A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I recently finished this book by Donald Miller and it was all about what he learned while editing his life for a screenplay and movie. I have yet to see this movie, but the idea of this book struck me as very interesting. What drew me to the book originally was the cover, and it became so much more as I began to read it.
As the author was going through his life he realized he could not remember much of his life and all that he did was gone from his memory. Not only that, but he found out he was not living the epic story that makes a great movie. As I was reading Donald's story I have also been studying Jeremiah's struggles with doing what God called him to, a prophet for God's word among the Israelites. Jeremiah 12:5 states, "if you are getting tired of running with men, how are you ever going to run with the horses." At this point in Jeremiah's life he was being pursued by men who really wanted him dead. He went to God and expressed his complaint and got God's reply.
If we just walk through life without a purpose or plan we have no motivation to do anything. This kind of life can get rather monotonous. God has called us to a specific plan and purpose, Psalm 139 talks about how God knit me together in my mother's womb and He knew me before creation and purposed us for His glory.
I guess the question at the end of all of this is, "Are we living up to the potential God has planned for us?" Everyday brings its own set of problems, but how we react to them is most important in life.

Response to The Shack

I have just finished reading a book, The Shack, which has some controversy attached to it. Without giving away the story a man, Mack, has a devastating event in his life which forces him to battle what he believes about God. The event caused Mack to succumb to what he called the Great Sadness. It is a depression that encompasses his entire life and affects his relationships with his wife, children and friends. The question the book is trying to answer: Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? It seems like a fair question. When something bad happens we all want to scream out to God and ask why. It seems only normal to blame the Creator for the mess of the world.
The book does a good job at answering this question and one of the more interesting parts was about what God expects of us. We all live in a world of expectations; whether we are failing, meeting or exceeding them is another story. Someone in your life has failed your expectations. Sometimes we pray to God and He fails our expectations. When we sin we feel as if we have failed God’s expectations. But what does God really expect of us? This is the part where we list all of our great spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, Scripture, worship and any number of things we try to do. We might even get on the 10 Commandments wagon and say, “God expects me to keep those in my life.” I find it interesting that when it comes to God and what he expects of us, the Bible is pretty quiet. I think we see a lot of rules in the Bible that tend to confuse us into thinking God is conditional and wants us to serve him and do all kinds of acts of service in His name. This would be the time to say not by works shall you be saved so that no one may boast…it is only by (God’s) grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). Even though we know this, there are times when we feel as if we have not been living the life God has planned for us and something bad happens to us and we feel judged by God. What did I do (or not do) to deserve this?
What God wants from us is relationship with Him. This is not a thing, but a verb an action. We set rules because rules are a lot easier to deal with than relationships. Rules tell us where the boundaries are, but in relationships it may be hard to define boundaries. Rules give power those who set them to enforce and judge those who fail to carry them out. God is all-powerful please don’t miss that, but He is not about lording guilt and shame over us when we don’t follow the rules. The Scripture says that anyone who calls on the name of Christ will be saved Acts 2:21). We are set free and because Jesus came down from his throne to dwell and have relationship with us that through His death and resurrection we are forgiven. The only thing we need to do is accept the free offering of God’s grace. We enter into a relationship with God through the acceptance of Jesus in our lives.
I stated above that relationships take work, but not works. To have relationship with God we need to spend time with Him. Not just some time, but all of our time. Our lives need to be about building relationship with God. Everything we do should revolve around this relationship with God. The Bible doesn’t teach us to follow rules; it is a picture of Jesus. While reading God’s word gives us a picture of God’s character and what He may want from you, we have to remember that none of it is possible all on our own. Life and living are in Him and in no other. We cannot live the righteousness of God all on our own. Rules may seem a lot cleaner than relationships, but rules will never be able to love you and rules will never answer the deep questions of the heart. Relationships were instituted by the very presence of God. Before there was any creation, there was a relationship in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Before we get all down on ourselves for not having enough relationship with God, remember that God is not into guilt. And finally the only one to get this right was Jesus when he came down to earth, yet this is the potential we all have, because Jesus was one of us, but had perfect relationship with God in the same chaotic world in which we live.

