There was an article written on MSN about unknown indiginous tribes in the Amazon. There was also a picture taken from a plane or helicopter that showed some indiginous Amazon tribes aiming bows and arrows at said plane or copter. It really makes you understand just how big a world we live in. Can you imagine that in your backyard there is a group of people who have never seen a bic lighter, a ballpoint pen, or a screwdriver let alone a screw? Can you imagine a people who have never ate at McDonalds, hunt each day as they don't have a refridgerator?

At first glance we might think, man I am so lucky to live in the US, to have access to a computer, eat fast food and live in peace. Well I seriously had to rethink that when I saw that picture. To be cut off from the society that we live in and thrown back into a more "simple" culture, where cars, houses and bank accounts are not more important than family and friends. Where each person of the tribe has a specific duty to the tribe and they fulfill their duties with great devotion and attention. Where each member of the tribe is reliant on every other member for the wellness of the group. Where corruption of mind and soul is so afar off it is laughable. Sometimes I think that is what GOD is looking for in a people. Those who don't care for the things of this world but are more concerned with him, and his people.

Stand for something...

or you will fall for anything. That was an old country western song that I still remember from my youth. I have always said that there are only two types of music I don't particularly like, country and western but that song has always held a space in the grey matter between my ears. It's title rings true today, we need to stand for something, anything. Too many people I come into contact with are afraid to stand for something. What kind of life are we living if we are not willing to stand up for something we believe in. There is a dose of fear that goes with taking a stand, but if we allow that fear to keep us from standing up, then we really probably don't believe in what we say we believe anyway.
It takes courage to "take a stand". Courage is not the absense of fear, but overcoming our fear to accomplish what needs to be done. It takes moxie to "take a stand". Moxie is not arrogance, but the belief that what you are doing is needed and worth doing. It takes peristance to "take a stand". Things won't change overnight and persistance is the staying power to see it through until change occurs.
What the world needs now is not more people watching from the sidelines but people of courage, moxie and persistance to take a stand against the things of this world that need changed. We have enough spectators, will you be a participator?

Wow....

Have you noticed the natural disasters on the rise? Earthquakes, tornadoes, Tsunamis...
Have you noticed the countries wanting and itching to go to war? Someone said today that the war in Iraq is the longest on going war in history...
Have you noticed the disease and famine that is ravaging parts of the world?

I am not a doomsday person, I am not a rain down hell fire and brimstone prophet, but I do know that in the last days the Word says that the earth will go through labor pains as a woman about to give birth before the son of GOD parts the Eastern sky.

$5 Gas???

Huh? $5 for a gallon of gas? Can this possibly be true, well guess what Americans, it is and it may get worse. Now I don't want to be all gloom and doom on you but we brought this on ourselves. You see, we love excess!! Hey, if two is good, then three must be better and four is GREAT!!
Take a look at our roadways today and what do you see? Most of the time large vehicles, SUV's, Hummers, large bulky vehicles that we can carry a lot of people or a lot of stuff in... for you see we like our stuff and our stuff is making gas prices rise.
So a few months ago when gas prices really started to rise, I started to look into options that would increase my gas mileage. Hypermilers http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18923454/ was something that I really loved. These guys take ordinary cars and work on them and do things to them to increase their milage to excessive amounts. They block off any holes in the body that would increase drag so they will slip through the air better. They take off anything that will increase drag, mirrors, spoliers, and even attennas so they will not have to push any extra air. They inflate their tires to the maximum to increase roll, they do special things to their bearings to increase roll. But most off all they change their driving habits, no jack rabbit starts, keeping the RPM's down, drafting behind other cars, getting rid of the junk in the trunk (take that anyway you want) that adds to the weight of our vehicle, and no hard braking, in the world of hypermilers, coasting is your friend!!
So I was thinking of this the other day (and yes I have gained about 2 miles per gallon!!) and started to think how we can apply this to our Christian life. You see to improve (and that is what CHRIST calls us to do) we need to work on certain things. Taking off the things that drag (get it?) us down and make our lives easier to cut through (get it?) the trials of this life. We need to make sure that we are operating as efficiently as possible, maintainence is important and we need to make sure that we are spiritual tires are filled up (get it?) and that we have lubricated our spirit regularly (get it?). And we need to make some changes in our habits as well, not get too excited that we blow off the line (get it?), don't use excessive braking when GOD is moving us along and keeping our RPM's in check (get it?). Get rid of that excess stuff that you carry around for no good reason, offenses, greivances and such that may not even apply today is like carrying around a jack that doesn't work, it is useless and cost you.
I really believe that we can learn a whole lot from those things around us, if we will just look for the application. Gotta go weld up my hood opening and cut off my rearview mirrors, as I just can't abide $5 gas...

