7holycrap funny thoughts, Life Lessons

Resolutions, Resolve and Making Change Stick!

Today I had a revelation about my year coming up. I was driving back from skiing and was trying to think through a meeting that I had to make with a person and thought, “I can’t really do Tuesday’s because I have pastor’s meeting on that day.” The only issue is that I am no longer working for a church and don’t have that obligation each week anymore. Generally, for the past 20 years of my adult life, I have had a “pastor’s meeting” in some form or fashion every week. I know that now working in the television world that I will still have some kind of staff meeting, but it will be at a time I choose. I then called my wife, had a good laugh and continued to drive home. Then I was thinking about how many times we make decisions in life based on the familiar and not the truth. I was modifying my meeting time with something that didn’t even exist in my life anymore because my mind had been programmed to remember staff meetings every Tuesday.

Now think about something you want to change in your life this new year. It is not as simple as just deciding to do something different. Deciding to change is definitely a start, but not the deciding factor of whether your life is modified or not. There is going to need to be what I call “repeated disciplines” that you commit to in the process of your life each day. One of the BEST ways to shift thinking is to read the Bible. Even if it is not something necessarily spiritual, reading the Bible can have amazing effects in your life. I know many people think the Bible is just a dusty book of life suggestions, but it has been such an integral part of my life growing up and now as a person who tries to let Jesus be seen in everything I do.

I want to challenge you this new year to make reading the Bible a staple in your daily life if you are deciding to make some kind of positive change. You can start with the book of John which is such a great book about the love of Jesus and is a fairly easy read. I would read The New Living Translation or New International Readers Version instead of the good ol trusty King James which can be difficult to understand. Maybe you already read the Bible each day but you are reading it out of obligation only. Maybe that needs to be your “change” this year in that you pray and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal new truth to you before you read one word. I know that I always get more out of the Bible when I do that before I start to read.

Have a wonderful new year this week and do more than make resolutions that are filled with good intentions but lack a positive game plan for execution. Praying for you all!

7holycrap Life Lessons

Good Riddance to Moderate Christianity!

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The days of “moderate Christianity” are coming to close, and I say good riddance! I was talking with a couple of different people this past week about all of the “anti-Christmas” situations that have come up in the news. My favorite so far was a Fire Station in some town that had a “Merry Christmas” sign on it. An atheist group filed a complaint with the city so the fire department took their sign down, in compliance, and put up a new sign that read, “Happy Birthday Jesus, We Love You.” Each of these people I was talking to said that it was amazing to see the attack on Christ and Christianity in society and I said, “I think it’s great!” I said, “I think the opposition to Christ that is happening in America is good because it’s weeding out moderate Christians who only have a familiarity with Christ and not a real relationship.”

Never forget that your belief in anything will only have its personal value tested when it is opposed, and this includes being a follower of Christ. Jesus even mentions opposition in the Bible in Matthew 10:22 and also in Mark 13:13 where it says believers in Christ would not just be opposed but hated but that those who endured to the end would be saved. This was not only a forewarning of attacks but even a CONFIRMATION that they were living properly! It was also a word given for followers to make sure and count the cost of following after Jesus. I am not sure in today’s world of consumer Christianity that much cost counting is done before deciding to follow Christ, which makes me very sad. I am not saying this as a judgment but more of an observation of the society we live in and what people are willing to give up for Christ versus giving things up for self. If this wave of challenges concerning Christ and people who follow Jesus will help people get off the fence with their beliefs, I think it could actually be something amazing and good for the church. It can also be a good lesson for Christians to learn to lead with the love of Christ (shocker) instead of conjuring up a lecture ABOUT the love of Christ. Jesus’ words were ALWAYS followed up with action so if I say I am following Him, then my actions better line up in the same way. Have a wonderful holiday and Merry Christmas!

7holycrap Life Lessons

Keith Elder and His Impact on my Life

I was up hiking today and happened to check my Facebook and saw that a hero in the faith for me had passed and graduated to heaven. Keith Elder was such a larger than life person for me, literally and figuratively, when I was growing up in Montana in the Assemblies of God. I was heavily involved in my church and their Royal Ranger (Christian Boy Scouts) program as well as the youth group when I grew older. I can remember the first time I shook Keith’s hand. It was like I only had a wrist because his hand was so big that I couldn’t even see mine.

