7holycrap Jesus thoughts, Life Lessons, Uncategorized

Growth from the Rocks of Life in 2013

Small_Tree_photo

I took this picture while up hiking a couple of weeks ago and thought it was pretty cool.  It’s a small tree growing from a rock formation that we stopped by while in the mountains. I was thinking today about this coming year and all the challenges that are ahead.  This small tree is flourishing in an environment that would not be considered ideal for growing strong and healthy.  It is hard for me, even as a pastor, to always see the importance of making the most of every situation in life because our flesh wants to always be focused on being in control and that includes our surroundings.  When this little seed landed between the crack in the rock it found soil, or something sustainable for its life, and began to grow.  Maybe that small seed is you at the start of this 2013.  You don’t feel like you are in “proper” soil to grow and be the person you want to be.  Maybe you need to just look around at what can sustain you and let God bring the growth.  As I mentioned in my New Years Day thoughts about giving God control of your life this year in the face of the unknown, really think about what you are doing to give yourself a fighting chance at happiness this year.  When i was sick, I was tempted (and actually did for a while) walk the path of anger at God for the things I thought He was needlessly allowing in my life. But in reality, I see what he was doing in the difficulty to help me understand the importance of giving complete trust in all parts of my life to Him.  Let 2013 be a year of growth for you but not because of the perfect soil and growing conditions that the world and its marketing will tell you exists.  Life is about ups and downs but the one thing that can stay consistent is a relationship with Jesus.  let growth come out of the hard or stony times of your life by trusting that God can bring the increase in any and all circumstances and situations.

7holycrap Life Lessons

Living a Facebook-less Life in December

If you are reading this blog then you really like me more than just to follow me on Facebook or Twitter.  That is because I have taken a break from social media in general for the rest of the month to quiet my life down.  I felt like I was investing too much of my emotional and physical energy observing the digital lives of my friends online. Now i am a social person anyways so social media for me was just an extension of my natural personality of enjoying the company of others.  But I noticed myself becoming addicted to Facebook and checking my “likes, comments and messages” on a non-normal frequency.  I feel like the break has been good for me in that I deleted the app off of my phone, logged out on all my computers so I would not click into it in a time of casual web surfing and generally unplugged.  It has only been 10 days, but it feels like I have been off of it for a longer time than that timeframe.  I never want my physical interaction with people to be superseded by my digital life online.  One thing I have reflected on while being away from Facebook and Twitter is knowing that I need to stay more disciplined in not trying to get into online disagreements when I know I am not going to convince someone of my point of view.  I want to focus on things that will help people consider where they are in life and to make changes, even if they are incremental, to begin to see good change in their lives.  If we would all see our importance to the world wide web, even if it’s small, we would act differently and probably look to make investments in the lives of others. All of this to say that I think its good for people to take breaks from social media so you don’t lose yourself and think about the investment or withdrawal you are making in the digital world.  This Christmas season, be thinking of ways to take breaks from things that are becoming habits and recalibrate your life before the end of the year.  Even when Jesus was on this earth it says in scripture that “He went away to a quiet place to pray.” Don’t wait to make a “new years resolution” to start changes in your life.  You can get a jump start on everyone else by making healthy choices now!

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.