Knee pain...

Wow, well I went to the doctor today and I might have damaged some cartiledge in my knee. It has been swelling up, which the doctor said was a good thing as it protects and lubricates the cartiledge which keeps bone from rubbing on bone. So he gave me a cortizone shot in my knee. That was a lot of fun!! 3" needle injected right into my knee joint...
The doc presecribed an MRI to really see what is going on and possibly surgury to correct it.
Now I am thinking this is like shadetree mechanics, keep putting parts on till it corrects the problem instead of really diagnosing the problem and taking care of it. If the MRI comes back good, then it is rest and relaxation till it heals up. But if the MRI comes back bad, it is to surgury. So why don't we just do the rest and relax for a week or two and see if it gets better and skip the MRI till we know that or not.
I mean, I have insurance but it is going to cost me $2500.00 for an MRI out of my pocket. And I was wanting to take the kids to see Narnia Prince Caspian this weekend. Well I made a decision, Narnia it is. I am taking responsibility for my own good, and putting off a $2500 bill as long as I can. I mean the knee can't get worse....
So sometimes, step back, evaluate the situation and make a good decision...

Ghost in the Machine...

Well last night was the first in a series that I stole the title from Mark Banderson on called "The Ghost in the Machine". Centered on the Holy Spirit I believe that it is going to be real good.
We went over the introduction of Pentecost, Biblical references for it from the Old Testament, to the New Testament, to the Epistles.
But what really got me was that we had almost everyone in the room raise their hand and proclaim that they had been filled. But then GOD dropped a new thought into my head.
How many have ever filled their car with gas? I mean filled it all the way to the top?
When I was much younger, I remember a friend and me wanting to go to Joplin on the day before payday, so we scraped together $2.59 to buy gas. It filled my car up to a quater tank (yes gas was cheap!!) and we went and ran around all night. Well that car very rarely ever got a tank full of gas. $5 here, $3 there but not very often did it get full. We were at the service station every couple of days, but there was not much of that Petrol that got into the tank. I remeber one time buying a Big Gulp, a huge bag of M&Ms, a bag of Funyuns, and some gas. I paid with a $10 bill if that tells you how much gas I put in. My car may not have been full but I was!!
So anyway, I ask how many had been refilled that day, not one hand went up. A couple had been filled the day before, I am sure they had a finals test or something and needed all the help they could get. But the point got across, we need to be filled to the top continually, not just get a couple of bucks worth to get us through the week, but filled to capacity with the Holy Spirit.
So next time you are at the serving station, get the full service and fill'r up!!

Blockage?

I mentioned my trials at work lately, we have been having internet problems for a while now. Well I think I have a handle on it, we have too much information coming in and our bandwidth is not big enough to handle the traffic. Imagine a big city at rush hour, that is what is happening, everything is crawling to a slow stop.
I started thinking about this in relation to our spiritual being. Sometimes we can have so much of the world coming into our lives that we end up slowing down or blocking the spirit from coming and giving us direction and insight. Kind of like a ambulance on a busy freeway, bumper to bumper traffic, it doesn't matter if you have lights and siren blarring you aren't getting through. So do a constant check on your spiritual traffic lines, make sure they are clear of the world's influence so when that emergency call comes down from heaven it doesn't get stuck in traffic and can't get through.

