7holycrap Life Lessons

Two Things to STOP and Two Things to START This New Year

1. Stop worrying about defending Jesus and Bible.
The Bible and Jesus have been around for far longer than you and I have even existed. The Word of God has been staving off attacks of all kinds for many many years. The Word has stood the test of time and continues to bring life and direction to all who heed its words. Jesus is in the business of defending YOU and not you worrying about how you are going to defend Him. He is not up in heaven nervous and biting his nails to the quick…so you shouldn’t either. It’s all about asking God for wisdom and to follow the verse in Matthew 10:16 for this new year; “…being wise as serpents and gentle as doves.”

2. Stop worrying about how to evangelize people and just start loving them!
There are so many things that are happening in today’s society contrary to the Word of God and its principles. The hard thing to realize is that many, if not all, of the things happening in our culture today were happening back in Bible times as well. Our CENTRAL focus in life should be how do we “out-LOVE” people around us who are screaming by their actions that they need someone to listen and show them Jesus. The key is when the opportunity comes and someone asks you “why are you being so nice to be?” or “why do you love me even when I can’t seem to love myself?” that you don’t say something like, “well, just because I am trying to make the world a better place.” You can say, “I follow Jesus in my life and he was the GREATEST example of love there ever was or will be. I am just trying to show the world what that love looks like through me in a healthy nonjudgmental way.” Just because you love someone doesn’t mean that you accept everything they do. Jesus loves YOU and he doesn’t always like the things You do either. People giving Jesus control of their lives will happen when you start SHOWING others what a healthy belief in God looks like coupled with loving others.

3. Start praying and asking God for opportunities to show true Christlike love in 2015.
It’s the age old adage; you don’t get what you don’t ask for. We need to realize that God is always speaking but sometimes we are not truly listening to what He has to say. When we ask God for his will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” we are saying, “God, use me today to bring your love to a lost, hurt and dying world that is falling slowly out of love with itself and doesn’t even know it.”

4. Start believing for the impossible in your life.
When we go through problems in life, we can program ourselves to start believing or looking for the negative in situations. When we start believing for the impossible we open a door of opportunity for God to show up and show off to encourage our faith and lift the life of someone else. We need to start getting worse at unbelief and professionals at seeing the impossible and believing for something GREAT! I truly believe that 2015 will be a year where faith in the unseen will be needed more than ever and that God is looking for those who would see the “possible” in the “impossible.”

Have a great New Years and wonderful start to 2015!! See you next year!

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 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 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, Uncategorized

Vitamins, Fasting and Your Life


I love Saturdays because I get to read and today was pretty cool because I had a revelation from a small line I read in a book on my Kindle.  It was talking about a vitamin called B2+ found in a certain type of food and if it was good for you or not and it had a side remark about what a true Vitamin is; it must be something that is essential to a healthy life.  I don’t know why that short statement struck me but it did.  I thought about my walk with God and what would I consider “vitamins” in my relationship with Jesus and what are things that are not essential?  I also considered all the “things” I have in life, such as regular TV programs DVR’d and ready to watch, a passion for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team, a love for technology (including my iPhone and Apple products), etc.  You know…just stuff.  I really want the coming fast that I will be starting with my church tomorrow for 21 days to be a time of evaluating what things in my life are “vitamins”, things that are OK for me but not essential, and things that are not good for me and are just time wasters.  I truly believe that we need to be mindful of what we physically put in our bodies that are essential for life but also the things that consume our lives and if they have a “vitamin” quality to them or if they are just things that need to be discarded for the good of the whole emotionally and/or physically.  I can say that fasting is one of my LEAST favorite disciplines as a Christian but know that it is something that needs to happen in my life and really in the life of every believer.  I believe it is a time of evaluating the “vitamins” (or lack of) in your life and if you are as healthy as you think you are.  I want to challenge you to really spend time in 2011 taking deliberate pauses to evaluate your life and see just how healthy or unhealthy you really are.  To me, regular evaluation of your life is a “vitamin” in itself and critically essential for living the life that you will be proud of this year.

7holycrap Life Lessons

Sample from my book “Holy Crap…finding God’s presence in your pain”

Here is a small sample of a chapter I worked on today about people watching you when you are going through pain.  Remember, this is a “thoughts to paper” draft of this chapter and very rough, but gives a good idea where I am going with the chapter.  Thanks and enjoy!

Holy Crap…finding God’s presence in your pain – Chapter 9

People will watch your Pain

What is it with a traffic accident?  In Colorado there is an epidemic of “gawker traffic” that occurs whenever there is any kind of flashing lights on the side of the road.  I am a true believer that people (although they wont say it) are looking for as much blood and guts as possible when seeing the red and blue lights of any kind of emergency vehicle.  It really is interesting to think about what people would do if they actually did see something gruesome on the side of the road and have to mentally process it.  I think when people see an accident they are thinking a few things; they may want to see if they know anyone involved in the incident, maybe they are thanking God that it wasn’t them in the accident or they want to see the level of destruction involved so they have a juicy story when they get to the office.  I say all these things because I believe that pain and opposition in a persons life can evoke some of those same emotions to the world around them.  Maybe people around them react based on the level that they know the person affected by pain.  I know for my parents, sister and wife that my sickness has really challenged them in their faith and believe in God’s grace and power.  People may also ask how a person is doing just so they can have the “inside scoop” when other people ask how that person is doing.  When they are talking to the person in pain they are thinking in the back of their mind, “I am sure glad I am not going through what that person is dealing with.”  I feel like for the years I was sick I encountered every one of those types of people in conversations or just in knowing that people were watching Yolanda and I from the thirty five different doctors reviewing my case and looking in my eye, to people in our neighborhood to friends and family in the church.  I am not looking down or talking bad about those people looking at me in any of the ways I identified, I am just saying that its a fact that people will look at you and your life when you go through pain.  I really want this book to be able to help people on all levels of pain and crap they go through in life.  I firmly believe that crap happens in life and we have all kinds of opportunities to help others, help ourselves and let Jesus do something more amazing in the bad times than in the good.  When people are looking at you and the life you are living in pain, God has just allowed you to influence and affect the path of their life in a greater way than you could ever imagine.
Before I go into some of these elements, always remember that it is your decision if you want to matter to other people or if you just want to “turtle up” and go into survival mode with your pain.  Survival mode is the automatic reaction to a painful situation, but remember that the first, initial, gut reaction to anything usually not the right thing to do, think or say.  I cannot remember one time in my life when I reacted to something and it turned out well, helped anyone or made me not look stupid and reactionary to a situation.  When I stepped back, evaluated my situation and then ACTED on whatever was happening I always did my best to make the most out of the situation for myself and for others around me.  This is not just you programming yourself to do the right thing when people around you are looking at your life.  It takes effort on your part but it also takes the power of the Holy Spirit in your life to do this.  In the Bible, Phillipians 4:13 says “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  It still says that its “me” doing the things, but it is the power of Christ in my life that gives me the ability to live a life that is not only pleasing to him, but encouraging to the people around me.
There is one key thing to remember here; I am not saying I have done everything right with my attitude and actions when I came home from the eye doctors office with reports of moving closer to removing my eye, possibly going completely blind and probably dealing with medication for the rest of my life because of an overactive immune system.  This book, prayerfully, is for you to read and learn from my mistakes and also to learn something from the principles of going through crap and not just getting through it but, in some way, looking forward to them as growing experiences.