It was nothing short of God event that I met and married my wife. God knew before we were born that she was to be my wife and I her husband. It took forty years before God introduced us though. Prior to our meeting I just could not make a relationship work with anyone. I made every mistake in the book. I allowed the enemy to lead me around and let him convince me to make several unhealthy choices in relationships.
My sweet wife has always lived her life seeking God first in every way. Since I had chosen the opposite path and lived by my feelings it took some forty years before I was worthy of meeting my wife. By that I mean, God allowed me take a hard look at my life and all the areas I failed to put Him first. When I began seeking Him in my decisions, guess what? He began helping me make better decisions.
The best decision I have made (second only to choosing salvation) is choosing to ask my wife to marry me. She is my best friend and best mom in the world. She is kind, compassionate, caring, and great woman of God. She has taught and continues to teach me so much about how to have God filled marriage and healthy relationship. I still make mistakes don’t get me wrong. But with love she always helps me correct my mistakes and learn from them.
I love my wife deeply. I had no idea this kind of love existed. It is a love that goes beyond the natural or physical. It is spiritual. As God intended love between a man and his wife should be.
I love you my sweet wife!! Now and forever!!
Monday, March 24, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Dear Dad
When I was a child I used to love spending time with my father. It didn’t really matter what we did as long as we were doing it together. My father worked hard all of his life to provide for our family. I watched as he would get up at 1:00 a.m. every morning to be at work by 3:00 a.m. He would work a full day then come home in the afternoon and try to spend a little time with my sister and me before dinner.
My dad didn’t have a cushy office job like many of my friend’s dads. No, he worked in the freight industry driving tractor trailer trucks and lifting freight all day long. He was always in very good shape from all the walking and lifting he had to do. No need to go to a gym. He got his workout in by working every day. What a concept. I have seen him out work guys half his age including me. He had great physical strength. When I turned 15 he put me to work. He would back a trailer up to a dock and my job was to unload and stack all the freight onto the dock. He would always jump in and get me started then he had to leave and do other things while I finished unloading. In the summer the heat in the back of that trailer was miserable. In the winter it was freezing. The work was hard. Bending and lifting all day long. Even as a young man it was physically challenging.
From an early age my father taught me about strong work ethic. He used the time he had in the back of that trailer to talk to me about hard work and life. He taught me that there is honor and pride in a hard day’s work. At the end of the day you should be able to go home and feel like you had accomplished something. He never focused on the amount you were paid for your work but just on the work itself. He taught me things like “always do your best”, and “finish what you start”. He taught me that God blesses those who work hard to make an honest living. Lessons that have stuck with me all my life. Lessons, I hope I pass on to my own children.
My dad, now in his early seventies, has slowed down dramatically. All that hard work has taken its toll on his physical body. The man I knew growing up, strong as an ox, is now weakened. It is hard to watch this transition. Long gone are the days he and I used to spend working together. But I will forever hold onto the memories of those hot summer days and the cold winter ones too, spent working side-by-side with my dad. I will hold onto the values and lessons he tried to teach me.
I love you Dad!
My dad didn’t have a cushy office job like many of my friend’s dads. No, he worked in the freight industry driving tractor trailer trucks and lifting freight all day long. He was always in very good shape from all the walking and lifting he had to do. No need to go to a gym. He got his workout in by working every day. What a concept. I have seen him out work guys half his age including me. He had great physical strength. When I turned 15 he put me to work. He would back a trailer up to a dock and my job was to unload and stack all the freight onto the dock. He would always jump in and get me started then he had to leave and do other things while I finished unloading. In the summer the heat in the back of that trailer was miserable. In the winter it was freezing. The work was hard. Bending and lifting all day long. Even as a young man it was physically challenging.
From an early age my father taught me about strong work ethic. He used the time he had in the back of that trailer to talk to me about hard work and life. He taught me that there is honor and pride in a hard day’s work. At the end of the day you should be able to go home and feel like you had accomplished something. He never focused on the amount you were paid for your work but just on the work itself. He taught me things like “always do your best”, and “finish what you start”. He taught me that God blesses those who work hard to make an honest living. Lessons that have stuck with me all my life. Lessons, I hope I pass on to my own children.
My dad, now in his early seventies, has slowed down dramatically. All that hard work has taken its toll on his physical body. The man I knew growing up, strong as an ox, is now weakened. It is hard to watch this transition. Long gone are the days he and I used to spend working together. But I will forever hold onto the memories of those hot summer days and the cold winter ones too, spent working side-by-side with my dad. I will hold onto the values and lessons he tried to teach me.
I love you Dad!