Purpose Driven???

I just finished Rick Warren's purpose driven church. Inside I found plenty of insights to the growth of their church in the LA area as well as plenty of how tos and don't dos. But the whole while I was reading this something kept nawing at me. Is church all about growth or is about something more. We look at churches and automatically classify them as a success or failure by their attendence numbers. Come on, we all do it. "So how is the church?" "Whatcha running?" and on and on. When you hear of a church having two or three services your first thought is, "wow, they got it going on..." and success is assumed. Well I got to thinking about that, we could go to four services this week, have a Saturday night service, and then do a 8:30AM, a 10:00AM, and an 11:30 AM for those late sleepers, and we will be successful, right? Well I can see we would have a few younger adults there for the Saturday night service as they hang out anyway on Saturday night and they would not have to get up Sunday. And the early AM service, well the lake people would love that, get out early enough to be on the water by noon. And the other two services would be filled with the not so early risers and the ones who want the traditional meeting time when GOD goes to church. So we go to our next big Pastors conference and when they say, how is the church, we can say, "Man it is crazy, we have gone to four services!!" and the people will look at us and go, "you got it going on..." when really we haven't done squat...

So what is success? Was JESUS successful? In the light of today, he had 12 members, no permanent meeting place, and the other church down the road hated his guts. Of his 12 members, lets see, he had a hothead, a couple of dirty ole fisherman who were unemployed, a tax collector who has no friends and had recently quit his job, and some other ragamuffins. Of the twelve that he had, one ran away and hid after denying him three times, the other 10 hid away in town afraid for their lives and one sold him out for 30 pieces of silver and went and commited suicide. Yep, that was successful!!

So I think when qualifying success in church, you have to look at two things. First, are the people growing their relationship with GOD. And second, is the leader replicating himself. Well in JESUS' church the first is answered with a yes. They were all growing in faith and wisdom in the things of GOD. And to answer the second question, JESUS groomed 11 men to continue on the ministry he started. And the one that fell away, well even after death JESUS commisioned another to take that one's place to fulfill the 12. So when looking at success and failure in the church, we need to take a different look at how we define success and failure.

Got the RIGHT plug in?

I have been fighting at work with computer network issues. I am by default the computuer guru here, not because I have extensive training, but because my brother is an IT guy. You know, they assume since my brother knows about computers, that somehow it is embedded in my DNA that I will know that stuff too! I know just enough to be dangerous, but because I know that "just enough" I am the man here. So when things associated with computers start to go bad, I am the one they call.
Well our network while not as sophisticated as some is pretty expansive, from computer to computer communications, to internet to e-mail we are pretty dependent on our network to keep us all connected.
I started thinking about that is how it is with the church. Sometimes it is hard to keep everyone connected!! Sometimes the plug gets pulled inadvertantly, sometimes on purpose. Sometimes the wires get messed up, and sometimes the hardware is not set correctly. It takes a lot of running, trying and messing with parts to get it all working right. The church is the same way, it sometimes runs all right by itself, and at other times needs someone to run around and try to keep it running efficiently.
So if you are having problems, first, make sure you are connected. If you have cut yourself (or unplugged as the case might be) with others, then you are the one that needs to fix that issue.
If you are having problems communicating, then take some time to diagnose the problem and then go about getting it fixed. And if you are having hardware problems, then it might be time to upgrade your relationship or your position in Christ so you can get on the same web page as him... happy surfing...

Oooops...

Ever have one of those days where nothing goes right? When everywhere you turn and everything you touch just falls apart? Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. But the blessing is that tomorrow is a new day. The problems of yesterday sometimes affect our tomorrow, but in many situations we are the ones that drag our yesterday's problems into today.
So when you are starting your day, make a decision to cut those ties of yesterday that will drag down today, for today is a new day!!

