“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matt. 17:20
I had one of those days once. Actually, I’ve had more than one, but right now I’d like to refer to one specifically.
It started building several days earlier. My wife’s grandfather died after a long fight with cancer. He’s home with the Lord now, but we still would like to have had him visiting with us a little longer. The next day my wife found out she was being bumped from the school she’s always wanted to teach at. It was only the third day of her first year and now she had 5 days to move to a new school and it would take 4 days to travel for the funeral.
When we got back to town after the funeral, “the day” started. That morning she began moving as much first grade material as she could in her little car. I spent the day at work fighting the guilt of not being able to help. When she arrived at her new school she found that most of her classroom inventory was missing and she would have to scrounge for the pieces. Twenty three six year olds would swarm into the classroom the next day.
At 5:00 I ran out of my office and drove to her old school to finish packing her supplies into my van, but she was nowhere to be found. “Maybe she finished packing up the room”, I thought, being oblivious to the approaching storm. Having no idea where the new school was, I set out exploring. Being a man, I made sure not to ask for directions.
As I sat waiting for a stop light, hopelessly lost, I decided to back track and maybe see her on the way. It was then the world exploded. I stepped on the clutch, which responded with a pop. My foot slammed to the floor, the van jerked, sputtered and stalled, and my heart leaped into my throat. I tried to choke it back at the thought of the clutch cable dangling loosely under the hood.
I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, but I could see it just down the road. And on the other side of nowhere my helpmate needed me to help stop the hurt, but my arms weren’t long enough to hug from there.
Well, there I was, stranded by the side of the road and none too happy about it.
I hopped out of the van, pushed it to the shoulder, and began walking down the road to the middle of nowhere and, hopefully, a phone. One walked mile, three directory assistance calls, a tow truck ride and two hours later I found myself back at the school.
It was then, sitting on the steps of the school that my stomach sent up the first notice, “Hey! How ’bout a sub down here?”
Whoa! I hadn’t had a bite all day, other than mosquitoes!
Everything up ’til now had been a minor inconvenience, but food is serious business. In fact, my kids get friends to come to supper by telling them they’ll get to see the bear feeding.
So there I was, sitting on the cold concrete, being devoured by mosquitoes, listening to my stomach rumble like an earth tremor, mumbling under my breath about anything or anybody that came to mind. The van, my kids, my parents, my boss, people walking by, the people at the fast food booth who always mess up my order, well, you get the idea. I had a lot of things to say. Things they might, or might not, have liked to hear, had they been there.
A broken down van, no money to fix it, a first grade class room waiting to be packed and then unpacked again, sore legs, blistered feet, empty stomach, and the person whose hug I needed the most seemed a thousand miles away. And even if she were there, she probably needed a hug more than me. The frustration welled up to tears in my eyes.
Then it caught my eye. Just above the trees. Can you see it?
A slight glimmer of crimson, then rose and pink. The colors exploded on wisps of cotton in a sea of indigo. God had colored me a sunset! Not just any sunset either. He had used ALL of the colors in His 64 color box of Crayolas. In spite of my self-imposed pity party, a smile sneaked its way onto my face as the sky poured its colors into my eyes, and my heart. God answers prayer!
“Hey! Wait a minute. How’d we get from grumbling and mumbling, to a sunset, to answered prayer?”, you might ask. Go ahead, ask.
Glad you asked. Let me tell ya’.
That morning I’d prayed that God would give me some quiet time. So, he did. And He used the colored sky to catch my attention. It’s not what I expected, but here it was. Solitude. Me and Abba. Alone. We talked and cried and laughed together. And He taught me two things as we sat under His pastel canopy.
First, He’s already given me time to be with Him. I just need to discipline myself not to crowd it away with other things.
Second, He always answers prayer. I just can’t limit Him to how He’ll move. Sometimes He moves in big boxes and sometimes He moves in little ones and sometimes He just moves.
And I have to be willing to let Him move however He sees fit. Because when I command the mountain to move from here to there, He just might put a bulldozer in my driveway.
