Listening to God’s Voice

God speaks to us in an infinite number of ways. Many times it’s through prayer and reading His Word or from His children who shed light and help us see what we can’t. For me, one of the ways God speaks to me is through creation.

As I sat on a dock this past weekend late at night pondering the glory and majesty of God I was reminded of His divine beauty and power. As the light from the stars and moon shined down reflecting against the water of the lake I was humbled that God would create this for us. I was humbled knowing that I can never grasp how vastly large and wide this galaxy we live in is and how God created it by speaking. I was in awe of the beauty of the stars and moon. How lights that were thousands and thousands mile away we allowing me to see in the darkness of night. I was reminded of so many things in that moment about God.

1. Light casts out darkness. I don’t know about you but I overlook this simple truth time and time again. The light that allows us to see every day is just short of 93 million miles away meaning that the light from the sun travels through 93 million miles of darkness. Light no matter how big or small can always be seen through the darkness. What a huge reminder to me no matter where I am that I can be a light to any number of people and will not be consumed or put out. I will shine with Christ.
2. God is beautiful. All it takes is a quick look around us to see the beauty and power God displays through His creation. There is beauty all around us at all times we just have to see it with the right eyes. Whether it’s mountains, oceans, forests, stars, moon, lake, pond, corn field, a rolling pasture, or a rocky cliff, there is so much beauty out there that God has so graciously given us. Wherever you are, take a moment to appreciate the beauty and wonder that God has granted us to see.
3. I am small. This is a humbling fact to be reminded of and one that more often than not escapes. In the chaos and busyness of life I forget that my life isn’t all about me. I forget that I’m not the main person in this story of life. As I look into the sky and thought about the vastness of creation in the galaxy I’m reminded that this is God’s story and I’m just a secondary character trying to further His story of unfailing love through Christ. This fact is actually very refreshing knowing that God is in control. He was sovereign as He created the galaxy as He spoke it to be. He was sovereign when He created the earth and everything in it by speaking it to be and He is sovereign as He lavishes love and grace and protection on His children every single day.

God speaks to us all the time so I urge you to take time time to listen to what God’s telling you. It could be so simple as a look into the sky but as you hear God’s voice speaking to you make sure you take time to share it with your families. In doing so you will teach your children to look and listen and seek God with all their hearts even in the busyness of life.

Our Sports Fandom and Our Walk with Christ

As a sports fan you experience a vast array of emotions cheering for your favorite team. You love your team dearly and always stand up for them. Through the good times when they’re competing for a championship and the bad times when you’re hope to just win a couple games, you love them. You learn to forget about the tough losses and the heartbreaks and hold onto the small moments or games when they made your proud. For us living in Iowa, it doesn’t matter if the Hawkeyes or the Cyclones lose every game as long as they beat the other team. In the midst of a bad season, you still claim them as your own and protect their name from everybody who badmouths them. You stay loyal to them through and through. Maybe you stay loyal because you really do love them unconditionally or maybe it’s because you’ve never been anything but a Yankee fan so how could you leave them. You’ve invested so much of your time, life, energy, and emotion into cheering for this team and staying up-to-date on whose on it you really couldn’t imagine your life without them. We become passionate about our team and ability to build relationships out of mutual love with other fans. Our passion leads to enthusiasm and often times we can be seen yelling at the tv in frustration or imagining what the team would look like if we were the GM (or coach) and in control of their destiny. It’s a wonderful roller coaster ride, but I wouldn’t trade it. There are somethings to be learned from our fandom though.

Passion

We as sports fans can be so passionate and obsessive it can be kind of uncomfortable for those around us. Passion is a beautiful thing in life and God gave us passions, but we also need to be cautious about our passions. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Sometimes we put such a huge emphasis on sports in our lives and on our sports teams that the beautiful passion God gave us turns into idolatry. We need to be careful where we are investing our time into because that’s where the essence of our heart appears. We have an uncanny ability to be passionate about a team of team of players who will never know our name or anything about us defending these people to the death if someone says something ill about them but what about Jesus. Why are we more inclined to defend a quarterback for our team caught in the wrong than defend the one who died for us so that we might truly be a live and live in freedom. It begs the question, are we passionate about Jesus? Do we see going to church as a chore? Do we see reading the Bible as a hassle? Do we try to get out of having family devotions or neglect them fully? Would we rather go to a ball game or sit back in our La-Z-Boy and watch our team over build our relationship with Christ?