Growing up, there were three people in my life that helped me know and then “seal the deal” that I wanted to be a pastor. My 3rd grade Sunday School teacher Carol Davis, my youth pastor and best man at my wedding Lee Terry and Keith Elder. As I reflect on the impact of Keith in my life, it is interesting to see how God allowed me to interact with these three people at important times that formed me into the person I am today.

My greatest memories of Keith were in Hungry Horse Montana at Glacier Bible Camp every summer through my Junior High and Senior High years. It was always fun to see my dad and Keith hug whenever we would get to camp because they both had such big bellies! From Keith calling all of the kids at camp “suckas” to his super low voice when he was warning the girls and boys to stay out of each other areas of camp. His explanation of the “hand holding rule” at camp was always hysterical and epic. He would explain that you held the pinky on Monday, then two fingers on Tuesday and so on until you had bliss in your heart because on Friday, when you got to hold the whole hand. I remember sneaking out of our cabins at night when I was at camp. Keith had a “Big Bear” Polaris 4-wheeler (funny because that was his Royal Ranger FCF name and nickname) and we would know we were safe to goof around the camp until we heard the roar of that engine in the night driving to the guy’s area and we would either hide or run to our cabins. I have so many great memories of friends from Montana and our shenanigans.

One of the most impactful moments of my life, and something that would shape how I dealt with students through the years and deal with adults now, came in a staff chapel when I was attending summer camp as a counselor. There was someone asking Keith about how to deal with kids that were getting out of hand and causing problems and Keith said the most profound thing. He said, “Always remember that kids don’t cause problems, they reveal problems.” Then I remember him starting to cry in the way that only Keith could cry. He had tears absolutely streaming down his face and his voice would never ever break or even quiver. He would go on to explain that the camp was often the only time that kids acting out would have away from the dysfunction and often horror of living at home. I truly believe that Keith was a man with a heart that was larger than the physical size of his body. Seeing him love on kids and their lives being changed at camps were hallmark moments in my life and caused me to hunger to do the same for youth when I grew up and to help people see Jesus in me.

I can only hope that someday, when I am dead and gone, that people will not remember me for my love of technology or my laugh or my multi-colored socks. But they would remember that I loved people like Jesus and took the time to not only talk like Christ but actually act like him as well.  I pray for his wife Marlys and kids D’awn & Kent and their families mourning his loss on this earth, but I can also hear Keith at the pearly gates saying in his low-tone Fat Albert voice, “Hey, Hey, Hey…I’m finally home.”

 

7holycrap Life Lessons

A 6.5 Millon Dollar Lesson on “Value”

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The image above is what a 6.5 MILLION dollar black and white photograph looks like. When I read the title of the news article about this picture from Peter Lik, I thought it was a misprint. I couldn’t believe that someone would pay that much money for a photo. Not even something that someone took years to create with their hands but just found that perfect moment to take a picture and made more money than most people could make in a lifetime. Even as I type this blog it’s still hard to register in my head.

Then I thought about God sending Jesus to die for mankind and the price that was paid on a cross. This is also something that completely dumbfounds me. God looked at the “picture” of our lives and decided that it had an incredible value and worth paying “top dollar” for, with the death of His son. As you celebrate Christmas this season, please realize that God sees value in you even when you feel like a “plain old black and white photo of a deserted dusty canyon.” His love for us is so boundless and his belief in our ability to withstand the pressures of life with Him at the helm is limitless.

Enjoy these few days leading up to Christmas and know that you have value in God’s eyes. It’s one of the reasons why I asked God many years ago to be the driving force behind everything I do. I encourage you to take a few moments today and think about how you see yourself and what you are motivated and driven by. If it is not a relationship with God, I encourage you to give Him a chance this Christmas season. Praying for you all.

7holycrap Jesus thoughts, Life Lessons

The Time it takes to Compliment Someone

I went running this morning and was thinking about ways to show the love of Jesus to people that I meet. One idea that I had was to make a running shirt that says “Stop me if you need prayer” on the front so that people will see it and I can interact if they want. Then I was thinking about the amount of time it takes to compliment someone about anything. I tried out my little “mental experiment” with a lady who was walking her dog and told her she had a pretty dog. Her eyes lit up and she said, “thank you!” I also saw a lady who lived in a beautiful house right off of the trail and told her that she had a beautiful house and she said, “thanks!” Those two smiles and compliments took less that two seconds each!

