Surprise! We think you’re great!

I have this chronic need to be liked. Maybe it’s normal; maybe it isn’t. Maybe I should change; maybe it’s OK. At any rate, you would think that someone like me would be a huge fan of being the center of attention. That I would look for ways to be the center of attention at all costs is—in fact—an assumption that many, who meet me, make. Yet, there is something that prohibits me from wanting to celebrate trivial things, like say, my birthday.

I cannot give a precise reason as to why, but I think it has something to do with not wanting to force people to give me dap. If they are going to praise me, I want it to not be because I tell them a simple fact about me, like today is the anniversary of my birth or I just made a sale or I have a pretty wife or any of another of a myriad of good things about my life that I could say. Now before I talk too much about my own neurosis, let me get down to the real subject.

The Surprise Birthday party. To me, it is the best of any potential party. It allows people to celebrate me, where I had absolutely nothing to do with the encouragement to do so. If they are giving mad props for the reason that it is my birthday and I had absolutely nothing to do with their desire to do it, then it makes me feel that the love is genuine. And genuine love can never be shortchanged, nor should it be discounted. It is an awesome gift!

Lest you think this is a (wink, wink) appeal for my readers to throw me a surprise party, I can assure you that my birthday is nowhere near this time. I am safely in the catregory of 35 (and I haven’t even earned the “half” my kids are always trying to claim). And if you want to throw me a surprise anniversary party, you had better include my wife in the planning, as she is not a fan of being the recipient of a surprise party. And including the subject of a surprise party is just kinda lame.;)

I am thinking about this, because this weekend was one of surprise parties. My friend was judging the Sunshine State Association of Christian Schools, music and speech contest. I was giving a ride back and had to speak with the whole family, as they were planning a surprise gathering. I hope it went well and wasn’t rescheduled to tonight!

On the other hand, I spent Friday evening with Paige Cousins, who was turning 40 and having a surprise party. I think she was truly surprised, but the thing that really struck me is that she didn’t need to be. She had a husband (by the way, Jeff, I’m not sure I like you setting the bar so high for the rest of us human husbands) who planned an evening to honor her. There were forty or so guests there to pay tribute to her wonderful life (not to mention the forty or so more who joined by video).

That is the beauty of the surprise party. I read today that the idea stems from cultures where people were killed after a party in their honor, but I think that is just an untrue rumor, based on the fact that people are usually only honored in such a way at their funeral. The reality is that when honored appropriately, people are more alive after such a party. And, in this particular case, I felt honored to have played a very small role in such a noteworthy life.

When a group of people come together to say, “This is Your Life” and we want to be proud of you, it is an incredible thing. To me, the crying shame is that so often we wait until someone has passed away to gather in their honor to say wonderful things about them. The surprise party is the first fix of such a travestical system, and I am glad that it was brought to my attention again this weekend!

Tough Providence

Being a theological sort of person, I like to talk with others about this thing I call, “Tough Providence.” For those of you less inclined to talk about such things, it is our way of recognizing God is in control of everything that happens and yet saying that we would not have chosen the same path He did for us to arrive where we did. The whole thing gets me to thinking, “Doesn’t everything that happens in our lives fall under the category of Tough Providence?”

Those things that tend to go the way we want, we rarely focus on the providential factor anyway. Surely, we believe that God is Sovereign over all creation and that our lives cannot be excluded from this formula. While we accept this on a theological front, we are often functionally not in concert with that. We feel that we create our own good fortune.

I was having a discussion with someone just today about how the unsaved man believes that God occasionally helps him along in all the greatness he does. Now, to be sure, God does allow our inputs to have a bearing, and thankfully, He does use us to accomplish His purposes. However, I feel that much of the time even we who are spiritual think things are all working out well, because of us.

The reality is that I am often thankful when He decides to show me my own incapability. This is ultimately for our benefit, as it allows us to refocus on Him and give the proper credit and live a submissive life. God is around the world accomplishing things, and I am just glad that the things in my little corner of the globe, over which he has given me accountability, sometimes turn out well, despite my shortcomings.

While that is definitely true, it is also true that knowing this concept theoretically does not make it easier when things we don’t like, happen. This brings me back to my original point. All of these things that God does for and through us that are not what we would choose are “Tough Providence.”

If Joseph and Daniel in the Bible had difficult things, despite never committing any big wrongdoing, I am certain that there is no way I can avoid it. Now I can rest in the fact that my God has never failed me before and will never fail me. I know that things will work out according to the good of me, when I am loved of God. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have knowledge of the end of the running commentary of my life, so I can see HOW.

