Your engagement is important

I sat with a friend of mine in the middle of a crowded restaurant. I was pouring out my heart and he was gracious to listen. I asked him questions about how he manages to survive as a husband and father in a house filled with women? I have heard other men say that they will basically leave or find a way to escape. He looked at me and said that he has heard this from other husbands and fathers, also, and that he can understand their logic. With compassion in his voice, he said that he has decided to make it very clear that his choice is different. He could run and hide, but he finds that the best choice is to engage. He chooses to engage when anything at home gets difficult. In the times that everything is tense he has found that that is when he is needed the most. For him to just check out only makes the situations worse. By staying and engaging, he is able to offer peace and bring change to his family.

~~~

Three words– “I am He” –would bring about the greatest event the world has ever seen. It would be a change that rocked the very foundation of souls ever since. Men and women have died for the man who changed history when he spoke “I am He.” By speaking these words, He engaged an unseen enemy and set in motion the victory over death that the world desperately needed. He could have easily run and hid and waited till the opportunity was right to escape, but true engagers do not run and hide. They stay the course and when the road gets hard they buckle down and commit to what they know is right! This man stood for true freedom, He died not standing but hanging from a tree. He did this out of the love He had for this world!

Today, become an engager, because life is short and the world is full of people who run and hide when life gets difficult. Choose a different path, stay and engage when it is easier to not follow through with what you committed to. Just like my friend and his family, you will find that you are able to offer peace and bring change to others. As my Savior did, on a cross, 2000 years ago!

Happy day of my Saviors resurrection!

 

Read it all

John 19

 

 

Hanging by a thread

I was running on a beautiful summer day.  Passed a tree and noticed that there was a leaf hanging from the tree and it looked like it was defying gravity.  It was just suspended in midair.  Upon further inspection I noticed that it was hanging by a very thin piece of caterpillar thread.  The thread was so thin that the only way you could tell it was there was when it would glisten from the sun light.  I was completely in awe of this because the wind was blowing rather hard that day and looked like there would be no way that this thread could hold up this leaf.  In fact at times the leaf was nearly horizontal with the ground from the gust of wind!  Yet the thread held firm and the leaf was no small leaf it was at least an inch long!  Time and again I would watch as the leaf would rise with the wind and hover only to once again return to its hanging position below the tree.  It gave new meaning to the phrase hanging by a thread!

At times in our walk with Christ we feel like we have nothing left to give.  We are exhaiusted and we cry out for God to relieve us.  No matter how much we ask and plead it seems that the relief does not come in the way that we would like.  Yet everyday we have just enough that we need and we are able to make it through the day.  It almost seems that we are hanging by a thread. 

God does not always promise us immediate relief. He wants us to understand that even though you are being blown by the winds of life you can hold tightly to Him! Because He is stronger than any winds of life that may blow against you! 

Stay strong and hold on!

Who is the greatest

The setting is the upstairs room of a house, and Jesus sits at the front of the table surrounded by His twelve disciples. Everyone is talking and laughing enjoying dinner, then Jesus drops a bomb on the conversation. He tells them that that very night someone at the table is going to betray Him. The room grows quiet murmurs of “Who is it?” and “Surely, not I Lord!” begin to move around the table. One would expect that in this moment the only thing you could think about was Jesus, but scripture says that thoughts of Christ quickly disintegrated into conversations of who was the greatest among the 12 of them. Suddenly, Jesus wasn’t as important as they were!

Some of us might be indignant about what the disciples did. We may say, “If I had been there, I would not have ignored Jesus.” Yet the truth is that we ignore Jesus everyday. The problem is that we think we are more important than we are. We run around trying to keep up with the Joneses, working all day and ignoring our families, sitting in front of the TV when we could be sitting in front of the Bible. We spend hours shopping for the latest fashion, checking our social media for “likes,” or growing our ministries so that people will be impressed!

We choose each day to make Jesus not that important by putting ourselves first. The problem is that we have gotten so accustomed to this that we don’t even realize that we are doing it. It has become second nature, all to familiar. Yet God is putting opportunities in our paths every day to hear His sweet words, but we allow His voice to be drowned out by the noise of our own importance. Don’t miss what Jesus is saying to you because you are concerned with your own greatness! Jesus is speaking, it is time to listen!

Open it Up
Luke 22:21-24

Read some More
Luke 22

Your doubts and worry

To often as of late I have been racked with doubt and worry. The kind of doubt and worry that makes you sick to your stomach. The worst part about it is that it ebbs and flows. One minute all is well and the next my thoughts are spiraling into darkness. Much of these thoughts center around my self worth and I feel unsure and unconfident. I can see how debilitating these thoughts can be and why some men and women give up. It is so easy to think merely of now and to not continue to move forward.

That is exactly where Satan wants to keep you also. To believe the lies that he is given you and to create the doubt and worry so that you are ineffective. These lies are so easy to believe, but they are not of God! For me it is choosing to rebuke the lies and stand firm on the promise of Christ. To not become consumed with the doubt and worry but become consumed with Christ!

