but it has definitely been an eye opener for me to hear four-letter words being thrown around all the time.

I'm sure that most of my Christian friends would be extremely uncomfortable around these guys I've met at work because of the cussing, yet I think my co-workers would be doubly uncomfortable around my Christian friends. Why do you ask? It's simple really, these guys "couldn't" relate to most Christians, because most Christians "wouldn't" relate to them. Let's face it, we love to pick on the Pharisees in the Bible, but aren't we just as bad when we refuse to relate with people who may seem a little bit rough around the edges or different than us? After all, doesn't the Bible say that rain falls on both the just and the unjust? (Matthew 5:45)

I think I know why all those people liked to spend time with Jesus (and it wasn't for the free happy meals and free medical either) people liked to be around Jesus because He could relate to where they were at. He didn't walk up to them with a holier than thou attitude (that's what the Pharisees did) and tell them to serve Him. No, he served them and ministered to them and that is why people wanted to be around Him.

Truthfully we have to ask ourselves, are we any better than the Pharisees when it comes to us relating with people that we meet in our everyday walk? The most important thing in this life are the relationships that we make. And we have also been commanded by our Lord Jesus to go out and make disciples. How long did it take Him to make those first twelve? He was only able to disciple them because He took the time to develop relationships with them.

Why then do we think that if we will just throw some Scripture at people we see, they will want to come and be a part of anything that we are doing? Really, they won't, they'll probably scratch their heads as they walk away and say, "Why would I go there?"

Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!

Look Out World, Here I Come!

Today marks another of many "firsts" in my life, I start a new job this morning. I have officially been unemployed since September4, 2011 and while that time was a little uncomfortable, I enjoyed staying home and playing house dad for a while. Although I will admit that I was itching to get back into the workforce, and that was a revelation that kind of surprised me.

Today I will be joining the Paragon Industries in Sapulpa, Oklahoma in the receiving department. What does that mean exactly? I have no idea, but in a few short hours I will find out. And that is what brings me to writing this morning. The unknown. How do you feel going into something when you don't know what it all entails? Do you find it exciting, fearful or maybe a mixture of both? For me, it is the mixture of both, the excitement of doing something you've never done before, meeting new people and that little bit of fear in your gut that you will be able to accomplish the things that are asked of you.

One thing that I know for sure, is that God is with me and that helps me to know that I can jump right in and begin to learn the job. He is with me, but not only that He has gone before me to prepare a place for me as well. Yeah, yeah I know Jesus was talking about in Heaven when He said that, (John 14:2) but I think it applies here as well. He wants me to do a good job there, and He has seen to it that I am in the place He wants me at this time.

All I know is this, today is the day that I start out on a new path laid out for me by my Father. I was thinking about Joseph, and how he got to the place that God had for him to be. Many people look at that story and see all the hardship that Joseph went through, sold into slavery by his family, lied about by his boss's wife, thrown into prison and forgotten. But in the end, in a matter of minutes actually, he became the ruler of the greatest nation on the planet, subject only to Pharaoh himself and no one else. Ending up seeing his family actually come and bow before him just as the dreams God had given him so many years before said they would.

This job, while a good one for me, and I am thankful for it, is not the end job that God has for me. I know that there is something else inside of me that He wants me to do, but with this job I am being prepared for it, just as Joseph was being prepared all of those years before he came to stand before Pharaoh. I guess the moral of Joseph's story is are we willing to suffer a little indignity to ourselves and learn the lessons set before us in order that we might do the work God has for us to do? I know, that I am patterning this time in my life after Joseph, so look out world, here I come!

Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!

What's Your Opinion Of Yourself, Or Do You Even Have One?

