Why all the fear?

I recall sitting in my bedroom on Walnut Dr.  It was summer.  I think I was 19 years old.

I knew what God was wanting to do with me at the time.  I knew what He was calling me to do.  I knew what He was preparing.  But I had this fear of stepping out and doing what He wanted me to do. 

Fear.  It’s an ugly four letter word.  One that I don’t like to face. 

So what happened on that day in my bedroom?  I had been praying about this thing on my mind.  I knew what God was telling me.  Yet I wanted him to write it out on the wall for me… send me a letter in the mail… speak to me audibly.  I just wanted authoritative proof that what was on my mind was really Him and not something I was making up in my mind. 

So what happened while in my bedroom?  Well, after I prayed I recall having this thought come to my mind. “Read Psalm 32:8-11.”  OK – cool – I will read it.  I did.  Before I read it I had no idea what it was going to say.  I wasn’t even sure if there were 11 verses in this Psalm.  I grabbed my NIV and started reading:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
       I will counsel you and watch over you.

Do not be like the horse or the mule,
       which have no understanding
       but must be controlled by bit and bridle
       or they will not come to you.

 Many are the woes of the wicked,
       but the LORD’s unfailing love
       surrounds the man who trusts in him.

 Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous;
       sing, all you who are upright in heart.

Well, He didn’t have to head me over the head!  But I’m glad He did! After-all I asked for it!

Tonight I am reading in Psalm 32.  While reading this passage I am reminded of that particular evening.  Now I’m 43.  Guess what!  I still struggle with that fear. 

My friend James told me yesterday, “Don’t be afraid”  – among other things.  Sometimes I think if God would put that bit in my mouth and lead me on I will not need to fear… yet he says, “Don’t be like the horse of the mule…”  I guess I’m a jack ass !  Just kidding… I’m a child of God that wants to be safe.  I need to live with “Reckless Abandon”.

Why all of the fear?

Filed under: Bible Reading, Calling, Confidence, Conversation with God, Faith, Fear, Memories, Oswald Chambers, Psalms, The Bible, Trusting God

Adonai…

According to International Standard Bible Encyclopedia,

a-do’-ni, ad-o-na’-i (‘adhonay): A Divine name, translated “Lord,” and signifying, from its derivation, “sovereignty.” Its vowels are found in the Massoretic Text with the unpronounceable tetragrammaton YHWH; and when the Hebrew reader came to these letters, he always substituted in pronunciation the word ” ‘adhonay.” Its vowels combined with the tetragrammaton form the word “Yahweh (Yahweh).”

I have been looking for a cassette tape of a sermon that I have not been able to put my hands on.  But in the process of looking for that tape I found one of my “Best Of” cassettes I made in college.  Man, this thing is good.  I had no idea what was coming next on the tape after each song.  I’ve enjoyed thinking about God and worshipping Him as I have listened.  I’ve even shed a tear or two thinking about what a profound impact many of these songs had on me some 20+ years ago.

Right after Jerusalem’s song “Time – Live” was Petra’s song “Adonai”.  I don’t like rewinding songs on old tapes but I just had to on this one.  I just worshiped driving down Euharlee Road this morning while listening.

I was reminded also of the time in 1990 I made a trip to Israel.  One moment for me that is special from that trip was going to the Wailing Wall also called the Western Wall.  I watched and listened to one man as he backed away from the wall all the way out of the Plaza… he was proclaiming praises to God at the top of his lungs.  It was all in Hebrew.  I was mesmerized by his praise.  I could hear the various names of God has he spoke.  Adonai was one of the names I heard.

This song has been on my mind all day.  All of the wonderful memories of growing in God some 20 years ago have also been there.  Adonai reminds me today I am still growing… I am still moving forward in His kingdom.  All praise and glory is to my Heavenly Father who loves me so… who loves you so!

Western Wall photo from Wikipedia.org

Filed under: Memories, Random Thoughts, Spiritual Growth

Mountain Biking to the Mountain Top

One of the greatest experiences in my life was also one of my scariest.

It was 1997 and I was in LaPlata Canyon, Colorado.  LaPlata Canyon is just west of Durango.  I had just begun mountain biking a year before.  This was my first trek up a real mountain.  It was a beautiful Saturday morning in June.  We started off at about 8,100 ft in elevation and worked our way up above the tree line at around 10,000 ft. or so.  I will never forget that moment when we were finally riding on what seemed to be solid rock above the tree line.  I could finally see the point I was headed for… then it happened.

What happened scared me pretty good.  Over one side of the mountain came a great storm that brought  sleet or hail… wind, lightning, and very cold temperatures.  I was not prepared for the drastic change in weather.  We jumped into an entrance to an old mine for cover.