7holycrap Uncategorized

An Encouraging thing just happened

Tonight, I had a visit from my neighbor.  This may not seem like a big deal, but there are circumstances around this situation that are really encouraging to me and I thought I would share with you all.  When I was REALLY sick with my eye situation, God had convicted me of not sharing my faith enough with the people that live in our townhome complex.  One guy in particular, was a person who had always been on my heart since we had moved to this area of town  about six years ago but for one reason or another I had always found excuses not to talk to him about Jesus.  Being a pastor, I always said I was too busy putting together services for other people so THEY could go out and share their faith with the world.  Then my world was turned upside down by having Scleritis and almost losing my eye in the process.  If you have never been really sick to the point of a changed lifestyle, one thing to know is that your priorities in life change.  I went from “looking good” as a pastor to actually doing my job on this earth which is sharing my faith with others.  I can remember the night about five years ago when I decided that I was not going to go blind or die and not have shared my faith with this neighbor who had been on my heart for so many years.   I walked over and knocked on the door and he let me into the doorway of his house.  I told him, “I have lived here for two years and have never told you about the most important thing in my life which is my relationship with Jesus.”  I was then waiting for him to break down and start crying and give his life over to God right then and there.  Needless to say, that didn’t happen.  He went on to tell me how he had been involved with a denomination growing up and had been abused by the church staff when he was a kid and still had some pretty hard feelings for church in general.  I told him, “well, you know I am pretty sick right now and I dont know what is going to happen to me, but I knew that I needed to tell him about my feelings for Jesus and that I knew I was supposed to talk to him that night.  I walked back to my house and went on with my life and living out the next four most painful years of my life emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially.  Whenever I had seen this neighbor around it was good because I knew I had done my part to tell him about God and the rest was up to him.
So fast forward to tonight and my visit from this neighbor.  He proceeded to tell me that he was fully involved in a church now singing in the choir and that he had dealt with the issues that had hurt him so many years ago.  He told me that he had made it right with God and was not mad at the church anymore.  I really feel like my conversation with him about four years ago started something in him that progressed to the point of him coming to grips with the pain that he went through as a child and knowing that being mad at God was not the answer to the peace he was looking for in life.  The other amazing thing was that his intention tonight was only to walk over and tell me this information about him going to church and that he had made it right with God.  This was encouraging to me in that my eye situation was used to get me off my fat butt and go tell someone about my relationship with Jesus and for it to start something good in his life and change his eternal destination forever.  I know that it was not just about me talking to my neighbor that changed him, but it was about God using me in the middle of my crap to change a guy who I will now see in heaven and who has made peace with a painful past.  What are you doing today to change the world around you?  Please don’t do what I did and wait for a rotten eyeball to do the things that God is asking you to do. If you dont have a relationship with him then please send me an email and we can talk.  pbrian7@yahoo.com
I can now say that this is the most fun I have had in my walk with God and helping to change people’s lives for the better.  It really isn’t me sharing with people about what I think is wrong with their lives or what they believe, it is talking about the peace I have found in Christ and the purpose beyond my life that is changing the world I live in forever for the glory of God.

7holycrap Uncategorized

Susan Boyle and Crappy American Idol tryout kids

I watched the amazing video clip of Susan Boyle on Brittain’s Got Talent again today and also refelected back to the beautiful TV known as the American Idol auditions.  There is something very funny about those auditions for a couple of reasons.  1) The fact that pe0ple have seen the show and know that if they are not any good that Simon is going to trash them like 2 week expired milk.  2) VOLUNTERARILY sign a contract to be put on television and basically, be video foder for us the public to view and critique.  For the longest time, I thought, “Why in the heck would anyone who was that sucky of a singer, put themselves in from of a gajillion people to be made fun of?”  The simple answer, for most all the contestants that really were terrible, was that they really thought they were good enough to make it on the show and in the music industry.  They either had a mom who always told them that they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, which is not bad in itself, but basically lied to them and told them their singing was just as great (notice the mom’s comments on the American Idol link above).  Or maybe they had people around them who were too afraid to tell them they sucked so they encouraged the friend to go on Idol to have Simon “tell it like it is.”  For whatever reason, we all watched that television show like a trainwreak waiting to happen.  Then you have someone like Susan Boyle who, in every respect, is a very odd looking person with a strange lifestyle.  But when she opens her mouth and starts to sing, she could have on a pantsuit made of turd-smears and hair frizzed to the high heavens and it wouldn’t have mattered.
The interesting dichotomy here is that Susan probably didn’t have anyone to tell her that she was a great singer or encourage her to go onto Britain’s Got Talent before this season because of her physical appearance or just a lack of support around her to help tell her she was great.   She was probably always looked down on automatically (like Simon did in the the beginning of her audition) and has not had the people around her all through her life to tell her that she had a special gift to be shared with the world.
The point of my blog today is two questions; 1) are you being honest with people when they ask you for an evaluation of them in some way?  It is more important that we share things with people in private before they possibly look foolish in public. 2)Are you encouraging others to greatness?  Are you investing positive words of encouragement in kids, a spouse or a friend?  We are not on this earth to glorify ourselves but, I believe, to make others better than they would be without us.  Anyone can be a smart alek and say cutting things, but it is a true person of value who says things to build people up and help them be as great as they can be.