I guess when things like my church finally getting a Certificate of Occupancy doesn’t seem to be happening as quickly as I hope or plan, I somehow think God is failing us. What I would like to say is that God, in His Sovereignty, knew that this time would be better for His church. I don’t know why this delay is necessary, but I do know that God has known, and I will rejoice in the fact that God is continuing to build us toward the great things He has for us to accomplish in the building. I just really want to know what exactly we need to learn to make it happen!:)

Never Give Up!

I think Peyton Manning is the best quarterback ever, and the fact that Bill Polian picked him when most of the people I read, at the time, were plugging Ryan Leaf makes Polian a tremendous visionary. Polian has won three NFL Executive of the Year awards and his legacy is pretty much cemented as a great football man. Nevertheless, his job was to build a good team and after years of speculation, it became clear when Manning sat out the 2011 season that he did a poor job at building that team around Manning.

If asked who the greatest NBA coach ever is, I think I’d have to say Phil Jackson, despite the fact I never really liked him. Nevertheless, at the end of the Shaq-Kobe era, when they had picked up Payton and Malone and looked unstoppable in the early playoffs, he was significantly outcoached by Larry Brown. The same Larry Brown who senselessly refuses to use rookies.

I believe my father is perhaps the best Bible Quiz coach ever, yet I can remember a specific quiz where he got out-coached. I think even the best preachers ever have a sermon or two that lacks the normal quality. I think the best radio host will have an occasional show that is not listenable, and the best band ever didn’t hit gold on 100% of their songs. In short, even the best are not perfect.

This is simultaneously encouraging and discouraging to me. It is discouraging to know that try as I might, I will fall short. I will never achieve perfection (some of you are thinking that I shouldn’t worry, as I’m not even remotely close). I guess in my depraved nature it encourages me to know that everyone else is feeling the same sting of failure that I so often feel. Not sure if that should encourage me, but in some small way, it does.

What it really says to me, however, is not that I need to be encouraged, but that I can never stop striving. If even those who have achieved (and are so recognized for) greatness fall short, I need to not settle. If I am striving for something and appear to achieve it, I need to strive harder or for something greater. Life is full of small challenges, and I cannot rest.

So, I am now committed to persistently strive to be a better husband, father, and friend. I likewise committed to persistently strive for better at memorizing, studying, and applying Scripture. I am going to persistently strive for being a better steward of the time, money, and business opportunities God gives me. And most of all, I want to commit to persistently strive to be the best man of God I can be!

Anyone Want Some Advice?

I am in a situation right now, where I am giving incredible advice. I have told the person exactly what the repercussions will be of a variety of decisions, and told them which decision would be the best course of action for them to take. While I know my wisdom in this area of expertise is amazingly thorough, I still cannot make these people believe that my 17 years of experience as a real estate agent, including seven as a real estate instructor and ten as an attorney, really allow me to speak with expertise.

On the other hand, they are listening to the advice of another counselor, who probably knows a fair amount also. Although from my vantage point, I can see they are clearly excited about the fact that they can receive money from their advice. It isn’t that they are giving necessarily bad advice, so much as that it is advice that is motivated by extra factors.

While I am on the outside, I can see this so clearly. Similarly, when I see my children doing things, I can often see that they are making the incorrect decision. The deal is, though, that as they start to age, my requirement that they follow my advice cuts off their ability to grow into learning the correct decisions themselves. I’m sure this is my something my parents struggled with also (although, I was the perfect decision-maker at the earliest of ages).

So the balancing act of when to allow them to start making decisions is a difficult one, but when you are dealing with people whom you are only working with, that ability was never present. So, how do we stand on our advice without trampling their individuality, yet let them know that we are knowledgeable on a subject and what should happen?

That is the predicament in which I find myself. I need to give advice and then just rest in the fact that I am not responsible for whether or not they take it. Allowing God to work in their lives through the wisdom I give without understanding whether or not they listened to me is tough. As Baz Luhrman says, “Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it!”

It is also difficult to understand that there is someone out there giving advice completely contrary to mine and knowing that it is not as sound. Nevertheless, I can let my character and knowledge speak for themselves and take comfort in the fact that I am a legend in my own mind with my penchant for absolute correct-ness.:)

Can a Blogger Get a Little Love?

How do we judge our worth in modern society? Tonight, I was at the bachelor party of my good friend, Dr. Know, and there were a few embarrassing videos that people wanted to post. They were going around the table asking how many FaceBook friends everyone had, so they could determine whom they should tag to maximize the embarrassment for the people in question before they got home and could tag us all. Amazing that we were judging value by FaceBook friends!

