God and you

1. People can be irrational, egocentric, and wretched. Forgive them anyway.
2. When you’re kind and generous people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind and generous anyway.
3. When you succeed you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
4. When you’re honest and sincere people may cheat you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
5. What you create and build others may destroy overnight. Create and build anyway.
6. When you find peace and joy others may resent you. Be joyful anyway.
7. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good things anyway.
8. When you give your best, others may mock, criticize, and ridicule you. Give your best anyway.
9. When you love your neighbor you may be attacked. Love them anyway.
10. Remember, your life is between you and GOD. It is never between you and them. 

In 1968, Kent M. Keith wrote The Paradoxical Commandments as part of a student leader booklet.  I changed a few words and omitted one of his commandments, but the idea is his.  Thanks and have a good and godly day.   

Mark chapter 2

14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth.  “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him.  So Levi got up and followed him. 

15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners.  (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.)

16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?”

17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.  I have come to call not those who think they’re righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

This passage stopped me today.  I have read it many times and know the scripture well.  Until today, I never gave it much thought especially compared to the time I give to Psalm 1, Psalm 27, or Psalm 91.  Add Proverbs 2, 3, and 4, Genesis, and James 1 to the list as well as Matthew 5-7 and many more. 

This morning, I’m curious why Christ Followers don’t do this well… “This” being defined as reaching out to sinners.  I know Christians who are more concerned with remodeling their bathroom and kitchen than reaching out to sinners.   

Things that make me go hmmm?  

1. How well does the Church/do Christians actually go and make disciples as the Bible commands?  
2. Have Christians developed a model today based on 'if you build it they will come'?  
3. Does the Christian community focus on developing disciples as much as they focus on getting people in the pews?  
4. Is the Church effective at developing disciples?  
5. What about developing young people and students as disciples?  

Have a good and godly day.

Funny thing happened

... on the way to outrageous success and wealth and power.  Those goals withered on the vine and replaced.  I am currently in the middle monumental life change.  A paradigm shift.  My daily routine I have know for a decade is obsolete.  My rut gone.  Uncomfortable.  Lost.  No direction.

God has doggedly pursued me for a few years… not to save me, not to chastise me, but to get me to realize my talent… to give up my current ambition or my career.  To simply stop right now.  Immediately.  I am puzzled because I have never pursued a normal career.  In fact, I don’t consider what I do as a career.  what I have done is invest a great deal of resources to develop a specific skill.  I have worked long to refine that skill.  Clients now pay me to perform that skill.  I was in bliss because I was fortunate to earn money doing what I loved.  I couldn't wait for Monday morning.  Despite all of my effort and dedication I lived in the middle of the curve.

For almost a year I knew, deep down where only God visits, I would never achieve my goals.  But, regardless of the evidence before me, all of the unanswered prayers, the obstacles, the emotional pain, the failures... I buckled down, dedicated more time, studied, extended my hours, and plowed along carving my path.  I thought if I included God in my ambition, worked hard, and didn't give up He would see to my success.  God was my lottery ticket.  I finally conceded my desire and motivation may not honor God.  The time and money and resources I invested may not be what God wants.  I sacrificed, therefore I promise my family sacrificed.  My children were ignored at times.  I read voraciously.  Studied continuously.  Both good and worthy.  

I finally listened and now leave with memories of fifteen hour days and experience.  The skill I developed and refined...  I managed investment portfolios and retirement accounts.  I was once a fully licensed Financial Advisor and soon learned life insurance products, annuities, 529 plans, mutual funds, and other financial minutia did not excite me.  I focused solely stocks and bonds and eventually just stocks.  

I believe now, as I did then, people need sound, honest, godly investment advice free from any conflicts of interest, such as kickbacks or 12b1 fees.  God spoke to me through His Word.  My wife, especially my wife.  Failure.  TV.  Books.  My children.  And other professional traders and investors.  However, the biggest influence on my decision I should move on was mediocrity.  The one outcome I can’t stomach is mediocrity.  It's just enough success to keep you engaged in the game and yet no real success is ever sustained. 

The one avenue, the one method God spoke to me, not listed above is prayer.  Oh, I prayed.  I prayed for others.  I prayed for wisdom.  I prayed to be a great manager, a great trader, a great investor so... wait... hold on... so He, God could financially bless my clients… and of course me.  I prayed hard and long.  Those prayers were packed full of goodness with a chewy caramel center.  I listened in every area except...  How God wanted to financially support my family... His family?  His children.  

That makes me as a hypocrite.  That makes me a liar, even if I only lied to myself.  That makes me a person who held and worshiped idols.  It also left me in need of a Savior.  In need of a God who doggedly pursued me until I stopped forging my own way and slowed down.  Now removed, now less worried, I see my path would have destroyed my life.  God or mammon?  God or mammon?  I disguised mammon, redefined mammon, and confused mammon as good and worthy and godly.  Oh how dark life gets when what I think is light is darkness.  

