To The Fathers

Fathers (mom's too), this is for YOU as the spiritual leader of your home. This may not be the most well written but it is the truth!

“Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.”  Proverbs 22:6

“To discipline a child produces wisdom, but a mother is disgraced by an undisciplined child.”

Proverbs 29:15

Our kids do not know what's best for them. We are born with a sin nature. Most of us were never taught to lie, steal or be disobedient. We don't need to be taught that. But "what not to do" are not the only things we need to be teaching our kids. We also need to train them and direct them to the things that are good for them, whether they like it or not. It is our job to make sure they are in Church. It is our job to make sure they are in a place to be ministered to while there. It is our job to make sure our kids learn to pray and spend time with God throughout the week and read God's word. It is our job to make sure they not just have fun but learn how to work, clean, make beds, do dishes, exercise, eat right, be respectful, courteous, etc. Remember, it's our job to help them succeed in life. So let's set them up for success and give them the tools they need.

“Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.”

‭‭James‬ ‭4:17‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Our kids aren't there to be our best friends. If you need a friend look to your wife or to other adults if you're single. Your goal should not be for your kid to like you. You are to lead them and train them. Set the example, show them the path and help them walk it. You should know what's best for them and it's your job to train them to walk it. Which at times requires us to make them do it. But that's training! And remember the best way to lead is by example! I am reminded of that every time I get behind the wheel and my kids are watching how I drive.

If you do this then when they have kids you will have a friend. But right now is not the time. Do the work, it's tough, thankless at times but totally worth it!

Missing You

Chuch, I am fairly certain you can't read this. I understand your doing better than the rest of us right now. No more pain or suffering. Joy everlasting. All life's questions answered. And all that still pales in comparison to getting to be there with Jesus. "Make heaven" you kept telling everyone. I hope that legacy has had an impact in many lives and you get to see all those people someday there in heaven with you. I'd love to meet some of them.

But I miss you terribly. The last 3+ years without you haven't been the same, though I suppose they aren't going to be. Christmas is missing something. You and I would send pictures of our trees and decorations to each other. Now some of the decorations you used are at my house. You helped make Christmas special for the kids too. I'm not sure how much Trinity remembers but I know Gideon does. They still have some of those toys. The tricycle you got for Gideon became Trinty's favorite until she outgrew it. Sad to sell it but you know better than the rest of us it is all just stuff anyway.

Uncle Mick gave me your cell phone. I can't afford to have my own phone so it is nice to have. It doesn't have a plan on it but I keep it. There is a free service that allows me to use it on wifi. Also I took a sabbatical in January and purchased a prepaid for the month. It was good to have to use and remind me of you.

Church is going well. We are staying faithful to what we believe God has called us to do and we love doing it. Not saying it doesn't have it's tough times but that's life right? It has it's ups and downs. We have faith in God that the best is yet to come.

I have the candle you gave me in the living room. I am glad it is battery powered. I get to use it and not use it up.

So what I really want to say though isn't about the stuff because. What I want to say is my heart hurts so much since your gone. It is heavy with pain and grief. I'd like to know why Jesus said it was time or if it really was. I'd really wish we had more time together. I am sorry I didn't stay at your house when we visited Florida. Uncle has welcomed us the last couple times we've been down. But it's not the same place without you. I so want to give you a HUGE HUG right now...  I cannot even begin to express the hurt I feel. I know I'll see you again but for now I want to see you now. I want to eat a Haggen Daas Ice cream with you. I want you to see Trinity and Gideon growing up. You'd be so proud of them! I want to go to Red Robin with you and get you another tornado glass since yours broke on the way home. I miss the moments we shared. The phone calls and the being your tech guy to keep your computer running. Logging onto your computer remotely and playing message in a bottle on it for you to hear in the other room.

AHHHHH!!! I want scream. IT HURTS! I am not sure what to do from here. I am not sure how to get through to the other side but I am trusting God to get me there.

I love you Chuch and miss you. I know you don't get this but I don't type this for you, I do this for me.

Trust .

Jesus said "if you love me obey my commands."

There are so many of us that say we are Christians. We believe in Jesus and that we are on our way to heaven for our faith in Christ and I wouldn't doubt that. But if you truly are in a relationship with Christ then there ought to be fruit, meaning things in your life ought to be changing so that you look more like Jesus. By look like I mean through us people ought to experience the love and grace of God. Their experience with you and I should be one that brings them to an encounter with the creator and causes them to make a choice. How can this happen though when we struggle with the fundamental issue of "trust". We say we trust God but then when it comes to His commands we worry and struggle with them.

