Anger

Before I say anything else, I want you to know that I really dislike being angry.  I really dislike losing my temper.  I really dislike conflict.  I really dislike confrontation.  I am an easy going person who most always gets along with everyone, even if I don't particularly like them.  I believe what Jesus says, love your neighbor as your self.  I believe in the golden rule, treat others as you would have them treat you.

99% of the time I manage to not let anger get the best of me.  More often than not, when someone is mean, cruel, hateful, etc. to me, I tend to let them do their thing, turn the other cheek, and walk away.  Only to slink into my own world where I have what I call a 'pity party.'  During this pity party time I will listen to certain kinds of music, mostly songs that are sad, I cry, and sometimes I feel sorry for myself.  I often wonder what I did to deserve to be treated this way.  Why am I the scapegoat?  Why is it all my fault?

Tonight was one of those truly rare occasions when I lost my temper.  Not completely, but enough for everyone around the table at a meeting I was attending to definitely know I had lost my patience.  I pride myself on not losing my temper.  On keeping a cool, calm head in heated discussions.  But tonight that all went out the window.

At some point, when you have listened to people tear you down for the past 13 months and there's just no letting up, somethings gonna happen.  I wasn't rude or mean, I didn't really strike back, but I confronted someone on something they said and ended it with "yeah right."  There were a lot of other things I wanted to say, but thank goodness God kept me from saying them.

Yes, there were several words of profanity that wanted to come spuing out of my mouth.  They were certainly racing through my mind at the time.  All I can say it 'thank you Lord, thank you.'

Returning hatred for hatred never solves anything.  If there's one thing I've learned in all my days, especially growing up in the South, is that there is no place for hatred.  There is no place for cruelty.  Letting yourself drop to this level is letting Satan have his way.  So for just that instance, I let Satan win.  I let him take control tonight and I am not happy about that.  Just because others act with stupidity and ignorance doesn't give me the right to act like that too.

It's going to be a while before I can sleep tonight.  All these thoughts just keep going through my mind and I keep replaying what happened.  I can't take back how I acted, what I said.  And truthfully, I have no desire to ask anyone for forgiveness.  Although when I say my prayers tonight, I will be asking God to forgive me.  To help me to continue to keep my feelings in check.  To be objective.  To be the loving person He expects me to be.  Nobody ever said being a Christian was easy, and certainly no one ever said being a pastor was easy.  In fact, Jesus told us that being a follower of God would bring us hatred, condemnation, and possibly death.

So I end this with, God help me please.  Help me to love those who are unlovable.  Help me to control my temper.  Help me to forgive those 'who know not what they do.'

Everything I Don't Want to Hear About Church

I don’t want to hear that it’s my responsibility to make disciples of others.  That’s the pastor’s job right?  I don’t want to hear that I need to volunteer more of my time.  I don’t have any time, aren’t there enough other people volunteering?   I don’t want to hear that my church needs more money.   I give every week, isn’t that enough?  I don’t want to hear that we need more ministries.  Why do we need more?  People wouldn’t come any way.  I don’t want to hear that our conference can’t help our poor church.  Isn’t that what they’re there for?  We’ve been paying our apportionments for years and what have they done for us?  I don’t want to hear that we need to open our doors to the undesireables.   Soon as we start letting ‘them’ in our church is going to fall apart.  We don’t want ‘their kind’ here.  I don’t want to hear that we need to change to make others want to come/join our church.  What’s wrong with how we do things?  We’ve been doing it this way for over a hundred years with no problems.  I don’t want to hear that I’m supposed to love, accept, and forgive everyone.  Why would I want to do that?  There are some bad, sinful people out there.  They might corrupt our children.  I don’t want to hear that I am responsible.  What do you mean I’m responsible?  Why isn’t the pastor responsible for the problems we have?

What are we so afraid of?  Why are we always looking for a quick fix?  Why do we think we're entitled?  When did learning about the joy, and grace, and love of Jesus Christ fall to the way side?  When did we start thinking that we're entitled?  Isn't that what they're calling the younger generation these days?

And what do you mean it's all up to the pastor?  Pastors come and go.  The church is not 4 walls with a steeple on top.  It's the people within that make the church. They are the ones who will be here day in and day out carrying out the ministries of the church and keeping it moving into the future.

It's up to us as individual, disciples of Jesus Christ to make the church a welcoming place for everyone.  To find ministries that meet the needs of the community we are a part of.  To find ways to engage our youth in the community we call church.  Help them to learn their gifts so that they may feel a part of worshiping God with us.  