Please welcome a guest blogger for today, Thomas Lester. Thomas is the president of Speak Records (www.speakrecords.com). He’s also a world class recording engineer and producer. But, more than all of this he and his wife, Heather, are raising two of the coolest kids for Jesus you’ll ever meet. And I’m blessed to overflowing to call him a friend.
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So… I got an e-mail today. It was a typical e-mail that gets forwarded around from friend to friend. This e-mail was titled The Spoiled Under 30 Crowd. The big idea is that todays youth have it so much better than we (the over 30 crowd) had it when we were kids. I could not disagree more! I’m including the first e-mail, then after, I’m posting my take. Please take time to read both all the way through. I’d love to hear your comments about either view point. Please forgive the formatting of the first part… I’m just cutting and pasting.THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!! If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning … Uphill BOTH waysYadda, yadda, yadda. And I remember promising myself that when I grew up,There was no way in hell I was going to lay A bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it And how easy they’ve got it! But now that… I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my Childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don’t know how good you’ve got it!I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet . If we wanted to know something, We had to go to the damn library and Look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!! There was no email!! We had to actually write Somebody a letter .with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and Put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!There were no MP3′s or Napsters! You wanted to Steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift ityourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ’dusually talk over the Beginning and messed it all up!We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you
Were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’sit!And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either!When the phone rang, you Had no idea who it was! It could be your school,Your mom, your boss, a collections agent, you Just didn’t know!!! You hadTo pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation videoGames with high-resolution 3-D gr aphics! We had the Atari 2600! With gamesLike ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘asteroids’. Your guy was a little square! YouActually had to use your Imagination!! And there were no multiple levels orScreens, it was just one screen Forever!And you could never win. The game just kept gettingHarder and harder and Faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!When you went to the movie theater there no suchThing as stadium seating!
All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy Or some old broad with a hatSat in front of you and you couldn’t see, you were Just screwed!Sure, we had cable television, but back then that Was only like 15 channelsAnd there was no on screen menu and no remote Control! You had to use aLittle book called a TV Guide to find out what was On! You were screwed when itCame to channel surfing! You had to get off Your ass and walk over to the TV to chan g e theChannel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoonsOn Saturday Morning. Do you Hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEKFor cartoons, you spoiled Little rat-bastards!And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat Something up we had toUse the stove or go build a fire ..
Imagine that! If we wanted Popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thingAnd shake it over the stove Forever like an idiot.That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids Today have got it too easy.You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted Five minutes back in 1980!Regards,The over 30 Crowd (Send this to someone you’d like to make smile,Whether they are under 30 or not.)
How I wish my kids could grow up 30 years ago
This is my take on take on growing up as a kid today
I agree with this… but today’s youth has a downside as well, and quite frankly… I wish to God today’s youth could have our youth. Here’s what I see the youth of today has that we didn’t have:
Today’s youth can’t go out in their own neighborhood and play freely without having to look over their shoulder for kidnappers and pedophiles. They can’t just “go out and play”. Good parents will need to know where they are going to be, what house, how long, etc… When I was young, I could leave the house at the break of dawn and not have to be back until dark. That was OK because there wasn’t the worry about me getting raped, killed, or kidnapped. When I was a kid, we had woods and trails we could explore. Not today… IF you can find woods or trails, it’s either private property and you aren’t allowed to trespass OR you don’t want your kids back there because there may be a pedophile waiting… or people doing drugs… or may be a place for gay men to meet for sex. Today’s kids (boys) can’t just go use the public restroom while at the store or the park, because there may either be a “Glory Hole” or the man in the next stall may stick his “package” under the stall wall for you to service him (yes… I’ve had two men do this while I was in the stall next to me, once at Wal-Mart, and once in a Home Depot restroom… I’ve heard from others that this is becoming quite an epidemic).
