Archive for November, 2009

Last night, I was flipping through the channels and stumbled across the movie “Gladiator”.  I was pleasantly thrilled by my find, since it is one of my favorite movies.  I was even more excited since the movie just started.  As I was watching the opening battle scene, Maximus (brilliantly played by Russell Crowe) stood before a host of soldiers while holding his sword in the air, proclaiming “What we do in life echoes in eternity”.  As I am typing this, I am actually doing my best Maximus voice, (you know the fierce, yet humbling, completely intimidating, masculine voice).  Anyway, Russell Crowe was stirring the strength of his army before battle by reminding them of this truth:  “Current actions affect future results!”  Wow, what depth for an action movie!

Many times in our lives, we lose sight of eternity.  We focus so much on today, tomorrow, a week from now, that we lose our grasp on the big picture.  Think about the statement, “What we do in life echoes in eternity”.   What you are doing right now will one day echo in eternity.  Your current decisions will affect much more than your current circumstances.  What you sow today, you will reap tomorrow!  God, in His infinite wisdom, gave man/woman a certain amount of time on earth (or in life) to mold his/her life forever.  So think about your daily decisions, because they affect more than today, tomorrow or a week from now.  I challenge you — live your life with a clear view of eternity.  I wish I could say it like Russell Crowe and stir the spirit of war inside you, but I can’t.  I can just type this small blog and hope you get the point.  So, the next time you have an opportunity to share the love of Jesus, or the next time temptation knocks at your door, remember — your decisions affect much more than you and where you currently are.

In May of 2008, Steven Curtis Chapman and family endured the unthinkable when they lost a child to death at the age of 5. As many of you may know, the circumstances in which the child died just added to the difficulty of the situation. I remember the morning I heard this news on K-love, and my prayers went out for that family as they would any family in that situation. As time passed, the world watched and patiently waited to see if he would continue in his Christian musical career after dealing with a family tragedy such as this. Perhaps he would choose to retire and stay close to home? Maybe he would withdraw into privacy, and we wouldn’t hear from him again? It turns out what he did was continue in his work with adopted children, continued his work on the orphanage in China, and used his God given musical gifting to write a beautiful song in her honor (to name a few). This song will be a comfort to many people who are also grieving right now. I, for one, have been inspired by the way in which this man has handled a terrible twist in his life. Almost immediately, he was releasing comments to the press stating that he knew God was in control. He has never claimed to understand the reasons that God chose to take his daughter home at that time, but he has always stood strong in his faith of the One who “gives and takes away”.  Many of us choose to turn from God for much less. It has been said that you can tell the true strength of a Christian in the way he handles adversity. Maybe you find yourself facing a difficult situation today or wondering why the Lord allowed something to happen that has hurt you. Sometimes we may never know. Like Steven Curtis Chapman, if you can use what God has given you and use it to glorify Him even in the worst of times, then that just may be the greatest moment to witness in your life. Rest assured, on the other side of the pain is peace in His arms and one day we will all understand so much more.

Read about Maria Here

Heaven Is The Face

Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.

Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee;
Take my voice and let me sing,
Always, only for my King.

Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee;
Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold.

Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in endless praise;
Take my intellect and use
Every pow’r as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine;
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store;
Take myself and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee.

I hope everyone is having a happy and blessed Thanksgiving day!  May we all be grateful for the blessings God gives us each and every day. 

John and I had our festivities last night at our house.  There were 21 family members and friends in attendance.  We had food galore, laughter aplenty.  I had decorated the tables to have a sit-down dinner, so no plastic dishes or tableware.  Today, I will continue to clean-up the kitchen, and have leftovers for lunch. 

Just watched the Macy’s parade, and the Adair County band did an awesome job!  We’re proud of our students from Hillside who were able to participate.  Have a safe trip home!

“ Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good;  His love endures forever.”  (I Chronicles 16:34)

^“Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise;  give thanks to Him and praise His name.”  (Psalm 100:4)

Be Blessed!

Go and listen to what this young man has to say… One of my favorite videos.

Leeland – A Message \’How Great Thou Art\’

These have been two of my favorite videos about grace. Listen to them and you will find freedom from your sin and hopefully understand the power, grace and love of God over your life.

Grace of God…Joshua Tongul sermon jam

Allen Hood – Battle of the messengers

The Lord blessed me tremendously this past week.  I was able to buy a beautiful home for a great price.  Anyway, this post is not about the home I bought.  Rather, it’s about the apartment from which I’m moving. 

For the past couple of days, I have been packing, stuffing, organizing and moving my belongings out of my apartment.  During this process, I have noticed certain areas in my apartment that were extremely dirty.  As I moved furniture to and fro, I found many hidden corners that were never cleaned during the entire year I lived there.  I thought to myself, “How did I overlook these areas in my house?  Why didn’t I take the time to clean them?” 

As I sat back and thought about the corners in my apartment, my mind was drawn to the scripture in which God compares our hearts to temples or houses.  I began to think about the corners of my inner house/temple and how often I don’t take the time to clean them.  I thought about how easy it is to clean the big stuff sitting on the floor, on the table, or on the counter top, but, it takes extra time and effort to clean the corners.  As I examined my heart, I became convicted of the lack of effort to keep my  inner corners clean.  It seems like corners are the places where we push everything we don’t have time to deal with or don’t want to deal with.  We believe, because other people can’t see it, then, somehow, it must not be there.  We believe, if we keep it out of sight, then we don’t have to worry about it.  Many times, it’s just small things, but we must remember it’s the small foxes that spoil the vine.  God is a big God, but He is interested in small things.  God never wanted us to stuff the corners of our lives with junk we were afraid to deal with.  Just because it’s out of sight does not mean it’s out of our hearts.

