It's gonna be a lovely day!

What a difference a few days can make! This week has been like a roller-coaster ride for me. I happen to enjoy thrill rides but I wouldn't mind a break every now and then. I am currently studying the book of James and I am learning to find joy through trials.

I look forward to bumping into the person from my previous post and telling them I love them. Yea, I a hurt BUT i have forgiven them. They have not asked for it and probably do not even know that I know they did it. Doesn't matter. I am striving to learn to love unconditionally so God has placed this person in my life to be loved. It is my jagged little pill to swallow. It stings all the way down but because Christ loved me I can learn to love. After all, how many times could He have called me a backstabber?

You know who you are!

You're sorry
You said it yourself and we believe you
(no we really do!)
Now no one is going to save you now!
Backstabber! Backstabber!
When you're in disguise

You're laughing
Cause they laugh at you
Then you scream out to all the empty pews
And No one is going to save you now!

Backstabber! Backstabber!
When you're in disguise

Now go and pray to your God inside!
Cause if you never knew, little boy it's you.
You can't use me! You won't use me!

Backstabber! Backstabber!
When you're in disguise

Lyrics to Backstabber by Jonezetta




You know who you are! It tears you a part to see someone else succeed as you fall flat on your face. You hate the fact that it comes so naturally. You try to become something you are not just to try to fit in. You preach with hollow words. You try to connect but find yourself all alone. You try so hard to become something they will like, but do you even like yourself. You look me in the face and wish me luck only to shove the knife in my back as I turn around. You aren't happy leaving well enough alone. You are on a mission to TRY and seek and destroy. You see me as a threat to your own future.

Well as you lay flat on your face look up and watch me as I continue to move forward. I move effortlessly unaffected by your attempts. I continue to be true to myself, something you don't understand. I teach without words. I am connected with love. I am accepted for who I am not when I pretend. I pull the knife out and hand it back. You are your own demise. I am on a mission to seek and feed. You were the controller of your own future.


You see you were so worried about what I was doing you lost sight of your own life. As you spend time in the car may these words ring over and over. Learn from your own mistakes. You were more worried about the dust in my eye and were blinded by the tree in yours. Realize who the enemy is and whose team you are on. Their is no room for lone rangers in this business.

Disturbed!

The longer I am in church work the more I understand two things. I see why the average time for a pastor to stay at a church is less than two years. The second is I now see why our churches are not growing. In the short 9 months I have been in my current position has been some of the most exhausting time of my life. It is amazing how much you come under attack from Satan. Just when you think you can come up for a breather the attacks start again in full fury.

So many pastors can't stay at a church for more than two years because of their need to protect their families. The attacks that pastors and staff have to endure take their toll. From taking time from the family to the family actually having to weather the attacks it can become too much to bare sometimes.

Free Gift!

This was just too funny not to write about. I was doing homework and the doorbell rang. We were not expecting company so we knew it had to be door to door salesman. The Mormon's seem to jump over our house every time.(Maybe that is due in part to me sharing my faith with them last time they knocked?) So my wife and I played rock, paper, scissors to see who would answer the door. I picked paper, she had scissors so you know what that means. I lost. I went to answer the doors and was greeted by two overly perky, sweaty, salespeople. I say people because it was a man and woman and they both looked like they had been doing this for most of the day. They introduced themselves and told me they were from the brand new vacuum cleaner store. They handed me a free air freshener. Sweet. I told them I didn't need a vacuum cleaner. I resisted the urge to tell them the one we had sucks. Once realizing that I was not a potential customer they asked for their $.97 air freshener and off they went leaving me empty handed at the door.

Moral of the story...There is only one free gift in life!

WHY ME?

I got home from church and got an update that I had once again ticked someone off. I figured that I offended someone with challenging them to have some "huevos" and stand up for what they believe. Or possibly my slip and instead of saying PSP I said PCP. These would have been expected, but that is not what I found. I had ticked someone off because I was doing too much for the church. They were tired of having to share me with other people. This caught me slightly off guard. It honestly troubled me most of the day. I was still spending more time with the very group that was complaining. I am sometimes there when none of them show up. I am continually inviting people to that group (something I don't do for the others). Some people may find this quite flattering, after al,l we all want to be liked. We all like to be needed. It reminds me of a classic middle school fight with the girl being competed for by all the guys in the class. It has disturbed me. What have I done? I am trying to point everything I do to a relationship with Jesus. Not me! I am a screw up. I will let you down. I fail. I am not worth your loyalty. It is important that I try to connect with every person I come in contact with but I feel like I have left them empty still searching not connecting to God. I hope they see through this mess of a man and see Jesus!

More questions than answers

I keep trying to find a way to start this and can't come up with anything clever so I am just going to ramble. DEATH. Today I couldn't seem to escape it. I started off the day doing work at Hospice of West Volusia where I saw people clinging onto the last days of their lives. Two families were mourning the loss of a loved one. They were recounting stories and laughter would occasionally break up the tears. It is weird but when a death occurs it brings out some of the fondest memories but the worse character traits out of a person.

Next I had to work in two nursing homes. One of them is the Ritz Carlton of homes, the other one not so much. But they both had the same thing in common, people will spend the last days, years of their lives here. I have always hated going to these places because I didn't know what to say or how to treat them. Today was different. I was actually wondering what it would be like to work there. I was really intrigued by the thought of working at Hospice. I don't want to be the guy changing diapers and bed pans (if you know me you know that this is not even a possibility with my wimpy stomach). I thought about what it would be like to be the guy who consoles the family. The guy who gets to hear about the joy the deceased brought into this world. I also wonder what it would be like to be the one who held the hand of so many as they enter eternity?

So a day that had so much going on stirred my thoughts. I have no ambition of quitting my day job (though I dream of it) to pursue it but who knows the doors that God may open!

Breaking News!

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I Ruined Christmas!

I may have ruined Christmas for a lot of people this year. I have been on a journey recently and now that I am taking a class entitled "Life of Christ" I have went deeper into this path that I have been on. It all began for me just thinking about how we use the Bible as a Nursery Rhyme book for our children. If we really read and understand this story we would understand the scene was terrifying. As the water began to rise people would be banging on the door to get in. They begin having to tread water as it rises higher and higher, they climb trees hoping the water will quit rising but it doesn't. As the trees disappear you may still be able to hear a couple of people who found something to float with screaming for their lives. Not the same story that we are use to.

Fast forward>> We re-enter the scene with a teenage girl who is engaged. She is pregnant. The law calls for her to be stoned. How scared must she have been. The young girl was in fear of her life. Fast Forward again. She gives birth to this child in a dirty stable. Our Christmas cards make it look more like a Marriott than a place where dirty animals were kept. She gave birth during a time when her country was occupied by the enemy. Not the best time to give birth to a Savior but it happened. Then by time the child is two there is a command to kill all males under the age of two so they must flee and go into hiding.

We celebrate Christmas with our pretty cards and extravagant gifts and distance ourselves from the true story. We have flannel board Jesus images so ingrained into our minds that is the way it must have been. We forget that he came during a brutal time of history. We skip over the verses we don't understand or that become uncomfortable for us. We say we don't understand because we are afraid we might actually understand. We have taken Easter and have a happy little bunny hopping around in order not to remember the brutality of the Roman form of the death penalty. We view the cross as an object of beauty when in reality it was one of the most cruel torture devices ever created. My intentions are not to ruin a holiday but to cause us to focus on the purpose of the holiday! Make us appreciate the sacrifice even more.

Don't think they ever expected for us to see the cross like this!