I was listening to some music from my past last night, it was Styx and the song was "I'm OK" off of the Pieces of Eight album. It brought back a lot of memories, but the strongest one and where I'm going with my thought this morning is that I have been my own person for as long as I can remember, and have really not been too concerned with what other people thought of me. Now that's not to say that for many years I haven't been out to get validation for the things that I've done in my life, I have, more often than not too much so, but as far as following fashion trends, or the latest thing that the masses chase after, that I've never done and have really encouraged my kids to stay away from as well.

So as I was getting another cup of coffee this morning, the thought crossed my mind, "What's your opinion of yourself, or do you even have one?" So many people if they even have an opinion of themselves it is a poor one. They choose, or maybe have been programmed to see the negative attributes of themselves in themselves and not the positive ones. Some people will say, "Yeah, but if I say good things about myself people will just say that I'm arrogant." Thinking good things about yourself is not arrogant at all.

God said in the Bible that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalms 139:14) We are not all the same, we are as unique as each and every snowflake that falls to the ground in winter. This world wants to fit us into a certain mold. Oh you were born here, so you have to act this way, or everyone wears their hair this way, so you've got to do that as well. I think we need to set the trends, not follow them blindly.

I heard a story about a young man that went to get a hair cut, and the barber by accident cut a large strip of hair out of the side of his head, leaving his scalp bare and showing. There was nothing that could be done short of shaving his head and the boy wouldn't have that and just decided to take the ribbing at school from his friends and let his hair grow back out. The next day at school there wasn't much said about his hair, and life for him went on as usual. A few days later, he started to notice that many of the boys in his school were now sporting the same haircut as him, as people thought it was a new style and began to copy it.

Now while that is funny, it also shows how insecure people are, those other boys went and had their hair cut in what the first boy thought was a horrible way just because they wanted to be cool and thought that it was a new trend in haircuts. People have been falling victim to peer pressure for eons, and there is no sign of it stopping anytime soon. And if you are an adult reading this and you are thinking well those kids these days, peer pressure isn't just for kids, it happens with adults as well.

How about at work, do you follow the crowd or are you your own person? Do you coast along doing just enough to get noticed by the boss, but not as to appear to be brown nosing? Are you doing the absolute best job for your employer, or do you stay with the pack? I heard a minister the other day say that when he was in high school playing football, that one day the players were all running and he was out ahead of the pack, when one of his teammates yelled for him to slow up and run with the rest, that he was making them look bad. That's funny that this guy thought the one giving his all was making them look bad, when in actuality the guys that weren't giving their all were making themselves look bad.

Having a good opinion of yourself is not a bad thing, and doing the best that you can actually do in a job, on a team or at school doesn't make you a loser, it shows that you are who you are supposed to be, and doing what God expects from each and every one of us, to be originals. Don't worry about the pack that is behind you, get out in front and be the leader that you are called to be. Just don't worry about what others think of you, they really aren't going to help you, just hinder you and that's for sure. So just like the song says, "Cause I believed them when they said I must do things their way, they tried to cast me in their mold, but I just had to say, that I'm O.K. I'm O.K. this way yes I'm O.K." I've embedded a YouTube video of the song below if you've never heard it. Funny how something that I listened to 30 years ago can be applied to my life today...strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!

What Are You Looking Forward To?

Proverbs 13:12 (AMP) says,"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire is fulfilled, it is a tree of life."

My question to you then is this, what are you looking forward to? Are you even looking forward to anything? I know that after the death of my youngest son, we as a family had to make ourselves look forward to things on a daily basis. We made the decision to go on a family cruise as our Christmas present to ourselves, and with the passing of each day prior to the cruise we would say to each other, "We're one day closer to our cruise!" We had an expectation that helped us to cope with the loss of Noah.

Well, it's been nine months since that cruise, and I was asking myself today, "What are we looking forward to now?" We have had changes come to our lives in the past several months, with me out looking for a job and Cheryl working full time in the work place. (She has always worked full time, it was just in the home and now is at the shoe store.) It seems as if we have just fallen back into that surviving mode which happens with major life changes. You don't really try and make as much forward progress as you might have once done, and life just becomes hard.

