Worry
In my musings about life, I have found myself worrying. You ask, “how could someone so good looking worry??? and about what ?” Well, I’ll tell you, its the little things of life, you know, will my children grow up to love the Lord? Will they find and marry a Godly person? Does my wife think I am a good husband? Is the Church going the direction the Lord wants? Is Jeff Hubbard gonna drive me nuts before my time? you know, every day stuff, then one day I ran across this story:
In 480 B.C. the outmanned army of Sparta’s King Leonidas held off the Persian troops of Xerxes by fighting them one at a time as they came through a narrow mountain pass, you may have seen the movie “300?” Commenting on this strategy, C.H. Spurgeon said, “Suppose Leonidas and his handful of men had gone out into the wide-open plain and attacked the Persians–why, they would have died at once, even though they might have fought like lions.” Spurgeon continued by saying that Christians stand in the narrow pass of today. If they choose to battle every difficulty at once, they’re sure to suffer defeat. But if they trust God and take their troubles one by one, they will find that their strength is sufficient.
Hmmmm… how many times have I preached on “eating the elephant” you know, how do you do it? The same way you eat a pop-tart, one mouthful at a time. It’s that time and space when we start worrying about the things that God controls and focusing on outcomes that have not yet been realized… here is what I discovered:
An average person’s worry is focused on :
40% — things that will never happen
30% — things about the past, that can’t be changed
12% — about criticism by others, mostly untrue
10% — about health, which gets worse with stress!
8% — about real problems that will be faced
Let’s decide today to let God be God. Trusting Him means we let Him handle the worries and we handle the work of the harvest. Let’s get busy doing the right things and leave the rest to the Father, See ya Sunday! PT
Can I handle it?
If you are in South Carolina right now…it’s hot. I mean egg frying on the hood of your car hot! And with the heat comes dryness, everything starts to dry up, your fishpond, the birdbath, and even your desire to get out in the yard. The mosquitoes even decide its’ better to die than to fry, and they too stay in the woods. It is with this backdrop that my story begins, its around 7:30 in the morning and I’m under my garage with my favorite fan, a good Bible study book, and a glass of icy cold water. I have just planted some flowers in our beds (plant them late and you can get them on sale!) and they are in need of a cool drink, so the sprinkler is running full blast watering the yard, the grass, my truck and my driveway…dontcha think someone could come up with a sprinkler that waters in squares! Ha… anyway, a mocking bird appears on my mailbox…he caught my attention, he was eyeballing the water like a frog eyeballing a juicy blowfly on a friday night! He looked and lingered, you could see the heat and dryness was playing with his imagination…hmmm…it looks like I can handle it…so after about two minutes he mustered up his courage and dove in…
Well, the water sprinkler won…his fear and intrepidation robbed him of a drink, he simply wasn’t willing to get completely wet, he only wanted the water in his pointy little beak.
Let me put a perspective on this: WE are the bird, the water is the TRUTH of God’s word. We need it like a bird on a dry hot day, it’s readily available, and flowing freely. You can stare, gaze, dream, and watch others get theirs, but until you overcome the fear of getting truth ALL OVER YOU, then you will always fall short. Paul talking to the Church in Galatia said: in 5:7,
“ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?”
What is it that is keeping you and I from the truth? What keeps us on the post always watching others get their refreshing drink, but we live on memories or are in a state of dehydration. The Father has let us know that the spirit of “fear” was not given by Him, but by our enemy. The fear God gives is a live preserver, the fear the enemy gives is a life killer.
Hey, jump off the post, its just water, you can handle it!
See ya Sunday…PT
Making Beautiful Music Together?
May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in
harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that
together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Romans 15:5-6
Have you ever read a scripture that hit you like a bug in the face at 50 miles per hour…on a motorcycle? This one did…for me, you see as much as I preach forgiveness and love, their are still isolated pockets in my mind that hold stagnant, ugly, stinkin thinkin…It’s only when the light of the word hits those places that I can find these isolated problems. On my own, I have discovered, I am fully capable and willing to ignore them. Which brings me to my point, Number One: Satan and my flesh will stop at nothing to keep me out of the word. Number Two: I can still be judgmental and categorize people instead of loving everyone the same.
