"What If…" Blog

I’ve heard from several people this year that “It just doesn’t seem like Christmas this year!” Now, I must admit, I am at a special advantage because my son is 27 months old this Christmas and he is very much understanding enough about Christmas to be very excited about it this year. Which makes it very easy for me to get excited since we have been blessed after so many years of not having children. But I am forced to ask myself, “What makes it “seem like Christmas?” Is it having a child around to get excited about trees and presents? Is it having the house all decorated with lots of lights and tinsel, and the smell of baked goodies? Yes, these things all carry some very powerful memories and a strong sense of the celebration of Christmas.

But what is Christmas anyway? Some may argue with me, but there is no escaping what the popular, historical, traditional Christmas celebration is all about… the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ-the Son of God. God who came to man as a man.

I recently read this anonymous quote and thought it so powerful:

50 Ways to Love Your Neighbor

I borrowed this list from somebody I write for. I thought it was a great list. I made a few additions, changed a few, removed a few.

We are told in Mark 12 to “love your neighbor as yourself, this is the second greatest commandment.”

1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church’s sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor’s grass.
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid’s family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes–and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree for a neighbor.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor’s too (they’ll let you… really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving an additional 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow, and go out in your front yard after dinner and meet the neighbors.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can buy happiness, then go make a neighbor laugh.
26.  Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year, then live what you read.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Give a gift card to the check out clerk at the grocery store.
31. Babysit your neighbors kids so mom and dad can go out.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don´t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Give your extra computer to someone who needs it.
38.  Give bottled water away on a hot day on a street corner. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don´t have clean water.
39. Bring dinner to a neighbor who just had surgery, or a baby, or for no reason and just bless them.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year, and give the difference you would normally spend to feed children.
41. Go through everything once a year, if you haven’t used it in a year, give it away. Or sell it and send the money to help some one who needs it.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help your church congregation create a  Scholarship and give it away to a young person who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a  ministry at a prison close to you.

Bonus idea- do the unexpected. It has a greater impact than doing what people expect.

God’s love- A Perfect Father and Imperfect Kids.

It’s been hard to wrap my brain around that statement. What does it mean?

Let me explain my answer.

I am a 49 year old with a miracle baby of almost 2 years old. The Doctors told my wife and I that after about 10 years of trying various things we would not be having children.

Now the fact that it was even a possibility was a miracle in itself since my wife had been raped as a young woman and had her uterus damaged to the point that it was not possible for her to get pregnant. God gave her a Word she was restored, and when she was examined before we got married, the Doctor told her she was perfectly normal and healthy and in fact had her hymen restored. So it was a bit confusing when years later the Doctors said we couldn’t have children. The question we asked God was, “Why did you restore her if we are not going to have kids?” To be honest, we never really got an answer other than God said, “Do you trust me?” So we resolved ourselves to the fact that God did not want us to raise a family. We were able to spend the next 10 years traveling a little to a few spots around the world doing missions work and being able to serve wherever we were needed in the church. 20 years went by and then God saw fit to bless us with an amazing little boy. It was an absolute blessing and miracle of God. I wish I could take the time to share everything that God did in this process to answer the question we asked Him years before about why we were not successful then in getting pregnant. But I will just say for now that God is God and His ways are not our ways. He truly has a plan beyond our comprehension.

But I can say that right now as a 49-year-old first time father, I am beginning to understand a bit about God’s Love-A perfect Father and Imperfect Kids.

I know that at the place my wife and I are right now it has been such an eye opener to be able to put together how much God our Heavenly Father loves us, and how He can love us when I know how absolutely imperfect I am.

I am so thankful that God included Romans 7 in the Bible:

(vs 15)”I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.  So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

I read that and I know the Father understands. In fact He loves us beyond what we can comprehend even when we are the imperfect beings we are! Having a son now myself really helps me to wrap my brain around that. My son is great; I love him more than I ever imagined I could. But he plays with his poop. He doesn’t want to rest when its naptime. He doesn’t always want to eat what is placed before him. He doesn’t always come when I call. He doesn’t always do what I ask him to do. He doesn’t always say please and thank you. Sometimes he ignores me. He sometimes acts like he doesn’t really like me too much. He doesn’t appreciate how hard his mom and dad work for him and how much we do to take care of him… sound familiar yet? If not, look back over all those statements, and you will begin to realize that in one way or another, we act exactly the same way to our Father in Heaven. Yet he loves us.