Today’s youth have been completely betrayed by all the people that should be looking out for their health and welfare. Doctors, Teachers, Principals, and parents. When I was a kid, it was considered normal for a kid to have energy. It was normal for a kid to be creative. It was normal to daydream. Not today… almost every kid has been labeled as having some “disease” or “disorder” because they are creative, daydream, or have energy. It’s become so ingrained into their culture that every kid I know will freely inform me, “I have ADD”, or “I have ADHD”, or “I’m OCD”, or “I have anxiety disorder”. Most kids I know (NOT MINE) are on at least one or more prescription medications to make them “not like a kid” just so parents and teachers don’t have to deal with actually disciplining them and they don’t have to work hard at supporting their kid’s creative and energetic nature. Kids walk around in a fog due to the medication. You look them in the eyes and they look lifeless. Think about it… when I was a kid, it was normal to be anxious on the first day of a new school. If today’s kids were to get anxious on the first day of a new school, they are diagnosed with an “anxiety disorder” and are promptly medicated.
Of course… today’s kids also have to live with parents that are high on prescription drugs 24 hours a day. The average parent, is on anti-depressants and/or anti-anxiety pills. They take prescription stimulants to help them focus during the day, and prescription sleeping pills at night, and take pills for “Restless Leg Syndrome” because they don’t go to bed on time. The parents are anxious because they are cheating on their spouse, lying to their boss, and/or are in debt up their eyeballs. They are depressed because they can’t get promoted (because they are neglecting their responsibilities at work), can’t/won’t communicate with their spouse, are addicted to online-porn, are distant from their drugged up zombie like children, and they can no longer get an erection as a side effect of their other medications. What’s the message they are sending to the youth of today? They are saying, “Don’t bother with dealing with your issues” (i.e. stop cheating on the spouse, start doing your job as expected by your boss, don’t spend more than you make, spend time with and really talk to your spouse, stop masturbating to online porn, take your kids off drugs and learn to discipline and spend time with them, and going to bed on time) “….instead, just ignore your issues and cover them up with the high of prescription drugs”.
What’s the result of being “trapped” in today’s culture of being told that their is something so wrong with you that you have to be medicated to be normal? Well… kids want acceptance for who they really are (them when NOT medicated). They turn to illegal drugs, homosexuality, other adults (pedophiles), etc for love and support. When they don’t get what they are searching for and yet again are let down by the people that they think love them, the turn to cutting and suicide.
When I was a kid, truth was truth. There wasn’t your truth, his truth, my truth, etc. Many of today’s youth are morally destroyed before the even hit their teens. When I was a kid, the boys in the neighborhood would sneak out a copy of their Dad’s Playboy or Penthouse magazine. We could see a woman naked. That was enough to make me struggle with pornography the rest of my life. Most kids today have seen hard core explicit pornography by the time they are 12. One wrong click on the Internet and they get exposed to child porn, bestiality, rape, gay sex, etc. Today’s kids see sex, homosexuality, orgies, torture, mutilation, murder on PRIME TIME TELEVISION! In my youth, MTV played MUSIC. Today, they just popularize gay sex, orgies, and drug use. MTV no longer plays music.
So… next time you are thinking about how spoiled today’s kids are, you may want to think again. I’d give anything for my kids to be able to grown up 30 years ago.
PS…. I’m 35.
“Nothing outside a man can make him unclean…what comes out of a man makes him unclean…out of men’s hearts come evil thoughts…” Mark 7:20-21
We try to clean ourselves from the outside in or, more often, we just try to whitewash over our vices. But, just like mildew in a sheet of dry wall that hasn’t been primed the stain seeps back to the surface. And even if priming keeps the stain from reappearing, the mildew lives on in the wall festering and eating away at the structural integrity of the material.
And inevitably, tragedy ensues. The wall literally disintegrates. If it’s part of a load bearing wall then the result can be catastrophic even though the wall “looked” fine on the outside.
It’s the difference between being innocent and pure. Even our judicial system recognizes that the issue is internal. Defendants in a criminal trial are found guilty or not guilty, rather than guilty or innocent. No matter how wise a judge and jury are, they can’t establish what is in someone’s heart. Innocence relies too much on appearance.
Purity, on the other hand, is a matter of the heart. It’s out of the abundance of my heart that I speak and live “out-loud.” The question is, “What’s in abundance in my heart?” Not, “Can I clean myself up with enough pious ‘pretreatment’ and doctrinal ‘detergent’?”