Are we capable of reaching out and building relationships on our love for the Minnesota Vikings, but spur away from fellowship with the body of Christ? I think it’s great to be passionate about sports but that can’t be the biggest passions in our life, not even close. We need to be passionate about our families, our children, our church, and Jesus. If you believe that it’s easy to be passionate about sports because they’re more fun than Jesus than you haven’t experienced the insurmountable joy that comes from being fully accepted, forgiven, and heart set on fire for the King of the Universe who transcended down into our lands to live amongst us, teach us, and die for us. There is no greater joy than calling His name.

Loyalty

The last thing that we can learn and more so be challenged by through our fandom is our loyalty. We as fans endure through the good times and the hard times. There are times when supporting and claiming a team is tough and whether it’s through a bad season, a scandal, drug charges or player conduct we endure and hold onto the hope that it will fade. I think that that long lasting enduring loyalty is a pretty special and uncommon trait amongst people who now a days tend to look after themselves. However, we should be challenged in why we will endure things like bad seasons but often run when it comes to things that matter in life. Whether it’s running or keeping our distance from the church or marital problems.

There are husbands and wives who can stay loyal to their sports team their whole life, but when a problem occurs in their marriage whether it’s financial problems, personality conflicts, illness, infidelity, will decide that it’s not worth staying there. That’s a hard thing to witness and for children to grow up believe it was easier for his parents to love a sports team than their spouse, but that’s the world we live in. There is grace in that moment, but what would our lives look like, our marriages look like, our churches look like if we decided to be loyal and stick it out through and through with them with the same fire and passion that we show for our precious Red Sox, Crimson Tide, or Wolves. They would look eternally different.

Sports and Jesus

I have personally always loved sports and have learned more about myself from sports than anything I learned in my formal education, but sports can’t be our lives. We need to be passionate about building our families and our relationship with Christ. We need to be passionate about being a part of our own team, the body of Christ and play our role. We need to be committed to our families and our God and put them as top priorities in our lives. We can love sports but we can’t worship sports, that’s what Jesus is for.

Running on Empty

A couple of years ago I was eager and set to impact the world. I was working at a bible camp and had the mindset that I was going to pour into everybody and anybody who was there. I was going to be a spiritual mentor to my staffers as well as a caring shepherd and teacher to all those students entrusted under my care each week. I knew it would difficult, but if anyone could do it, I knew it was me. I was as close to Superman as the next guy and believed in myself so much. It was going to be a remarkable summer. I would leave feeling like a king for doing the work of Christ every minute of the summer all summer long.

About mid-June I started to lose it. I was constantly tired, always crabby, I was filled with bitterness and resentment at how hard I was working and why I had to do more work than everyone else, I felt under-appreciated, and I was scared. I remember feeling so exhausted I would just lie face down on the floor and sleep after a long day. I was terrified that I was experiencing all these negative emotions and was only two weeks into the summer season; I was literally running myself into the ground.

Then came one fateful afternoon after our Day Campers left after their week program where I lost it. I literally went crazy and lost all control of who I was for about 90 minutes. I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, talking but not making any sense, I was a wild child, knowing exactly how I should act but not being able to do anything about it. It was terribly embarrassing but my nerves and emotions finally snapped and I couldn’t do anything. My director pulled me aside and forced me to sit down so we could talk after the incident and I lost it again, this time though instead of being wild I just bawled. I bawled and I bawled and I just wanted to rest.

Good Intentions Bad Results

I wanted so badly to be Superman that summer that I disregarded my own walk with Christ for a large portion of the summer and in the end I paid for it. It was a hard lesson for me to learn, sometimes trying to be as selfless as possible is bad for you. If you continually neglect your own health (physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually) in order to help someone else eventually it will come back to you. After all you do your best ministering when you are insynch with God and that happens when your cup is full. In my attempt to be put everyone ahead of myself I let my own cup run empty and didn’t bother to try to fill it. I thought I could help people enough to get it back to where it needed to be. Life doesn’t necessarily work that way though.

As parents, knowing when to say yes and when to say no, is an important and critical truth to establish in our lives. As our children grow up we continue to work hard all day and then come home to minister and pour ourselves out at night. We have to know when to fill ourselves up so that when we do minister, support, love, and pour ourselves out we are more able to do so in a godly way. Otherwise, we run risk of growing bitter and angry with them, all because we didn’t take time to rest ourselves.

Filling up on Holy Spirit

Everyone is going to be filled and energized to do God’s wondrous work in different ways. I don’t believe there is any “one-size fits all” model but I do believe somethings are more inclined to help you feel God work. It’s important for you as a parent to explore different options and ways so that when your running on empty you know just what to do. For someone it might be going into nature and being surrounded by God’s creation through a walk and prayer time. For someone it might be plugging away on a guitar and just relaxing in the presence of God. For someone else it could be taking time to just sit and read and be still. Be confident in how you fill yourself up, God created you how you are, so don’t compare apples to oranges. There’s a chance what fills you spiritually also fills your spouse and that’s great; there’s also a chance what fills you spiritually doesn’t fill your spouse and that’s okay too. Do what you need to do to be filled so that in time you can out-pour yourself to your family, friends, and co-workers and then take time to rest, eat, and be filled again.

God is good. He will provide for you. He will fill you up. Take time to not only teach those around you but also to teach yourself. Be still and listen to God in the busyness of today. Christ showed us the power of being selfless in everything He did in life, but remember, even Christ would leave the masses after a while to be one-on-one with God and fill His own cup. Let us do the same and let us by the Grace of God do His work the way He designed us too, at one with Him.

A Father’s Day Toast!

Father’s Day is a special day, a time for fathers across the world to kick their feet up, sit back in their recliners, drink a beer and enjoy a day of being appreciated for all their work they do for their families day-in and day-out. After all, fatherhood is tough job that can bring even the manliest men crying and retreating out of the lives of their family. You’ve worked hard all day long in an attempt to provide your family with everything they need. You come home after a long day and pour yourself out teaching and loving your children. You give yourself fully to your wife and love her as Christ did for the Church. You lead your family through the ups and downs of life, taking the spiritual reigns of the house so that you can guide them closer and closer to Christ. It is a tough job and today you get to feel appreciated for all the work you’ve done. Here are some words to encourage you and get you through the tough times.

1. You are appreciated. You are so appreciated as a father and the work and love you give to your family. In a society where fatherless homes are more and more common, the simple fact that you are there is changing the lives of your family in a way that could never happen in your absence. When you add the fact that you are actively and passionately serving your family know that you are so loved and appreciated. You taking the time and energy to provide for your family and then serving them is having a bigger impact than you realize. It’s sending the message to your children and wife that you love them and believe in them and that changes lives. Never forget how appreciated you are to your family. We forget to say how we feel time to time, so allow me personally to say I appreciate you and am praying for you.

2. You are not alone. Sometimes as men we can struggle with pride and that’s a very dangerous thing. Pride stops us from asking for help, seeking guidance, and puffs us up to think we are invincible. There are a couple key people we need to continually remind ourselves that they are on our team and in our corner. Wife: She’s wonderful isn’t she? She would do anything for us and will love us and give us the same love and grace that Christ would. Don’t keep her in the dark. If you’re overwhelmed with things go to her, bring her up to speed on what’s going through your head. She will walk confidently beside you wherever you go and will help any way she can, let her help. Church: We are here for you! It seems weird sometimes like well what are you suppose to help me with? But we are, it’s our job to equip you and guide you when it comes to getting through the hard times. If you need help leading your family spiritually or struggling with something and in need of prayer or counseling we are here to get you through so that you can better reflect Christ. Jesus: Our wonderful Savior, Friend, Counselor, Healer, and Giver is with us and inside of us. He sent His Holy Spirit to dwell with us and you can trust that He will be there for you. Lean on Him and His ways and trust in His divine plan and it will prove to be enough time and time again. He is worth of your praise and will provide for you, whether it’s physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually He will never leave you hanging.

3. You are making a difference. If you are ever stuck in a rut wondering if you’re doing anything right know that you are. You were called to lead your family and through Christ you are being continually built up and empowered to do just that! We do need to also continually remind ourselves that the greatest thing we can do for our families is not providing, but loving. You are making a difference but never forget the primary responsibility to your family. Time will past and your children will forget the things you bought them but they will never forget the love you gave them and the time you invested in them. Your top priority in making a difference is loving them and putting them first, sometimes that means working and sometimes that means saying no to work to be with them. They will appreciate the time more than anything else. No matter what though, rest assured that you are in fact doing a great job in the chaos of life and you are making a wonderful difference.

So take a break! Enjoy some time to reflect on the last year and where God has brought your family and get ready for another exciting year ahead. Wherever you end up always remember those simple truths though: you are appreciated, you are not alone, and you are making a huge difference!

The Fruit of The Spirit: Kindness

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

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Stretching, Laughter, and Kindness

Some things in life just seem to be more contagious than others and I’m thankful for that. As I look back on my time as a competitive runner I remember stretching in a large group before runs and how contagious stretching was. I would be standing there stretching my arms and reaching out as far as I could thinking well I think this is all I need to do, just then I’d look up and see someone doing some lunges and I would quickly realize I hadn’t done those yet and kneel down to start doing my own. Mid-way through a lunge, I’d look over at someone else doing a butterfly stretch and I would then drop to my butt to stretch groin with the butterfly and then everyone around me would be doing the butterfly. I’ve experienced the same thing while watching comedies. I may not laugh much on my own but if the person I’m watching with laughs there’s a greater chance that I will laugh too.

