Listening

If you are anything like me, when you listen to a song that you can’t understand the lyrics you simply make them up as you sing along. Eventually you start to believe that those are the actual words. I’ve had some pretty funny moments with my wife Amber when she hears me sing a lyric and she’s like, “that’s not what they say.”

When we get the lyrics to a song wrong it’s no big deal, but if we don’t hear what someone is trying to tell us it can cause big problems. When we don’t listen to what others are saying, just like lyrics, we make up whatever we want to believe about their lives. We fill in the gaps with our own understanding instead of the truth. But when we take the time to listen we start to hear things we never heard before. We begin to hear a need our friend has or a struggle our children may be dealing with. I’ve even been able to hear my wife drop a hint that I am not loving her the way she needs me to. I’ve discovered that when I take the time to listen, I learn more about what I am supposed to do then if someone were to simply tell me what to do.

Listening is the key to understanding and in our crazy busy lives, one of the hardest things to do is slow down and listen. That’s why God tell us to slow down and listen to Him. It helps us to be a listener first before anything else. The bible says over and over again, “Listen to what the Lord says.” It is a call to slow our lives down and listen to what God has to say to us before we act and before we make a mess of things.

Next time you try to sing the lyrics of a song that you don’t know, slow down and listen to what the creator of the song is really saying. And the next time you can’t figure out what to do in life, slow down and listen to what the creator of life has to say to you.

Questions

You made the sky so incredibly blue and yet the world does not recognize You.

A dog that’s lost will always find it’s way, but a child still goes hungry everyday.

So many questions that fill my mind; So many things I ponder that I can’t unwind.

If I ever stand in your presence to ask, I’ll probably just forget the task.

I may not be able to clearly see, but I trust that there is a reason to be.

Today I ask you to take my hand and lead me through all that I don’t understand.

Significance

The other day I had the chance to just hang out by the side of a river and watch the water flow over the rocks. It was seriously an awesome time of just contemplating the things of life that God has provided us with. It made me start thinking about the significance that water plays in our lives. We wash with water, we play in water, and we drink water. We literally can’t live without water. This thought caused me to start thinking about my own significance.

I want to make a difference in the world and I want to have a sense that my life mattered. I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t. But the way that we most likely measure our own significance is to compare our lives to the difference we see other people making. Then we determine that if we want to make a significant difference then we have to go out and do something to achieve it.

I heard a joke the other day about a business man who was on vacation and came upon a guy who was sitting on a chair on the beach with a lone fishing pole in the water. The businessman asked the guy fishing “Why don’t you have two poles in the water, so that you can sale the fish you don’t need and make a profit?”
The fisherman asked in response, “Why would I need to do that?”
The businessman responded, “So that you can eventually buy a boat and catch even more fish”.
The fisherman replied, “And then what?”
The businessman excitedly replied, “Well then you can expand to two boats and eventually hire other people to fish for you!”
The fisherman asked, “And then what would I do?”
At this the businessman was noticeably agitated and said, “Obviously you could relax on the beach like me and do all the fishing you want!”
The fisherman replied, “And your point?”

You see we so often get caught up in being significant that we miss the whole point. Our significance isn’t found in what we do in this world as much as being a part of what God is doing.

“But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of.” - 1 Corinthians 12:19 (The Message)

God has a plan and you are part of it. God has uniquely placed you in your life for a reason, so stop looking for a way to be significant and be significant. Be the difference maker in the lives of those who are already around you.

Twisted

Every time I open up a new package of bread I have to remove one of those twist ties off the end of the packaging. Then after I remove the bread I usually just disregard the twist tie and spin the bag and tuck it under the bread. Because how many times have you gone looking for those twisty’s when you want to put the bread away and they seem to disappear? And then there are those square ones, those are just annoying because you have to spin the bag enough to get them all the way around the bag.

Well then just the other day I go to get my favorite raisin bread for breakfast and it’s all hard and stale because it wasn’t wrapped up correctly. It was a tragedy to ruin perfectly good raisin bread that way. It made me realize that using those twisty things really are the only way to guarantee the freshness of the bread. I can do my best to preserve something, but if the bag gets moved and air gets inside there is nothing I can do to make it right again.

Protecting something is all about preserving it’s life. That’s why God gave us his word to protect and preserve us.

"How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands." - Psalm 119:9-10

Unfortunately, just like those twisty’s, people have disregarded God’s word and experienced a pretty stale life in the process. So let your life be twisted by God’s word found in the bible, it is the only way to keep your life fresh and preserve your existence from the stale corruption of the world.

