Highlights

I’m a pretty avid Sportscenter guy. I probably don’t go a day without at least watching a portion of it to catch up on the world of sports. Because there is something about seeing the Top 10 highlights everyday that are highly entertaining, but unfortunately also make me feel pretty inadequate. Which gets me to the point of my thought. Why is it that when a draft is about to happen or a team has traded someone, we only see the highlights and not the ‘low’lights or at least the ‘real’lights? In the NBA a player has a good night when a he shoots 43%. That means he missed 57% of his shots, but we don’t see those. And in baseball, a hitter is considered great when he goes .350, meaning he got a hit 3.5 times for every 10 at bats. Well what about the 6.5 outs he got? Boy I wish I was measured on the same scale in life. I mean how great it would be if no one ever remembered the times I said something stupid, or forgot to gargle, or worse yet wore my shirt inside out.  

But that’s what so great about God’s grace. Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, grace is like a highlight reel in our life. Because of Jesus, our sin, shortcomings, mistakes, blemishes, stains, wrinkles, flaws, and everything else that keeps us imperfect is forgiven. Meaning God doesn’t see it anymore. 

"Their sins and lawless acts I remember no more." - Hebrews 10:7 

When the cross and your life collide, it’s called Gracecenter. Let the highlights begin. 

Dun-na-na Dun-na-na!  

Guests

Recently our home has felt a little like a hotel. Maybe it’s the price of travel or that we live in a pretty great area of California, but we have had the privilege and pain of hosting many of our friends as guests in our home this summer. Hey don’t get me wrong, I love having people over, but it’s nice to finally have our home back to ourselves and finally no one is eating all of my Pop Tarts. I have come to realize is that even though guests are fun to have over, guests are also a lot of work. I’m sure we have all said, “make yourself at home” at one time or another to the guests that come to our home and to a certain extent we mean it, but to another extent we don’t really think they’ll take you up on it. I mean we just say it to be nice right? I think I did more dish washing and shut off more lights in the past two weeks then I have all year.

I love the story Jesus tells when he compares being a guest in someone’s home to life with God.


"When someone invites you to dinner, don't take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he'll come and call out in front of everybody, 'You're in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.' Red-faced, you'll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left. When you're invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, 'Friend, come up to the front.' That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I'm saying is, if you walk around with your nose in the air, you're going to end up flat on your face. But if you're content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself."

Being a guest is a privilege, but being invited is an honor. I hope I can remember that when I go to someone’s home, but also every day that I realize that I am a guest to experience life. God has invited us to honor Him with our lives and to live everyday remembering Him. When we place ourselves first before everyone else, we will only experience temporary recognition and comfort in life and eventually embarrassment when we are exposed for who we really are. However, when we place others first we can experience the real thrill of having God promote us in life. I haven’t got this totally figured out yet, but I’m working on being a good guest every day.

In the meantime come on over, just remember to eventually leave.

Dreams

The dreams that I have while I sleep are often strange entertainment. Rarely do they make any sense and they often make me wonder what the heck is going on inside my head. I’ve had dreams of flying, dreams where I couldn’t pedal a bike, and my least-favorite-of-all-dreams where I am reliving a job from my past and I’m in trouble because I forgot to do something. When I wake up I simply have to remind myself that it was just a dream and I’m not really going to get fired. Then there are those dreams that we remembered we had, but we can’t remember what they’re about. Often all I really remember are the emotions I had while I was dreaming.

Experts say that dreams or our minds way of reshuffling our stored information and memories to allow us to make room for more. Which makes perfect sense and even gives me some peace about the randomness of my dreams, but then there are those dreams that are incredibly vivid and detailed. You know exactly who is in them and exactly where you are at. And I have to wonder if there isn’t something more going on in that moment of thought within my grey matter. Like something profoundly spiritual is happening.

The bible is filled with references to dreams being a method of how God got someone’s attention and motivated them to act or respond. We see them in both the old and new testaments and because of the response to those dreams lives were changed and God’s purposes were realized. If this is the case, then I think the dreams that have that deeper affect on us should cause us to not just sit up in bed, but to motivate us to live differently.

We often refer to the hopes and aspirations of a person as their dreams. And at the same time we know that we don’t control the dreams we have while sleeping, but God can and does speak into some of them. Therefore, I believe that the dreams that come from God are all about the things He desires us to know and realize. God inspired dreams can be about what burden’s Him or what concerns Him, all to draw attention to His plan and will. Some dreams are a portal into the heart of God.