Even when my boy does those things, it doesn’t overshadow the absolute joy it brings to me when I come in the door and he comes running and yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!” Those things don’t overshadow the times when my 2 year old boy lays on my chest at night and quietly lifts his head up, places his hand on my head, closes his eyes and whispers, “Jesus, heal daddy’s cold, make daddy better, Jesus heal daddy.” Those things don’t overshadow the times when my boy goes to the nursery in church and the little girl is crying and he sits behind the chair next to her and strokes her shoulder and offers his sippy cup and quietly says, ” no cry, have sippy cup.”

I am so blessed by the awesome things that show even at not yet 2 years old the love of God in him, that when he ignores me, or doesn’t do what I ask, or doesn’t want to eat dinner, I just take a breath and exercise patience and try to teach him how to do better next time. If I can feel that way, as imperfect as I am, then how much more so does the Heavenly Father, who is PERFECT, love me and forgive me and understand me.

Matt. 7:11  says this, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

We all struggle with things. The good news is that we struggle. The point when you need to really worry is when you don’t struggle. Then you don’t see the need to change anything, and if that’s where you are, guess what? You’re wrong. That’s just called denial. It’s called a “fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12) for a reason. We will be fighting something until we are with the Lord in Heaven. The joy and peace comes in the truth that in the midst of all this, we realize that God loves us deeply, purely, perfectly. Better than we can imagine.

I just watched a video clip posted on Facebook from an old schoolmate of mine titled “I Want To Be Where Jesus Is” It is a very powerful statement about serving Christ by serving others, ESPECIALLY those that don’t know Christ and really have many needs.

It made me think, sometimes I feel like we have the conception that Jesus lives at our church.  Like most of our close family, we go visit on weekends and spend time together and laugh and love each other and then the weekend is over and we go back to the rest of our lives until the next weekend. Well, I suppose in a sense that is true about Christ, hopefully He is in our gatherings,  but what we fail to fully appreciate is that if we want to be where Jesus is, He isn’t always at the church, just waiting for us to come visit on the next weekend. Or even waiting at our house for us to come home from work, or school, or wherever. He is out with the lost, trying to get them to understand His love for them. Trying to lift them out of the holes they are in. Loving them and trying to get them to see there is hope where there seems to be no hope. If we want to be where Jesus is, look where he was in the bible. He was with the lost sheep as much as possible. Yes He had His small group to refresh and encourage each other. But that was for the purpose of reaching out to a lost world to have them see that their messiah was there. I want to be where Jesus is, and that isn’t always on the mountaintop. He would be found where the work needed to be done, not at the rest stop all the time.

And this is not about guilt and performance. It is about being a witness, being a light. And to be a light you don’t have to know how to create bulbs, and batteries, and generating electricity. You just need to be turned on and let your light shine.I want to be doing that where Jesus is.

Controversy… What does that word make you think of? What picture enters your thoughts as you ponder that word? Perhaps a disputed situation and differing descriptions of the same event. Possibly a particular subject matter that you and someone you’re close to have differing opinions about. The dictionary says this,”a prolonged public dispute, debate, or contention; disputation concerning a matter of opinion.”

In our time it is certainly safe to say that being a Christian is “controversial.” For that matter being a Muslim would certainly involve “controversy” about who or what you are and stand for. What do you have to do to start a controversy? Perhaps just being passionate about something stirs up controversy with those who don’t feel the same. Does that mean we should avoid controversy at all cost. I think not.

Our belief system as Christians is named for a man who so thoroughly challenged the status quo that religious leaders called for His death. Jesus Christ was at the center of controversy during His ministry and very likely all through life. That’s why the biblical record so often shows Him slipping away for time alone with God–He was seeking direction and receiving strength. While Jesus was fully God, He was also fully human. He knew the sting of rejection and the taste of fear, just as we do (Heb. 4:15).

