7holycrap Holy Crap

A Key to WINNING the Coronavirus FIGHT

I can remember three times when debilitating fear struck me when i was sick.

One was when I had been sick for a few months and Yolanda and I were sitting on the couch at our house waiting for the results of a CAT scan of my head/eye area. I remember laying on the couch and not saying anything to Yolanda and my mind wandering from cancer to anything that could be worse. The test came back negative and the doctor said that everything (minus my eye situation) looked normal.

I can also remember being sent to the hospital to get a test for Grand Wegeners disease as a possible solution to why my eye was flaring up. I remember laying in the hospital before being admitted to the ICU and singing, with tears in my eyes, an old Imperials song “He Didn’t Lift Us Up To Let Us Down”. I got my kidney biopsy with a three day stay in ICU to make sure I didn’t have internal bleeding and released with another “good” report that my immune system was not functioning correctly and the core issue of my eye flaring up. This didn’t help where I was mentally and struggling to get a foothold on my disease.

The third time was when I took a trip to Barnes Eye Institute in St. Louis Missouri to meet with one of the best retinal doctors in the country. Barnes is known as the “Mayo Clinic for eyes” and I had high hopes that they would be able to give clarity to why my eye was acting up and giving me issues. I remember sitting in the examination chair with my eye dilated (which I have and always will hate) and the doctor taking a look in my eye and saying, “It looks like your doctor in Colorado is doing all he can. I don’t have another solution to your issue.” It was like someone punched me in the stomach.

Each of these situations gave me greater insight into what despair looked like when someone faces an issue, especially when it comes to fear and health. The best way I could describe what I was feeling during my entire time of being sick was like I had claustrophobia but it was coming from inside me and not from outside forces. Meaning, there was nothing I felt like I could do or anywhere I could go to make it better. It was like I was drowning inside myself with water pouring down my throat and an anchor tied around my foot.

I learned that when i got sick I knew Jesus for everyone else besides myself. In essence, I had lost my first love with Christ and thought that I was in full control of my destiny as a youth pastor and able to just cruise through life because I was a good person and doing the work of the Lord. I believe that God had to interrupt my life so that I could recalibrate and learn how to trust him even in the darkest days or nights.

I share these things to illustrate what it was like to lose control, or what I THOUGHT I was in control of, in my life. You see, we live our lives with a false sense of controlling the things around us or even our own health. Of course, we can be wise and eat healthy, get sleep, etc. but the reality of life is that we cannot prevent all bad things from happening to us. I can almost remember to the day after being sick for so many years when i finally let go and said to God, “I recognize that I cannot control this situation and whatever you have for me is what I will receive.” After I prayed that prayer, things turned around for me. It was not that I was succumbing to defeat but deciding to live my life in SURRENDER.


It is funny to think about how I reacted when I got sick and how I grew up with important outdoor life skills. I do a lot of hiking and always have from when it was a kid. Growing up in Montana, we were always taught one simple and important fact about getting lost in the woods. It wasn’t to bring enough extra supplies or know how to make a shelter, how to sterilize water or even build a fire. It was to STAY CALM. If you lose your head in adverse situations then you already start at a disadvantage. I even had a time when I was hiking a 14er (a 14,000+ ft mountain, for those of you not from Colorado) and got off trail and started going the wrong way up the mountain. I was assessing our situation and making plans to stay overnight in the wilderness but was able to think logically through the situation and not get nervous. Also because of keeping my head, we were able to find the trail again and get back to the car with limited problems. So even with all my learning and understanding of keeping calm in adverse situations I still “lost my head” when i got sick because I felt out of control with limited information about my sickness and why I was dealing with a rotten eyeball.

It is similar in seeing people’s response to not having a lot of information about COVID19 so they spin out of control and (for example) buy up rolls and rolls of toilet paper! There was nothing any of us could have done to prevent where we are and the only thing we can do is STAY CALM, trust in God and take patient steps to get through this season of life. In fact, those who don’t have a relationship with Jesus will be watching how Christians react to this situation and if we are going to walk in the same worry and fear that others do or are we going to show where our hope is; in CHRIST alone. I know that the peace I feel now in this situation is from spending so many years in fear when I was sick with my eye condition and see the results; loss of sleep, tearing down of my trust in God and pulling everyone around me into my black hole of defeat. Christians need to now PROVE all the worship songs we have sung for years in church and take a stand against the enemy and his lies and schemes.


Praying for you all and that the PEACE and love of God surrounds you like a flood and that you will NOT listen to the lies of the devil who wants to try and flex his power when the ONLY power he has is what we allow him to have in our lives. That you will take this time now to develop your relationship to Jesus or maybe start on the journey of making Him the Lord of your life. Once you experience HIS peace there is no virus, no disease no earth-shattering event that can keep you from mental and emotional well being that people have searched for and never found without Christ.