As quickly as the storm came we saw blue sky once again.  There we were having worked so hard and to get so close to the goal.  As we debated what we should do - the next set of clouds, wind, icy substance falling from the sky, and much colder temperatures began to surround us…

We decided to head back down the mountain – as fast as possible!  I have never had so much fun… and to be as scared as I was at the same time.  The ground was now looking wintry and we could smell the lightning.  The sound of the thunder was so loud.  I’m not sure which was worse the sound or how the rumble felt as we darted down the mountain.

I never tried to go back up to the top again.  But I didn’t quit riding.  In fact, it made me want to ride all the more.  Unfortunately, once I moved back to Georgia I quit riding.  I really want to start back.  I think about it every day.  As for now, my Cannondale mountain bike is sitting in the house. 

This memory I have is one of my favorite memories to talk about.  It’s strange that I love to talk about it yet it is something that I didn’t get to complete.  It’s like a mirror image of my life to a large extent.  It’s another chapter started – yet not completed.

I’m ready to begin a chapter that is actually written with an ending.  It’s like my life is this book with all of these chapters that have been written – the problem is that there are not any endings to any of the chapters.  So the reader starts the next chapter and has to wonder what in the world happened in between chapters 3 and 4.  “How did he get here?” the reader would ask.

Why is life so hard?  Why is life so stinking challenging?  For me, it’s like I never get a break.  There’s no time to take it easy.  My life seems like it is made up of storms that I am constantly trying to run from.  And as soon as I think I’m seeing blue sky’s another storm sets in.  I know there is a reason behind it all – there really is a purpose behind it.  I’m not beaten up and torn down over it.  In fact, right now I am very hopeful with what the future holds. 

As I look back on that couple of years of living there - I really think I was living on the mountain top – yet there is some unfinished business from those days.  I was reading Oswald Chambers today and the following quote from My Utmost for His Highest got me thinking about this story… it got me thinking a bit deeper about my life.

We are inclined to think that everything that happens is to be turned into useful teaching. In actual fact, it is to be turned into something even better than teaching, namely, character. The mountaintop is not meant to teach us anything, it is meant to make us something. There is a terrible trap in always asking, “What’s the use of this experience?” We can never measure spiritual matters in that way. The moments on the mountaintop are rare moments, and they are meant for something in God’s purpose.

Photo from summitpost.org.

Filed under: Memories, Mountain Biking, Oswald Chambers, Surrender, Trials and Testing

September FOCUS

Here we are September 1, 2008. 

A year ago, going into Labor Day weekend, I had determined after work I would go home and lay on the sofa all weekend and watch NASCAR and football. 

I recall having that weekend to myself and desiring to do nothing!

I received a phone call from a friend (Nat) I had not seen since high school (over 20 years) that Sunday afternoon.  He invited me to a Bible Study he was leading and out for coffee at Starbucks afterward. 

Well, there went my plans for the weekend.  Little did I know - all of my plans for the rest of my life were about to change.

You see, that night was a set up. Yep, I met Lori that Sunday night. 

As we were leaving Starbucks, Nat asked if I had plans for Labor Day (There goes those plans too!) I told him I didn’t and he invited me over to his house for a cookout and to swim… Lori was there.  He didn’t tell me she was going to be there but she was… I got her phone number… we got married a few weeks later… well, the rest is history.

Here we are a year later… MARRIED!  I’m getting on her nerves (educating her) with Fox News, NASCAR, and College Football.  I’m showing her how helpless I am with my piles of clothes, inability to take care of myself, etc.  You know what?  I think she really loves me through all of that.  She’s been God’s richest blessing in my life.  I was praying for a new Jeep and got a wife!  Still dreaming of the new Jeep.

It was this time last year God had begun to do some incredible things in my life as well as Joel’s!  I think I will celebrate this time of year for the rest of my life.  God filled my life with Lori and he broke through a lot of darkness in my life.  I also saw God move in Joel and Kathy’s lives at the same time as they awaited the birth of Abbie.  I had been having many long conversations with Joel about how the Holy Spirit was at work in our lives.  I would not trade September 2007 for the world!

As I begin the month of September 2008, I want to…

Keep my [your] eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in.  Study how he did it.  Because he never lost sight of where he was headed- that exhilarating finish in and with God – he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever.  And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God.  When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through.  That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!” (Hebrews 12:2-3, The Message). 

Filed under: Family, Focus, Friends, Memories

“…willful, deliberate prayer.”

My prayer life with God has been on the forefront of my mind.  Several things have brought me to this place.  Conversation with friends, reading, and circumstances.  Out of all these things has come Whispering Secrets, Just how important is it? and now “…willful, deliberate prayer.”