Missions Trip to FL

Yes I know it is hard to go from the deep freeze of the mid-west to Florida in the middle of February, but sometimes you just have to suffer for Jesus. It started out pretty cold, but by the time we got back on the plane it was 74 degrees. Very nice. Of course, we had to come home to a snow storm...Oh well it is still winter.
Myself along with 10 others from both North Grove and Crossroads Church in Polo went to New Tribes Missions Homes in Sanford, FL. This is a retirement facility for missionaries that served with NTM. Pretty cool place. We were "hired" for a roof and some siding work, both of which we did not finish, but we did get close. We ran out of shingles for the roof, and more where 2 weeks out. It did not seem fair, but it happened. It was a good week. We did get to visit R.C. Sproul's church. Kind of cool since I have read a few of his books. Our contact with NTM is Wallace and Barb Pouncy who have been supported by North Grove for somewhere near 30 years. They are a great couple with some wonderful stories of meeting tribes in the jungles of South America. Including Wally getting speared. Not fun, but very much a Christ centered couple.
For those of you interested, my wife has a blog as well chronicling her difficulties with this strange mysterious health conditions she has. Check it out: href="http://it-all-can-change-in-a-day.blogspot.com/">

End of my time with GT

It is a sad state. I just received an e-mail from the GT Dirt Coalition that the team has ended. I was really looking forward to racing for them again this year, but looks like I won't. I really enjoyed racing my GT and showing it off at the races, but I will continue on, probably still racing my GT cause I don't have anything else to ride. Thanks GT for the great ride!

Couldn't the sun just shine?

It seems like forever since the sun made its presence known to those of us in the midwest. We had a brief spot of sun today, but so far it is filtered through some grey dismal clouds. It is hard to get used to the weather here in the north again. For 5 years we lived in southwest Missouri and this time of year we had pretty good weather, but this snow from Thanksgiving to Memorial Day is too much. Yes I know I exagerate, but it feels true.
We finally got around to buying a new car. This has been a 3 1/2 year process(since our son Corban was born). We did only have a VW Beetle and with the way we have kids we did not have any notice so buying a car was not really possible. For the first six months, we had both kids in the Beetle alone. We finally found a Ford Focus and we had that for almost 3 years, but it never really fit us well. So we decided it was time. It is so nice to have room to move in the car. Traded in the Focus and got ourselves a minivan. Yeah, we are one of those people now. I swore I would never own a minivan, but having two kids has changed my mind on the whole subject. It is a nice Pontiac Montana with the DVD built-in. Can you say road trip?

Great Expectations

At Church, we started a new small group last night with the younger couples. I call them the younger mainly because of our kids age, but also in their marriages they are fairly young. Joy and I are the oldest with 14 years in, but our kids are 3 and 4, so we fit right in. It was a good start and part of our lesson was talking about the desires we bring into our marriages. Whether it is all of a sudden or over time, when we get announced as man and wife, these desires become our expectations for the marriage.

Expectations can come from anywhere: TV, media, books, parents or others marriages. These sign of an expectation can be, "Well that's not how my parents did things!" Of course it can be any number of ways, but expectations can be detrimental to a relationship. If our spouse does not live up to the expectations we can get conflict. Conflict is just a nice way of saying having a fight. This is an option for expectation not being fulfilled, but it does not always end good unless we know that the conflict is not going to end in someone taking off and saying, "Enough!"

We talked through some of the different solutions for expectation, but we ended on the perspective shift of fighting for our marriages. It is not enough to fight for our marriage. We are in a relationship with another person. We need to fight for the other person, just as the other person should be fighting for us.

It is never easy to have a one-sided relationship, because it is not possible. It's in the definition: one-sided is not a relationship. Our prayer is for our group to become more we centered and fight the temptation to be I. Working together to strengthen our marriages with the strand of 3 cords making sure Christ is the third strand.

Lost at Sea

I realize this may sound like I really am lost at sea, but really it is just a sea of busyness. I have not written anything in 2 months and right at the moment I do not have the time either to sit and be very creative, but Christmas and new years are over for another year and we have jumped both feet into the January blahs. It seem that this time of year is the hardest for me to get out of bed and do anything simply because of the lack of sun light pouring in my face. It is always nice to have a sunny day to sit; letting the sun energize me. More of these times are needed for me.

For those interested, I was ordained as a minister in the Evangelical Church Alliance this past Sunday. It was a great service and I thank everyone that came out and supported me. Most important was my family. I really need them there for this stepping stone occasion. I also need to thank Pastor Pat for coming out and making it a great Spirit-filled event.

For now, we must all go forth and combat evil doing our best to see God's will and follow His ways.