7holycrap Life Lessons

Why Birding is Just Like Listening To God

Bee Eater
(This pic is of a Bee Eater…eating a Bee that Yolanda took on our trip to Nepal last year)

Yolanda and I went “birding” over the weekend. If you don’t know what “birding” is, it’s finding a place that birds hang out, getting a decent camera and/or binoculars, and walking around trying to see or take pictures of the rarest ones you can find. The key is to go out looking with the realization that you may not see anything or you may hit the jackpot and see a ton of them. Yolanda has gotten some amazing (and I mean AMAZING) pictures from all the places we have been. It is like every bird is just waiting for our car to pull up and then they have a little bird fight to see who gets to fly in front of her camera and get shot (in a good way).

When I go, I am mainly going to support her but I also feel like it is an intentional time of not talking about work (because you are supposed to be quiet and not talk) and for some exercise. I have to admit, I get just about as excited as she does to see an owl or another rare breed. But for me, it is more about just getting out and getting away from the grind of life.

When you are birding it is very important that you remember a simple recipe for success. No matter how far you walk or where you go looking for birds, you need to occasionally stop, look up and listen. You can be out walking around and a great bird can be in the tree next to you but if you don’t stop, look up and listen then you will probably miss a great opportunity.

It is the same with listening to God. I can get so busy in life with my “walk” with Jesus that I can forget sometimes in life to just “stop, look up and listen” for things that God may want to share with me. I am a firm believer that God is always speaking to us and willing to be found but we are the ones who need to learn to slow down in life sometimes and be willing to wait on God and his voice.

Sometimes I can intentionally “stop, look up and listen” with God and I don’t hear a peep (get it? Haha) If I am consistently stopping, looking, and listening for Him I raise my chances of hearing something from God AND I train myself to learn that it is not even always about the grand revelation that God would share with me. I think the peaceable life that God teaches about in the Bible is 20% Spiritual and 80% just learning to shut up and listen. Listening to others. Listening to those who love us and want to bring Godly correction or even God speaking himself to us.

I know that going birding has taught me more than just the importance of not talking, which I still fail at regularly. It has taught me that the world around me will let me “run” in life as fast as I want, even to the point of burnout. If I am not taking time out of life to just BE and not try and DO, I will allow the world to dictate the pace of my life and not God. When I intentionally put the brakes on and take time to enjoy nature AND use that time to listen to what God has to say, I take back control of my life and essentially put myself on God’s time.

I use birding to slow down my life and shut up. What do you use? When trouble hits in life the peace we find in those times of quietness and listening to God will be a foundation to help get you through. Think today about what you do to change pace and “stop, look up and listen.”

7holycrap Holy Crap, Life Lessons

My Near Death Experience from Chapter 1 in “Holy Crap; Finding God’s Presence In Your Pain”

icefishing
Excerpt from Chapter 1: Holy Crap! This Book Is For Everyone! 
“When I was kid, I would ride with my grandpa occasionally to a favorite lake to go ice fishing. I can remember one trip where I thought it would be fun to jump up and down on the cracking ice around the edge of the lake. I liked the sound the ice would make when I would jump up and down on it, not realizing how dangerous it was for me to be at the lake’s shore on ice that was not completely frozen. I was right next to the shore and jumped way up in the air and came down on a piece of ice that gave way under my feet. I fell into the ice-cold water a good distance away from where my grandpa was sitting. The ice under my feet was like a slide under the water, and I couldn’t keep my feet under me and started to slip under the ice. I tried climbing out of the lake but would just slip further into the icy water. I reasoned that all I could do was turn back out towards the middle of the lake and break the ice further away from shore until I could get out to thicker ice and climb out. I can remember thinking that I was going to die. Well, needless to say, I ended up pulling myself out and getting back to the safety of my grandpa. I learned a valuable lesson that day about icy conditions on a lake and did not try anything like that again.
 
I share this to help you understand something: when you are in the middle of crap, your primary thinking is to just survive. I understand the feeling of despair and the instinct of survival in an adverse situation.”

Click here to order your author signed copy of Holy Crap today!

7holycrap Holy Crap, Life Lessons

The Simple Truth of God’s Love

gods-love-for-you

We have been trained to believe that we need to become something before we can be accepted by God. The truth is that we can NEVER become who we can be without accepting God’s love for us just the way we are.

Your Mission Today and EVERYDAY: Accept God’s love for you and watch your life begin to change for the better!

7holycrap Holy Crap, Life Lessons

Talkers are Praised While Listeners Go Unnoticed

Listening
I cannot say that I know very many people who are great listeners, including myself. Someone who, when their name comes up, is known to others as an exceptional listener. At the same time, we can name numerous amazing speakers when it comes to people we think have full command of the words that come out of their mouth. It is an interesting thing to me that we praise talkers but great listeners in life go unnoticed. Maybe it’s because we feel like if we don’t share how we feel we will not be able to change our corner of the world. Maybe you grew up in a large family and if you were not able to express yourself well that you were ignored or even forgotten.