“What fills my heart?” Only God and I know, but how I react under pressure reveals my “tells”. (By the way, “tells” are the subtle signals people give off when playing poker. What may seem innocuous to the amateur poker player is a distinct advantage to a seasoned professional in trying to determine a bluff from a straight flush. Only God can read our minds, Satan can’t. But, Satan has thousands of years of reading men’s tells and uses it to manipulate us. More on this in a later blog.)
Anyway, how I react under pressure comes from the abundance of my heart. When everything is going my way it’s easy to play “holy”. But, when the world spins out of control and I get blind-sided…when my “vessel” gets tipped over, what spills out? If I have an abundance of God’s spirit and word in my heart, that’s what spills out all over everybody around me. If I filled my heart with anger, impure thoughts, fear, etc. then that’s what spills out.
Or, maybe it’s more subtle than that. Maybe we’ve filled ourselves with self-righteousness, doctrine, denominational distinctive, private agendas and territorialism. What good is that to anybody? When the world comes crashing down…mountains tremble and waves crash…is a post-tribulation, pre-millennial theological, pro-{insert favorite theologian here}, anti-{insert least favorite theologian here} dissertation really going to encourage or comfort anyone? Is a list of our “good” works and theological acumen really going to “edify the body”?
These may be good things, but they’re not going to make us clean so that we reflect the love of Christ. How can we be clean? “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart…” The other things may be good, but they are lifeless and passionless.
And lifeless, passionless things lead to lifeless, passionless worship. During the week we fill up on empty spiritual calories and then wonder why we don’t “experience” God on Sunday. We end up standing and watching someone else worship trying to get our spiritual “jollies”.
We will do well to heed God’s warning through Isaiah, “These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain (emptiness); their teachings are but rules taught by men.”
Turn on the faucet of life and fill up with the joy of the Lord so that when you are broken, either by life or in worship, you leak Him all over everybody. And don’t worry about running out of His water. Leak all you want, he’s got more and more and more…
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners race, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” 1 Cor. 1:9
One warm June evening several years ago my son’s baseball team taught me a lesson in perseverance. Going into the final inning they were behind 7 – 1. A hopeless situation. You see the rules are such that no team can score more than 5 runs in an inning. Jordan would be the seventh batter, in the miraculous event it went that far. The game was already decided, or so I thought. I walked toward the third base coach’s box just in case a runner actually advanced that far. Secretly I hoped it would end quickly. As the first batter approached the plate I noticed a strange movement on the bench. The players were shaking their rally caps. For those who don’t know what rally caps are, shame on you.The first pitch was a strike. My heart sank. The second…another strike. The third…”yer out”, bellowed the ump. My heart dropped further. The team cheered encouragement. I guess they didn’t understand that the gig was up. The second batter spent a mercifully short time at the plate. One pitch, a pop fly, and out. I kicked at the dirt. His teamates cheered and welcomed him back to the bench with “way-ta-goes” and “at-a-boys”.Two outs, no one on. Let’s just go home.
Continue Reading…
“…but we have One who was tempted in every way.” Hebrews 4:15
It’s a great comfort to know that Jesus can relate to all of my temptations. But, it’s also humbling to realize I’ll never be able to remotely relate to His.
Of all the temptations He faced, I think the greatest must have come from the thief that challenged Him to call down angels to save Himself. Jesus could have done it, you know. If only to save His pride…I would have. Imagine having the power to prove yourself right and everyone else wrong. But, His coming to the world wasn’t about being right. It was about being reconciled. And if He did save Himself to prove that He really was the Savior where would faith be? He could have done it simply to stop the pain. Do I love anyone enough to keep from saving myself in order to see them saved? I can hope that I would lay down my life for another, but it’s not certain.
The blessing of Jesus is that I don’t have to face the temptation of saving myself. I can’t do it. Sure, I try sometimes but I always end up failing. The grace of The Cross is that I can wrap myself in the comfort of knowing that when I’m weakest His power to save me is strongest. And, if I can’t save myself I certainly can’t save anyone else. It’s not my job. All I can do…all I’m capable of doing…is to make sure that everyone can see His saving love in me. And His gift of love to me compels me to do all that I am capable of doing.
“Thank you, Jesus, for bearing the unthinkable horror of saving myself. I would have just messed it up. Actually, I did. So, thanks for saving me, too.”