Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Wednesday: A Story & A Point

I am sorry about there not being a post yesterday. I went to a workshop all morning (I will post something from it tomorrow). Wednesdays are going to be a day where I will tell a story and make a point; pretty simple. Enjoy.

There are many stories that have circulated concerning the Titanic. My favorite one is probably one that goes unnoticed.  It doesn’t have to do with heroic rescues or death and destruction; it enlightens us about priorities.  It concerns a frightened woman who had just found her place on a lifeboat that was about to be dropped into the water.
     She thought suddenly of something she needed in spite of everything that was happening around her. She asked for permission to go to her stateroom. She ran across the deck that was already slanted at a dangerous angle. She came to her room and pushed aside her jewelry and reached above her bed and got three small oranges and found her way back to the lifeboat and got in. Death boarded the Titanic that day. Instantaneously, priceless things had become worthless. Worthless things had become priceless. And in that moment she preferred three small oranges to a crate of diamonds.
     In Matthew 16:26 Jesus says this: “What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself. What could you ever trade your soul for? (The Message)” What is your priority in life?  What is the one thing that drives you?  That you lay awake at night thinking about? Priorities change when we’re confronted with the fact that whatever it is we hold so dear may not be around much longer. The phrase “getting your priorities straight” is wise enough when someone is on a self-destructive path. But what about those of us that just need a more fulfilling priority?  As you make plans, watch your priorities. Is God in charge of them?

Monday, November 28, 2005

Theme Days Coming...

OK, I'm back! Thanksgiving trip completed, 1000+ miles later, we're back! I am sorry for the missing days but I was not able to post where I was, so I came up with some ideas for the future.

In order to put some organization to this space (and my thoughts), I’ve decided to give themes to different days on this blog. For example, Monday is going to be “LIST” day (I’ve got a book of lists that are somewhat thought-provoking). I haven’t decided what all of the other themes will be yet; we’ll do it as we go. Here’s a good place to start…

Traits of a Successful Person (Scriptures added are mine)
  • Consciousness of an honest purpose (John 17:3)

  • A just estimate of oneself and everyone else (Romans 12:3)

  • Frequent self-examinations (See Romans 12:3b again)

  • Steady obedience to what one knows to be right (1 John 2:5-6)

  • Indifference to what others may think or say (I’m going to address this tomorrow)

OK, it’s amazing how you can find some secular book sources and, without knowing it perhaps, the author hits on some solid biblical truths! Hey, let me know if you find anything like this…

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Experience...

A young man once asked an older man, “What’s the secret of your success?”
“Good decisions,” the older man replied.
“How do you learn to make good decisions?”
“You get that by experience.”
“How do you get experience?”
“By making bad decisions.”
Although this wouldn’t be the recommended way to learn how to make good decisions, most of us can look back on our lives and see how this little scenario played out for us. For us parents there is nothing more we would like our children to avoid than the same bad decisions we made. Unfortunately, as they get older our influential role decreases and we have to do the thing that parents fear the most: watching. We watch our children succeed (that’s the enjoyable part) but we must also (gulp) watch them fail. We love them, pick them up, dust them off and then the watching starts again!
This is not to say that we cannot, and I must say we should, equip them with all of the wisdom and skills they need for this life journey. The book of Proverbs in our Bible was written for the Hebrew people to be a kind of book of common wisdom (sense) for parents to use to teach their children. While we may have a huge selection of parenting books, manuals, and other helpful materials I find the most encouraging statement to come from that same book of Proverbs. Proverbs 22:6 says this, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it,” or as the Message Bible puts it, “Point your kids in the right direction- when they’re old they won’t be lost.” I find comfort and encouragement in those words. Yes we have our work cut out for us and sometimes things don't turn out exactly as we had planned, but maybe we need to look at parenting like a gardener would. We are planting seeds. They may not show growth for a while, some may not show fruit for a while either. But when they do, what a beautiful sight it will be, and God will receive the glory!