As a follower of Christ, I was ALWAYS taught growing up the importance of telling others about my relationship with Jesus. Even now, Christians far and wide believe the most important thing is telling the world about how much Jesus loves them. We even sing worship songs about “telling” and build vision/mission statements around talking! When was the last time you read the vision statement of a religious organization that says, “We will listen to the broken and answer with love first and words second.”

Please hear me. I am not poking holes in religious organizations or churches but just making a statement about maybe some of the pacing we do as followers of Christ that tries to mimic the people who don’t have a relationship with Jesus yet. The world is all about telling others who they are, how they feel and the convictions they have and operate by.

There is an incredible power exhibited when you LISTEN to someone who either disagrees with your stance on something or even says things based from a place of hurt or pain. Stop trying to come up with a witty antidote to something being told to you and just tell yourself to shut off your mouth and engage your ears and mind to just listen.

The amazing byproduct of listening is that it encourages others to hear what YOU have to say because they felt honored that you would listen to them. So it is not whether you ONLY listen or ONLY talk but that listening opens up the channels of communication with others and helps you share what is on your heart. Maybe it is a priority of listening with a result of talking. Even Jesus would interact with people in a question format, listen to what they would have to say and then share. The greatest communicator to walk the earth was first and foremost the greatest listener, and He is who I want to be.

7holycrap Holy Crap

Take Heart and Trust God!

John 16_33 Pic
John 16:33
…In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

The world will be full of problems and trouble of all kinds. Even in the book of John in the Bible, there is a factual statement Jesus makes about problems and pain life saying that “this world will have trouble.” So it is not a question of IF there will be pain but WHEN and to what degree.

The term “take heart” means to evaluate your heart and where your trust is in difficult situations. This verse was not when Jesus and the disciples were lounging next to a lake eating figs and enjoying the cool fresh breeze. It was before Jesus’ arrest and the beginning of a very difficult time for his followers.

Today, think about where your trust is located. Is it in temporal earthly possessions? Is it in your looks or your personality? Or is it in Jesus who is the one who has overcome the world and all the destruction that will continue to occur around us? Find hope, peace and strength in Jesus and maybe start to give him control of even one area of life. You can do it. I am praying for you and believing for the BEST in your life.

7holycrap Holy Crap

GPS….Just…WOW!

GPS
I was typing an address into my car’s GPS the other day and thought, “Wow. We have come such a long way with navigation in this world.”

I can remember when I used to have to just know where to go and my own crappy directions. We also used to go to AAA to get a “TripTik” for longer vacations. It was basically a map that was spiral bound at the top and about 4 inches wide and 8.5 inches long with your route cut into 25 miles increments. The AAA agent would have to use a stamper to let you know where construction or obstructions were going to be on a trip. There was no guarantee that you would not get lost using the map because it was still up to you to find the turns.

I have voice-activated navigation in my car that has real time traffic as well as a Garmin in Yolanda’s car that you can wake up by saying its name and tell it where you want to go. It just boggles my mind how technology has advanced when trying to get around.

Then I thought about the life we live in general. What are we allowing to give us direction in life? Is it trusting ourselves and our knowledge of what we have experienced to help us navigate life, like when I first started driving? Is it just based on other people we know and their experiences as in the case of going to AAA to get a TripTik? Or is it looking to God with a global network of satellite “life” images and accurate positioning to trust in our journeys? I know now that if I were to not have GPS in my vehicles that it would be much more difficult to get to where I wanted to go and I would most likely get lost.

When we give God control of our lives we basically say, “God, I know you have mapped out every place that I would need or ever want to go and I trust in following your directions in everything I do.” The key as well with GPS is that you still need to make the turns!! You don’t put in the location you want to go and then just sit in your car. You need to still drive and follow the directions.

Think today about giving navigational control of your life to God by reading the Bible and seeking God in prayer. If you don’t know how to do that, then click the “Connect” button above and send me an email. I will be more than happy to help you calibrate and start using the “God GPS” in your life!
Have a great day!

7holycrap Life Lessons

Going Through Pain is not enough to bring Glory to God

I have had two people I know who were followers of Christ in the past few weeks go home to heaven.  I was considering their lives and the immense testimonies they each were to the people around them in the face of imminent death.  I was thinking about how everyone, at some point in their life, will go through pain.  It really isn’t a question of “if” as much as it is a question of “when” because we live in a world where things don’t seem fair at times.  When I went through my eye challenges a couple of years ago I thought that because I went through the “pains of life” that I brought glory to God just for going through them but I don’t think that is true now that I look back.  I can remember sitting at home when I was out of work and instead of asking God for strength and to use my situation for HIS good I was wondering what it would be like to go blind and considering all the life adjustments I was going to have to make. (I would actually take showers with my eyes closed to see if I could function without being able to see.  That’s how far I had come from faith in God taking care of me.  Not good)  I had a perfect opportunity to give God glory and instead I complained about the condition of my flesh.