Friday, February 15, 2008
You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet
Growing up in the 70's in a rural Arkansas town was a blessing from God. Of course I didn't appreciate those simpler, less complicated times then....but oh what I would give to go back in time. Back before video games, the internet, ipods, BlackBerry's, cell phones, satellite television, and yes, I guess even blogs. No one locked their doors. Instead of watching TV we actually played outside. We rode bikes, went to the swimmin hole, went to the fishin hole (those are two different holes by the way...you can't catch fish with a bunch of splashing going on), caught June bugs and tied their legs to a string, caught lightning bugs to put in a jar (no bug was safe from being captured and thrown in bug jail), sometimes we would just lay in the field and watch the clouds float overhead and talk. (If I want to talk to my kids today I have to email them or text message them and they may only be in the next room....) When did talking in person become un-cool?
A big part of my childhood was spent in a stereotypical Southern Baptist church. My parents took us to church every time the doors where open. And if my parents couldn't take us my grandparents or aunts and uncles took us. We went to Sunday School, Training Union, Choir Practice and every summer Vacation Bible School. Which when you are a kid doesn't seem like much of a vacation.....especially in the 70's. You see back then not all the rooms had air conditioning and when it got too hot in the room they just sent us outside.....In the SUN....to see if we could do such things as carry an egg on a spoon for 50 yards or some other silly game. Oh yea I forgot RA's on Wednesday evenings. Now there is an old Baptist boys group you may have forgotten about or may never have even heard of...."Royal Ambassadors". I suppose we were ambassadors for Christ, but there never seemed to be anything too royal about it....
There was really no escape from church for me growing up. My uncle was the pastor, my grandfather was the "song leader" (another good ole southern term), my grandmother cleaned the church and my dad filled in wherever he was needed. It seemed like we were at church all the time. I took church for granted.
When I got older and moved out on my own I found myself not going to church as much. As time went on it became easier and easier to find reasons to NOT go at all. You see I didn't ever think about what God intended the church to represent. Oh I knew it was His house. And we were supposed to go there to worship Him...but for me that's my brain stopped. God intended the church to be so much more than a place to worship. The big part I missed out on were the relationships. God intended for us to build and nurture relationships with other believers. It took me way too many years to realize this. Looking back now I see how I lost relationships with those I grew up in church with and I missed out on making new ones over the years.
God not only wants us to build and nurture relationships within the walls of our church home but also with those we come in contact with outside those walls. God puts people in our lives for a reason. We may not see it in the natural but rest assured it's true. God has placed it on my heart over the past several months to reestablish and nurture relationships with people I have met over the last 15 years. God knew it would not be an easy task for me to go back and contact all of these folks and humbly ask them if they would like to reestablish a relationship be it professional or personal or both. He knew I was moving way out of my comfort zone. I was scared but I did it anyway. And you know what? God is faithful. Everyone I was able to contact was receptive. God had already prepared their hearts. All I had to do was be obedient and make that call or send that email. He took care of the rest.
I guess part of the point I am trying to make is that it is easy to fall into the trap of taking church for granted. Just go through the motions. Show up, endure some fire and brimstone and go have a big Sunday lunch. At times it all may seem a bit boring. But let me challenge you to do something I did almost two years ago. Activate you faith. ACTIVATE your faith! What does that mean? I mean live each day like it might be your last. If we knew we only had 24 hours to live I bet most of us would make each minute count. We would tell this person "I'm sorry" and that person "I love you" and the next person "Thank you" and so on. We would do our best to get our affairs in order and make things right with those we wronged and those who wronged us. We would focus on relationships in our lives. Well what if we did that everyday? What a difference we could make. If you think being a Christian is boring then you have not activated your faith. You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet!!! Activate it and hold on for some of the most exciting and rewarding times of your life.
I would like to leave you with this passage from Job22:21-30
21 "Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.
22 Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.
23 If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tent
24 and assign your nuggets to the dust, your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines,
25 then the Almighty will be your gold, the choicest silver for you.
26 Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty and will lift up your face to God.
27 You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will fulfill your vows.
28 What you decide on will be done, and light will shine on your ways.
29 When men are brought low and you say, 'Lift them up!' then he will save the downcast.
30 He will deliver even one who is not innocent, who will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands."
A big part of my childhood was spent in a stereotypical Southern Baptist church. My parents took us to church every time the doors where open. And if my parents couldn't take us my grandparents or aunts and uncles took us. We went to Sunday School, Training Union, Choir Practice and every summer Vacation Bible School. Which when you are a kid doesn't seem like much of a vacation.....especially in the 70's. You see back then not all the rooms had air conditioning and when it got too hot in the room they just sent us outside.....In the SUN....to see if we could do such things as carry an egg on a spoon for 50 yards or some other silly game. Oh yea I forgot RA's on Wednesday evenings. Now there is an old Baptist boys group you may have forgotten about or may never have even heard of...."Royal Ambassadors". I suppose we were ambassadors for Christ, but there never seemed to be anything too royal about it....