God calls us to relationship with Him. Personal time, prayer time. Time to listen and meditate. What do we do? Honestly most all of us, myself included struggle with "well I don't have time". REALLY?!?!?! How can I not have time for the God who created time? My existence is because of Him and I don't have time? But then we expect to run to God when we need something and get a hand out. We want God to speak to us but we don't take the time to listen and get know Him. Then when we need to hear from God and we don't we venture off on our own. Then when our plans fail we want to blame God. If you want God to take care of you then you need to get this. God tells us that "those who WAIT upon the Lord shall renew their strength". God isn't the McDonalds drive thru window and He wants a legit relationship.

God commands us to not forget to get with the Church. NO not the building, the people. The people who have a relationship with Jesus are the Church, the body of Christ. How can you expect to survive as part of the body of Christ and not remain connected to it? If you think you can be Christian yet not be a par of a Church family you are mistaken. The body needs to be together and in unity. You don't believe that? Cut off your hand and see how long it lives? (please don't actually do that) You, like your hand need to be connected to be useful and survive. Sometimes the hand helps care for another part and sometimes the other parts care for the hand but they all work in unity. Maybe you'd say, but I don't like "Church" people. Well first off if you call yourself a Christian you are one of them. Second God addressed that too.

1 John 4:20 "If someone says, "I love God," but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don't love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?"

1 John 3:15 "Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don't have eternal life within them."

Also once again time plays into this and work also. Well I don't have time, my kids have a game OR I have to work on when the Church is meeting. As if life isn't distracting enough why do we allow more obstacles to keep us from remaining connected. God can and will provide a job for you that will allow you to not miss remaining connected, you just need to stand your ground and trust Him. Your kids can get involved, but we excuse them from Church and wonder why when they grow up feel God is irrelevant and not necessary. Why? Because that is what you modeled for them.

God commands us to give financially in His word, but we say we can't because we cannot afford to. Don't we trust that God will supply all our needs or not? Then when we don't we want God's blessing. Sorry but if you want God's blessing you need to do it God's way. I am not saying give your money and you'll be on the next MTV cribs, that's not God's promise. We see what happens to people who are millionaires overnight. Most of them are crushed by their lottery winnings and that is not what God wants for us. I am saying He will make sure you are provided for, no need to worry about tomorrow. Jesus commands us not to worry, but we do when we cannot simply trust Him with what He gave us.

So who is really the one who is not being trust worthy, us or God? Let's ask God to help us learn to be people He can trust.

Don't Give Up

I know some new believers, people who are just beginning their faith journey or have not been on it very long and they see and feel the value in Church attendance, they experience the work Christ is doing in their life and have been able to validly connect it to a relationship with Christ and connection to His Church family. I also currently know people who have just recently become faithful to God with their tithe and offerings, and can also validly connect their personal financial blessing to the fact that they have become people who are obedient to God with their finances that He has given them.

Unfortunately on the flip side I see people who should be "mature" believers. People who have known Christ a long time. They know God's word yet they seem to have lost the sense of value in attending Church and making sure their kids are there and involved. They also have lost the realization that the reason their home was provided for was because they were faithful in their tithe. For whatever reason they slowly back off Church involvement and attendance. They also begin to waiver or even stop their giving to God and forget all they have is from Him. They some how grow cold or maybe what God would describe as "luke warm" in Revelation 3:16. Then one day they open their eyes and don't understand why life becomes so difficult and why their kids grow up wanting nothing to do with God or Church.

First for the new believers. Please learn from those of us who have gone ahead of you and our mistakes and even those who have made the mistakes before we did. We didn't take the time to learn from them and we should have. We could be avoiding a lot of turmoil in our life right now. Learn the lessons from the old Testament with Israel and how their love for God and trust in God grew cold. Read and see what God was willing to allow to have happen to them so they would come back to Him in full devotion and obedience. Learn it and don't repeat all the same mistakes God wishes we would avoid. Keep your fire for God and realization of who He is and that He is your source in every area of your life.

Second for us "seasoned" believers. Why did we season our self with lemon? We tell young believers "you'll understand someday" and "it's because your new". There maybe somethings they don't get yet but they will. But the lessons we want to teach them shouldn't be how to stagnate and walk away from God. We shouldn't model how to grow cold and let the fire burn out. Instead let's show them how to be inspired by the young believers. Show them that we are still teachable and can even learn from someone who is new in their faith and encourage them in their excitement for their new faith. Let's model what Paul talks about in Romans 12:11 "Never lose your zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." Let's model that a mature believer doesn't just warm a seat and attends less but instead gets involved more and benefits from serving others. Let's show them that we have a deeper understanding of giving than is mentioned in Malachi 3. That a tithe was to test God and learn to give and we've grown beyond that. We now get the passage where Jesus shows the widow who gave her last two coins and in doing so went beyond filling a duty but understands God is our source and we can give it all and know he'll take care of us. It's our job to make sure that we light the way for those who come after us and not be a stumbling block instead.