Monday, November 21, 2005

Guard Your Heart

I caught a pretty bad virus about a year ago. I was sick. What a hassle! What an inconvenience! It ended up taking me the better part of a week to get over it. I even had to spend $80.00 on a new hard drive, sit all day in my office reinstalling software… wait, I wasn’t specific about the virus was I! It was a computer virus! Sorry to mislead everyone, although at one point that week I think I would rather have had the physical virus. I am now a devout believer in virus protection software. Oh yes I had it before but I must confess that it wasn’t quite up-to-date. Now I am going to be vigilant about trying to keep up with every evil virus out there.
You know, all of this talk about viruses, protection, guarding my computer, and so on reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, Proverbs 4:23. It says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Doesn’t this verse conjure up images of some sort of warfare or battle? That’s how I felt this week when I was dealing with my dead computer. It was war! I ended up being convinced (again) that I needed to protect my computer. Isn’t that similar to how we need to protect ourselves from what is evil “out there”? We need to be extra careful about what we put in our minds and hearts (and what is put into the minds and hearts of our children!).
A few years ago when I was a youth minister, our youth group decided to make this verse our theme for the school year. They put the verse into their own words and made it something worth adhering to: "Sin is toxic!" They wanted a constant reminder about what they needed to be focused on and reminded of what they needed to not let into their lives. Listen to words of this proverb in The Message: “Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that’s where life starts.” I guess it applies to computers too, but more powerfully to people. Stay vigilant!

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Laws of Golf...


Just some humor for a Saturday.  Golfer guys, you’ll be familiar with most all of these. I’ll do the rest of them another time. Enjoy!


LAW 1:
No matter how bad your last shot was, the worst is yet to come. This law does not expire on the 18th hole, since it has the supernatural tendency to extend over the course of a tournament, a summer and, eventually, a lifetime.
LAW 2:
Your best round of golf will be followed almost immediately by your worst round ever. The probability of the latter increases with the number of people you tell about the former.
LAW 3:
Brand new golf balls are water-magnetic. Though this cannot be proven in the lab, it is a known fact that the more expensive the golf ball, the greater its attraction to water.
LAW 4:
Golf balls never bounce off of trees back into play. If one does, the tree is breaking a law of the universe and should be cut down.
LAW 5:
No matter what causes a golfer to muff a shot, all his playing partners must solemnly chant "You looked up," or invoke the wrath of the universe.
LAW 6:
The higher a golfer's handicap, the more qualified he deems himself as an instructor.
LAW 7:
Every par-three hole in the world has a secret desire to humiliate golfers. The shorter the hole, the greater its desire.
LAW 8:
Topping a 3-iron is the most painful torture known to man.
LAW 9:
Palm trees eat golf balls.
LAW 10:
Sand is alive. If it isn't, how do you explain the way it works against you?

Friday, November 18, 2005

Plan Some Family Fun

The rapidly approaching Holiday season gets me thinking about a number of things, like avoiding malls and any store altogether and doing all of my shopping online! No really, it gets me thinking about all of the time that families spend together during this time of year.  Family members flying or driving all the way across the country so they can spend time together.  It sounds great in the planning stages but then people that have the same old relationships get stuck in a house together for too long and the temperature starts to rise.  Does this happen to you?  Does your family need to break out of a rut of spoiling Holiday times together?  How about some fun? What does your family do for fun? What I mean is this: What does your family plan to do for fun?  Plan fun?  Doesn’t sound like fun you say?
Here’s what Bob and Annie Schuckert, quoted in Our Families magazine say: “We had a tradition of the entire family playing croquet when the children were little. Soon the children were grown, had families of their own and were scattered all over. Everyone would come home at Christmas and other times and we played croquet. We now turn on the lights on the backyard and the entire family plays croquet from about 10:00pm until about 2:00am. It started years ago when one of the kids did not arrive until about 8:30pm. Then around 10 someone suggested we play a night game. We all played and had so much fun that we have been doing it ever since”.
My wife, her brother, her father and I started something a few years ago after one of us got the first video camera for Christmas.  We started staying up way too late and making funny films. From making fun of the shopping channels to “chin people” (only my family will laugh at just the memory of that one), there is very little planning that goes into it.  My kids have become involved and we have made it into something that is expected at Christmas time and other family gatherings.  Sometimes everyone stays up a bit too late for me and usually I am the cameraman. Also, it is only funny to us, but isn’t that the point?  Do something fun for your family.  Make it a tradition.  Starting this year.  Even if your oldest child is embarrassed to mention this fun family tradition at school!  See what it does to those old family patterns!