There was really no escape from church for me growing up. My uncle was the pastor, my grandfather was the "song leader" (another good ole southern term), my grandmother cleaned the church and my dad filled in wherever he was needed. It seemed like we were at church all the time. I took church for granted.
When I got older and moved out on my own I found myself not going to church as much. As time went on it became easier and easier to find reasons to NOT go at all. You see I didn't ever think about what God intended the church to represent. Oh I knew it was His house. And we were supposed to go there to worship Him...but for me that's my brain stopped. God intended the church to be so much more than a place to worship. The big part I missed out on were the relationships. God intended for us to build and nurture relationships with other believers. It took me way too many years to realize this. Looking back now I see how I lost relationships with those I grew up in church with and I missed out on making new ones over the years.
God not only wants us to build and nurture relationships within the walls of our church home but also with those we come in contact with outside those walls. God puts people in our lives for a reason. We may not see it in the natural but rest assured it's true. God has placed it on my heart over the past several months to reestablish and nurture relationships with people I have met over the last 15 years. God knew it would not be an easy task for me to go back and contact all of these folks and humbly ask them if they would like to reestablish a relationship be it professional or personal or both. He knew I was moving way out of my comfort zone. I was scared but I did it anyway. And you know what? God is faithful. Everyone I was able to contact was receptive. God had already prepared their hearts. All I had to do was be obedient and make that call or send that email. He took care of the rest.
I guess part of the point I am trying to make is that it is easy to fall into the trap of taking church for granted. Just go through the motions. Show up, endure some fire and brimstone and go have a big Sunday lunch. At times it all may seem a bit boring. But let me challenge you to do something I did almost two years ago. Activate you faith. ACTIVATE your faith! What does that mean? I mean live each day like it might be your last. If we knew we only had 24 hours to live I bet most of us would make each minute count. We would tell this person "I'm sorry" and that person "I love you" and the next person "Thank you" and so on. We would do our best to get our affairs in order and make things right with those we wronged and those who wronged us. We would focus on relationships in our lives. Well what if we did that everyday? What a difference we could make. If you think being a Christian is boring then you have not activated your faith. You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet!!! Activate it and hold on for some of the most exciting and rewarding times of your life.
I would like to leave you with this passage from Job22:21-30
21 "Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.
22 Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.
23 If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tent
24 and assign your nuggets to the dust, your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines,
25 then the Almighty will be your gold, the choicest silver for you.
26 Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty and will lift up your face to God.
27 You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will fulfill your vows.
28 What you decide on will be done, and light will shine on your ways.
29 When men are brought low and you say, 'Lift them up!' then he will save the downcast.
30 He will deliver even one who is not innocent, who will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands."
Monday, January 28, 2008
Fear Factor
What are you afraid of? What is your greatest fear? Why do we fear certain things? Does everyone have fears or is it just me? How do we overcome fear?
Have you ever stopped to think about the things you fear? We are fearful of many different things. One of the greatest fears for a lot of us is public speaking. Some people fear riding in airplanes while others fear driving on the freeway. We fear animals, insects, heights, small spaces, snakes, the dark, the light, the outdoors, the dentist, the doctor, our boss, our spouse, our parents.....We fear we won't make enough money, loss of a job, not getting a promotion, getting a promotion, not enough responsibility, too much responsibility....Whew!!! And so on, and so on.....This is just the tip of the "fear" iceberg. The list of fears can be a long one. Some well founded mind you while others are not. It is probably a good thing to fear alligators. It's silly to fear that the Patriots won't win the Super Bowl. (I mean come on, you know they are gonna win).
It is okay to fear things in life. But we cannot allow fear to control our lives. Fear can paralyze us if we allow it and Satan knows that. Fear is one of the enemy's strongest weapons. That is why it is so important for us to turn our fears over to the Lord in prayer. Jesus promises us that we have nothing to fear, not even death. Remember when Peter saw Jesus walking on water and he wanted to walk out on the water and meet Jesus? Jesus told Peter: "Come" he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith" he said, "why did you doubt?" Mathew 14:29-31
How do we overcome fear and doubt? Fortunately, God provided us this little book called the Bible. If we read His word and apply it daily He helps us manage our fears. How do we "apply" His word? It is as simple as stopping when a negative thought enters your head and asking the Holy Spirit to give you positive, life giving words from the Bible to counteract the negative. Sometimes, I have to pause several times a day and repeat this exercise. This may be something new for you and that's okay. God wants us to pause throughout our day and reflect on Him. If we yield to Him, He will bring us freedom from our fear and give us a peace like we have never known. I invite you to try this and see if it makes a difference in your life.
Have you ever stopped to think about the things you fear? We are fearful of many different things. One of the greatest fears for a lot of us is public speaking. Some people fear riding in airplanes while others fear driving on the freeway. We fear animals, insects, heights, small spaces, snakes, the dark, the light, the outdoors, the dentist, the doctor, our boss, our spouse, our parents.....We fear we won't make enough money, loss of a job, not getting a promotion, getting a promotion, not enough responsibility, too much responsibility....Whew!!! And so on, and so on.....This is just the tip of the "fear" iceberg. The list of fears can be a long one. Some well founded mind you while others are not. It is probably a good thing to fear alligators. It's silly to fear that the Patriots won't win the Super Bowl. (I mean come on, you know they are gonna win).
It is okay to fear things in life. But we cannot allow fear to control our lives. Fear can paralyze us if we allow it and Satan knows that. Fear is one of the enemy's strongest weapons. That is why it is so important for us to turn our fears over to the Lord in prayer. Jesus promises us that we have nothing to fear, not even death. Remember when Peter saw Jesus walking on water and he wanted to walk out on the water and meet Jesus? Jesus told Peter: "Come" he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith" he said, "why did you doubt?" Mathew 14:29-31
How do we overcome fear and doubt? Fortunately, God provided us this little book called the Bible. If we read His word and apply it daily He helps us manage our fears. How do we "apply" His word? It is as simple as stopping when a negative thought enters your head and asking the Holy Spirit to give you positive, life giving words from the Bible to counteract the negative. Sometimes, I have to pause several times a day and repeat this exercise. This may be something new for you and that's okay. God wants us to pause throughout our day and reflect on Him. If we yield to Him, He will bring us freedom from our fear and give us a peace like we have never known. I invite you to try this and see if it makes a difference in your life.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Out with the old, In with the new
Greetings and Happy New Year!! It has been a while since my last post. The holiday season always seems to be such a busy time of year. Rush, rush, rush. Sometimes we barely take time to slow down long enough to really enjoy this time of year and what it truly represents.
December is the month each year we Christians choose to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Sometimes we may forget not everyone celebrates Christmas. To a certain segment of the worlds population December is just December. But if you are a Christian this is the time of year to focus on the Christ child. God loves us so much that He sent His only son into our world in human form. Jesus came not to judge us but to serve us. Many people think of Jesus as a great leader because of the miracles He performed. But if you read the stories written in the New Testament carefully you will see that Jesus was always serving. When the multitude needed to be fed, He fed them. When the storm came upon the disciples at sea, He calmed the waters. Before His death He washed the disciples feet. By serving, He was leading. When you think of leaders today who do you think of? Your boss, the president, politicians? How many of those folks would get on their knees and wash your feet?
Then there's January. The beginning of a new year each year. A chance to start fresh. Too many times this is not the case though. We allow our past to keep us from taking that fresh start each year. I know I have been guilty of that. How bout you? For several years I have felt so bad about things in my past that I never allowed myself to start fresh. That is.......until now. This year, for the first time in a long time I am allowing the past to be the past and forgive myself. I am going to embrace God's gift of a new year to start fresh. I encourage you to do the same. We cannot change the past. But with God's help we CAN change our future.
So out with the old and in with the new. Let the past be the past and the future be the future. Our past does NOT define who we are, it molds us into who He wants us to be.
December is the month each year we Christians choose to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Sometimes we may forget not everyone celebrates Christmas. To a certain segment of the worlds population December is just December. But if you are a Christian this is the time of year to focus on the Christ child. God loves us so much that He sent His only son into our world in human form. Jesus came not to judge us but to serve us. Many people think of Jesus as a great leader because of the miracles He performed. But if you read the stories written in the New Testament carefully you will see that Jesus was always serving. When the multitude needed to be fed, He fed them. When the storm came upon the disciples at sea, He calmed the waters. Before His death He washed the disciples feet. By serving, He was leading. When you think of leaders today who do you think of? Your boss, the president, politicians? How many of those folks would get on their knees and wash your feet?
Then there's January. The beginning of a new year each year. A chance to start fresh. Too many times this is not the case though. We allow our past to keep us from taking that fresh start each year. I know I have been guilty of that. How bout you? For several years I have felt so bad about things in my past that I never allowed myself to start fresh. That is.......until now. This year, for the first time in a long time I am allowing the past to be the past and forgive myself. I am going to embrace God's gift of a new year to start fresh. I encourage you to do the same. We cannot change the past. But with God's help we CAN change our future.
So out with the old and in with the new. Let the past be the past and the future be the future. Our past does NOT define who we are, it molds us into who He wants us to be.
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