Are we lacking the spiritual fruits that we need to push forward into the future?  Are we willing to explore what those fruits may be?  In every church, not just the small ones, there are always the select few who are always volunteering, organizing things, keeping things going.  What are the rest afraid of?  Why do they ignore the needs of their church?  I understand that people lead busy lives these days.  We even manage to book our kids solid so they don't have any free time.  But why are we ignoring the church?

In a world so full of competition, we have to find new inviting ways to keep our members coming.  Sure, there's always the faithful who will always be there.  But our church can't depend on them alone.  We must find ways to keep the people we have interested, to help them discover their gifts so that they can contribute them to the whole at large.  As the church sign here at left states, 'shouting Oh God' from bed doesn't count.  Showing up only on Easter or Christmas Eve doesn't count.  Now don't get me wrong here, I know there are people who are required to work on Sundays.  I was one of those for many years.  I dearly missed and longed to be in church.  Life certainly wasn't the same for me.  But for those who think showing up whenever they feel like it makes them a follower of Christ, well, they better rethink that position.

There is no easy way to heaven.  It takes hard, faithful work.  It takes commitment.  It takes following Jesus' instructions: "for no one enters the kingdom of my father without going through me."  There is a road map, you just have to be willing to follow.  

There are no quick fixes for things going on in our churches today.  There's no hero who is going to walk through the doors and instantly make things better.  If we aren't willing to do the job Christ has entrusted us with, then why are we even bothering to keep the church doors open?  People are leaving, the bills are piling up, and everything is in disrepair. Nobody's motivated to do anything.  They all have this 'I'm a victim' attitude.  Makes me very sad.

Sometimes Life Seems Like Chapters of Goodbyes

Before you get out the tissues, I don’t intend to make this post all about sadness.  So we’ll start out on a happy note here.

The first goodbye we experience in life is that of leaving the womb.  I know, you’re thinking “but that’s a beginning.”  And it is, but it also a goodbye.  A child has spent 9 months in the womb.  You have to imagine that they have been happy and comfortable there, having all their needs met 24/7.  They didn’t have to cry, kick, scream or anything.  They just had to grow and enjoy their time there.  So leaving the womb is definitely a goodbye for them.  And then it becomes a new beginning.  The beginning of life as we know it.  They are breathing real live oxygen on their own, they are hearing and seeing things for the first time.  It’s an awesome and scary experience I’m sure.

The next goodbye we experience is going to school.  We’re saying goodbye to all day play, taking naps, and having undivided attention from our moms.  Now of course most of us didn’t perceive it that way, we were excited about our new adventure – albeit – a new beginning.  I do believe this was harder on the moms than anyone else.

Fast forward to the teen years.  Here is where we are first introduced to heartache of goodbye.  I think everyone went through puppy love.  Of course we are sure that this love will never end.  But it does, and we are completely broken hearted and swear we’re never gonna fall in love again because we could not possibly love anyone that much, ever!  Even so, this is also a beginning.  It’s the beginning of growing up, and learning what love is all about.

Sometimes though, as adults, we forget how that was as a teenager.  Some people fall in love easily, some don’t.  But it’s as true for adults as it is for teens.  Sometimes even worse.  Because once you’ve given your heart to someone and they throw it away, or take advantage of it, you now feel betrayed, and like you’ve been made a fool of.  You thought you’d grown out of making dumb mistakes (not that you  really did) and you are devastated.  These goodbyes are some of the hardest to get over.

One hard goodbye is the one when a father walks his daughter down the aisle.  So many dad’s get choked up doing this.  They are giving away their baby girl.  They are sad that are no longer the most important man in her life.  And to make it worse, the poor dad always has to have the first dance.  But for both of them, this too is a new beginning.

Another hard goodbye is when we must let go of a loved one who has died.  Even if the person has been sick a long time, the grieving begins, it hurts like hell, and it takes a while for  the healing to come.  Even though this is extremely hard to go through, it too is a new beginning.  Our loved one is starting life with Jesus.

Speaking of Jesus, many, like the disciples, had to say goodbye to Jesus.  They weren’t quite sure what was going to happen even  though Jesus had told them.  It was awful for them to watch him suffer and die on that cross.  But it was also a new beginning, for Jesus and us.  Because Jesus gave his life for us, we began a life where our sins have been forgiven.  And the disciples came to realize that their new beginning was to carry on Jesus’ teachings of making disciples of the world.

There are many more examples of goodbyes that we could talk about here, but I think the point here is that while there are many goodbyes in our lives, there are also many beginnings.  So the next time you’re experiencing a goodbye, go ahead, have yourself a pity party as I like to call them.  But somewhere along the way, make sure to realize that it is also a beginning.  For every door that closes, God opens another.  