Thursday, November 17, 2005

Promoting & Protecting Purity

Promoting and Protecting Purity

Protecting our country, our lifestyle, our way of life has been something that has grabbed everyone’s attention over the last few years.  We want to make sure we are safe.  We want to make sure our families are safe. People have begun to resort to “extra measures” in order to protect themselves against possible threats. Let me just say that being safe is always a good thing. But let me push the envelope a little further and ask this question, “What are we doing to protect our souls, our spiritual walk with God?”
Someone said, “Holiness is the everyday business of every Christian.  It evidences itself in the decisions we make and things we do, hour by hour, day by day.”  Sometimes it seems that our battle is by the hour or even by the minute.  What can we do DAILY to protect ourselves, our marriages, our children, and the church from the constant attacks against us?  These attacks aren’t as obvious as flying planes into buildings. These attacks are on our daily lives.  The attacks I am speaking of threaten our faith journey.  It may come in the form of some temptation to do something we know is wrong.  It may come as a life-threatening illness that shakes our faith.  It may take shape as a spouse or loved one abandoning or leaving a family. It may just be the onslaught of daily pressures that stress us out from work or with our family’s daily routine. Whatever the form, we have opportunities every day to protect what the Bible calls our holiness (which does not mean we have a “holier than thou” attitude but rather holiness means we try to live our lives for God!) or our purity (keeping ourselves clean from evil). There are some things we can do to ensure we are protected.

First, we need to RECOGNIZE the destructive forces that are already at work in our lives.  Here’s something you can do: Individually, come up with five potentially destructive elements that may have more of an influence in your life, marriage, and children than you want them to have.

Then we need the REMOVE the impurities. Spend a few minutes in private prayer about impurities in your life, where your purity has been attacked, and pray for God’s deliverance.

REPLACE them with a growing love for God’s word, holy living, and service in the church. Try doing this exercise this week: Read 1 Peter 1:13-16. How would you define the commands here or put them in your own words?  Which one command sums up everything? How?  Based on these commands, how would you define “holy”?  How can living a holy life protect you from attacks on your purity?

Lastly, we must RESOLVE to seek God, especially in prayer. What steps can you take in order to know God better or to seek Him? May God richly bless your efforts to protect your family’s purity.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

The Value of a Godly Family.3

One of the foundations for the family as the prime agent of spiritual nurture is Dt. 6, a chapter which became famous in Israel's history. The chapter begins by reminding God's people that they were to observe his commands and decrees after they cross the Jordan. The reason attached is:
"so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you." (Dt. 6:2)
Note 2 very important things about this. First God expects the family to pass on the faith. The command to parents, far from permitting them to forget about their children, is for them to strive for the goal of handing down their faith to their children and grandchildren. Parents, this challenge is still for you. Not only to have a lively faith yourself, but also to pass on the faith down to your children, and to so equip them, that they will pass the faith on to their children as well. Including yourself, will your love for Christ be passed on to the 3rd generation? It won't be easy. It will take work, and a long-standing commitment. Secondly, we are told what to pass down:
"all his decrees and commands".
It is not half, nor part of God's commands, but the whole corpus. And it is the imperative instructions that we are to pass down. So God gives the family the blueprint in those verses. God does not leave us in the dark about what we should pass on to our children. Then the passage continues with the famous:
"Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one. Love he Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be you’re your hearts. Impress these on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your house and on your gates." (Dt. 6: 4-9).
God does not call us to present holy worship to our children as one option among many to see if they will grace us with an agreement to attend. He charges parents with the duty to impress these things on our children while they are impressionable. God calls on the believing family to impress these things on our youth - not merely throw them out as options - among many - to believe. Nor do we relay these truths and convey to our children to believe any old things. No, we authoritatively declare the one truth of the one living God, and we seek at every opportunity to impress these on our children. Our homes are to be bathed in the messages of God. All activities are to be infested with his holiness. And regular times will be helpful in most cases.
But don't stop here. Drop down in the same passage to v. 20, to see further, how our children are to be involved.
"In the future when your son asks you, 'What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the Lord our God has commanded you?' tell him...".