Did He avoid controversy? Definitely not. But an important and fundamentally necessary factor in His being controversial is that He is The Truth. He didn’t pursue controversy for controversy’s sake. He saw controversy happen because He spoke the truth, in love. Sometimes we as Christians use the badge of controversy as an excuse to be vengeful or simply out of anger and frustration. But we really need to be careful in being “controversial.”  Number one: be certain we are speaking truth, and two: saying it in love. If we are to be light to a dark world it should be to illuminate not blast like a high powered laser.

My motivation should be to enlighten not enrage. Obviously sometimes the truth in and of itself will enrage people, simply because darkness does not like to be exposed. But I want to stay out of the truths way by sharing it with the intent and purpose of showing someone that Jesus loves them and has answers for their questions and needs. If I share the truth with anytihng but the love that comes from the heart of Christ, I risk blinding my intended object of blessing with anger and resentment. My motivation should not be to “Make sure they understand”, “Expose their incorrect thinking”, etc. I do not have to have their concession to my truth to have completed my task. I pray for it, I hope it happens, I try to do my best. But the job of conviction and understanding in their soul is the job of the Holy Spirit. If I feel I have to get their surrender to have won the issue, I probably will get frustrated, agrumentative, and start walking in the flesh. So, I plant a seed. I hope to see the fruit immediately. But I would be content to see the results of the planting by seeing that person with me in eternity with the Lord and know that God used me to touch that persons life. That is victory. I want people to see the joy and peace that God has brought to me. Not to just hear what angers me and frustrates me. I will write  more about this in my next post. Blessings to you all. Be encouraged. Our God is so great, and He loves us.

Several days ago I posted a blog entry titled Busted! In it I discuss how we the church handle sin. How do you handle not offending someone you are trying to witness to when discussing sin. How do we as Christians handle sin in ourselves, our families, our church?

I came across this video as I am lying in bed here, waiting to check on my son. I ask you, whoever you are that may read this, to watch the video I post the link to below. It is about 45 minutes long.  It is a Southern Baptist Youth Conference. I don’t know the fellows name. But I would ask you to watch the video and share your thoughts. As I stated in my previous blog post, I believe we need to ask ourselves some questions. Questions that may not be “popular” today. But necessary I think.

I have more to say about this, but I want to wait until I see a few comments regarding the video. Please take a few moments to give me your feedback.

http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=19fd9c84c942a08316e0

Thank you, and lets fight the fight of faith. Not each other

I was prompted earlier this evening that unfortunately this was simply a math problem. It needed to be John & Kate Plus 8 and “The One”. It was an incomplete equation. I’ve never seen the show. As a new father myself the prospect of raising 8 kids is beyond my comprehension. I don’t see how anyone could do it without a LOT of help. I am saddened that this family is being torn apart by relationship problems. I once told a co-worker that was having problems with his teen girl, ” You know, I know its hard. And you can always have more children and hope things turn out easier. But your daughter will always only have one father. Do what you can to make it work.” God bless the children involved and protect their hearts. We can’t do this “family-relationship-loving people thing” the way it is intended without doing it with the Father. He made us, designed us, loves us, disciplines us. Sent His only Son to die for us so that we could go through life without having to do it alone. I have no idea what type of people John and Kate are. I certainly ain’t going to believe any picture painted by the media. But one thing I can say with certainty. If they have been trying to do this “family” thing without the daily input, advice, support and love of our Father, it is difficult and I dare say impossible to live life the way it can be lived and is meant to be lived. I need to spend more of my time serving Christ by trying to help families like this and others like them. And I don’t mean just telling them they are sinners and are going to hell unless they accept Christ.  But telling them they have a Father that loves them and has answers for ALL our questions and needs. That there is a way to make things better. That there is hope where it seems hopeless. SHOWING them all this by living my life in a way that they see the example in how my life is being lived and see hope for them. I can’t just do this with words. I need to do it with actions and my time. To get my life in theirs and let my actions speak. And I get my power to do this thru all that God is in my life, thru His living in me and transforming me.

I pray that God will send Christians to John and Kate and that they can turn this around.

