Wow... strong winds...

Well our annual fireworks stand is up and going and Saturday we had a doozy of a storm. I had just checked the weather to see what to wear for the day, and saw a huge storm cell heading our way. So I called my wife who was manning the tent and told her to batten down the hatches. So like, ten minutes later her distraught voice was calling me telling me the tent was blowing down and to get up there ASAP!! So when I arrived, both sides of the tent were flapping in the breeze, only the center poles were standing. When I got inside I found my wife and my associate pastor's wife holding the poles. They looked like two sailors in the midst of a storm who had lashed themselves to the mast to keep from getting blown overboard. We had tent stakes pulled up out of the ground, ropes that snapped and water everywhere. As the sideways rain came down, we finally were able to stabilize the tent and get everything locked down again. But we lost about half of our inventory to water damage and were soaked to the bone.

It taught me a lesson though, if you take the proper precautions to prepare anything to stand the tests and the storms of time, it will stand. But, if you build it shoddily, without thought and take shortcuts, it will all fall during the storm. Our tent was not put up very well, the poles were cracked and the ropes were rotted which translated into a tent that almost fell down during the storm. So if you are building anything, wether it be a career, a ministry, or a home, make sure you take the proper precautions and build it to withstand the storms of life.

Pass the dressing...

I read an interesting thought today from an atheist (a person who does not believe in a Supreme GOD) today about dress in the church. What was acceptable and not acceptable and I thought it interesting to hear a "outsider's" view on the subject.

If you ask believers about dress in church you will get everything from; "you must dress to please GOD in your "Sunday Best"", to; "GOD will accept me just as I am in whatever I happen to be wearing". And I do not believe that either of these statements are false. I believe that we do have in certain churches standards of dress that are usually set by the congregation and are relative to the social settings of that particular congregation.

Now to what my atheist friend said. He said that our dress for church many times falls into a catagory that we are trying to impress others than we are individually trying to impress GOD. In layman's terms, he said we were there to be seen, rather than there to see GOD. What an idea. So it got me thinking, what is our motivation in regards to our dress? Are we there to be seen or there to see GOD?

Da da da dum, dada da!! Da dada daaa da dada da da!!

Tonight, I will be Indiana Jones, my life will be filled with trapdoors, pungi sticks and traps that will inflict great harm upon me should I spring them. You see, I have made someone upset. Yep, she is mad at me. I left her hanging, did not help like she wanted and therefore I am about to enter into the world of Indiana Jones where there is peril around every corner.

Guys, communicate with your gals. Gals, let your guys know EXACTLY what you want as we are sometimes to much of the hunter gatherers that we get focused on one thing and can't read between the lines.

So as I head home I am checking the gear... Leather Fedora...check! Pistol....check! Bullwhip....check! Chocolates.....? I need to swing by the store and get my wife some chocolates so I don't have to go sleep in the snake pit tonight.

Cancel Church???

Are you kidding me? Sometimes that is the thought that runs through my head when I consider cancelling a church service. I have been conditioned that if the church doors are open, unless I am sick I am there. Sunday AM, PM and Wednesday nights are the times when GOD is open for business and how dare we choose to dismiss a service when he is waiting on our every word.

What?

I think sometimes we need to shake ourselves that the appointed meeting times for the church are just that appointed meeting times and not the "church" itself. Is that not what is happening with the church in America today, they say "Amen!" from the pew on Sunday and "Oh me!" at work on Monday. From Sunday saint, to Monday ain't, the church has gotten confused that we are with GOD whether we are in a sanctuary, sanitarium, or stadium, GOD has not moved. GOD is there with us every morning that we get up, until we go to bed at night. And I admit that Paul cautioned that we should not neglect the assembling together because togetherness builds up the body of Christ, but that does not mean that we have to set aside EVERY Sunday AM and PM and Wednesday nights as our GOD time. For if that is the case, we are a very shallow Christian indeed.

So there; I have cancelled a service, the one after fourth of July, the evening service, which is usually attended by the faithful few and the ones that are required to be there. So be cautious if you are standing near me for the next few days just in case GOD decides he needs to punish me for this blasphemy of historic proportions!!