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

The Value of a Godly Family.2

In terms of being the primary place to teach religious values, the buck stops in the home. Do we really want or should we have any institution, group, school, or government mandating how our homes should run or what we should teach? We should also not get caught in the situation where some other agency ends up being the place (because we gave this responsibility to them), where values are taught to our children. At best, let me say that again, at BEST, they should only reinforce what we are teaching at home. The value of the Christian family is that we model for the whole world to see what God wants for His people. We are training agencies for the next generation of God's people. Just look at how many times in scripture the Jewish people are encouraged, no commanded is the more applicable word here, to tell of God and His love and deliverance to the 2nd and 3rd generations. Here are just some of the values that need to be taught in the Christian home, which in turn, increase the value of your family:

Learn about covenant- to love and be loved. (protection, nurture)
Learn graceto forgive and be forgiven.
Learn empowermentto serve and be served. (citizenship, work ethic)
Learn intimacyto know and be known.

The state is not instructed to do this. The school is not charged to this. The church is not even the primary agent to do this. The youth group, may support the home, but it is not called on to do this. Moms and dads are called on to keep this age-old pattern. When our children ask questions as they normally will(and even when they don't!), then we are to explain the teachings of God. Parents are to instill godliness, and set before their children God's commands. At the same time, they will do well to explain how and why we cannot perfectly live up to those, and how God gives grace to enable us to obey. Our homes are the central and most important places for religious nurture.

Monday, November 14, 2005

The Value of a Godly Family.1

Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a dinner guest over who was a free thinker of the late 18th century. Throughout dinner he expounded on the virtues of freedom of choice, how religion prevented people from being truly free, and the evils of training children in the faith, saying no one should have external structure imposed on them. Coleridge, who'd been quiet during the tirade, ushered his guest toward the back door, opened it and said to the man, "Here, let me show you my garden. I'm sure you'll agree that it’s one of the best in the world." There were no rows of bushes, no succulent smells, no organized beauty. There were only weeds and vines, an absence of artistry or botany. The man looked puzzled, and said, "Oh... so this is your garden? Coleridge, the sage poet, replied, "Yes. I have followed your advice. Just as you said, I wouldn't want to impose in any way on this nature. Especially the young vines, I want them to grow as they will. It would be like imposing religion. Isn't this a beautiful garden?"
A tag phrase over the last few years has been "family values". Let me just say this: no real progress will be made in “family values” until real emphasis is placed on the “value of the family”. The family that God Himself has created and we help to grow! Remember that feeling you had when bringing your little baby home from the hospital? Well, maybe not the first day, because your mother (or mother-in-law) was still around, later on when you and your spouse were alone with your little one. Remember the feeling of helplessness, like the responsibility of their whole life was right before your eyes! That’s the feeling I hope to rekindle over the next few posts as we review our responsibilities about the family. As parents our job is to grow a healthy, weed-free family! If you are a part of such a family, give God praise! If you do not have a family yet, tuck these things away and pull them out later when you need them! From today on, help cultivate a family so it can thrive!

Friday, November 11, 2005

Have You Lost Your Laugh?