Life is full of so many surprises.  I wonder how many of those little surprises would be surprises if life was built on willful, deliberate prayer?

When you pray – are they worried prayers as you run from one activity to the next?  Or do you intentionally sit down and focus your prayer.  It’s harder to do the later.  Do you have a portion of your day that is God’s time… totally devoted to God?

God has used Oswald Chambers today for such a time as this…

Prayer is an effort of the will. After we have entered our secret place and shut the door, the most difficult thing to do is to pray. We cannot seem to get our minds into good working order, and the first thing we have to fight is wandering thoughts. The great battle in private prayer is overcoming this problem of our idle and wandering thinking. We have to learn to discipline our minds and concentrate on willful, deliberate prayer. (My Utmost for His Highest, August 23).

I’m reminded of a time after getting to know the Lord.  I was getting ready for my second year of college (which was my first year at Lee College).  The live version of “Bad” by U2 had recently been released on Wide Awake in America.  I recall me and my friends spending a lot of time together that summer.  One night we had been over at Kathy Mac’s house… Rick Allen was there too.  We had been swimming and ended up on the porch of the house talking about prayer… getting to know God…  a deeper place.  I recall Rick challenging us to commit to an hour of prayer a day.  An hour of total dedication to God…

I began to spend that hour after work praying in my room (too hard before work).  I made myself go home and pray for an hour before I would let myself do anything else.  I did this for awhile.  It eventually developed into a daily habit at different times of the day. 

I ask myself, “What about now?” 

It’s time to enter into the secret place.  Take a moment to reflect on these words by Oswald Chambers:

Enter into “the secret place,” and you will find that God was right in the middle of your everyday circumstances all the time. Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless you learn to open the door of your life completely and let God in from your first waking moment of each new day, you will be working on the wrong level throughout the day. But if you will swing the door of your life fully open and “pray to your Father who is in the secret place,” every public thing in your life will be marked with the lasting imprint of the presence of God. (My Utmost for His Highest, August 23).

Filed under: Memories, Oswald Chambers, Prayer, Spiritual Growth, U2

What’s next to do?

I’m wrestling with the thoughts I had from “Take courage…”

There were other examples I could have used instead of the one I used about playing guitar.  So now, I wonder “What’s next to do?”

This question comes from today’s Oswald Chambers. 

…Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened. If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God…

When you know that you should do something and you do it, immediately you know more. Examine where you have become sluggish, where you began losing interest spiritually, and you will find that it goes back to a point where you did not do something you knew you should do… My Utmost for His Highest, June 08.

Sometimes I look back at a decision I made to leave one church.  I’ve wondered on several occasions if that was the right thing to do.  At the time, I thought it was.  I believe God even led me to specific passages of Scripture that helped me in that decision.  I wonder still… so much turbulent water has gone under the bridge since then that makes me ask the question today: “What’s next to do?”

No matter what I do today – I still go back in my mind and past to determine at what point I de-railed so that I may get back on the tracks and ride out His purpose.

Filed under: Memories, Oswald Chambers, Swimming, Trust

Famous Last Words

Today has been a tough day for many I work with.  Gerry died unexpectedly Sunday night.  He will be missed by all. 

As I have gone through the morning, I have listened to people remark about Gerry and the shock.  It’s interesting to me in almost every conversation people mentioned the last time they talked with Gerry or the last time they saw him.  I received a phone call this morning before work to let me know and I did the same thing… my first thought was of him sitting in my office this past week and the conversation we had. 

I understand it is unrealistic to live our lives thinking each conversation we have with someone may be our last.  Be we really need to be reminded of the importance of our lives and what we do with them.  Our actions and our words matter.  They do have a lasting effect on people.  Unfortunately, we don’t think about that until someone dies. 

Perhaps the most famous and powerful last words to ever been heard by human kind were by Jesus.  In John 19:30, Jesus said, “‘It is finished.’ With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

Filed under: Friends, Memories

Teach me to swim.

I’ve been talking about God’s love, knowing God, walking a road few dare to travel, being intimate with God, and going deeper.  This past week has been around the metaphor of the ocean.  God’s deep and wide limitless love.  I want to learn to swim in this ocean of love.

It’s Mother’s Day weekend.  As I think about God and wanting to learn to swim, I’m reminded of my grandmother, Mommy Bo.  I can recall some bright sunny days in the shallow end of her pool when I was very small.  I recall her wearing her swimming cap with me in her arms teaching me how to swim.  I guess she taught most of her grandchildren how to swim in her own backyard.

