Live Life

So the mayhem of activity is over and another year of memories and events are almost completed. The year is winding down and the road ahead is no less certain than it was a year ago. We have gone through 12 months and somehow on the other end we still struggle to make sense of our lives.

Yet looking back we find we have traveled safely this far. Sure there were ups and downs, extreme highs and deep lows, but you are still here. You are still breathing and you have more than some others that did not get this far. The Bible tells us that a live dog is better than a dead lion but often our life can make us feel that scripture is a lie.

You have hope if you are among the living and if you can read this you are alive! Now, what are you going to do with that life? I love the song that says “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee, take my moments and my days let them flow with ceaseless praise”.

Your soul is constantly stirred by divine joy that cannot be silenced by time, traditions or troubles and that first Christmas unwrapped this great joy in you. You are spoiled; you can’t expect to be entertained anymore. You must not treat this New Year as you did the previous year. In order to live the way God wants you to live you must live extraordinary! Live with the character, the design, the weapons and the content that only He can bring, you are amazing and are destined for Godly purposes. There is no higher calling.

“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” (John 17:13)

Gifts

What presents did you buy this year? Did you get the Zuzu for your kids? Did you buy a new flat digital window to the world, or a gaming system to complement it? Clothes, perfume, the dreaded tie? What gifts did you spend a massive amount of time these past few months tracking down? Spending time to find it on sale, to find the right gift, time to wrap and mail them? All for usually no more than about an hours’ worth of unwrapping the gifts under the tree the average American mother will spend 28.8 hours doing all this in the final 2 weeks. Over one full day for one hour.

That is some dedication to the cause! But what cause, the cause of getting and giving gifts, the cause that brings real joy to the world? I think there is more to this season than we unwrap. I believe that each Christmas holds a greater treasure.

As a child I remember the day I found a 5 dollar bill on the ground. I remember the place, the weather that day, the way I felt – everything about that moment. Why? Just because I found money, well yes – but more over what I found was joy. A small example of what happens when joy over takes you is when you find something you thought you lost or expected never to have.

(Matthew 13:44) “"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”

We seem to think that if we take Christ out of Christmas that everyone will find joy, but the opposite is true and in the end no one finds the greater treasure. The son of God is the greatest treasure you can unwrap in your life. What dedication do you have to the one that is dedicated to you?

Joy

(Psalm 33:1) “Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him.”

Heather and I have close friends that gave their daughter a middle name Joy. My daughters’ middle name is grace. They are fitting names for both girls, but both of them have struggled at times to live up to those names. Just like them we often find out that it is hard to live up to the name of Jesus. To have our profession of our mouth turn into a profession of our lives.

The name above all names, the most beautiful name, the most wonderful name. At that name ever knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of all mankind! Awesome, amazing – hard to live up to! But are we really suppose to live up to the name or live under His name?

Surrender is the antidote oxymoron of Christianity. By bowing we are built. By bending we are blessed. By allowing we are avowed and find ourselves a better fit of His name. We find that joy does come in the morning because a new day brings new hope, new peace, and new chances to do our best to follow Jesus.

Another year has passed and Christmas is upon us. Have you bowed more this past year to the Christ than the previous year? Is there more joy in your life this year than last? Are you living up to His most Holy name by letting go? Joy is chasing you, joy is finding you, joy is around you and is bringing good news!

The issue is do you see it, can you see it? If not pray David’s prayer today and lift your eyes to the joy of a baby born that saved the world. David prayed…

(Psalm 51:12) “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”

Kick Me?

It was once said that “if I could kick the person responsible for the majority of my problems I would not be able to sit down for a week.” The humor of that line fades away into the truth that it states. The hardest person to influence, to help, to disciple is yourself. Yet you are the only person that can adjust you. And the time you take to grow and invest in yourself always returns 100%.

But for whatever reason we get in the way of ourselves and cause ourselves most of our problems. Think of the last time you had a problem in life, now think how much did you contributed to that problem? Be objective, think critically of how your emotions, your conclusions, your approach caused the problem to get worse. Most of the time you will conclude that you robbed yourself of so much growth through pride, bitterness, anger, and selfishness.

Joy is one of the silent victims of our sinful behavior. It usually is the first to receive the killing blow from the hammers of our selfish ambition. How much disorder is in your life? Did you know that disorder is the fruit of “me first” behavior? The level of dishonor, difficulty, disorder is often in direct proportion to how selfish you really are. Disorder is a message that says “Examine yourself!!!!”

Selfishness is hard to pin down because we often picture a person that intentionally hordes and hides things they don’t want to give away. Like the child with the cool toy that does not want to share. But can a child that never has the stuff still be selfish? Yes! And often that internal selfishness, which is not attached to material things, is the worst.

It’s the hardest to find and the most difficult to define. I have seen many people in life that give and are still selfish. It’s legitimate selfishness. Legitimate selfishness has very good, legitimate reasons behind it, but in the end it still kills your joy. It still robs you of your humanity.

Joy and selfishness can’t exist in the same room, so choose this season to DO something for someone. Show that beautiful joy that is inside to the world! As you do that selfishness will melt into selflessness.

“Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity.” (2 Corinthians 8:2)

Christmas Forecast

For the past decade I found myself in a very particular place this time each year. No matter how much I prepared for it, decorated it, sugared it up…Christmas was becoming more and more a bummer rather than a blessing. I looked at the commercialization of it by our society, did studies into the traditional icons we know of like “where did the idea for a Christmas tree come from?” and so on. No matter what I did each year my emotional forecast for the festive season would be another bitter, cold storm.

But a year before my daughter was born I had something happen to me that changed all that. Now I wish I could tell you that it changed the way the world views and uses Christmas, but it did not – that is obvious. The world did not change, but I did! So what did it? Well I realized something about myself that actually adjusted my life not only on the 12th month but also that other eleven.

I realized that I was looking for Christmas to make me happy! Well it never did! I would buy the wrong gift, received the wrong gift, forget to buy a gift, struggle to decorate the house, attend Christmas parties and Christmas pageants, but none of it brought happiness. Something was wrong and getting worse by the year. I had lost sight of my Joy. What I was looking for was happiness but not Joy! Even though joy would chase me down the same time each year, I would ignore it’s message.

I realized that I was looking for happiness and bought into a selfish lie. I never found happiness because happiness and joy are not the same thing. Funny we can have happiness without joy, but we can’t have joy without happiness. Hummm…I had lost my joy because I was looking for happiness. I was singing “happy to the World….” Instead of “Joy to the world….” When I realized this and started looking for Joy I found it right away. What I was looking for was there all along, I was just looking for the wrong thing.

The next Christmas I experienced joy AND happiness when my daughter celebrated her first Christmas. Never mind she was only a few months old and could not play with any toy we bought her; Joy was in our home and it still is today. Look for joy this holiday, and everything else will fall into place!

“Be joyful always;…” (1 Thessalonians 5:16)

MTV Admits "Family First"!!!

Family, it is what we come home to, what we long for if we don’t have it, it’s what brings great pleasure and great pain. It is full of up’s and down’s, highs and lows yet in it all we learn something about life and God. We learn that family is here to stay, just as God is here to stay. You can’t remove family without destroying society and you can’t remove God without destroying life.

God speaks through family, the abundance of it or the lack of it. He says when you are alone without it, “"Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5) and when you are full of family He speaks “…his banner over me is love…” (Song of Solomon 2:4)

Let me ask you today, what is the health of your family? Are you saying, "I'm sorry," "I forgive you," and "I love you" often? Is your family happy? Teenagers seem to be the most unhappy with their families today and they are often used as the blunt of jokes, even with the phrase “Well, that’s a teenager….”

What makes someone between the ages of 13 and 24 happy is not what you might think, according to an extensive survey conducted by the Associated Press and MTV. (Yes MTV and AP did this!) The results showed that spending time with family (73 percent) makes young people happiest. Nearly half of kids surveyed mentioned one of their parents as their hero, with mothers (29 percent) ranking higher than fathers (21 percent). After family, "relationships with friends" was most likely to make children happy.

"You know what's really surprising is that this poll flies in the face of some of these cultural values that MTV is pushing on kids," said Dr. Bill Maier, vice president and psychologist in residence at Focus on the Family. What makes children, teens and parents happy is to have a family to be with.

Don’t forget to place the value on your family that God does and remember your family is one of the most powerful and important aspects of your life. Even though the Apostle Paul is talking about widows, I think this scripture is a powerful message for all of us today in regards to our families.

(1 Timothy 5:4-5) “… learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.”

True Friendship

Friendship, true friendship means something. Well it used to but with the advent of the electronic avenues such as cell phones, voicemail, Facebook, and Twitter we seem to be ready to be that Friend, but often it falls flat in satisfying the desire for true friendship.

I joined Facebook a little over a year ago under the encouragement of my staff. I was reluctant, not because I resist technology, but because I did not want to spend my time trying to be a friend or pastor through a keyboard. I prefer to do it in person, face to face! Eventually I saw the value in joining Facebook, so I signed up.

Amidst the fun of learning another piece of technology I noticed something on Facebook; that Friend’s counter on the left side that shows how many friends I have. Interesting, how many friends I have….humm. Well that must mean something right? I later found out it did not mean they where my friends, it just meant they accepted an invite from me. Sadly over the time I have been on Facebook I have talked with people that consider it a badge of honor or a goal to have as many friends as possible. Instead of gaining real friends they gained virtual friends. I have yet to see a realistic friends list, most range from hundreds to thousands!!! This runs the risk of a false sense of connection and friendship.

The far becomes near and the near becomes far in the electronic age. We have become a culture of individual tribes placing a priority on relating electronically instead of in person, often being more honest to the virtual world than the real world. Our desire for connection and community continues to grow as our friends list grows, yet we struggle to find true friends and become digital nomads wandering through life alone.

True friendship is a rare thing and is more than a simple click of a mouse; it is more valuable than that. So, what friends do you need to get together with face to face with this week? Make sure to cultivate the right friends in your life, they will be few and it will be an investment that will save your life one day.
(Proverbs 18:24) “ A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother”