7holycrap Life Lessons

A 6.5 Millon Dollar Lesson on “Value”

Lik_Photo
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 Jesus thoughts

Hollywood and the Disease of Being Famous

As I read more reports about Phillip Seymour Hoffman it just breaks my heart. So much talent, so much adoration from the world and movie industry, so much money and awards. Yet no peace, no contentment and no escape from the disease of being famous. Whenever a star from Hollywood dies in a way like this, it is a constant reminder that the superficial world that is Hollywood doesn’t bring true contentment with its adulation and awards alone. For those of us NOT famous and running in Hollywood circles, it can be easy to dream about the lifestyle of a star. Even though I am a pastor, I am just as prone as the next guy to allow thoughts of “what would it be like” to run through my head every so often. Then I am brought immediately back down to earth when I read about the death of a famous star from drugs, alcohol or other “escape routes” that famous people try to use. I know many people have made fun of Justin Bieber in the past few weeks but we need to be praying for him and his SCREAMS like a little lost boy of “HELP ME!” Being in Hollywood and having awards and money and opportunities are not terrible in themselves and can actually be really great. The main component is the relationship to Jesus that changes the focus and dynamic and the entire foundation of happiness in this world.
The point I am trying to make is that if you think you will have enough people love you and honor you and enough money to “be happy” and enough “shots to make it big” without a foundation in God then you are mistaken. There are MORE than enough examples in life of people that didn’t have a firm foundation in Jesus and in who they were and they kill themselves or end up in a never ending cycle of bad relationships or rehab to prove my point. We need to take the bright lights of Hollywood at face value and take a relationship with God as a priority.
Maybe you don’t even know how to start a relationship with Jesus. Do you realize how much patience God has with you? He will NEVER take control of a persons life or decisions. He is waiting for you to ask him to take control. It’s just as simple as “Jesus take control of my life. Amen” There are SO MANY resources on the web about study of the Bible and lots of great Jesus preaching, Bible believing churches you can go to and get involved with. All it takes is commitment and one step. And then another step. And then another. Have a great Wednesday and if you would like more information about a relationship with Jesus you can email me and I will help. Brimo777@gmail.com

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

The New Year can be like a game of Farkle

23-happy-new-year-wallpaper

My wife and I are on vacation this week and I was teasing her that I was going to practice Farkle rolls. We have recently taken up the game of Farkle which is similar to Yatzee in that’s basically based on chance.  So I was basically teasing her that I was going to practice rolls of chance which is really not possible.  I was then thinking about this coming new year and things I can and cannot control.  many times, life can feel like Farkle; just rolls of chance and hoping to “get the best score and win.” With the medical things I have been through in my life I have not always understood why things have happened to me.  I can only put my life in God’s hands and trust that He knows what is best for me.  This new year, focus your life on the things you can control and not on things you cannot.  The most important decision you can make for 2013 is putting God in charge of your life. It is a great way to start the new year and to keep the events of your life in perspective. I know that when I focus on God then I don’t have time to worry about why something happens and I can let God show me WHAT he is trying to teach me by allowing events in life that I don’t fully understand.  Have a great New Year!

7holycrap Life Lessons

Darrell Scott’s Conversation with the House Judiciary subcommittee

This was from an email that was forwarded to me this morning and I thought it was excellent considering the tragedy in Newtown and the perspective of a father from the Columbine shootings here in Colorado.  I couldn’t agree more.

On Thursday, Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful.

They were not prepared for what he was to say, nor was it received well. It needs to be heard by every parent, every teacher, every politician, every sociologist, every psychologist, and every so-called expert! These courageous words spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and deeply personal. There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice crying in the wilderness.
The following is a portion of the transcript:
“Since the dawn of creation there has been both good and evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

”The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used.. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.

”In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA – because I don’t believe that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent

I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy — it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.
Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question “Why?”
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!


”
Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact. 
What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws. 
Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts. 

”As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. 
To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA — I give to you a sincere challenge.. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone! 
My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!”
- Darrell Scott