I remember learning how to kick and move my arms but the one thing I didn’t like to do was to keep my head down.  I couldn’t stand to put my face in the water.  Maybe it was the water in my eyes or up my nose that I didn’t like.  I think more than that I worried about how I was going to breathe.  I trusted her as I was in her arms but I didn’t trust swimming with my face in the water.  She had faith I could do it when I didn’t have the faith.  She loved me with a love I never understood at the time.  But as I grew and became an adult I came to a place where I understood her love.  She was a great cheerleader for me… and all of her family!

Today, close to 40 years later I am asking God to teach me to swim…  To teach me to swim in the ocean of His love…  Trusting Him with the me He created.  Much like the trust I had in my grandmother’s arms.  At a certain point I had to swim on my own… to let go and swim in her pool.  I guess I’m sort of the same with God.  For so long He has been holding on to me teaching me to swim – now it’s time to believe I can swim in His ocean of love.  It’s His pool… He’s still there watching with great joy.  I guess it’s time for me to believe I can do it.

Thanks Brad for the encouragement.  I’m trying to understand.

When it gets right down to it – it’s not about learning how to swim but rather learning how to drown in the ocean of His love.  Thanks for the insight Glenn.   Total surrender would be to drown in the ocean of his love.

Filed under: Faith, Love, Memories, Swimming

Are you ready?

If God were to speak to you right now would you be ready to listen?

Several years ago I was Youth Pastor at First Baptist Church in Aztec, NM.  I took a group of Juniors and Seniors from high school down to Wayland Baptist University in Texas to check out the college and to hear Third Day in concert.

One of the students at the college from Aztec was walking with me across the campus.  His name is Clint Staj.  He is now a part of a great ministry in Australia and has a band named Zuigia.  As we walked across the campus we talked about God speaking.  He told me how God would speak to him at the strangest moments.  So, not to miss a word of what God had to say he carried a little note pad in his pocket anticipating that next conversation with God.

I thought about that this morning as I was responding to an email from Kevin.  Kevin was on that trip.  Kevin was a part of that youth ministry and was a leader traveling with me on that trip.  Kevin has been a great friend and someone I have missed over the years.  He also worked with me at Harvest Church (now Soul Rio) in Albuquerque. 

God has taught me a lot through both of those two guys!  I’m thankful to God for the friendships He has given to me in Clint and Kevin. 

These two guys (in my mind) have always stood alone.  They have stood out from the crowd.  In the way I mentioned in May FOCUS: Determination.  To live as Christ is to live against the crowd.  It’s traveling a road many will not dare to travel.  Because that road is not safe.  It’s dangerous.  It’s lonely and away from family.  It’s for the sake of Christ the bringing together of His people for His purpose out of LOVE…

He brings His people together through those who will commit to stand alone. Are you ready?

Filed under: Discipleship, Friends, Memories, Spiritual Growth

An unguarded moment (pt 2)

Yesterday I wrote about “an unguarded moment” in my life.  That moment took place in the early Spring of 2000.  I catch myself sometimes thinking a lot about times that have gone by.  It’s interesting to me that my children do the same.  Just the other day one of them made the comment that she was glad she didn’t see Extreme Makeover Home Edition on Sunday because it would have made her cry.  She misses her friends and the times she had in Albuquerque.

2 Corinthians 5:7 reminds me today that we are to “walk by faith and not by sight.”

It’s real easy to get caught up in the emotions of the past.  Whether those emotions are good or bad they can hinder us from what God is doing now… especially if those emotions are the focus of our lives.  Any of us, if not careful, can take a moment from the past and allow it to control our present and our future.  It’s easy for my thoughts to go back and revel in the days I hold real dear to me on a spiritual level.  But if I am not careful I will miss what God is doing today.

I know God worked in me in the past.  My life is a testament to that.  He is working today… He’s doing a new work for a new time.  I’m trying to grasp and understand where He is at work now and how I need to be available.

My guarded moment eight years ago happened for a reason.  God needed to step in at that time to give me a reality check.  Oswald Chambers puts it this way today:

God will give us His touches of inspiration only when He sees that we are not in danger of being led away by them.  We must never consider our moments of inspiration as the standard way of life – our work is our standard.

That day I was in danger of taking myself out of a situation God wanted me in.  Had I taken myself out of there prematurely His complete work would not have been done.  You see, one of the electrical engineers came to me one day while working there and told me: “I hear you are a preacher.  Let me tell you we need your influence around here.  I’ve been praying for more godly people to come and work here.”

I had never met him before that day.  I also found out in that conversation he had been supporting one of the other ministries I was doing.

Never be surprised when God shows up in an unguarded moment.  Keep your eyes on Him.  God is there in the mundane just as He is in the great moments of inspiration.  There is not a decision to be made in our lives God can’t take and work for His glory… if we “walk by faith and not by sight.”

Filed under: Bible Study, Discipleship, Faith, Lessons Learned, Memories, Oswald Chambers, Spiritual Growth