…saw a big deer the other day….
It’s that time…
To decide which party we want to be screwed by – so in that spirit I give you a wonderful musical production by Jib-Jab.
Gone…
…for twelve days into the Canadian wilderness. Pray for lots of Walleye and Smallmouth to be hungry, as I’m SURE I will be pretty hungry=)
See you at Intersect on the 6th=)
A conversation…
Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend – and when I say a friend, I mean one that I’ve known for 32 years (I’m 33). He got a new Job, but not just a new job, it’s a DREAM job. As long as I’ve known him he has been into airplanes. He went to school to be an aircraft mechanic, and worked in a shop in Cincinnati repairing airplanes installing avionics, etc.
He loves to restore old airplanes, and for a while worked for an independent outfit in Goshen on the weekends restoring vintage aircraft including this fun one.
There’s a fun little article here about the Heddon Minnow plane. He eventually got a job at the Tri-State Warbird Museum restoring vintage warbirds.
He and his wife wanted children and God allowed that to happen. His wife was an art teacher and wanted to stay home with the new baby boy, so that’s what she did. Anybody out there trying to make it happen on one income?? Long story even longer, They are making it, but not really getting ahead and there were job opportunities that he was seeking, for jobs that he really wasn’t passionate about, but you have to pay the bills, right?? So he kept pursuing jobs to no avail.
Ok, here’s the really cool part of the story. My friend and I used to go to the USAF Museum and just be in awe and wonder at all of the vintage warbirds. Recently he applied for a job there in their restoration shop and after going through some hoops, God in his mercy and grace allowed him to have the job. He’ll be on their restoration and display team, making more money, working fewer hours, have a more flexible schedule, with more time at home with his family.
The comment he made to me was it really made him realize how much God loves him. Chad is like you or I. His life hasn’t been easy – his first wife walked out on him, his church crapped on him when that happened and he was ostracized because he was divorced. Yet through all of this he has realized the depth of God’s love for him.
Ok, my encouragement is this – Have these conversations with those around you. Have them with those you love, have them with those you don’t even know. The stories that we tell have an unseen power behind them because they tell the story of our intersection with our Creator, and his son Jesus. They tell about why we are different, and how we have been changed for the better.
What’s your story??
A good start to T Paul’s sabbatical…
So to celebrate my friend Tim’s first day of sabbatical, we went to a secret fishing hole to sort of kick it off right. It worked and we tied into a couple of bronzeback Smallmouth Bass. Mine just a little’n, Tim’s was pretty nice.
So it was caught in the same hole as the nice bass my friend Bryan caught a year ago.
I ran into a famous guy…
…at the Golden Nugget. Any ideas who he is??? Hint… He’s pretty dang famous;0)
A beautiful portion of Scripture
“In the land of Zebulun and of Naphtali,
beside the sea, beyond the Jordan river,
in Galilee where so many Gentiles live,
the people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light.
And for those who lived in the land
where death casts its shadow
a light has shined.”
Matthew 4:15, 16
Some evenings…
Pictures mean a heck of a lot more than words!!! This evening is one of those evenings. Jesus Reigns!!
Equipped to Serve
There’s an interesting story in Matthew seventeen about a boy who was referred to as a ‘lunatic’ (coincidentally this was one of my dad’s pet names for me). The boy was possessed by a devil. This possession of the man caused him to be self destructive, and throw himself into fires and water. The devil was literally trying to kill this poor boy.
The sad news is that the father of this boy had taken him to Jesus’ disciples but they could not cast out the devil. In desperation the boy’s father brought him to the source of abundant life. Jesus right away rebuked the devil in the boy and the devil left immediately, leaving the boy healed and whole.
The disciples upon seeing how easily Jesus cast out the devil took Him aside privately and asked Him why they couldn’t do it. He gave them several answers. They didn’t have the faith to do it, they didn’t believe that it could be done, and beyond that Jesus told them that this kind couldn’t happen without prayer and fasting.
The bottom line is that the disciples weren’t equipped for this task. This passage really lets us peek in at the relationship between equipping and service. It’s interesting to watch the relationship grow with Jesus and His disciples. At the beginning of the gospels we see Jesus teaching and doing most of the serving Himself, the disciples are just watching Him taking it all in. We then see the relationship change a bit where He is involving them in some of the serving, and ultimately He sends them out without Him to go serve, and from that point they are actively involved ministering to people physically and spiritually.
Equipping and serving go hand in hand, and whenever we do one without the other our spiritual maturity has to be questioned. In Matthew seventeen we see the disciples’ attempts to serve without being properly equipped to do it. The disciples were not mature enough to handle the spiritual powers that they were facing, and in the same way if we attempt to do great things for God without first being equipped for the task, we will be as embarrassed as the disciples were, at our lack of spiritual maturity.
So what does this equipping look like? It is first and foremost our relationship with Christ. In Matthew 11:29 Christ tells us to let Him teach us. The King James Version puts it, ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.’ There has to be those times where we just sit at His feet and learn of Him. When we saturate our life in His word we begin to learn His ways, and we begin to live out His values. There is no supplement for the role of the Scriptures in the life of the Christian. Concerning the role of Scripture in equipping, 2 Timothy 3:16 says ‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.’
Secondly we need to take a look at our giftings and skill sets. God has wired each of us uniquely for the specific tasks that He prepared in advance for us to do. 1 Peter 4:10 tells us that, ‘Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in it’s various forms.’ I love that they are called gifts, and they are something that we discover. It’s only through the work and power of God in our lives that God gives us these gifts, and these gifts that are given to us are to be used in ‘administering God’s grace’.
Ok, we realize that we really must be equipped before we can serve – however that’s not always the issue that believers face. Some, like myself, have grown up in the church and have been around the Scriptures and maybe have even led Bible studies, but just lived a life of receiving and learning without using all that equipping to engage Christ’s mission in the world.
This is the condition that I found myself in a few years back. I had a ton of scriptural knowledge and had taught the word. I had been equipped for years to serve but had yet to engage Christ’s mission in the world. I was spiritually immature. I was selfishly hoarding all of my knowledge and giftings and only using them inside the church. I never knew that once I began to engage Christ’s mission I would find so much joy and happiness in serving the lost, the least and the loveless.
A friend of mine recently told me that in retrospect the Christian life seemed boring before she decided to step out and use what God has gifted her with to engage the world around her. It’s still a day, by day walk for me, and I am still learning to listen to the still small voice that asks me to be aware of those who are around me. What a joy it is when God brings those divine intersections between us, and those He wants to reconcile to Himself.
All of our Bible knowledge, skills and giftings are wonderful, but they are not the goal. They are a means to an end, and that end is carrying out Christ’s mission in the world. We are only equipped to serve, and to be the hands and feet of Christ. Let’s not be the kind of believers who seek after knowledge and spiritual gifts, and once we attain them we become worthless in the kingdom of God. There are too many people out there dying without Christ. He is their only hope, and we are His only messengers.
My encouragement is this; let us reach for the goal of being mature followers of Christ. We need to sit at His feet and learn of Him, and once we have learned of Him and learned His values, let us carry out His mission of bringing hope and reconciliation to this world that He created.