I challenge you to evaluate the corners of your heart and make sure every area of your heart is washed clean.  Don’t let things accumulate in the corners of your heart, because it’s harder to get rid of the longer it stays there.

²⁴ A man of many companions may come to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24

Monday will conclude my 7 days of connecting with God every 60 minutes. Here is what I have learned:

1) When you take the time to look, it isn’t difficult to find things to talk with God about all day long. I thought it would be difficult. As time progressed, I opened myself up to be led by the Spirit, and I usually had a different subject each time. If I didn’t, He didn’t mind hearing it again.

2) There are many ways to connect with God other than praying. Praying and listening in prayer is a wonderful way to do so, but worshiping in music or reading a devotional are a couple of other ways.

3) In just under 7 days, I found a miniature story that showed me where I fail in connecting with God in normal times of my life. For example, when distraction comes into my life, then I often overlook the need to connect with God on a regular basis. It isn’t that I have to actually do it every hour, but there isn’t any reason we can’t do it several times a day. There were a couple of days this week when I let the stresses of work and life keep me from remembering my commitment on the hour.

4) When you open up a dialogue like that on a regular basis with God, He will oblige by speaking to you as often if you are listening. Doing so doesn’t always solve your problems right away, but it does give you a great peace in knowing that the Lord holds them all in His capable hands.

5) Finally, as with the verse above, the Lord never tired of me talking to Him. I could not find another person in this world who I could call every hour of every day that wouldn’t tire of talking to me. They would tire of hearing my problems. They would even tire of hearing my praises. They would want some space from me. God never tires of us, will always be there to hear our problems or praises, and loves every minute that we spend with him, whether it be 10 minutes or 10 hours.

Going forward, I doubt that I will realistically stick to my every hour commitment….at least not on the dot. I have learned that there are many moments in every day where I can pull God in and I haven’t been. Going into this experiment, I found out that I didn’t know how to set my cell phone to alarm every hour without setting separate alarms for each time. I made a mental note to try and watch the clock and catch the hours. I quickly learned that I check my text messages and email just about every hour of every single day. If I can remember to check in with the world via text and email that often, then I should be able to remember to check in with God at the same time. So, my new commitment is, that if I am checking my tweets, facebook, or email, that I will also make sure, at some point in that moment, to put that down and just connect with God, if only for a moment.

For those of you who also tried this experiment on some level this week, I would love to hear how your week went by using the comment section on this page. May you continue to draw nearer to Him as He draws nearer to you.

When my sister and I were kids, my parents owned a computer store. We would spend countless hours there, waiting until the golden time of 6 pm to go home for the night. We would get so bored sitting in the back room of the store. We’d watched all of our movies nearly a million times, worked all of our puzzles thousands of times, and cable usually only held reruns that we’d seen at least a hundred times.  We had to be creative. We played with duct tape … a lot.

I asked my sister if she would let me duct-tape her up, because I’d never done it before. She agreed, surprisingly, on the condition that the moment that she said stop, I would.  After choosing an office chair, I first taped her hands, and then her mouth, so she couldn’t tell me to stop… and then proceeded to her feet. I rolled her into a closet. I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?  I was laughing so hard that my mom soon became suspicious and came to see what I was up to.  Tears were running down my face because I was laughing so hard at my amazing idea.  Mom rolled her out of the closet and carefully pulled the tape off.  It hurt, as you can imagine it might.

I’m taking a prayer class right now at school, and the professor was talking about the importance of watching what we say. She simply put it “that words are like duct tape”. They can hinder, and they can help.

Has anyone ever called you stupid, or fat or any number of things that weren’t true?  But, because someone said them about you, you began to consider them as truth.  Maybe you just gave up on your grades because someone told you that you were stupid. Or maybe you decided to quit eating because someone told you that you were fat. Or something far less extreme… These false things can control you… they can even hinder you. Like being bound to an office chair with duct-tape, words affect us in powerful ways. We say they don’t—those things that people say about us to bother us, or even make us second guess ourselves.

Now think about what you’re saying.  Are they things that build up the people around you?  Ephesians 4:29 says, “Don’t use any foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those that hear them.” (NLT)

James talks about the power of the tongue.  He compares it to the bit in a horse’s mouth, a rudder in a ship, and the spark that brings a wildfire.  He goes on to say, “People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, but no one can tame the tongue.” (James 3:7-8)

What are you joking about? What do you playfully accuse your friends about? Working on skillfully using our words to build the people around us up is a definitely a challenging task, but we can lean on Christ to help us. It’s worth the challenge.

Don’t duct-tape people with your words.

“Toto . . . I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”.  This famous line was taken from The Wizard of Oz, spoken by Dorothy to her dog, Toto, just after they had arrived in Munchkinland. 

Last year, I went with the Regional GO team on a mission trip to the Dream Center in downtown Los Angeles.  One night, we went to Hollywood Blvd. on an evangelistic mission.  The streets were full of local people, tourists and artisans.  Several individuals were dressed up to depict various TV and cartoon characters.  The first one I met was Dorothy.  I remember telling someone in our group, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”  Nor were we in Columbia or Russell Springs.  The environment was totally different than what we were used to at home.  What your mind could imagine, your eyes could probably see on the streets of L.A.

As we conclude our journey “down the yellow brick road”, we find Dorothy, Toto, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion approaching the Emerald City.  You know they were in wonder of the sight they were beholding!  They had followed the path, and reached their final destination.  As Christians, we are also looking for a city, a place to call home for eternity.  When we think of Heaven, our minds cannot fathom what it will really be like.  We can read about how John describes it in the book of Revelation, form a picture in our minds of what we think it will look like.  But, until we walk upon those “streets of gold, until we walk through those pearly gates”, the best we can do is “only imagine”.