You know, it's not often that SpongeBob can be an inspiration for something, but today the episode that is playing behind me as I write this involves Mr. Squarepants losing his laugh. Now, if you know anything about SpongeBob, you know his laugh ranks just above fingernails on the chalkboard on the irritate-o-meter. It got me to thinking though. We adults sometimes have the tendency to lose our laugh. We take things waaaay to seriously. We need something. Let me tell you about what happened last year during a stretch of time where we had 3 days in a row of snow days (this was in VA, where at the least suggestion of snow, everything stops).
I am beginning to appreciate snow days. Now don’t get me wrong, they are a hassle and a major interruption to my schedule as much as the next person’s, but I am beginning to appreciate them. By “appreciate” I mean being able to do something we adults don’t normally do on snow days: PLAY! Kids get this principle easily. You tell them there’s no school, they cheer (literally in my house), they run to the closet, find their winter paraphernalia and run outside. No time for anything important, let’s play, they say!
It took me a day to get out there because, well, I just was enjoying not having to get up the first day and besides, there was this good book I was reading. The second day I went out with my kids to our street (we lived at the top of a steep cul-de-sac) and made myself a human projectile down the slope! What fun! It reminded me of the times when my friends and I in seventh grade used to inhale our lunches, run to the hill beside our school, sled on a piece of cardboard covered with a garbage bag for a half hour before returning to class. What fun! What freedom! No responsibilities! Just play. I found a little bit of that last year due to my new found appreciation for snow days.
It reminded me of a well-known verse, Proverbs 15:13: “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” This saying that a happy heart can cure some things. Are there some ailments in your life that a good day outside playing with your kids can cure? The look of pure glee on my then six year old as she flies down the hill is enough good medicine for me! Although, my kids received some good medicine as well watching old guy dad wipe out in the snow! Another translation of Proverbs 15:13 goes like this: “A cheerful heart brings a smile to your face, a sad heart makes it hard to get through the day.” Don’t just trudge through another day. Go out and play. Find your laugh again!

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Who Am I? Who Are You?

Thanks for the emails and input from yesterday. We're off to a good start. God-discovery elicited some good feedback. I'd like to take one of them and run with it a little today. The quote from one comment went like this: "The more we discover God the more we find our true identity in him." I love those two words, "IN HIM". Identity is an interesting construct. Ah, the age-old question, "Who am I?", "what is my identity?", comes to the surface at different times in our lives. Let's take this in two directions:
First, maybe we need to change the question a little to read like this: "Whose Am I?" (I know the grammar is bad and somewhere in Canada there is a former english teacher of mine cringing). If we ask this question this way it unfolds a different image in my mind. Who am I creates ambivalence, indecision, agitation, pressure (like it's up to me decide who I am in the first place!? Like it matters to eternity who I am anyway!?). Asking the second question starts me on the road of something defined; defined by God, that is. I am His. That can and should be sufficient for me.
The second direction would be to find value in what we were created to be. We find this in Genesis 1:26 when God said, "Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness..." Whose am I? I am God's. What is that like? I am made in in His image and likeness. How can we be confused? Our identity is found in the fact that we are created in the image of God. We are His, and we are made to be like Him.
Another response from yesterday that I might tackle tomorrow is the two-word phrase, "knowing God." those two words are packed with meaning for us. How close can you get to God? So close you KNOW Him.

Forever God's,

Jim


(also, if you want to leave a comment, look down below this sentence to where it says 6 comments (the number may be different). Click on that and a pop-up window will appear, thanks!)

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Hey, I'm here!

Hey, everyone. I feel like I am embarking on a journey. A journey not only of self-presentation (it's a bit vulnerable putting yourself out there (here) even though there are protections) but of self-discovery. There it is. The title of my first post: self-discovery. You hear a lot of that hyphenated word on shows like Oprah and Doc Phil, or in counseling sessions. Not much of that in scripture though. Mayeb because that is not what w need to be after: the discovery of ourselves. Hmmm....
The way I see it is God intended us to find Him, not ourselves. I don't tend to find out anything good when I "discover" things about myself (cuz it's usually stuff I need to change about me!). Discovering me is no great task: I'm fallen, I need Him. Period. God wants us to travel down the road of God-discovery. And what an amazing find it is once we have "discovered" Him!
This post is going to be short, but I'm just starting and I really want these things to be a dialogue with anyone who wants to share. Let's share about how we discovered God; or how He found you; And I'll share about how He found me and how I am continually discovering Him. I think that would be a great place to start. Let's just see where this dialogue takes us (hopefully closer to Him).

still discovering...

Jim