I'll end with this... 1 Thessalonians 5:11"Therefore encourage one another and build each other up"

Let's challenge each other in our to do more and better than we've ever done. Because if we don't grow weary in doing good and right we will reap a harvest if we don't faint. PLOD ON!

Keep the Cat In

I read what I thought was a pretty funny statement week. It said, it's easy to let the cat out of the bag. It's getting it back in that is the challenge.

Let's face it, once you let the cat out of the bag there is no getting it back in. Your stuck waiting it out until the storm passes. I do think the word storm is the most appropriate for describing this. I like how Proverbs 13:3 says it, "Those who control their tongue will have a long life; opening your mouth can ruin everything." There is destruction that can come when we don't keep our tongue under control. Just think about the times you've opened your mouth to say something and you just wish you hadn't. People get hurt, lives can be ruined, trust is lost and relationships are destroyed. The sad thing is in our country there is an entire industry made to thrive on this. There are shows that just talk about the latest gossip, there are newspapers at the checkout line at the store that revolve around gossip. What is more sad is that it is a thriving industry. I wonder how many celebrity's lives have been ruined by gossip. I get it, your living in the public eye. But that doesn't give us the right to gossip. In fact in a brief search I was able to come up with 47 verses that point towards gossip as hurtful and bad. Here is one in Proverbs 11:13 "Whoever goes about slandering reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps a thing covered." There are others that attack it more directly but I like this one because it goes after the other side. I want to be the one who is trustworthy in spirit because I keep things covered. I want to be a friend that people can trust to actually be helpful because I don't use their words against them or leak them out to anyone else. How often have you offered to be an ear to someone and I believe with the best intentions. You want to help and be there for that person. But from experience I can tell you that I would not go to a person with personal info to "talk" when they are someone who is constantly filling me in on others lives. Yes, there are people out there that just cannot seem to hold in others personal information.

Consider James 3:5-8 "Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison." Ok, so it would seem there is a reason that there are people who cannot seem to keep things to themselves. Because God describes the tongue as something that cannot be tamed. In fact this whole passages is a warning against the destructive power of our speech. I hope this is coming across clear because there is so much destruction that has been caused by what is said in social media. All we can do is allow the storm to pass at this point. The problem is we don't stop and just keep feeding the storm and it just keeps becoming more destructive.

Let's highlight one more thing there. James 3:6 quoted above tells us just how destructive our words are not so much just to others but really to ourselves. "It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." In my opinion this is the most powerful passage on our words in the whole Bible. It shows us that our words are most destructive to ourselves. That it corrupts our whole body. Nothing in our body is left untouched and in fact it goes beyond our body to effect the entire course of our lives. Have you found that you don't like the direction your life has taken? It seems to me that your tongue should be your number one suspect. The direction your life has taken is strongly influenced by the words you have spoken.

So my hope is this, (even at least for myself) that we all will learn to guard the words of my mouth. That we will think before we speak and consider our future and others. Forget about the immediate gratification from being able to "share" or "speaking our mind" and think about the consequences of opening our mouths.

A Life Worth Living

Living for Christ is a forward movement kind of life. Too often we come to Christ and after making that decision do nothing with it. Yeah, maybe we attend Church and might even get involved but isn't it more than that? Isn't a relationship with Christ just that, a RELATIONSHIP. Jesus invites us to do more than just receive Him as Savior but also as Lord. Lord to me goes back to the medieval times where there was a Lord and everyone served him. But God isn't a Lord like you may have experienced back then. God is a loving God and a VERY patient loving God at that. We often project on to God our definition of love and then think how could God ever love me or forgive me. There lies the problem, our definition of love and patience is far different from His. God is WAY better at love and patience than we are. Because He is better at it than we are His Lordship in our lives is amazingly beneficial to us. Everything He commands us to do or not do is for out benefit and not just because He said so. The fact is God wants us to live an amazingly fulfilling life and He knows how that is best done. Not only that but the God who created the universe with just the power of His words wants to spend time with us. He wants to know us and wants us to know Him.

So in living a life that moves forward. That accomplishes what we just mentioned lets look at
2 Corinthians 5:14-17  

14Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. 15He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.