“And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.” – Joel 2:28-19

So what are we supposed to do when we have these types of dreams? Respond. Don’t just dismiss them as random, purposeless, memory shuffling synapses. Pray for understanding, reach out to those who you dreamt about, and go with what you think God wants you to do. In this way our dreams can have the profound affect God intends for them.

And I’m one of those people that doesn’t even dream in color! What’s up with that!

Right or Just Wrong?

I am reading the book by David Kinnaman, You Lost Me, about the reason why many young Christians are leaving the church and it’s having a sobering affect on me. I’m convinced more than ever that God is good, Jesus loves us, and the church has to do a better job of living out the gospel.

What particularly struck me today in my reading was a story that David tells about his friend Luke who works at a local coffee shop that he frequents. It seems that a man comes into the coffee shop everyday and regularly buys a small coffee and then always asks for an extra large cup as well. He then proceeds to put cream and sugar in his small coffee and then fills the extra large cup with 2% milk. After watching this man do this a number of times, Luke informed him that the next time he came in he would have to charge him for the cup if he continued to fill it with milk. The man became so upset that he complained to the manager and in the end the result was that Luke was written up for “failing to leave the customer with a positive experience”.

Say what? When I read this story my jaw literally dropped with astonishment. I get it, value the customer, apologize for upsetting him, and give him a pleasant experience, but how can someone be written up for doing what is easily seen as the moral thing? What about saying, “Way to go Luke thanks for looking out for the best interest of the company” and rewarding him. When did our value system as a society change to depend more on the outcome of the situation rather than our own rights?

I guess why this hijacks my emotions a bit isn’t because I’m worried if I’m going to eventually get busted for putting too much cream in my coffee, but more about how this reality will continually erode our world. What this begins to tell the next generation is that it is wrong to stand up for what they believe and it’s wrong to make a determination about someone else’s situation and react to it. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if someone hadn’t stood up to me and questioned my behavior. I owe my very life and soul to someone who didn’t even know me, but spoke to me about what they saw wrong with my life.

In our society there has to be a standard to operate on to make us strive to achieve something greater and something more profound and useful than doing what we want. God set the standard for us and the more we know Him the more we live by His standards.

It is not what you and I do... It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them! – Galatians 6:16 (The Message)

Have the courage to stand up for what you believe and help others see the standard that God set for us to live up to.

Man-made

I just got back from a great time In Lake Tahoe with my entire family to celebrate Christmas. It was a week early, but the busy lives we live and the miles that separate us all, cause us to work our schedules out this way. Unfortunately we were planning for a little more White Christmas than we got, but we made the best of it and created many great memories for years to come.

One of the plans we had was for all of us to going skiing or snowboarding, but the only option at the slopes was Man-made snow. You can choose your side on this debate, but once snow is packed I really can’t tell the difference and after a day of snowboarding neither can my quadriceps. Don’t get me wrong, nothing compares to fresh powder brought down from the heavens and shredding it on a snowboard (Sorry skiers I jumped onto one board years ago and I’m not going back anytime soon). However, this gets me to the point about the Christmas season that we are all celebrating today because there are two realities at Christmas, the Man-made and the Heavenly.

The true meaning of Christmas came down from heaven in the form of the incarnate baby Jesus Christ. He lived the perfect life to show us what life with the Father can truly be like. And then gave up his life to allow us the privilege to live our life to the fullest with God’s guidance. And ever since the first Christmas, man has been attempting his Man-made efforts to celebrate this truth and it’s gotten us farther and farther away from the real Heavenly reality. Now every where we look we see the evidence of Christmas, but it’s getting harder and harder to see the difference between the Man-made and the true Heavenly.

There is only one true meaning of Christmas and The Grinch, Scrooge, and Clark Griswold may have gotten close, but they didn’t truly discovery it because it’s not just being nice to our fellow man or giving gifts with sincerity. The true meaning of Christmas will radically change your entire life and can never be duplicated in Man-made efforts. The true meaning of Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the gift of life He brings. You can never be fulfilled with the Man-made efforts because they don’t really change anything, but can only mimic what only God can do.

“Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” - 2 Corinthians 9:15

May the true meaning of Christmas bring the joy of fresh powder to your lives today and throughout the New Year.

Merry Christmas!

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.