Mistakes...

As many of you might know, I like to build guitars. Not fancy acoustic models, but solid body electric guitars. You see I am too cheap to buy new ones, so I started buying used ones and refinishing them. But then it got to expensive to buy used ones so I started buying parts and putting my own together. I did a bass for my daughter, and made a telecaster for myself and my other daughter, and I am in the middle of Stratocaster for myself.
What I am finding in finishing these guitars is that any mistake you make is amplified in the finish. Bump it with your watch and put a small scratch on the wood, yep it will show through on the finish. Sand it uneven and it will show up when you put your shiney finish on it. It is painstaking work, sand on and sand off, paint and primer and sand some more. And then when you go to put everything together you have to be real careful with the screwdriver, and the soldering iron or you can mess things up pretty good. What is frustrating is even if you get that guitar perfect, in the course of playing it, you sometimes ding it and all your effort for a perfect instrument are thrown out the window. I even had one that broke a string and the string whipped the face of the guitar and made a mark. So why put all the effort into making it perfect from the start. Well I think it comes to the "creation" gene in us.
That is the same gene that GOD has. He created us perfect but sin came in and damaged his perfect creation. So GOD provided a way to cover our imperfections with his son JESUS. Now when I look at a guitar that has been played a lot, and has all sorts of nicks and dings on it, I see character instead of blemishes. I think GOD looks at us the same way, he sees our character over our blemishes. So next time you are being dented and dinged in the course of life, remember that GOD still covers our flaws, but the world is able to see all of our character.

The mind is willing...

but the body is not. Well that is not true, actually the body tries, but with limited success. Let me set the stage for you... I was an athlete... baseball, basketball, football, any and all sports I loved to play. While in Jr. High and High School I was good at academics but I loved sports. I would drag myself out of bed on test days, but on game days I was ready to go. All day long my mind would drift to game time, readying myself for the competition. After school was over I went onto college and played pickup basketball games at college and around town. Then it was onto softball, in church leauges and industrial leauges. I have stayed active throughout my life until I started Pastoring. Then time got tight and the sports had to be cut out as church time adn family time were more important to me. So it has been at least 5 years since I have been in a competitive enviroment. Of course I have played on some summer softball teams during tournaments, told myself I was not going to slide but when faced with scoring the go ahead run found myself belly flopping into home plate but the tremors were felt a county away. Was part of a church leauge softball team a few years ago, pitched our team and got plantar fasciatis (bottom of the foot tendon problems) that took six months to go away. But I was still an athlete!! I played basketball and softball with my kids and was still athletic but last Sunday something happened.
We went bowling as a family. I of course was going to kill everyone at the alley as first I could have been a good bowler if I applied myself. I am an athlete remember? I can roll a 150 in my sleep and have gone as high as 190 without practice... so it is me, my wife, and my four kids. The game started off well, spare off the bat, and I am cruising through the first five frames with two spares and a strike, probably on my way to at least a 150 and I am just warming up. Then it happened. Going to throw my ball down the lane I looked like a pro, four steps forward, ball goes back, bend over left leg sweeps behind the right as I throw my perfect hook for a strike when, SNAP, I feel something in my right leg pop. The ball ended up in the gutter and I limped back to the ball return. My wife laughed at me and I told them I think I hurt myself. Well I am an athlete so I can play through pain. I retrieve my ball, take my stance and proceed down and I can't bend my knee to follow through without it feeling like someone was sawing on it. Five pins as I did not get down low enough. I gutted out the remaining frames and decided I was done for the day. The knee felt like it could lock up and I was having pain on the inside of the knee. I have never really injured my knee before so I am thinking what is wrong. We get back home and it is so stiff that I put some ice on it. Sitting at work on Monday, it is getting so stiff that it takes effort to bend it back straight. And last night it looks like it is swollen. So what happened?
Age happened... I am not 20 any more, or 25, 30, or 35 for that matter. I am 40 and things I used to be able to do I find myself not being able to do it anymore... When did I get old? What happenend to me? How did this happen?
Well my friend, it happens to all of us. It is part of our design that we begin to break down until eventually these earthen vessels cease to work. I am now faced with my own mortality and it is a sobering throught. So as I lumber into the sunset, limping as I go, remember to enjoy the things in life to their fullest, you never know when you might blow out a knee...