If you find yourself driven by doubt and worry today, rebuke it! Whenever you feel the thoughts creeping in, take hold of them. Do not give Satan that foot hold, because you have a world to change!

Open It Up
Phil. 4:8-9

Your Counselor

My wife and have been seeing a marriage counselor for the last several months. Not because our marriage is failing but because we wanted to be proactive after everything that has happened. We wanted to make sure that we were not missing something and it is always good to get better. During the very first session I broke down and cried like a little baby. I could not control it, and had no idea how to stop. During the second session it happened again and both times it was completely unexpected and awkward! I was a broken man, and it felt so good!

Friends if you want to experience Christ to the fullest you have to admit that you are broken. If you want to see yourself become the best you can be, you must admit that you need Jesus. Trust me, when you experience His boundless love for the first time the tears will come. It will be uncontrollable and it will be a little awkward but it will feel so good!

I went to a counselor for help and to receive healing. Maybe it is time for you to finally receive some counseling also?

Open it Up
Philippians 2:14-17

Trusting when nothing makes sense

In the Bible Joseph encounters several detours until becoming 2nd in command to Pharaoh. Yet through all of the waiting and trials he trusted God even when nothing made sense.

When difficult things happen to us we are so quick to turn to God and trust, and that is great! Trusting becomes difficult when the end result is not what you would want. We will trust God for a time but if He doesn’t fix our problem the way we want it, than the trust is off the table. If He doesn’t help us in our time frame we also start to lose the trust. When we stop trusting we can become discouraged and stagnant. We can also make decisions out of fear and not confidence.
God is worth trusting even when nothing makes sense.

Open it up
Psalm 27:7

Read a little more
Genesis 37

Others first

Over the last year one thing that has remained constant on my heart is putting others first. This is a hard thing to do especially in the world that we live in today. Everybody is trying to get their piece of the pie and in order to succeed it has to be all about you. This is hard for me and it was especially hard when Amanda was sick. In order for us to survive as a family I needed to let go of all of my ambitions and dreams. This has been a struggle because I am wired like everyone else to be about me.

“then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,” (‭Philippians‬ ‭2‬:‭2-3‬ NIV)

Christ wants us to be about others and to put their needs first. On this Fourth of July we celebrate those who put the needs of others freedom above their own. In Christ we find a man who gave his life for everyone’s freedom! Today remember that it is not about you!

Straining and Pressing

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14 NIV)

I have been meditating on this verse over the last week. What has stood out to me are the words pressing and straining. Part of me wishes the words were ease and comfort! Paul never says that walking with Christ is easy, he says simply that he always moves forward. No matter how much he has to strain it do it. I picture a sprinter straining towards the finish line, leaning forward as much as possible to gain the inch needed to win the race. Press and strain in your relationship with Christ, towards that finish line. It won’t always be enjoyable but it is so worth the prize!

Those dirty hands

I recently watched a documentary called “Blood Brothers”. It is all about a young man from America choosing to live in India at an orphanage for kids with HIV. I was inspired by how unafraid the young American is to care for these kids. He gives his life for these kids bandaging their hurting bodies, giving hugs, he loves them when no one else will. He is not afraid to get his hands dirty.

If we choose to help bandage someone’s pain, it will cause us discomfort. Everyone will ask us why we are doing it! To them it makes no sense why we would want to “dirty” our hands with other peoples problems. This is exactly how Jesus lived His life though, He was always caring for those that no one else would. Jesus knew the only way for us to truly love people was to get our hands dirty.

Open it up
Mark 1:40-42

Read a little More
Mark 1

God has great things….?

So often I have heard the comment “God has great things in store!” Anytime that someone perceives a difficult season in someone’s life that phrase is used. Every word spoken is sincere but what if the great things He is going to do we will never see?

Take for example Deitrich Boenhoeffer. He was martyred for his faith at the hands of the Nazi regime. He would be locked in a jail cell, utterly alone, away from his fiancé, his family, his friends before his death. What “great things” lay in store for Him? Some would consider this tragic but not Deitrich, he speaks of both trust and peace with Christ in spite of his dire circumstances. He died before seeing all of the great things God would do through his life and eventually his death.

You see the Peace of Christ is internal and makes no guarantee for the external. It is a super natural peace of the soul, regardless of how desperate the external forces have become. No promise of safety but of sanctity. Trusting God places no guarantee on your life and that there is any freedom from your pain. It just means that He understands your pain and wants you to trust that He is in control. This also means that your difficulty may not end in the way you want it. When we follow Christ He gives us no guarantees other than our salvation. Our “great things” are God’s peace and our great trust in Him!

(For me this has been a difficult lesson to learn.)

Open it up
Phil. 4:7, Phil. 3:14

Read a little more
Psalm 37