A Hard Message

I was reading Ezekial 4 this moring and God tells Ezekial to tell Israel a hard message. For three hundred and ninety days he is to lay on his left side and then turn over for fourty days and lay on his right side. He can’t turn over at all and he must eat rationed bread cooked over cow dung and rink rationed water. The message he is delivering is hard enough but the method is even more so. Ezekial is showing Israel and Judah how many years they have rebelled against God and what God is going to do because of it. (Ezekial goes on to shave his head and what he does with the hair is the judgement.)

Sometimes in life we have to deliver hard messages to other people. It would be so easy to run from that and honestly most people do. The desire to be the nice guy and liked by everyone can often prevent God from working in another persons life. So we put oursleves through all of this misery and anguish because we won’t deal with the situation. We need to take Ezekials example and be willing to deliver the hard messages. There may be more at stake than just you or your feelings.

Another note we should consider is that God may be calling us to a radical ministry. That is what he called Ezekial to. Lately my wife has been teasing me because I have been using the word vanilla a lot… okay constantly. The reason I use it is because we live that kind of life, just a little flavor with nothing to distinguish us. We need more colorful people who are willing to stand out and proclaim a different message…one of change. It is not easy and no rewards are promised but it is the right thing to do and in the end that makes all the diference.

Not Enough Horsepower

Have you ever been sitting at a stop light and had a shiny new car pull up next to you that has it’s speakers blaring, it’s muffler whining, and you can only see the tops of the heads of the people inside becasue their car is lowered? Then once the light turns green they punch it and the sound of their car drowns out even your thoughts. The car races off and you sit there in your minivan thinking I just don’t got it.

That is how I felt last night at our basketball game. We played the first place team and they basically ran us off the court. They were a bunch of young guys who could drive and shoot and by the end of the game I felt old and slow. The first half was a blur. We ended up being down 25-7 but in the second half  we made a game of it and only lost 71-30.

After being off two weeks with an injury I felt slow, sluggish, and heavy. My shots clanged off the rim like a banging cymbal mentioned in 1 Cor 13. I know we are playing for fun but when your body can’t respond you feel like doo-doo. Add on top of that our big guy Mike was out with a knee injury and Brian twisted his ankle (pray for those guys) five minutes into the game. We all hustled and played our best but you know when you are overmatched.

I am looking forward to the second half. Our team is starting to gel and I think we will play better. This minivan may not have the flash and speed but it is dependable and gets where it needs to go. Oh yeah and it is paid off.

Avoiding a Rut

Having children has taught me a lot about routines. Children can become very regimented in how they do things because it provides a sense of safety for them. My son is very routine driven. When he gets up from his afternoon nap he expects to have his yogurt and then watch Blues Clues. When we break that routine it sends him into a frenzy. We have learned as parents that we must provide both routine and disruption to teach him how to handle the transitions of life.

Our lifes can become very routine as well. In fact our brain operates this way. Mark Batterson has a great blog on this. It seems that the left side of the brain is where familiarity resides and novelty resides on the right side. When we do something new it stimulates the right side and after we have done something several times it goes into the left side. Routine can be great but it also can become boring. This is why we need to stimulate our right brain so much.

Our walk with Christ can become very routine or rut like. Devotions become a drill and worship becomes a task to be completed. We must strive to make our relationship with Christ new and fresh from time to time. Read a different translation, sit somewhere different in church, or have fellowship with someone new. These often to tend to provoke a fresh sense of the wonder of God. If you are in a rut spiritually then seek God out to refresh it.

Just a Closer Walk With Thee

One of the favorite songs out at the Prison I go to minister at is an old hymn "Just a Closer Walk with Thee." The guys really get into the song because it talks about getting rid of everything that hinders us from being closer to God. As I was reading this morning several things struck me in a similar way. In Hebrews 5 it talks about people who have been with God a long time who should know enough about the Bible to be teaching it but are still learning the elementary things or the "milk" of the Word. A.W. Tozer calls this "a veil over our hearts." That veil is our self life whether it be self-righteousness, or self-pity, or self-love. These things dwell so deep in us that we don’t even notice them until God brings them to light.

Many of us desire that intimate walk with Christ, or a closer walk with Him but find it hard to do so. What is preventing that is our self life. We need for Christ to remove that veil just as he did when the veil to the altar was torn at the crucifixtion. Teaching alone won’t bring this out. It takes us seeking God and Him revealing to us the hidden veil. When He does that we need to respond and let Him take us through the fire of purification so that we will be refined and pure before Him.

I am not a car guy

I am not a car guy. It is not embarassing to admit that but ever since I’ve been watching Overhaulin I have this desire to buy an old convertible and learn how to work on it. Chip Foose is amazing and the show is done really well. When they take an old beater and stick this shiny new engine full of horse power inside it wells up all of my manhood.