Kung Foo Panda!! Yesterday we took a family outing and checked out Po and his latest movie. It wasn't great, but it was a good entertainment for an hour and a half. But I did learn something. Sometimes we put too much value in things that really do not mean anything. Not to ruin the story, but Po's father is a noodle soup maker who has a secret ingredient. And in the end Po finds out that his father's secret ingredient is "nothing". Too many times we are looking for the secret ingredient when in reality there is nothing more needed to make something special. We all feel if we loose weight, get more hair, have whiter teeth, drive a fancier car, live in a bigger house, have more money that we will be happy. Well in reality those are just things and are really not that important in the grand scheme of things. What is important is you, just as you are.

Well, I watched a documentery about some fliers who were POWs during WWII. One statement they made has really stuck with me was this. The hardest thing to do for an extended period of time is.... nothing. Huh? how many of us love to do nothing? I do!! I love to set around and do nothing and play guitar. Or set around and do nothing and watch TV. Or set around and do nothing and read a book. Oh, but that is really not doing nothing. Doing nothing, is doing nothing!! Have you ever tried to do nothing? You get really bored after a while and then need to find something to do.
So next time you have nothing to do, try doing it. Nothing I mean and see how long you make it.

Decisions, Decisions...

Man, as a comfort creature I despise change and when decisions have to be made to change things it is one of the hardest things I have to do. I am grappling with a change right now that will affect a large part of my life. I am barraged with the thoughts of success and failure. Is this a GOD thing or a me thing? Am I supposed to pursue or wait? Do I need to put another fleece out and this time ask that the ground be dry and only the fleece be wet? I feel like Gideon today, knowing GOD is steering me but really, really, really wanting him to boom from heaven the direction I am to go.
I know that GOD puts up with us untrusting souls like me and Gideon who need multiple "signs" so we can move on, but sometimes he wants us to just follow because he is leading.

Sometimes it is good to...

blow off some steam. Too many times we try to hold everything in. Pastors especially, we need to be seen as the rock, the pillar, the immovable object that when the storms of life blow we are not moved or swayed. But can I tell you, we are all human, with the same frailities of humanity and sometimes we get discouraged, and sometimes we get angry, and sometimes we withdraw, and sometimes we blow up. Yesterday I had a time of letting go, you know just giving in and venting. Luckily I have a group of individuals that are very good at looking past my faults and allowing me to just be normal. It felt good as I typed and typed and typed some more about the situations that have surrounded me. I felt a release of emotional pain as I recounted situations in my life that have cut me to the quik. Hopefully my rant will shed some light into some situations that I have kept hidden for too long, and hopefully I will be able to let them go and heal from the wounds inflicted upon me.

Weather...

Boy talk about extremes. We have nice hot days, and then wet rainy days where it looks like someone needs to start building an Ark!! With all the flooding in the midwest it is going to be an interesting summer. Which got me to thinking the other day. I was crossing a river and noticed these tree trunks and stuff floating down the river. All was good till I saw that farther down the river is a train tressle bridge with a good amount of debris pushed up against it. And of course I had a spiritual moment of interpretation. When we have debris flowing through our life, through the purification time there is a bunch. It is all good as it cleans and takes all the junk downstream and out of our spiritual house. But if we have some blockages in our spiritual house, all that junk can clog the move of GOD in our life and create a dam that blocks off the flow.
I know in my life sometimes my job can get in the way of the flow of GOD in my life. I start worrying about next week and next month and pretty soon I have a blockage and the river is not flowing like it should.
So get out there and tear down those blockages before the river of GOD tears them down for you.

Change, Change, Changes...

That was the name of a song way back in the day, "Changes". Change is a funny thing. It is happening all around us, just go look at your yard after a storm or your kids pictures. It is an integral part of nature; we have day and then it changes to night. We have summer and then it changes to fall, and then it changes to winter, and then it changes to spring, and then it changes back to summer all over again. Our bodies change, sometimes for the better, most times for the worse. Our outlook on life changes, we start as a teenagers thinking we know everything. Then we get older and realize that we don't know anything. As a young person our desires are to acquire things, and as we get older our outlook on life changes and we decide it is not more important to acquire things as it is to give things away. Change is all around us, inside of us and part of our makeup. So why is it so difficult for us to change?

1) Fear... We fear what we don't know. Think about it, you aren't really scared of the dark, you are scared of what MIGHT BE in the dark. The unknown is a scarey thing. It requires faith, it requires trust, and those are two things that we are very stingy with. Things that we know won't hurt us and are safe, while new things could be dangerous. But how will we ever know if we won't try? Remember when Henry Ford came out with the car? Everyone loved it, right? No, there were people who said that the car went too fast (30MPH!!) and that people would die if they started driving them. Horses were so much safer... yeah right!!