I’d love at this point to say, now let’s move on and hit on you, however this blog is about me…wow…not a lot of fun having to expose yourself to …yourself? Yep, that’s about the crux of it isn’t it? God already knows, my friends already know, I am the last one to know. Last night after the ball game I ran into a person I will not name who approached us about our church and ministry and I felt myself pulling away from them and the conversation, afterwards I ask myself why, and then I realized it was because I didn’t want to be associated with them because of comments I have heard others say about this person….I was and am ashamed of my actions.
It’s real easy to say we love everyone, as long as it’s easy. It’s when loving someone has a cost attached to it that it becomes difficult. Yet in this verse Paul is praying for “harmony” between believers. One of my degrees in this world is Music Education, because of this I understand “harmony” the vertical alignment of pitches. Harmony is in a nutshell, different notes being played at the same time, and together they make a rich, full, melodic sound. It’s not that you can’t play alone, but God wants us to play together, in vertical alignment to make one beautiful note…and as we move, we make a beautiful melody! It’s the differences that will give us fullness, and richness and appreciation for the Father’s wisdom in not making us all alike. Wouldnt’ that be a dull place to live, a place that never challenged you, never made you think, never made you laugh because you already knew the punch line!
My daughter is a joy in my life, she can be so random and off the wall. She is so different from my son, a common thing for them at this stage in their life is their fighting…wow, it can really be frustrating for Terrie and me at times. But the unique thing about their relationship is laughter, they love to make each other laugh. My favorite thing is to see them dance, or copy the “three amigos” from the movie…they will crack each other up and fall in the floor laughing. You see, in that moment, they have figured out how to play in harmony…
Can we?
Remember this: “The shame is not in being human and being imperfect…the shame is knowing your fault and ignoring it”…-Tom Wallace
Avoiding the Sting!
The test of manhood!
When I was a little pup, we left the beautiful picturesque landscape of the farmland of Marion County to follow the Great American dream. My Dad went to work with United Parcel Service and we were immediately told to “Go West” young man, so our life then began to morph around the changes of rural to a surburban lifestyle. Wow, what a shocker. I had a lot trouble making the adjustment. On the farm, we had so much for a young adventurous kid to do, you could swim in the irrigation pond, chase geese, ride hogs, and even dig holes to China (if it wasn’t too wet!) In Suburbia, a land of perfectly manicured tiny yards and no animals, except the occasional cat or dog, you were really limited to the fun and adventure you could find. I remember catching crayfish in a ditch once and making a little stew, and even building minnow nets and pretending we were commercial fisherman…right down to eating my first sushi…you got it, raw minnows! (by the way, don’t try this, they are sooooo gross!)
But that was all in my juvenile years. As I matured I found the most interesting thing in the corner of the front porch of our home, a big blob of paper with these red shiney bugs on it. Being the intelligent, curious, young, budding Indiana Jones that I was… I did the scholarly research and picked up a nearby rock and “chunked” it as hard as I could. “Whack!” A dead bulls eye! I rattled that thing so hard ALL the bugs fell off, as I stood in amazement it was only seconds before they congregated around my body like a school of minnows on a bread ball and proceeded to administer a lesson in pain that I had never imagined possible!
YEEEEOOOOWWW, I remember running, screaming, and coming out of my clothes right there in the front yard…My older retired military neighbor, who I could only describe as a “Mr. Wilson” type laughed so hard I thought he would soil his way too loose khaki shorts…he was a sight, but I was way too busy trying to outrun these emisarries of torment as they repeatedly penetrated my body with their barbs of death! It only took seconds but if felt like hours before I ran in the house, whelped up, naked as a skinned rabbit, and crying like a newborn baby. My loving sisters laughed themselves sick, while in between breaths asking me “what happened to you?” Needless to say, I cried myself to sleep waiting on mama to come home. When she finally arrived, I remember the love and care as she gave me benedryl and kisses…wow, that is the stuff man, I was ready for round two.