Now there is something you need to understand if you don’t live in or are from Colorado. People are not so friendly when it comes to being on their property or at their house. But when you meet or greet them outside on trails hiking or running, skiing at any one of many ski hills or just walking out in the sun, people are just different and much more friendly. I knew this from living here for almost fourteen years and understanding the culture.

The point I’m trying to make is to always remember one simple fact when considering your ability to be like Christ on this earth; we are all just part of the process. This sounds like a “duh” statement but it is really profound if you think about what it means. I truly believe that we get so caught up in the last step of someone giving his or her life over to Jesus. We forget we are part of a greater plan and need to realize that even small acts of kindness can lead to a person’s life being forever changed by giving God control of how they live their life. We never know how being kind to someone or something as simple as a compliment is going to be a catalyst to put them in a better mood and for the next person being obedient to God being able to talk about what Jesus did for them and planting another positive seed in their life.

So basically those two simple compliments were, quite possibly, the two most important interactions I had all day and took less that two seconds each! What an incredible shift from looking only at the result of the actions we take on this earth with our walks with God to just being obedient in the moment and trusting God for the results and letting Him get the glory.

Have a great rest of the week and know that I am praying for God’s love and Holy Spirit to guide and direct what you do in the moment and that you will learn to leave the rest up to Him.

7holycrap The Book

Pre-Thanksgiving Book Snippet for your reading pleasure….Good things about being Sick

This is another section of my book I wanted to post before the thanksgiving craziness of tomorrow! Enjoy!

God designed the church body to lift one another up and be there for one another. I started something amazing with my Facebook account that I know completely came from God. I take a day of the week and update my status with asking for prayer requests that I will lift up during that day. It is amazing, the number of people who respond to me and ask for me to pray for them. I also encourage them to post testimonies about what God did through prayer to help encourage those still with a prayer request. I do not consider myself someone who knows everything about terminal disease or being sick for many years. I actually feel blessed that I could have a few years of pain to experience the things I did so I can somewhat relate to people of all walks of life who have some sort of crap going on in their lives. I was sick just long enough to have the “we don’t know what else we can do” conversations with the doctor, have a major test done on my body and be sent home to wait for the results hoping it wasn’t cancer. I was sick just long enough to have the privilege of spending some time at the Arthritis Clinic in the Remicade room, hearing so many heart-breaking stories.

I consider my experiences to be wonderful opportunities to have a peek into the lives of people who were dealing with life-altering disease and to encourage me in a new way to pray for them and believe for God’s best for them. I have let the pain I went through be a catalyst, of sorts, to help me understand how to pray and to have a heart that goes out to every person who has a serious need in their lives. If you don’t know Jesus as your best friend, then you really need to have that connection in your life to get a full grasp of what I am saying. This is more than just having “good and positive thoughts” about a person. It is doing something in the spiritual realm to lift a person’s needs before a God who will always be there to listen and to help you use your difficult circumstances for a greater good than just getting through the inevitable pain in life.

Holy Crap Moment:
Being a “strong” person, and just keeping good and positive 
thoughts going will not make real change in your life and probably won’t be enough to bring you through really tough times. When you have a relationship with Jesus though, you change from just trying to survive by your positive mental outlook alone, to now having a deeply personal connection to God, and it’s His love for you and His power at work in you, making real and lasting change.

7holycrap The Book

Excerpt from Chapter 6 of Holy Crap – Change Challenges

This excerpt from my book is one of the “change challenges” that I encourage readers to do. Enjoy!