It’s impossible, yes impossible, to listen to God if you are too busy doing or too busy talking.  I was both.  The nudge started years ago with:   

1. That movie was really close to being a great message about Christ but...  
2. That song is really close to sending a great message about what Jesus could do, but…   
3. Stand By Me, good movie but not appropriate for an adolescent boy.

I would pray and ask God to give my daughter something to watch that is well written, well done, and well acted and yet glorified Him.  The same premise applied to music for my son.  God asked what are you going to do about that.  I argued as Moses argued, “I can’t" and then proceeded to offer evidence to support my opinion... "no time", "not one lick of musical talent or ability", "I'm a math guy, not a arts and craft guy".  The only other time God asked that question, that same question, was when He asked me what I was going to do about my two year old son.

My talent, as best I can hear God, is being creative, more specifically writing.  I am not an artist.  I have no musical talent whatsoever.  I write for Christ.  My first attempt was this blog.  It is however, uncomfortable because it’s vulnerable… uncomfortable to leave the old way and move forward to the unknown… vulnerable sharing thoughts and opinions and dreams.  

I have previously posted Jay Bakker's question.  I now have my answer to... “Why do I get out of bed and why should anyone care?”  I got out of bed to serve mammon.  Not many people cared.  That is the real paradigm shift in my story. 

Have a good and godly day.   

Prayer

St. Thomas More (1478 ~ 1535), write the following while in prison, "The things, good Lord, that I pray for give me the grace to labor for."  

Why do people, including Christians, ridicule and detest beggars but don't hesitate to become one before God?  The purpose of prayer is to better, to refine, to elevate ourselves… it is to draw us closer to God, to better know God.  Maybe, we should try to spend less asking of God and more time listening to what He says…

Prayer does not change God, 

but it changes him who prays.  

Soren Kierkegaard

The value of consistent prayer 

is not He will hear us, 

but we will hear Him.  

William McGill

We have to pray with our eyes on God, 

not on the difficulties.  

Oswald Chambers

But in my distress I cried out to the LORD;

yes, I prayed to my God for help.

He heard me from His sanctuary;

my cry to Him reached His ears.

Psalm 18:6

In times of trouble, may the LORD answer your cry.

May the name of the God of Jacob keep you safe from all harm.

Psalm 20:1

May He grant your heart’s desires

and make all your plans succeed.

…may the LORD answer all your prayers.

Psalm 20:4-6

For You have given him his heart’s desire;

You have withheld nothing he requested.

Psalm 21:2

He asked You to preserve his life,

and You granted his request.

Psalm 21:4

Have a good and godly day. 

Absent Jesus

From Jay Bakker’s book Fall to Grace: 

“Absent Jesus, the law would be like one of those unwinnable carnival games where you are promised a big stuffed animal if you can just throw the plastic ring over… the bottle a few feet away.  Seems simple, right?  Only the game is rigged: the ring is too small and you can’t win regardless of how many times you try!”

Rigged?  Unwinnable?  Discouraging?  After that statement, someone has to wonder if this whole thing is a scam, a rip-off, a grift.  Have we been bamboozled?  Who wants to participate in a rigged game?  Not me.  I certainly wouldn't be writing for Christ if I thought the game was rigged and I was the sucker.  Below are just a few of God's Words that indicate He wants the best for us, that He wants us to know Him, and it not a con job.   

Matthew 7: 7-11

⁷Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. ⁹Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him.

Psalm 91: 9-16

⁹If you make the Most High your dwelling, even the LORD, who is my refuge, ¹⁰then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. ¹¹For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; ¹²they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. ¹³You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. ¹⁴”Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledge my name. ¹⁵He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. ¹⁶With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.

Luke 18:14

“I tell you that this man... went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Psalm 34: 8-10

⁸Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. ⁹Fear the LORD, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing. ¹⁰The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

Jeremiah 29:12-14

¹¹"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹²Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴I will be found by you,” declares the LORD

Psalm 50:15

and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

A note on Jeremiah 29:11.  It's a popular quote, especially for young people and newer Christians.  It is a great quote.  It's encouraging.  It provides hope for those who struggle.  However, it is a mistake to isolate it because I think verses 12-14 are even better.  Why is verse 11 isolated?  Well, 11 shows what God will do for us while 12-14 explains what we should do.  It always been my opinion that we prefer easy versus hard.  Being served versus serving.  Inward versus outward.  Pleasure versus joy.   

Jay Bakker asked, "WHY do you get out of bed everyday and WHY should anyone care?"  Answer that and you will be way ahead of the curve on experiencing Jesus.     

One last note, Psalm 1 tells us to mediate on God's Word day and night.  You may want to read and re-read Jay Baker's quote at the top.  It might prompt some of us to do as God instructs. 

Have a good and godly day.        COMMENTS