The next day I gathered my compadres from the neighborhood for testing, I showed them my wounds and bragged on how it didn’t hurt a lick. As they ooohed and aaaahed I dared them to throw a rock at the home of the shiney red bugs. They one by one thought like I, that you could outrun or out-manuever these crafty clever top-gun pilots…and one by one they all went down in the agony of defeat. Ah , but we were the men of the neighborhood. The Girls stood in admiration of our scars and whelps as we bragged on how brave we were. Then one day while finding new ways to irritate the shiney bugs I found a yard stick from the local furniture store. I thought, huh, what a great sword! I’ll stab the little critters! Much to my amazement when they began their aerial assault, they only attacked the end of the stick, not me! Wow, this was too good to be true! I could harass, act like an assassin and pick them off one by one and never one time would they look to see who was at the other end of the stick.
I know so far you are having trouble finding the spiritual relevance of this little memoir of my childhood, however, bear with me. In ephesians 6:12 we are told we wrestle not against each other, but against the kingdom of our enemy, Satan himself. Recently we have been talking about and making discoveries about the heart of God. Several weeks ago in our staff meeting the Holy Ghost manifested Himself and the message left us was “when we search the heart of God , we would find it beats with two things…love and forgiveness” This has been reverberating in our body as of late as the Father has allowed each of us to face the ones we have hurt and the ones that have hurt us. For some, forgiveness is easy, for others it has been a trying and exhausting task, however we are moving through it by God’s grace and mercy. If you need some help, remember my little memoir, it’s not the stick that gotcha…its’ who’s on the other end.
You see, my brothers and sisters are not my enemies! They are either the harvest or they are my companions on this journey and I need to place this deep in my mind. We all can become a tool in the hands of the enemy , no matter how holy we think we are. Even Peter, that great apostle, took a rebuke from Christ as he allowed the enemy to use his mouth. Christ however didn’t hold it against him, he looked to the one who was weilding the stick and corrected his beloved apostle, reminding all of us…keep the handle in the hands of the Father so we are only used for edifiying our brothers and sisters. Forgiveness is easier if you will just look at the other end of the stick.
God bless and thanks for reading. Be patient I’m trying to get better.
Pastor Tom
What is wrong with me???
I know this is a loaded question for me to ask, because the most popular response is going to be “depends on who you ask!” And that is infinitely correct. We gather others opinions of us and use them like a wardrobe each day to shape how we act, much like the clothing we wear affects our actions, so do others opinions. Isn’t it tiring trying to live up to what others think or don’t think of us? I know for me, it is impossible, there are simply too many people expecting too many things for me to ever satisfy everyones need or perspective on what I should be. Recently a friend dropped a book off by my office and today during my quiet time I picked it up and began to read. This book is going to be one of those that aggrevate me, I can tell already. You know the kind, you read it and conviction and questions begin to race through your mind.
The first thing I had to ask myself is “what is wrong with me?” I believe it’s so easy, after many years of serving the Lord, to become a “professional christian” and lose purpose and focus on what is truly the heart of what we do. The matter of truth is, we complicate the simple, layer by layer, generation by generation. We add to and compliate the profound truth of being a follower of Christ. Jesus had to address this with the pharisees and told them that the most important “to do” of our lives should be: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy HEART, and with all thy SOUL, and with all thy MIND and with all thy STRENGTH” Hmmmm, I can think of alot of things I have put in place in my life over this truth, can you? What is wrong with me…..
We forget that to go forward, you must go backward…back to the place where you first encountered the face of God, the place where you sought him and He allowed you to find Him…that sweet place of birthing a relationship that yearned to grow but somehow became mechanical and tiresome. Fresh, is more than a Subway logo, it should be the smell of our relationship with Christ. The Church in Galatia was asked “you did start well, what did hinder you?” I guess we all need to sit down and ask ourselves the same question.
Love is What?????
- Love is WHAT!!!!