2nd “Change Challenge”:  Have an attitude of gratefulness

Think about this statement: gratefulness provides an atmosphere for change.  This was another one of those principles which I didn’t understand until about 4 years into my sickness.  If you haven’t noticed, I am trying to set you up for greatness.  I want you to be able to read the pages of this book and learn from my mistakes.  I am not saying I did everything wrong, the past few years, but I did enough things wrong to maybe help you be further along than I was in my pain.
There is a great example of thankfulness in the book of Luke in the Bible about ten lepers (outcasts with a terrible skin disease)Luke 17:11-19 (NCV)    11 While Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, He was going through the area between Samaria and Galilee. As He came into a small town, ten men who had a skin disease met Him there. They did not come close to Jesus but called to Him, “Jesus! Master! Have mercy on us!”
When Jesus saw the men, He said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” As the ten men were going, they were healed. When one of them saw that he was healed, he went back to Jesus, praising God in a loud voice.     Then He bowed down at Jesus’ feet and thanked Him. (And this man was a Samaritan.)  Jesus said, “Weren’t ten men healed? Where are the other nine? Is this Samaritan the only one who came back to thank God?” Then Jesus said to him, “Stand up and go on your way. You were healed because you believed.”

Did you read those verses correctly? There were ten lepers who had an incredibly terrible skin disease and were outcasts to society. It says that nine went on their merry way, yet only ONE came back to actually thank Jesus for what He did!  This portion of scripture always floors me with the contrast of gratefulness and ungratefulness, all in the same section of scripture.  The one made the effort to go back to where Jesus was to thank Him, but the others so quickly forgot that, not only were they healed but an amazing lifestyle change had just been given to them.

I believe gratefulness is a key element in making it through a rough time in your life.  It takes the sting out of a painful situation by focusing on what you DO have instead of being concerned with what you DON’T have.

7holycrap The Book

One Doctor Down, A Whole Lot More to GO (excerpt from my book “Holy Crap”)

Below is an excerpt from my book I am working on today. I can remember this day like it was yesterday and the pain like it was last night. Praying today for all of those going through a painful situation in their lives.

I remember the day when I came to the end of my care with Dr. Goldstein, my ophthalmologist. Our youth were getting ready to go on a missions trip to Brazil. It had been planned and arranged for many months by Yolanda and my youth staff, I had done the recruitment for it, and I had every intention of leading the students on it. But at the doctor’s office, he told me that there was nothing else that he could do for me, and he sent me home. I knew that I was not going to be able to go on the missions trip with my students because of the condition of my eye. I lay on the bed with Yolanda and just looked at her and asked what was going to happen to me? It was one of the darkest hours of my life.

Holy Crap Moment

            If you are in a place of despair with something going on in your life, please know that Jesus cares for you; don’t give up.
Even as I type this section, I am praying for your hope to be sustained as you read these words. See. There IS someone
praying for you in your situation and believing you are going to make it!!

I knew that people were praying for me, but I couldn’t even pray for myself. All those years in Royal Rangers at church (Christian Boy Scouts), all the years on the Bible Quiz team, all those Wednesday nights growing up in high school and leading worship for the youth group, four and a half years earning two Bible college degrees, ten years and four churches of leading youth ministry, and I couldn’t even say the name of Jesus. As I think back, that is probably a harder realization than even the pain I was going through at that point. All those years of doing “good Jesus stuff,” and I couldn’t even say His name. You may ask, “Brian, why are you telling me this? I thought this was a book to show me that all I need to say is “Jesus” and everything is taken care of.” I am not discounting the power of the name of Jesus, but I am saying that I realized from my pain, during those years, that I didn’t really know who Jesus was. I could read about him, sing about him, and even preach about him but I didn’t know him.

7holycrap The Book

Holy Crap book Update!

The first draft of my book is done and I am having my second meeting with my editor next week! I was thinking about the timing and how long it took me to finish the first draft of my book and realized that it took me as long to finish writing my book as the five years I was sick. At first I thought, “what a slacker!” But then I was talking with my wife about all of the things going on in the world and that this book is in God’s timing and really happening at a perfect time.

I will keep everyone updated on the final timing of everything and when it will be available. I am thinking of doing an ebook release first just to get it out there and then prayerfully getting a publishing house to pick it up. I am just trusting that God will get it into the hands of the right people to have the highest level of effectiveness. Please be praying with me that my book will be a tool that God can use for His glory in the lives of people ready to give up or who think they can’t trust God anymore.

7holycrap Uncategorized

The home stretch for the Holy Crap book!

Well, I am coming into the home stretch of finishing my book and getting it to the editor! I am excited about finishing something i feel has been therapeutic as well as an act of obedience of God to help others going through crap in life. This week is interesting with so many friends and family dealing with emotional and physical pain. So many reminders that I need to press on and finish it up! Have a great week and blessings!