That's what I think this Scripture is saying, if you defer your hope, life will get tough. It is easier for me to pull back, not engage the world and just want to stay home with my family instead of pressing forward and living the John 10:10 life which Jesus promised me. Life is going to be hard, there are always going to be things that we don't like or challenges in our lives that we never thought we would face, but if we let our hope get deferred, who's fault is that? I think it rests squarely on our shoulders, and no one else's.

The definition of the word deferred is: Put off (an action or event) to a later time; postpone. Life is about choices, I think that we can all readily agree on that. And if life is about the choices that we make, then we must make the best possible choices on a daily basis. And choosing to look to something in the future, and not putting it off or postponing it will do wonders for our souls I think.

Well hopefully this has given you something to think about, strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!

Old,Me? Maybe, Just Not Numerically

This morning I woke early in my Comfort Suites hotel room in Gallup, New Mexico to frost on the ground, coffee in the lobby and a the knowledge that I may need help to really be considered a man. As my friend Terry and I ate breakfast we overheard a couple of older fellas comparing notes about their lives. One of them was a World War II navy veteran, and was a very cordial and engaging man, the kind that you want to sit and listen to him talk and tell stories for hours on end.

As we listened, we realized that he had taken a cross country trip on a motorcycle, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8000 miles. The interesting thing is that he is in his mid eighties, and really pretty spry. As we were sitting in the lobby, swigging coffee and perusing the internet we saw him and the man he was talking with both leave the hotel and get on their motorcycles. The second guy walked out of the hotel using a walker too.

Okay, at this point both Terry and I decided that we would have to up our game or we were going to lose our man cards. We were both gimping around the lobby acting like we were twice our actual age, and these older guys were acting half theirs. It was definitely a wake up call for me, I'm not sure what to do with this information, or where to even start. These two seemed to be really living life, that's not to say that I'm not, it was just weird to see older guys living what to seems a pretty full life.

It makes me think of where I'm going to be in forty years, will I still be gimping around or will I have made it to the level of living that full life that Jesus talks about in John 10:10? I think I better get on with making it the second. I probably need to spend more time on the people I meet and not so much on talking about me. Well here I am again, realizing that I need to work on my love walk, to be more like Jesus. Here we go Lord, let's change my heart and become more of what You desire me to be.

Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!

How'd You Like To Be Job?

I don't know why the book of Job fascinates me so much. Maybe it's because so many people are quick to put God and the devil playing a chess match with Job in the middle. I think this one passage of Scripture has been so misquoted and it aggravates me that God gets blamed in this way. Let's look at it for a minute.

Job 1:21, "And Job said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."

This passage of Scripture gets quoted a lot at funerals, and while it has the appearance of being Godly, I really think it has been used by the enemy to confuse and bother people more than anything else. It's plain to see from the passages before this, (Job 1:12 -19) that it wasn't the Lord that had taken from Job, it was the devil. Job in his limited understanding of what was happening determined that it must have been the Lord, even though it wasn't.

Deception. That is the enemy's number one tool. He works to deceive us every chance he gets. If he can get us to thinking that God is the one doing things, or we have through some lack of effort on our part caused the calamity to happen, then he has won a small victory. He loves to take himself out of the equation when bad things happen, then sit back and watch us scramble around trying to affix the blame to someone other than where it belongs.

Notice the earlier passages (verses 13 -19) when the messengers start to come in. The first one arrives and tells how all of Job's oxen and donkeys were taken and his servants killed. While this guy is telling Job what has happened, the second messenger arrives and tells how all the sheep and servants were killed by fire from the sky. Before he can finish, a third messenger shows up and tells Job that all his camels are gone and the servants killed.

But the worst news came when the last servant arrived and told Job that a mighty wind came out of the desert and destroyed his oldest son's house killing all ten of his children. It is at this point that Job makes the statement found in verse 21. Now I've had some bad days, but I think that we can all agree that Job probably has had the worst day of anyone ever. He lost everything in the course of a few minutes time.