16So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! 17This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

Christ died for all and we then die to our old life. When we come to Christ we are admitting that we are sinners in need of a savior to avoid being punished for our sins. Jesus took the punishment so we don't have to, we just have to receive and believe in Jesus Christ. That recognition is what is being noted here. Christ died for us and we then die to our old life. Our way of doing life changes. Jesus died so when we receive Him we no longer live for ourselves. Think about it, how different would your life look if you stopped living for yourself and began living for others? I think you could spend a lot of time on just that idea and how it would change the world around you. I don't mean living for others for "recognition", but simply no longer for your benefit. It is this idea that we miss just about everyday of our lives. It is a poisonous idea floating around in the Church world today that we want to do what is convenient and works for me. We don't want to take the time to do what serves others. 

What we need to understand then is that Jesus wants what is best for us. Problem sometimes being that we don't give up our old life and when life with Jesus isn't working out we cannot figure out why. The why is here, Jesus died so we give up and are free from our old way of life. We need to find ourselves living for Jesus and not us. When we do this we have put ourselves under the command of the person who loves us more than anyone possibly could. Someone who will care for us and keep us on track if we will just obey.

There are those that see Jesus from an outsiders perspective. That perspective of the world that religion is a crutch for only the weak goes away and you realize that it a relationship with Jesus is so much more than mans religion.

So get it... When put your faith in Jesus you become a new person. You can walk in it and know it to be true. It's not a about a feeling, it's a reality. When Jesus says you are a new person then you can believe it! Begin walking in that new life that Jesus has for you. Put away the old way of life and begin experiencing a new and better way of life. Trade in the old broken solutions to life's problems for the answer Jesus has been waiting to give you.

Lessons at the Last Supper

Easter is just a few short days away. But right around now is the time when Jesus was preparing himself for the crucifixion. One of those days leading up to the crucifixion was a day Jesus himself had said he was looking forward to. Luke 22:15 Jesus said to His disciples that “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins." This could actually be one of the lessons we can take away from the last supper. Even Jesus needed to be surrounded by his closest friends/family before the most difficult time in His life. It amazes me how many times I watch people retreat to a place of solitude when life is it's most difficult. We use our difficult circumstances as an excuse to leave friends, family and Church family behind. It seems to me we see Jesus model something different for us here. That as we face life's difficulties that we ought to be seeking the company and fellowship of our friends and family. There is strength to be found with those who we are closest to. Ecclesiastes 4:9-11 covers this really well, Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? We need to be willing to put aside whatever pride we have and face our issues. We are not alone except that we decide to be. But nothing you have faced, are facing or will ever encounter in this life hasn't been done before. So don't do it alone.

A second interesting thought from the last supper is how Jesus handled the preparation of it. Jesus told His disciples to "go and prepare the passover meal so we can eat it together". Here we get to see that Jesus is interested in the details and even makes sure that what He orders is taken care of. In Luke 22:10-12 Jesus spells out very specifically how this meal is to be prepared for. Understand that the details of the food prep were spelled out in the old testament. But Jesus goes even further to make sure they had the details for their specific circumstances. Jesus is very interested in the details of our lives and providing for us when we follow what He asks us to do. When we are obedient God, not only will He provide for us But He wants to. We really do make it more difficult then God intends it to be.

A third interesting tidbit here is the Luke's perspective of the last supper. In Luke 22 they are addressing the fact that Jesus said one of them would betray Him. Then the very next verse we see that worrying about betraying Jesus turns into who will be the greatest among them. WOW, our sin nature at it's finest. Only as people could we be seen going from defending ourselves against accusation to worrying about being the leader. Now from other perspectives we know that a little more happens here. But this is a perspective of the meal that cannot be ignored. And Jesus doesn't rebuke it, instead He takes advantage of the teachable moment and does one of the first leadership trainings to prepare them to lead the first Church. We learn from this argument that the leader among us must be willing to be the least. They must be willing to show up first and leave last. Willing to make sure the needs of everyone else is taken care of before their own. "The greatest among you should take the lowest rank and the leader should be like a servant." Not the easiest words to swallow but it is truth! And we even know we are more likely to follow the one who serves us that the one who serves self.

I am sure there is more but here is my final lesson from the Last Supper. In verse 19 Jesus tells the disciples to "do this to remember me". Jesus gaves us instructions on how to remember Him but then I also really appreciate what He does shortly after this in the telling of the last supper. He addresses Peter and says, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have pleaded in prayer for you, Simon, that your faith should not fail. So when you have repented and turned to me again, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus pleads in prayer for Him. If Peter is predestined then why plead in prayer for him except that prayer works and changes things. And in fact the Bible tells us in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God wants all to be saved. So when Jesus died on the cross He wasn't dying for some but for all. Jesus recognizes that Peter will need to repent and return to Him, but when He does Jesus is communicating to Peter that he is restored to continue doing what God has called him to do.

Lastly, there is no record that Michael Angelo was there to be able to paint a portrait of the last supper. Just saying.