On the other hand, I feel that many of us determine our self worth from the numbers. I have another friend, Marc Ryan, whose very contract includes clauses based on the number of twitter followers he has. (Therefore, you should follow him on twitter if you can). The fact that it isn’t just a group of guys with an embarrassing tea-pot video judging by that, but big and profitable corporations.

I further believe that we tend to judge our own worth based on the social media feedback of others. For example, if I write two wall posts on FaceBook and one gets 13 likes and another gets 5 likes, I am bound to think that my thought that received 13 likes was far superior and bound to influence my thinking for any and all later statuses. I had this discussion with a friend once, but it is almost impossible to not recognize that much of our feeling of quality work is influenced by the feedback of others, often in environments where the options for feedback are limited to a couple of weird options.

That leads me to blogging. The question of how bloggers determine how good their blogs are is probably mostly driven by the number of people who read the blog or the number of people who comment. I mean the number of reasons people blog is probably as varied as the gross number of bloggers out there, but just about anyone would like to think that others like their work, at least to some degree.

People pour themselves into a blog post, and often people’s reaction to it is nondescript. Yet, I believe that even a quick note stating the mediocre reaction to the post would be appreciated by the writer. So, consider this a plea that when you read a blog, leave a comment. Even if it is merely a score on a 1-10 scale, that would be cool. And definitely feel free to give this blog a bad grade, so I can continue to feel bad about myself!

Worried in a Wanton World

Every man’s life is impacted by a wide variety of things. Some of those things that impact us are things of which we are absolutely aware right away. On the other hand, there are things that God works together, through His Sovereignty, that have a huge impact on our life and yet, we are largely unaware of them.

When I was young, I felt everything was always perfect. My parents never made any mistakes, and there were never issues that had “gray area” to them. Right was right and wrong was wrong, and the answer was always easy to find—just ask the adult closest to you.

Of course, then I grew up (a little) and realized that decisions are not always easy. determining the correct thing to do often took asking SEVERAL grown ups, who then give you conflicting advice, praying about it over and over again, and then finally settling on something that you just didn’t quite 100% feel was the right move, but you needed to take some action.

While I think as adults we realize that it is sometimes possible for opposing sides to both be correct, I think more often than not, it is merely a sign of the curse. We live in, are surrounded by, and are completely affected by sin. This means that we are often left with a distorted view of what should be.

For example, my wife and I have been happily married for a few years now (3 out of 14 ain’t bad, I guess). In this time, our disagreements have been mostly small, but one revolves around the existence of light in our room, especially as the hour for sleep comes around. I am like a little child who is afraid of the dark, while she is like a mature person who likes it pitch black.

Then, I leave town for a week and upon my return, mysteriously, the light in our room had been “broken” by one of the children. They didn’t just turn it off, take out the bulb, or break something a fat man with a small handyman skill-set could fix, but rather the entire chain that one must pull to make the light come on is jammed.

Now, the truth is that I’ve been fortunate enough to never question whether I received a heaping helping of God’s grace in my marriage covenant relationship, but the curse distorts my view. I am unable to see the truth of the light because I want to blame my absence or my children’s lack of concern over my fear of the dark, when what I should see is that my wife and children love and care for me, and they want me to see clearly, but things on this earth are not perfect.

The reality is that this is the same plight we have in our every day lives with those we work, live, and play. We may want them to see the truth of the light, but the fact is the curse is distorting their view. The sin in which they are inundated and surrounded is collapsing around them, and they are unable to see clearly what is correct. While we long for the day when we shall see perfectly, we must continue for now in this cursed world.

The best way around this is to show those, around whom we live, work, and play, the love of God whenever we can. And perhaps this means to occasionally let them know that our outlook, too, was distorted by sin’s curse and we just couldn’t see clearly. Now, if you were expecting me to write about the things about which we are unaware, you allocate much more knowledge to me than I actually possess. As I do not know those things that are unknown, I just wrote about how we try to live rightly in a cursed world, where there are those things for which we must trust God’s Sovereignty.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction?

If you are approximately my age, odds are you don’t have the time to read this. Assuming you actually make that time, you probably grew up with Star Wars as a part of your consciousness. Of course, if you didn’t like learning about “The Force,” there are countless other alternative realities with which you may be familiar. The great thing about this is we can have a whole different world in which you can imagine you live (and our friends know that same world).

It’s nice to be able to take our minimal imagination and still have an entirely fictional world in which we can live or think. Yet the fact that we all know the rules of our new world, does not mean that these worlds are really normal. Just because Lucasfilm is able to make it look good on the big screen does not mean it would either look good (or even happen) in real life. Fiction is created for the express purpose of putting us in a world where the impossible is possible.