The spiritual connections to this show are endless. I always think about Philippians 1:6 which says: "He who has begun a good work in you will complete it to the end of days." God is in the buisness of overhaulin us. He makes us better than we were before He got ahold of us and He specializes in taking the worst cases and making them look the best.

My daughter went in for some tests last week and they discovered that her intelligence is far beyond that of an eighteen month old. The lady testing her kept saying over and over she is really smart. I give God the glory for that because she was supposed to have brain damage at birth. When He healed her He did an above average job. Really motivates me to do the same.

A Lucky Win

We got away with our third win in a row last night by sheer luck. We won 14-9 and that was only because we had a huge sixth inning. Our fielding let us down several times and we struggled to intergrate all the new players. Thankfully we were able to get out of there with a win but I think we all walked out of there a little frustrated. We have two weeks off before our next game so hopefully we can heal up and get some batting practice in.

Lessons learned from the World Cup

I have never considered myself a soccer fan. In fact it was the sport I hated the most in school. It involved too much running and the use of my feet which to this day haven’t fully coordinated with one another. So when the World cup was coming on TV I had only a little interest in it because I am fan when it comes to our country playing other countries.

I learned several things from watching:

1. I am not a fan… I am a casual observer
     World Cup fans wrote the definition of what a true fan is. They aren’t crazy they are obssessed with their country and their sport. Talk about passion!

2. America is a very lazy country
     I watched a match with Mexico playing and there were 37,000 fans standing in the city square watching their team play. This was at 10am! What I saw is that we are very self involved country who are used to having things handed to them. We yawn at most stuff. People from other countries live, breathe, and eat this stuff.

3. We don’t sacrifice very much
    I don’t even want to know what some of these people did to get to Germany to watch their country play. That doesn’t even count the people on the outside of the stadium who couldn’t get tickets. These fans sacrifice everything to be a part of World Cup. I didn’t see to many americans sacrificing to even watch it on TV.

The church can learn alot from this situation.
1. Be passionate about your God
2. Live, breathe, & eat your faith
3. Be willing to sacrifice everything for the Kingdom of God

If people can pe this passionate about a soccer game why can’t be crazed about a God who loves us, sacrificed His Son, and contiunes to look out for us?

Something Left in the Tank

We won our first basketball game last night! I don’t have the details becasue I wasn’t there but I heard it was thrilling. We were up by three points and the other team had the last shot and Ryan Hester blocked the shot. Wow! I was getting calls like crazy last night telling me how it went down. I think our team has a new strategy: Have Chuck injure himself in softball so he can’t play. It increases the chances of winning.

Seriously though I am glad we won. It does so much for the confidence and mojo of the team. I am looking forward to next week. Because of my injury(see previous post on softball) I took the opportunity to take my wife out for dinner while the kids wore out their grandparents. Honestly it would’ve been tough to be there and watch it all go down. Everything within me would’ve wanted to be out there playing and I probably would’ve injured my groin even more. It is feeling pretty close to normal now so I will be on for next week.

If you want to watch next weeks game we are playing at 7:30pm.

Always Convicted

Everytime I read the parable of the Talents I am convicted to the core. In Matthew 25 Jesus describes three servants who were given talents according to their abilities. Now talents in this story is money but you can easily make the correlation to our abilities today. The Master gives the first servant five talents and he promptly goes out and doubles it to ten. The second servant is given two and he also doubles it. the last servant is given one and he buries it out of fear.

When the Master comes back he congratulates the two servants for their work by saying "Well done thou good and faithful servant." When he talks to the third servant he condems him to death with satan. He takes the one talent and gives it to the guy with ten talents.

What always gets me is the question of whether I am doing what I am supposed to with the talent God has given me? I am always hounded by the thought that I am spinning my wheels spiritually. It is not a matter of doing what is right in my eyes but doing what God desires of me. I can’t possibly know this if I am too busy to spend time with Him.

I was reading A.W. Tozer this morning and he was talking about the hunger and thirst for our relationship with Christ. This confirmed what I had heard from a teaching by Britt Merrick just the other day. Am I too busy doing work to worship? Do I keep my relationship a higher priority than my work? I was really convicted this morning.

Book Review: Elements; starting a revolution in your world

I just finished reading a book by Bob Franquiz, a Calvary Chapel Pastor in Miami, Florida. This is a good book! It is scripturally sound with very practical application. He gets at the heart of how God used John the Baptist to start a revolution and ties it back to God wanting to do the same thing in our lives. There are some hard hitting points he makes about who we influence in our lives. His perspective on parenting was very convicting.

I was motivated to seek for God to use me in new and radical ways after reading this. It is a very short and easy read and if you are looking for a spiritually motivating book then I recommend this. Just click on the book and it will take you to Amazon to order it.