2) Comfortableness... if that is a word (it is now!!) We are creatures of comfort. We don't rock the boat unless the boat is filling up with water faster than we can bail it out. We like to be comfortable in our surroundings and with ourselves. Throw us into new surroundings that we haven't experienced and we are not sure we like it. Throw us into a new group of people that we have never been around and we are not comfortable. Think about when you went somewhere and people were speaking a language you did not understand. Did you feel comfortable? How about when they said something and they all laughed? Did you feel comfortable then? Absolutely not!! You just knew they were talking about you, and laughing at you... see we like to be comfortable. Change changes our surroundings, our friends, and our outlook on life.

3) Failure... we are all afraid to fail. I have heard that the greatest inventors of our time were failures many more times than they were ever successful. Think about this, Thomas Edison failed almost 2,000 times trying to make a light bulb work. But that one time it did work, Viola, there was light! You see, we are scared to fail just one time trying something new. The "way we have always did it" is a powerful suggestion to keep failure at bay. If our kids crashed their bike the first time they tried to ride and gave up, Scwinn, Mongoose, Huffy and all those other bike manufacturers would be out of a job. But we fell down, got up and tried again because we knew that we needed to ride to get somewhere. Many times we try a different approach because of failure and finally succeed in finding the right approach that is hugely successful. It is because of failure that we can grow, learn and succeed in life.

So next time you encounter change, embrace it, encourage it, and enjoy it, for you will most likely learn something and grow better for it because of it.

Anniversary Thoughts....

Well Wednesday was my 20th wedding aniversary. I noticed that my wife blogged about it. 20 years is a long time and we have great plans for this milestone. Together on a cruise or on a tropical beach, spending time together with the kids at grandma's or something. But it was not to be. Finances, work, schedules all get in the way of doing something like this. And that can take some of the lustre off of an event like this. But I think back of when we first got together, decided we wanted to get married, have kids, go into the ministry , revitalize a church, do a builing project, buy a house, and on and on it goes. What a journey it has been and I relish the thought of where the journey will take us.
So relish the journey as it is far more exciting than the destination.

I really like riding a motorcycle. The other day I was lucky enought to get to ride to work and to the hospital for visitation. I love the fact that when I am on my bike, I have time to think, ponder and wonder about life. You see, you have to ride with everything in sight and ready to react at a moment's notice or you will find yourself in trouble. You don't enter a corner without taking a look to see if there is loose gravel, you always are keeping an eye out behind you in case someone wants to run you over. You are watching for animals coming out of the bar ditches or turtles crossing the road. You pay attention to the wind; when and where the gust are liable to be that will try to blow you around. You watch the clouds and avoid those that are filled with rain. All your senses are engaged and your mind is processing every threat and every thing that comes within the area you are traveling.

I wish we would do this in our personal life all the time. I know that when I get in the "cage" (car to all of you non riders) my senses are turned off to an extent. I don't look for those things that could cause an accident as much as I do when I am on the bike. If a deer runs out in front of me; in the cage I have a better chance of wrecking the deer than the deer wrecking me. The "cage" is indeed safer, but also cuts you off from the surrounding world.

Sometimes church does that to us. It is safe being around people who think like you, act like you and talk like you. But it does not thrill the senses like it does when you are all out in the open and you notice every single detail of the people around you. How the talk, how they act, what they do and how they respond to situations in their life. So I would enourage you, saddle up your spiritual steed and start riding some new roads. You never know what you might encounter along the way.

Travel...

Well I have been on the road as Willy Nelson sings it and I've been everywhere like Johnny Cash. From New York to Ohio and all places in between I have been busy. I can tell you that traveling by plane is a pain today. Long lines when you send your baggage to the great warehouse in the sky, ling lines when you have to take off any metal object (belts included and for those of us that NEED a belt that is a compromising situation), keys, coins and even removing your shoes to go through the metal detector only to brush the sides and have to get frisked by the little old grey headed lady in a uniform. Then to have to show your ID to everyone and anyone who asks for it, flying has become an uncomfortable thing. But I think it is worth it to make sure that there is not someone smuggling something on board that could hurt someone. Making sure that people bent on evil will not get access to that plane.
I guess if taking off my shoes, belt and putting all my metal objects in a tray, having my ID out and ready means that I can fly without fear, it is worth it. And it is good to be home.