The greatness of that escape is, in my opinion, one of the primary reasons that we love escaping reality for a while. The great part about parachuting into a world in which we do not really exist is that we can see when something that is about to happen and either warn the potential victim or just not feel permanent repercussions. In the real world, we occasionally see impending doom and just can’t stop it. Sometimes we fret over what might happen for weeks on end.

Good fiction will keep the person captivated for a while, but at the end of the day, only people with mental problems invest as much in fiction as they do in reality. The fact is that we have grown so used to fiction that we can often predict what will happen, whereas real life is usually unpredictable. Some try to predict. Some are good at it. When real people are trying to adjust outcomes in different ways, life is unpredictable.

I guess that unpredictability is why we actually say and think that the truth is stranger that what we see, read about, or hear in the fictional realm. Nevertheless, fiction is created to be strange. We have determined a world where we think mere unpredictability is strange, and I think that is bad. We should relish the unpredictability. We should be excited by the fact that as we go through our world, we do not know what will happen.

I believe that the world in which we exist is strange, largely because we think it is weirder than these sub-real worlds we create. We create “reality” TV that has writers. At any rate, I think the world is filled with capricious people and we never know what might happen. Relish and enjoy it, because if you ever attempt to entertain yourself with fiction, eventually you’ll get to the point where it all seems redundant!

Should we Keep it Up?

I love history—not necessarily the kind you study in school, though that is ok also. I like peering into recent history. When I was in college, I went to the local library to look at old maps and study the history of the city. When I went to Faith Baptist Church, I put together a lot of material to have a history book, including pictures and every Sunday morning sermon title preached there.

Therefore when I get involved in something, it is only natural that I try to see what has happened before my involvement in the activity. This leads me to be nostalgic about so many things that my kids and wife probably think of my as a dope. But it also means that in the regular course of life, I am commonly asked what happened in the past.

The benefits of nostalgia exist, but there are also detriments. For example, it seems to lead to complacency. Those who are overly nostalgic tend to like consistency and are slower to see the need for changes. So, those minor tweaks are something that we nostalgic people are hesitant to make.

Nevertheless, the biggest issue is not the minor tweaks. Usually we receive enough criticism from those using the better technology to insure that as much as we want to hold on to things, we can not. However, the biggest issue is when we need to completely re-think our paradigm. When something is so bad, but we hold on to it just because it is what we’ve always done.

This has happened to me a few times, and it is always sad, but it is also necessary. I pray that as I continue to go through my traditional things that I am blessed with people who have the vision to correct me from my continuing of tradition, when the tradition itself needs to be debunked. I don’t want to continue with a mistake, just because it’s been happening for years.

This Life is Yours!

I seem to have noticed recently a certain affinity for a few buzzwords. And while the specific word chosen is not necessarily important to me, what is important is that we recognize that there is a reason we are here and why we are going through what we are going through.

● Depression. When I have insomnia and cannot fall asleep, I hear many TV ads about it. Some debate whether it is a sickness or it is just a lack of joy in your life, which is a debate I really want to avoid altogether.
● Frustration. Some people have this because the economy has taken a turn for the worse and they were unprepared for the effects it would have. Some have it because they can’t control their parents (or their children—or co-workers—or boss…)

Whether you want to term something a disappointment, a saddening situation, a letdown, a bitter pill, a blow, a calamity, a disaster, a discouragement, a downer, a drag, a dud, a failure, a fiasco, a fizzle, a miscalculation, a mischance, a misfortune, a mishap, a mistake, an obstacle, a setback, or any other term you can come up with; the reality is that if we live our life working from one bummer to the next, we are not focusing correctly.

I just read a story to my son from Front Porch Tales, which on the whole I find to be a great read. However, I was kind of disappointed that on this story, Mr. Gulley chose to leave it as an open-ended negative. I understand that no one wants to lose their best friend, and I have had a couple friends about whom I’ve mourned their loss. Nevertheless, I think more of us need to stop worrying about what isn’t going correctly in our lives, and just be thankful that we have them.

I know Paul said in Philippians 1 that dying would be gain. I know that Heaven will be vastly better than anything we can imagine. I also know that life on this earth is precious. I know that as bad as our life is, we can make it extraordinary (the apostle Paul wrote the aforementioned Philippians in jail, and not one of the cushy jails we have today). Today is what we have before us, let’s go make it great!

I have a good friend who commonly says, “We get to do this!” He understands that it is a gift that we get to do the things that are laid before us, and that we should take joy in that. Yes, it is true that our lives can fall into patterns that we dislike. But if Corrie Ten Boom can be thankful for lice (which if you don’t know her story, read about her family—it is convicting and exciting), we should learn to make greatness out of what we have.