I’m thankful that kindness has that same affect on us.

Kindness in the Gospel

As we look at the life and times of Jesus we see the path He walked was founded on kindness (and all the other Fruit of the Spirit that work together in unison) which changed the lives of everyone He came across. Whether He was giving redemption and a second chance to Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, the adulteress woman, or any number of His disciples who would later reject Him.There was love, there was grace, and there was kindness, and that’s because they all work together so beautifully. We demonstrate kindness to those who we love, Jesus did the same, only His capacity to love was infinite.

Christ, in His time on earth loved the rich, poor, man, woman, father, child, prostitute, thief, liar, and alike. Which made every action He had with everyone one that showed His wonderful kindness. The whole point of the Gospel is displaying God’s love for us by having Christ willingly take our wicked punishment for our sins on His shoulders til the point where He sacrificed His life. An act of love that demonstrates His kindness and how much He cares about us. That act changes us from the inside out, just as it did His disciples, they wanted to show that same love, grace, and kindness to everyone around them. It was contagious when they experienced and it’s contagious today.

Kindness in Our Lives

It’s important to know what’s contagious in life because people who are around us will rub off on us and we will rub off on them. This is key when realizing the impact our lives have on our children. How we uphold our selves, treat those around us, talk about those present and absent, is subconsciously telling our children how they should behave. You are your children’s superhero. You are the one they want to be like. They want to have your job, like the things you like, eat the foods you eat so they can be strong like you are. Your children will mimic your words, your mannerisms, your actions, and that is precisely why it’s important we think about them. It can be overwhelming. Luckily Christ is with us each step of the way, because in the end it’s not our kindness that we want to show to the world, it’s His; and in the end it is His grace extended to us that lets us breath a sigh of relief when we fall short. It is His love, grace, and kindness that we want our children to cling too and it is His Fruit of the Spirit that can be seen in us when we follow His steps and let Him guide us.

The point isn’t to focus on being kind or perfect; the point is to focus on Christ. It is only through Him that we can demonstrate who He is. We are the only Jesus that many people encounter and the biggest influencers in our children’s lives. Follow Christ then because it’s the most important thing we can do for our children; follow His love, grace, joy, peace, and kindness with all that you have and let His Fruit and His kindness be displayed through you.

Our Last Meal on Earth

Our Own Green Mile

“And I think about all of us walking our own green mile… …each in our own time.” – The Green Mile

I’ve been reflecting on this quote for a couple days and really letting it resonate within me. The quote comes The Green Mile, a movie that stars Tom Hank as the head of Death Row during the Great Depression. He’s reflecting on his life and the lives of those that have come to pass and comparing them to those same lives he used to oversee as they waited until their death and took their final walk down the Green Mile to the execution chair. He decided we’re all walking our own Green Mile, some people’s last longer, but the same fate awaits us both.

As I pondered this thought and examined my life a lot of things faded out and a lot of things focused in. I guess when you examine the shortness of life and the importance of each day, binge watching the newest Netflix show seems pretty trivial. Life is short, it’s often compared in the Bible as a mist, a vapor, a shadow, and so on. When we take that mindset up it allows us to truly focus on the important things in our lives.

The Final Meal

As I reflected on walking my own green mile I quickly thought of what happens just before the last walk. That final meal. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, what my last meal would be and finally I came across my answer. I didn’t care and truly I don’t. For me it’s always been less about what I’m eating and more of who I’m with. Family and friends have truly changed my life and God has used them at every stage of my life to get me through, speak wisdom, love me, encourage me, support me, and many times God has used them to show me His own characteristics.

When we reflect on the shortness of life I think we’d all have the same response as I had to our last meal and why wouldn’t we? If we asked those same people in the movie or in real life, they would agree with us in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t we all trade in an expensive steak dinner with all the fixings by ourselves for a final meal with the ones we love best, even if it was something as simple as a ham and cheese sandwich and some potato chips?

So What Are We Doing?!?!

I grew up in a family where everyone was on the go. Sometimes we went places that mattered like practices or work and other times we just went to our rooms, but sometimes we would enjoy eating together while watching tv. It wasn’t until I grew up and started appreciating and desiring things like being with my family that I realized we never took time to do them together. The children of the house didn’t want to be around the parents and the parents didn’t want to force us so we did our own thing and once in a blue moon we would gather together around a nice meal and actually talk about our lives. I wish I was a minority in that upbringing but as the world speeds up and kids grow up faster it seems just the opposite. This way of living is more and more normal and it won’t be until it’s to late (when the kids have graduated and left, when at the hands of death we lose a loved one) that we will truly realized what we missed out all those times when we could have been together.