On a side note, did you notice that it was fire from the sky (lightning I'd imagine) and a mighty wind (a tornado) came in from the desert to destroy his son's home? Those sound an awful lot like what insurance companies call "acts of God" to me, does it to you? And if it was the devil that caused the calamity in Job's life, then shouldn't those actually be called "acts of the devil"?

The thing that I want you to see here today is found in verse 22, "In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrong doing." Even though Job said that the Lord takes away, that was not considered in God's mind, charging Him with wrong doing. It says that Job did not sin by charging God with wrong doing. What does that say about us when we do? If we say that some catastrophe in our life is caused by God, then according to this Scripture we are in sin.

I know that I have foolishly charged God with things in my past, but since learning who is behind things, I have corrected that in my life. How about you, have you ever charged God with something that should have been attributed to the devil? If your answer is yes, then you should probably hop on over to 1 John 1:9 and confess your sin to Him and receive the forgiveness that is yours in Christ. You'll be glad you did.

Okay to wrap this up, there is no cosmic chess game going on, the devil is not on equal footing with God. So in the future if bad things happen understand that it isn't God that is doing them, so place the blame square on the devil's shoulders and keep moving forward with God. I like to say it like this, God is good, and the devil is bad. That pretty much covers it in my life. If something good happens, then it is from God, and if something bad happens it is from the devil.

Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!

Life, Is This All There Is?

Now I must admit that I do not understand this obsession that the world has with zombies. There are movies about them, video games where you can shoot them, and I even saw a computer commercial the other day, where the CEO of the company has a vision of what could happen to the world if they left out one part in their latest computer. I mean really? Using zombies to sell merchandise, who would have ever thought it?

I've been thinking for a while now about Jesus and how He lived while on this planet. I see in Scripture that He went from one thing to the next, and there always seemed to be excitement surrounding Him, and you could say that He lived a very full life, and that would not be an exaggeration. Jesus even said in John 10:10 that He had come to bring us life, and life to the full. So in looking at my life, I have to ask the question, "Is this all there is?"

I'm not complaining here mind you, but I am beginning to wonder what has happened to me that my life has become more about complacency than living a full and satisfying life. It seems that in my heart I long for this full life that Jesus talked about, but in reality I'm just looking for a way to have more comfort and free time. Is life about working hard every day and falling into bed at night exhausted just to get up the next day and do it all over again?

I'm not opposed to hard work, after all if we don't work then we don't eat. (2 Thessalonians 3:10) It just seems that life is geared towards doing work, trying to make room for a little comfort and then going the way of the grave after many, many years of this circular situation. Crap! I hope that's not the case! Jesus came to bring us a full life, not just an existence. Yet what I see mostly in Christians is this cycle of life.

Which brings me back to my first paragraph about zombies. I think what we have are a bunch of Christian zombies, people who are not fully alive, just existing and waiting until they can reach Heaven. I could even lay claim to this title, and that my friend does not set well with me. I realized this yesterday as I was listening to the Mercy Me album "All That Is Within Me". The song is called "Goodbye Ordinary" and you can watch a YouTube video of it below:

I listened to this song somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty times yesterday. It convicted me, in that I realized that I have been living an ordinary life. Something that I must change today, I can't wait, it has to happen today. Won't you join me in breaking free of an ordinary life? I don't know about you, but I want my life to mean something. I want to live a life that is to be followed, not one that is to be regretted. Jesus said, "The works that I do, you will do also, and even greater works than these." (John 14:12) That's what I want to do, the works of Jesus.

Father, I ask that You lead, guide and direct me by Your Spirit in living a life that is anything but ordinary. Show me how to be Your hands and feet, and to show the love that You have shown to me to those that are hurting. Help me to live my life to full, just as You promised in Your Word. In Jesus Name.

Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!