This life is indeed ours. We can make great things happen. We can create lives we are happy with. I wrote a blog in the past where I complained about my life (all for the purpose of being funny, I’m sure), and my sister told me, “You’re an adult now. If you don’t like it, change it. Quit complaining and make your life better!” This is something that six months later, I am passing along.

Nothing in this world that’s worth having comes easy. Go out, make your life great, and don’t let anyone take away your joy! Don’t choose to let the criticisms and hassles of others hold you down. Make your life extraordinary, and I am confident you will be thankful later!

What Memorizing Scripture Means to Me

This week I have attended three different national Bible Quiz tournaments. One high school tournament, one elementary tournament, and one middle and high school combined tournament. Bible Quiz is an amazing event, where groups from around the country come to participate against other groups in a competitive event revolving around Bible Memorization.

In total, I saw about 225 students, ranging from the age of 8 to 18 and almost all of them have memorized at least 200 verses from the book of John. Many have memorized the entire book of 879 verses. All have accomplished this feat in approximately the last year, as last year, they memorized the books of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon for a similar set of competitions.

I think back to when it all began for me, when I was in kindergarten. My father was on the school board, and the school board was wondering who wanted a free vacation to Greenville, South Carolina to take the high school team, who had managed to win the state competition. My dad volunteered. He immediately became very excited about the event, and less than two years later, I was participating in an elementary Bible Quiz over Colossians. Over the next 11 years, I memorized significant portions of 18 New Testament books, aided primarily through the motivation of Bible Quizzing.

Unfortunately, I must admit that since my graduation from high school and the elimination of most of my encouragement of Bible Quizzing events, I have slowed down considerably in my zeal to memorize. In the last several years, I have taken time to refresh my memory of many of the books already learned and learned significant portions of most of the New Testament books skipped in my youth.

The benefits of having that database of verses in my memory bank are almost innumerable, but to see six benefits John Piper thinks, click here. Suffice it to say that we live in a world where we tend to flatten wisdom into the mere possession of information, and while I think that is a gross undersell of what is required of us (perhaps enough to be a later blog post), it is obvious that we cannot be significant stewards of anything, including biblical knowledge, without devoting a great deal of effort into the study and proper application of it.

While we talk to God in our prayers, the primary way he communicates to us is through His word, and the reality of the matter is that our prayers to Him will naturally be on point if we have in our heads His words. How sweet the conversation is and can be, when we can have it anywhere! How wonderful the situation when we can be locked away and know that we can continue to hear new mercies every day in our mind!

When a biblical truth or understanding begins to come to you, how much quicker our mind can accept it, when we have large portions of Scripture with us. And while we live in a country with Bibles easily at our fingertips at all times, that is not a guarantee and, in many parts of this world, it is simply an impossibility. If faith comes by hearing, as we hear the word of God in our heads, it is assisting us in furthering our faith. Subvocalization is an incredible way to continue to grow our faith.

I am growing exceedingly excited about the book of John, and Pastor Curt’s journey through it in our time of worship through preaching on Sunday, and I know that as we move into chapter 15 and Jesus speaks to His disciples by saying if “my words abide in you,” we will have whatever we wish. The best way I know to have those words abide in us is to memorize them.

Conquering the lies that Satan tries to feed us to just combating him in spiritual warfare, the only thing I know with which we can fight the devil to which there is no refute is the holy Scriptures. And when someone else needs encouragement from an attack, we can most easily and readily encourage them through our own use of the Scriptures. I know in my own life, the most encouraged I have been by others is when they quote back to me the promises of God in His word.

If you are unconvinced to memorize the Bible, I just plainly disagree. I further believe that anything we believe in and commit to doing should not be half-hearted. I am blessed by working with students whose commitment to memorize Scripture is evident. In my own family, my seven year old son Jacob has already memorized almost 400 verses. If he is able to Bible Quiz next year and does essentially the minimal commitment of memorizing one verse a day, he will by the age of eight know over 600 verses. I’ve heard it said that the average Christian memorizes ten verses a year. That means my son will have a lifetime (60 years) of Christian memory work done before his first decade of life! And if he listens to his nagging dad, he certainly won’t stop there.

To me the challenge is motivation and accountability. So, I guess this is my public plea for accountability. I will do my best to provide motivation, but I would love for many of you to join me in an effort to memorize significant portions of Scripture. We could set goals and accomplish things together. I know the benefits are tremendous, and I hope that we can realize them together!