Wow what a busy day... not only did we have people in our church have a new baby, (it's a girl) we had others in the hospital getting test run at the ER. When it rains it pours sometimes, you know.
But through it all I know that GOD is in control. Sometimes we may wonder if he has fallen asleep at the wheel. With things like the cyclone in Mrynamar, the earthquake in China, tornadoes in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. But even through it all, GOD is still in control. Many people ask me if GOD is a god of love, then why does he allow all these things to take place? Well I love my kids, I love them so much that I would probably give my life for them, but yet bad things happen to them. My oldest still reminds me of the time I put alcohol (thats what they said to use in boy scouts) on a bike wreck cut she received. My second youngest broke her ankle one day in a softball game and I had to drive her to the hospital as she cried in the backseat. My third child once smashed his finger in a window, and my youngest, well he hasn't hurt himself really bad yet (for we know it is coming). So my point is, do I not love my kids because I allow them to get hurt? No! I love them through their hurt, and we can say the same about GOD. GOD had an utopia, the garden of Eden, and sin came in and ruined that, but GOD also made a way for us to escape the trials of this life, through the sacrifice of his son. So GOD has made provision for us, even in the midst of the storm...

What's really important...

Sometimes we need to set down and think what is really important in our lives. With this weekend's wild weather, power outages, and new arrivals the first of the week it really makes you think about what is important.
Lets start with Saturday, it was a lazy day around our house. Sleep in, since we did not have anything pressing like the previous twelve Saturdays. Got to play with the kids, babysat a one year old for some friends, made brunch for the boys (thats what you call it at 11:00AM), stripped and refinished a guitar body while the owner was out of town, got to go to a guitar shop while they were making $5,000 guitars and pretty much had a lazy day till 5:35 PM while I was setting down watching a little TV when the power went out. Dinner plans had to change as I heard the fire department wail off to the north. As information came in we came to realize that 6 miles north a tornado had tore down some power lines and had impacted a house or two. At that point, the important things start to weigh on you. Not stuff like, I can't watch the end of the game, or I can't turn on lights, or make dinner. No the important parts like, is everyone OK? You see I have people that live up that way, so in trying to run them down and find out if they are OK (and they were!!) you then begin to find out that the storm it is impacting a whole lot more than you initially realized. We knew others who lived in the path of the storm, some who had family that had not been heard from, and others that we were not sure about. And at that point in time you begin to see what is really important...
... as I got to work today, the cars in the parking lot look like someone had taken a hammer and were swatting flies all over them, the ground is pock marked like some monsters where playing golf in the front yard, and the storm wreckage was strewn all over the place in the aftermath of the storm along the road to work.
But...
Even though our power was off for 24 hours, church services were cancelled, and our weekend was not what it was planned to be, the important things in life were brought to the forefront.

And this morning on May the 12th, just after 7:00, at the same place where the injured were treated this weekend following the raging storm, new life was brought into this world. I watched in awe as a new little person was taking her first breathes, opening her eyes and squeezing hands for the first time and realized this, life is precious and is the most important thing.
Buildings can be rebuilt, cars can have dents removed, but the lives of people is something that can not easily be fixed or replaced. So today think about the things that are really important...

Makin' Music...