  

Not sure that I'm really happy with how this turned out tonight, my thoughts seem to be very jumbled.  But hope you find something useful here.

Hope or Let Go?

 Today I read a story about a young doctor, still in his internship, who had to confront this question in a very traumatic way.  He was part of a team that worked on a man who had been burned over 90% of his body in an explosion.  The man was going to die.  His wife and child were waiting outside.  The man is in considerable pain, obviously.  He is being given oxygen from a mask over his  mouth and nose.  He is barely audible.  The lead doctor says it's time to intubate.  But the young doctor knows if the man is sedated in order for them to do this that he'll never get to tell his wife and child that he loves them and they won't get to say goodbye to him.  The lead doctor decides intubation is what they're doing and then he goes out and talks to the family after it's done.  He brings the wife in and she sits beside her husband, holds his hand, and hopes for the best.  The young doctor struggles with this decision, even though it wasn't his to make.  Which is better, to give hope or to let go?

There are a lot of things in life that give us this option.  We can have hope that we'll get that job we want or we can let go of the worry and just see what happens.  We can have hope that the cute guy across the room will ask us to dance or we can let go knowing that there's no way he's ever gonna do that (high school days, remember girls?)  We can have hope that we pass that test, or let go of the fear and just do the best we are capable of.  We can have hope that the car makes it to the gas station before we run out of gas or we can let go of the worry and just coast on in. We can have hope that our children will grow up to be wonderful people who do all the right thing, get the great grades, etc. or we can let go and accept them for whoever they become.

To me there are three 'hope or let go' situations that seem the hardest to me.

#1  There is the hope that a friend or loved one will survive a surgery or beat a terrible disease. Or should we let go of that person and let them go to Jesus in peace because logically we know that there is no hope even though our hearts want to hope and believe in a miracle.

#2  There is the hope that the man or woman we have fallen in love with will return that love in the same way.  That if they will love us as much as we love them then we can have this beautiful, forever relationship with each other.  Or should we let go?  Maybe logically we know that this isn't possible.  Perhaps this is the best, closest relationship we've ever had and we need to let go of this hope so as not to ruin what we already have.

#3  There is the hope that God is watching over us no matter what we do.  The hope that Jesus loves us through thick and thin.  That He will never give up on us.  That He will provide for us.  That we will go to heaven when Jesus returns.  Or do we let go, just assume that all the above is automatically going to happen because Jesus gave his life for us up on that cross and forgave all our sins?  Do we let go and just live our lives anyway we want, right or wrong, and just assume that we are forgiven and yes, we'll go to heaven because of this?  

There is a big flaw in the thinking of #3.  Yes, it is true that God is always watching over us, that Jesus loves us unconditionally and will never give up on us, and that he died on that cross for our sins.  BUT, that's all good and fine until we just ASSUME.  Jesus tells us that we must repent.  We must ask for forgiveness.  We must try to live our lives by the examples Jesus taught us.  NO, we cannot just go out and do whatever we want, live anyway we feel like it, and expect to get into heaven.  Jesus knows that we will make mistakes.  But to out right ignore his teachings is completely idiotic.  If this is the way you choose to live then you are letting Satan rule your life.  Satan is the one telling you it's ok to do whatever you want.  "Go ahead," he says, "do whatever you want, God doesn't care, Jesus already died for you."  And if you fall victim to this vicious lie then you are going to regret it.  

Jesus did die on that cross for you and your sins.  But he didn't do it in vane.  There are expectations.  Expectations that you will follow the instructions given to you in the Bible.  He didn't walk around on this earth preaching and telling his parables for nothing.  He did it to teach us and to help us understand what it means to be a Christian and what is means to go out and make disciples of the world.  

I'm sure Mary Magdalene, his mother Mary, the disciples, and many others hoped that he would save himself from this cruel torture and death.  But that was not the plan the Father had in mind.  He suffered, and suffered greatly for us.  He sacrificed himself for us.  He was not a martyr.  He was and is our guide.  Our guide to the promised land, to join him in heaven with the Father.  

As for the other situations, that's your call.  Discern the situation at hand, and make the best decision you can. And if you ask, Jesus will help you find the right answer.

Friend Love

Have you ever wished for an endless night? For time to stand still because things could simply not be more perfect? Ah, memories..... love with friends, for friends, by friends- safe- warm- fun- crazy. Not to be shared with everyone- never to be forgotten. Always to remain in the private crevices of the mind to be accessed when the sky is dark and the birds are singing and you don't know who to believe!!