Wrecked

We have all been in traffic caused by an accident. I’m not sure what compels us to slow down and look, but there is something within us that is drawn to the affects of a wreck. We slow down to see the damage done to both car and person and maybe even try to make sense of how it occurred in the first place. Wrecks cause pain, wrecks ruin lives, and wrecks make traffic happen. Even though there is nothing good about a wreck, sometimes seeing a wreck is actually a good thing if it causes us to drive more cautious and attentive.

This past week I was in a wreck. It wasn’t a car wreck that caused any physical damage, but it was a heart wreck that caused me to slow down and look at myself and it actually was a good thing.

I’ll spare you the details, but something happened that got me incredibly angry at a guy who offended my son Chad. I had every right to be angry, but the problem was my anger turned into disgust for this guy, so much that I found myself fantasizing about putting him in his place, embarrassing him in front of his friends and making him apologize to Chad while serving me lemonade. Okay not really about the lemonade part, but its funny how our minds work when we start imagining things. In the midst of dreaming of how I would wreck this guy’s life, God was preparing to wreck my heart.

About two days later, Amber asked when I was going to forget about it and move on. As I was answering her that I was justified in my anger, God reminded me that He was angry too, not at this guy, but that I wasn’t showing this guy real love, a love based on compassion and mercy. And that’s when my heart got into a head on collision with God’s heart. I was headed in a completely different direction and I got spiritually wrecked. It was painful, but a good kind of pain that got my attention and reminded me of what compassion and mercy really look like.

The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God. - 1 John 4:8-10 (The Message)

I’m so glad that God rescued me from my wrecked life by sending His Son to die for me and I’m glad that He continually wrecks my heart to show me how He intends to use me to show others His love.

Wrestling

I’ve never been a big fan of wrestling, maybe because I just don’t get it. Two people engaged in a struggle to overpower the other and get them to a point of immobility or submission. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good fight and seeing two guys engaged in conflict is quite entertaining, but wrestling is different. In fighting there is a clear outcome and you see the evidence of the fight, but in wrestling it’s not so obvious. After a wrestling match, if you didn’t see the match, you may not be able to determine the victor over the defeated.

Honestly there are times in my life when I feel the same way. I often wrestle over issues or causes or convictions that I’m not sure what winning or loosing looks like. I often see some type of injustice in the world or in my life and when I don’t I have a sense of exactly what to do, I feel like I’m wrestling myself. There are times when I think know what I should do, but I fail to do something about it and it feels like I’m loosing. Then there are times when I don’t know what to do and it causes me to react and I get a sense that I’m winning. What I am beginning to realize is that it’s time to stop wrestling and start fighting.

Is it time to pick a fight in your life with something besides yourself? When was the last time you stood up for injustice by refusing to buy something? Or spook up for someone who couldn’t by writing a letter? Or run in a cause just because you could? Or supported an organization that’s helping people put there lives back together? I don’t care what you fight for just stop wrestling over what to do and just pick a cause and fight for it.

God fought for us so that we could fight for His causes. He calls us into conflict with the world, not ourselves.

Jude 1:3 - I have to write insisting—begging!—that you fight with everything you have in you for this faith entrusted to us as a gift to guard and cherish.

Trash

Thursday is trash day. Every Wednesday night we have to take our garbage and refuse that we have collected throughout the week and bring it to the curb, so that I t can be picked up and trucked to a far away place where we no longer have to deal with it any more. But we always have trash.

We are always creating trash. Open something new and you instantly have trash. Something gets old and it turns into trash. You can even turn something perfectly fine into trash when you drop it or forget that it’s on the roof of your car (another story).

Trash is a burden. No one likes trash day. No one likes taking out the trash. No one likes the smell of trash. I bet the Trashman doesn’t even like trash!

It’s interesting that when someone makes a mess of their physical body, we say they’re “Trashed”. And the same is true when we make a mess of our lives, we “Trash” it.

God didn’t make trash when he made us and He never intended us to become trash, but we sure do create a lot of trash with our lives in terms of outcomes. There are trashed relationships, trashed marriages, trashed brain cells, trashed lives all because we didn’t take out the trash in our lives in the first place. Unless we let God work in our lives and help us deal with the trash, all we will do is trash our lives and make a bigger mess.

When God works in our lives look at what the bible says will happen…

“(He) will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He's going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He'll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he'll put out with the trash to be burned.” Matthew 3:11 (The Message)

I know it’s not fun, but in life everyday is trash day. Deal with it.