Have you ever thought what goes into making music? It is a bunch of different instruments all playing at different times playing different things with different notes and yet most times it comes out sounding great. Now I would like to challange you on this to think about these three settings. First, take any large city orchestra, strings, percussion, brass, woodwinds, and all the ther things I don't want to type, put some music in front of them and let the conductor direct and they sound great. Second, take all those people out but leave the instruments, what does it sound like? Well it sounds like nothing because it is the people making the sounds. Thirdly, take a whole new group of people off the street and go plop them into the same seats the original people were setting in, place the instruments in their hands, and get the same conductor and have him start directing them. Will it sound the same? I think not Sherlock!! It probably sounds more like the slaughter house at the local butcher shop than a ochestra concert. So what happened?
The chairs are the same, the instruments are the same, the conductor is the same, the location is the same, so then how did one setting produce beautiful music, the other setting no music and the third setting a horrific amount of noise. It is the people... the people are what makes the difference. If you have well trained people, a conductor can get up and direct and the results are beautiful. But if you have no people, you can do all the conducting that you want, but you are not going to make any sound. And if you have untrained people, well, yeah...
So if you want to make beautiful music, train your people in the skills that they need, if you want to make no music then run everyone off so you don't have to deal with them but you are going to be the idiot up there conductiung a bunch of chairs, and if you want to make bad music, then just throw an instrument on someone and tell them to play, but don't gripe when they play the wrong notes, the wrong tune and don't take your direction, they don't know any better.

Power failure...

Over the last few days we have had a lot or storms roll through our neck of the woods. One thing about living where we live, strong storms means that we are probably going to loose our electricity for a few hours. I notice that when I am sleeping and we don't have electricity it really doesn't bother me. But when I am up trying to get stuff done, having no light, no power tools, no computer or TV really does make it difficult to work.
It is kind of that way with GOD, when we are sleepwalking through this life, we really don't need his power, his direction or his annointing and we probably don't really miss it much. But when we come to a roadblock in life, and we need the power of GOD to get through it and it is not there, then we realize the shape we are in.
So my question today is, have you checked in with your power supply today?

It is all in your persepctive...

I got to thinking about a situtation I saw yesterday and something very similiar happened to me almost the same as this poor guy. I saw this guy on a motorcycle almost get wiped out by this old man driving a beat up old truck. He made a right turn on red right in front of the guy on the motorcycle making the motorcyclist stop and wait for him to pull out in front of him. What was strange was there was a policeman right behind the old man. I was ready for the lights to go on, and someone to at least get a warning about trying to run someone over. Well, guess what no lights, no warning the old man just drove off like nothing happened.
Well I had a similiar experience, but mine was an old lady, and she was at a stop sign and I had the clear right away but as I approached the intersection I saw her look at me and then to the right, and then back at me and then to the right and then I saw her start to ease out into my path of travel. Luckily I was only doing 25 MPH and my motorcycle has good breaks!! So I get it stopped and as she was inching out into the intersection into my lane of travel I honk my horn at her. Now I am sitting still about 5 feet from her window when I honked. She swiveled her head around and look somewhat surprised when she saw me. At that point I thought, "OK she has seen me know and has seen the error of her ways". Nope! She rolls down her window, (yes still sitting in my lane and half into the other lane) and snaps at me, "you need to slow down!!!". I was sitting there mouth agape, thinking "what?" as she rolls up her window and proceeds to almost hit the truck coming the other way. He stops and honks at her and she then proceeds to tell him he is number one with her middle finger. This lady (I use the term loosely) was like cutting people off and driving like a maniac. But then I began to think from her end. She was almost hit by a big biker guy wearing leathers who honked and looked menacingly at her. And then some Redneck in a pick up truck tried to rear end her while she was on her way to get her hair done. "What a day", I am sure she told her hairdresser, as she recounted her harrowing journey to get her weekly perm.
That just goes to show you that sometimes life is all a matter of perspective. It comes down to how you react to situations in life and how you see things. So next time you get almost runned over, think what the other person is thinking before you kick their mirror off their car.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