Think about it; if everyone goes through hard times and you are just another person who made it through, how is that a reflection of God’s glory in your life?  Maybe you just got lucky and barely survived like everyone else.  The only thing that would set you apart is that your attitude lined up with God’s word and example of focusing on His greatness and not your life’s goofiness.  There were definitely times where I was giving the example of a selfish person who was only thinking of myself and how the pain I was dealing with was affecting me and not thinking of my wife, my parents, my sister and the other people around me who love me and didn’t want to see me sick. 

Appreciating pain leads to being thankful for pain. In other words; if I can appreciate, or value, what God is allowing to happen to me I may not be pleased about it but I can learn to be thankful for it.  The degree that I appreciate pain is the degree that God can use pain for my good and not for destruction.  The key comes from developing that trust relationship with God so that when pain comes I don’t see it as punishment but an opportunity to let Him shine through me and through the circumstances of life.  Pain in life where we don’t see the healing we are expecting are perfect situations for people to watch our lives and see how we deal with pain and be encouraged by it.

So here is the reason for the blog post today: if you are going through pain now in life congratulations! You have the perfect opportunity to give God glory that you could never give him if everything was going well.  If you are not going through something in life right now, you have the chance to develop your relationship and trust in Christ to a point that when your day of testing comes you will have a chance to lead others to Christ by a Godly attitude in middle of your storm.  This stuff is never easy, but that’s why, as a man of God, I want to learn how to deal with pain so that even in the bad times I can give God glory in my life.

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The amazing blessing to our family…Wilson

Today Yolanda and I had to put our little dog Wilson to sleep.  He was 16 years old and had been getting sick the past few days so we took him in this am to be put to sleep.  It was a sober reminder to me about the impact that Wilson has had on our lives.  Whenever you have a death of any kind in a family, you begin to talk and think about the life that was once a part of the family.  I know some would say, “he was just a dog” but Yolanda and I have never been without him as a couple.  She Got Wilson as a puppy when we were first dating and we have had him ever since.  We were talking about all the times that Wilson could have died from just doing stooopid things like getting out of the car on a trip from Florida to Springfield Missouri and running the WRONG WAY up the highway towards a birm in the road.  Or when he saw a cat at our house in Wyoming late one night and forgot he was on a leash and took a tumble on his head down eight concrete steps.  The best and most endearing memory I will have of him is when I was REALLY sick with my eye situation.  I remember one time when I was so sick that I didn’t want Yolanda or anyone else around including my dog.  Wilson knew something was wrong and kept trying to get closer to me on the couch.  I finally pushed him away with my foot, but he kept on creaping up to me.  I love my wife and she knows this with everything we have been through the past five years, but I can say without a doubt, that I probably would have killed myself if it wasn’t for Wilson.  I just had no reason to get out of bed some days and sometimes Wilson was the only reason I had to get up and get going with my day.  The mornings were always the hardest for me when I was sick, but Wilson was always right there with me.  There was a stretch of 11 months when I was out of work where I was with Wilson all day sometimes.  We definitely spent some good times together and now that he is gone I have a new respect for what he meant to me in this life.  I want to encourage you today with the death of my little dog Wilson.  My God loved me so much that he gave Yolanda and I a little Yorkie when we were first married but could see down the path of my life that I was going to need Wilson at my greatest point of need.  He gave me Wilson when he knew I was going to come to a place of giving up on life and needing to have a reason to go on.  The God I serve is so conerned about me that he would give our family that little dog to get my mind off of my eye rotting out of my head and on Wilson.  God knew I was going to have struggles with believing He was there but knew that Wilson could be that bridge for me to figure out it was God all along giving me what I needed exactly when I needed it.  Yolanda and I will miss Wilson, but that little dog served his purpose in this life and I am determined to do the same.  I will live my life for the cause of Christ and for the people around me that need to see that Jesus can take care of EVERYTHING they are going through.  This little blog post may seem a little dramatic, but you need to have stepped in my shoes the past five years to understand what Wilson and my God have meant to me.  It was Wilson’s love of me that kept me going and I know that it is the love I have for people that will help them in their time of need.  Hopefully, I will be that bridge for people to get from seeing a person loving them and lifting them up to a God that wants to know them and have a real relationship with them.  If you want to know more about Jesus and giving him more important role in your life, then send me and email and I will be in touch!  pbrian7@yahoo.com