Sometimes we can do really stupid things. Like not allow God to answer our prayers. How? We pray for something and then when He gives us an answer, we refuse to see it, or allow the answer to bear fruit. This is especially true if the prayer and answer involves praying for people. Say you pray for someones spouse to get saved and then when they communicate there has been a response to the Lord, we get real skeptical about the validity of there conversion.

For example, my wife and I have a close friend that is a relatively new Christian.  He had a relationship for several years with a person before he met the Lord . He has not had a relationship with this person for a long time recently accepted Jesus.  Since getting saved he has had several relationships looking for a mate. After several unsuccessful dating relationships, he began limited contact with the old friend. After a very short period, to everyone’s surprise this old flame “accepted Jesus.” Now I know that people had been praying for this person, my wife and I included. But when we heard the news that she had accepted the Lord, we began to voice things like, ” I sure hope it’s genuine,” Let’s pray it isn’t just so they can ‘get together,’” Doesn’t it seem rather convenient to ‘accept Jesus’ so they can date in good conscience.” Then I really felt God saying, “Ummm… excuse Me. I thought you had been praying for this to happen. Did you not think I would answer your prayer and work on this person?” It just hit me… will I let God answer, or will I not hear when He does because my flesh gets hung up with doubt. Now to be honest, it may be true that this person is putting on an act. They may not have made a genuine decision to follow Christ.  But is it up to me to validate their decision? Or rather is it up to me to “Believe the best and hope the best.” To love that person and let their actions and life speak for itself. If I want to guarantee that their decision is going to be short lived, then just continue to voice the doubts and question them. I quote from Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify!” But more importantly, I quote 1 Corinthians 13 “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…”

Maybe it’s the prayer that your spouse will change some habit that is a problem. Maybe it’s the prayer that your child will stop doing drugs. Maybe it’s the prayer that your husband will start treating you better. Maybe its the prayer that God will bless your family. Maybe its the prayer that God will set you free from whatever is destroying you. It could be any of thousands of things. But we must believe that God is who He says He is. That His word to us is true. Whatever it is, lets don’t be like the religious people of 2000 years ago and not see God’s answer to our prayer just because we don’t see it answered in the way we thought it should be.

Do we hate sin? Or do we only aggressively deal with sin, including our own, only when we get caught… when we get “BUSTED!” How do we bring a message of reconciliation to a world that doesn’t have a relationship with God and deal with the issue of sin?

It seems that if we deal with the issue of anybody else’s sin, we are being judgmental and critical.

It also seems that dealing with the issue of our own sin has been somewhat put on a lower priority after the issue of raising our self image and and having a firm grasp on our position as joint heirs with Christ and having the riches of Christ as our inheritance.

So how do we handle it? First off we know it has to be the way God deals with it and not the way we would deal with it. 1 Corinthians 13 says this,  “If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”

It is so important to do this Jesus answered the Pharsiees query with  this in Matthew 22…

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Paul also teaches in Galatians 5:

“You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

All the Law and every word the Prophets spoke hang on those words. LOVE… What more need be said? Now lest we not be clear on this, we must love as God has shown us by His example. I can hear the little voice inside all of us saying, “Sure, but I am not God.” Yep, but God doesn’t ask us to be like Him, He knows we are on a journey of Sanctification. It is a process that will not end on Earth.

Just Like Paul says in Romans 7:  “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.  So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

I believe we have gotten soft as Christians these days in dealing with sin. Am I advocating an Inquisition and a laying down of the Law and intolerance and judgmentalism, etc.? Nope, not at all. But we need to understand that just as a loving Father will discipline his child to stop his child from doing something that will hurt him, we must see a sinful world around us, sin in my own life, sin in our families, sin in our churches, and stop saying “well kids will be kids, they’ll learn someday…” The answer is not more self help programs, feel good sermon messages, and medication. It’s about aggreswsively engaging teh journey of sanctification we all need to be on and IN LOVE… let me say it again IN LOVE, loving our neighbors enough to see them set free from as Paul said in Romans, “this body of death.” Set free from that which hinders us from becoming more like Christ.