In the movie "Clockstoppers" a young man whose father is a mathmatical genius ends up with a watch that can allow him to speed up so fast that it seems time is standing still. Well the premise is that time is standing still, but in reality he has sped up so fast that it seems as if time has stopped. Sometimes I feel that I am in the exact opposite space time continuem. It seems that when I look up, that hours instead of minutes has flown by except those times when I am wanting the clock to speed up, like between the hours of 4 and 5 PM on Monday through Friday, like when you have to go to the dentist or get a physical when you reach that magical age of 40 and the doctor tells you, "you might feel a little discomfort" as he snaps the rubber glove on.... In those times, time does not defininately fly...
Sometimes we get so busy in life that we don't have time for the important things in life. Like spending time with friends and family, doing our outlet hobbies, going fishing or hunting or spending time with the creator of the universe. Can you imagine GOD'S disappointment when he is waiting for his time with us and we decide we have something more important to do?
So take some time and spend it with the only one who can control time and space, you never know, you might find that your time is managed better all day long...

Pastor Pat

Weekend Warriors...

Wow, this weekend went fast, I guess that happens when you have school all day on Saturday (well just 5 hours but it is a 1.5 hour drive to get there) and then Church on Sunday. It seems like it flew by. I wonder if that is how eternity will be? We will look up and 100o years has past. We got to talking a little about eternity in our class when one of our classmates started talking about the finer things in life. Nice houses, nice cars, nice vacations, well all of those things are for just a moment in time. Solomon said our lives are as a vapor, wow, now that is fast! Think about those cold winter days when you are outside and let out a deep breath. Remember how you could see your breath for a moment and then it was gone? But in comparison to eternity that is how our lives really are. So the question I pose this Monday morning, is with life so short, why are you sitting there reading about my weekend and not out living yours? He he he he... go do something today!!

Pastor Pat

In the master's hands...

Have you ever tried to replicate something. Hopefully I have uploaded an image of a guitar. It is a guitar that I built with some parts and hand crafting some other pieces. It was my attempt at duplicating a 50 year old guitar. So many intricate details to duplicate and yet even though I had the original at hand to compare to, it just did not come out exactly the same. To the naked untrained eye, it might look the same but to someone who is trained and schooled in guitars, it is different as night and day.

Have you ever tried to duplicate something that someone else does. Wether it be in work, play or even preaching? Sometimes we are best off doing a new thing, something that has never been done than trying to duplicate something else.

So next time you are tempted to do something that has already been done, try something new. You might be surprised at the outcome.

When it rains...

it pours sometimes. Wow, I have had some challanges lately. First off my leadership was questioned by someone who I always thought would always be there right behind me. Imagine my surprise when I find that they were not as solid as I thought they were. Secondly, my mom is diagnosed with cancer, treatable but cancer none the less. And then thirdly, my company is struggling and I just found out that one of my longterm customers fired us. At least he had the decency to let me know that he was not happy with the company (at least he was OK with me personally) but that we needed to shore things up to continue to do business with them.

It is very much like a storm, wind, rain, hail, all beat against the structure and sometimes inflict damage. But most times it just messes things up enough to get our attention. I think GOD does that sometimes with us. He allows situtations in our lives that "get our attention" and get our focus back on him.

I had to refocuse my leadership, am I am man pleaser or a GOD pleaser?Am I going to follow GOD or my own rational thoughts? I am glad to say that that someone has since come to an understanding and is once again backing me up and for that I am thankful, but those doubts still remain. My mom, well she is being well taken care of by a doctor who is doing tons of test to make sure that they do the right thing, so much better than the other doctor who was lets cut things up and ask questions later. I know it is making me think of the more important things in life, as it is my mom as well. And the company, well, who is my source? Is it my job or is it GOD? If it is my job, then I should be in a world of hurt as that customer accounted for a large portion of my $$ last year and the year before. But if it is GOD, then I know that he will supply all my needs (not all my wants as some will preach it!) but all my needs. He knows what I need and he knows what is best for me and the way that he will have me go, so for now I am leaning on his arms and trusting in his ways in all things...