Recent studies show that parents have just under 40 minutes of meaningful conversation with their children each week. It averages to be just over 5 minutes a day truly building and encouraging your children and knowing how their life is. They also show an increase in grades and a decrease in deviant behavior or problems whether it be eating disorders or drugs. It all stems from being in an engaging and positive setting. Besides the statistics, eating together allows you to better ministry and get to know your children because it gives you extra bonding time together every day to recount how your days are going and what’s going on in your lives.

Eating together will take more time, more discipline, and work but I assure you it is worth it. Life is to short to let the small moments like enjoying a meal with the ones we love closest to slip by every day. So as you walk your own green mile alongside your family don’t be afraid to go above and beyond and make the most out of every day you have with each other.  Because truth be told, we don’t know how much time we have and if you’re not careful you could experience your last meal by yourself instead of with your loving family.

Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control.” – Galatians 5:22-23a

Patience on the Golf Course

I spent a large portion of my life trying to prove myself as an athlete. I grabbed a hold of any sport I could get my hands on to see if I could prove myself great in the eyes of my peers. Many sports were abandon immediately for lack of skill or better yet a lack of body size (turns out my middle school football team had no place a 5′ slow wide receiver who weighted 80 pounds.) I was doomed from the start. However, one particular sport was tried and tried and tried again until ultimately my frustration decided to throw the towel in once and for all. Golf. A sport of precision, mental fortitude, and what I lacked above all patience.

I determined I was a terrible golfer from the first tee box but I tried to enjoy it none-the-less. My attitude would not let me however, I couldn’t get past how awful I was. I knew if I put the work in and stayed with it eventually it’d pay off but I couldn’t get myself to do it. Bad shot after bad shot after bad shot my patience run low. I decided it was time to put the clubs in the shed and find a new sport to try.

In hindsight, a lot of great family memories occurred on the same courses that frustrated me into agony. When I was younger, my attitude dictated much of my life. My lack of patience made many things impossible for me. I was always told “Patience is a virtue” but there has to be a way that this behavior manifests itself in our lives right? There has to be a way we can continue to grow in our ability to hold it right?

Patience in the Gospel

The Gospel so beautifully illustrates patience in a way that nothing else can. As we examine the history of God’s story we see His perfect patience seen time and time again. As He created the world and us, everything is good, everything is perfect. Yet, as sin lurks in the shadows and is born into Adam and Eve, God’s patience is first seen. While they rebelled and disobeyed still God is seen tending to them, caring for them, and creating a plan for restoration for the sin that has come into the world. Flash forward to God’s chosen people Israel as they live through the sacrificial system of offerings God has created to continually remind them of their dependence and how they will need an all-atoning sacrifice once and for all we see them fall away. They disobey God, their hearts grow cold, they become distant, God ushers them back into His arm, they stay there momentary and fall away and the endless cycle continues. God’s patience was working perfectly as He continued to love them, guide them, and bring them back into His loving arms time after time. Flash forward to Jesus, walking around the earth teaching His disciples and His lost sheep. As He lie in the Garden of Gethsemane telling His disciples that they would turn away from Him, His patience was at work. The Gospel at every level demonstrates (especially through the life of Christ) what it looks like to be patient. As Jesus lived His life, He was patient and loving. While He lived, as He taught, He knew as the all-knowing God that He was knew who would turn away from Him, who would reject Him, who would betray Him, who would crucify Him, yet He remained patient with everyone around Him. He remained loving because of this patience.

Patience in our Lives

As Followers of Christ, the Gospel comes to life in us. As Jesus died on the cross crushing sin, His Spirit would be given to all believers as a gift, a deposit of Him in us. We are able to be made more Christ-like because of this then. We can look toward Christ and His Spirit to be our patience. As our tempers falls we can start to see things as Christ sees them if we renew our mind to be like His. We can regain our focus and composure for our co-workers who run our patience low by seeing them as Christ sees them. They are loved, they are desired and wanted, they are broken and in need of the same Savior we desperately cling too for our hope.  We can see our child who continually disobeys us and is out of control as the same lost sheep that “The Great Shepherd” looked up and down through the meadow to find. Through this love our patience will shine through again, because of His patience. We just need to continually look to Christ to fill us with His Spirit; it may not solve our golf game problems, but it will solve our inability to show patience and love to those around us.