All Things Goofy

In today’s financial crunch it can be easy to forget that we have plenty to be thankful for.  The aforementioned crunch has been particularly hard on us.  The job I got at the beginning of the year didn’t last long.  I had to step down from my position as youth pastor at church.  We had to find a new church and leave behind people we cared about deeply.  We had to move out of the house we have rented since moving to Nashville 3.5 years ago and leave behind the best landlord on the face of this earth.  The job market has dried up significantly here.  Needless to say, it can be difficult to find things to be thankful for.

However, the truth is that there is plenty to be thankful for:

• I am alive and well
• I have the most beautiful, smart, loving, incredible wife on the planet!
• I have a motivated, entrepreneurial hyper-intelligent son that I am incredibly proud of!
• I have the most beautiful, entertaining, smart 7 year old in the universe!
• I have the most amazing, advanced, smart 2 year old around!
• I have a beautiful home to stay in while we look for a new place.
• I have the BEST in-laws.  Since the invention of marriage, there have been five in-laws that were rated the most loving, the most pure. These leave them all behind.
• I have a great new church where I am surrounded my solid, mature believers and real, authentic leaders.
• I have the best best friend a guy could ask for.
• I have awesome parents who love me dearly!
• I have an incredible brother who I love talking to!
• I have loving sisters—even if they like to pretend that they aren’t (well, one of them)
• I have some of the best aunts & uncles that a kid could ask for.
• I have incredible friends back up north who I miss incredibly
• I have unbelievably loyal, loving, REAL friends whom I have met over the interwebs
• I’ve had the opportunity this last year to speak into the lives of some awesome teens
• I’m sure there are TONS of things/people who I am missing and I apologize to them, but it is 3am and my memory isn’t what it used to be!

I had an assignment in one of my classes at Liberty recently where I had to write a parallel situation to Phil 4:13, “I can do all things though Him who gives me strength.”  The lesson talked about how often this verse is taken out of context and that Paul’s primary point is that no matter how tough things get, Christ will see us through.  There is no situation we can find ourselves in that Christ can’t handle.  Things may not go our way, but they will go His way.  Paul’s trying to tell us that with Christ by our side we can be content through our trials.  I can say by first hand experience that this is entirely true.And that leads to me the things I am most thankful for….

• I am thankful for God’s Word
• I am thankful that my sins are forgiven
• I am thankful for a God that loves me unconditionally
• I am thankful for a Savior who died so I don’t have to

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; His love endures forever.” – 1 Chron 16:34

Eight years ago today, I got up for work like I did back then, and was informed by my wife that we needed milk before I went in. So I ran to the convenience store around the corner. As I was walking to the back of the store I remember hearing a breaking news alert. They announced that a plane had just hit the WTC. I rushed home to tell my wife and neighbors. We then sat and watched the 2nd bldg get struck, but I had to get to work. I remember driving down I295 when they announced that a plane had just hit the pentagon. At that point I called my boss to tell him I was going home. Terrorists had just obviously struck north and south of me and I was going home to be with my family. Before I could tell him, he told me to go home. I still remember that drive home. I feared I would never see my family again. My eyes were on the skies more than the road, waiting for a plane to come down on top of me. Our country was under attack.

The outpouring of unity in this country was amazing to me. Days trickled by. Soldiers died. Conspiracy theorists spread their rhetoric. A President left office. “Hope” and “Change” was ushered in. And where are we today?

We have forgotten.

We have forgotten where we were that day. We have forgotten about our friends and neighbors who lost loved ones or didn’t know if they had or not. We have forgotten that our homeland was attacked. We have forgotten that it could have been us.

We need to move on–that is for sure. But let’s not go in the wrong direction.

We now live in a country that it is perfectly OK for a member of Congress to shout down the President during a speech. Why not just throw shoes at him?

We now live in a country where more than ever, EVERYONE feeds off fear.

So what exactly is it that we have forgotten??

Respect

Honor

Concern

Humility

Grace

Loyalty

Love

³⁶“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” ³⁷Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^[b]
38This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Matt 22:36-39

I pray today for the people of this nation, that the Hope and Change that they so obviously yearn for would come, but not through a man, but through the only one who can truly usher in the needed Hope and Change… Jesus Christ

Now that our life is falling into the routine again, I am back blogging! Although we are prayerfully considering some changes to our lives(details further down!) I think that I will be able to maintain the blog through those changes!

Erica & I are prayerfully considering getting plugged in at a new church we have been attending. This “plugging-in” is looking like it may include my starting up their youth program, and becoming the youth pastor! Details are still being ironed out, but this is something that I have been praying for for years!!

And for the not so serious side of things….
80% Geek

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

I suddenly realized tonight that I have become extremely isolationist in my own little world. I venture out when it suits me, I attack only when attacked, I maintain a schedule that precludes me from very much human interaction. I am the epitome of personal isolationism.

I will help those around me—when it suits me. I will put my money towards things that work for the greater good—when it suits me. I will remove my earphones and recognize the world around me—when it suits me.

Unfortunately, I am not alone. Society as a whole has gotten increasingly me oriented, from the iPods we carry around to the Bluetooth headsets that are virtually surgically attached to our ears to the fast, convenient drive-thrus we all frequent. Even Starbucks—a coffeehouse, a place once equivalent with true community and interaction—has an unending line at the drive—thru window.

Richard Foster opens his book The Celebration of Discipline “Superficiality is the curse of our age…. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.” In order to be deep people, we need to begin to extend ourselves outward. Only by laying aside one’s own ambitions and desires can one begin to attain the depth to which God has called us.

Have you ever stopped, thought for a minute, and discovered that you had lost yourself? And not in a good way, but a bad way. You get so caught up in “stuff” that you no longer recognize who you have become. The ideals that you have held so dearly have mysteriously slipped away. This is where I have found myself frequently lately. My life has been a whirlwind of change since I graduated from high school many eons ago. Up to that point in my life I was highly predictable. I was a born-again, hockey-loving, underachieving computer nerd born and raised in New Egypt, NJ. I stepped out into the world in June of 1990 and became a whirlwind of change. I went off to college. I flunked out of college. I tried out about 5 different community college. I gave up on college. I moved to Virginia. I moved back to NJ. I moved to Nashville. I moved 3 times in just over 2 years while in Nashville. I moved back to NJ. I got married. In the next 8 years I had two kids and moved 3 times around NJ. Now I am in Nashville. In 2008 I will have been out of high school for as long as I had been alive when I graduated. During this chaos I began to understand that there was a call on life. God has called me to the ministry. Very likely, and yet…not. I can’t speak in front of a large group of people. I am definately not your “typical” Christian. I was once, and I think that is a good part of me that I lost. Point being….I had 18 years of stability and calm, followed by nearly 18 years of chaos. I think I am about to head into a different stage of my life. I’d like to say it is going to be a stage of calm…but I don’t think that is going to happen. Yet, I don’t think it will be chaos….well, maybe controlled chaos. Actually, that is what it has always been. God has always been in control and has directed my steps the last 18 years that have appeared as total chaos to me, my wife, and most of my family and friends.

So I sit here this morning, trying to figure out where I am, where God wants me, and what I need to do to start out in that direction. I feel that I have totally lost myslef somewhere over the course of the last year. My relationship with God had been getting closer to where He wants it. Shoot…I was actually in a place where I could hear Him speak to me…and follow through with it…regardless of the insanity of the idea of uprooting my family and moving them halfway across the country away from our family and friends. I’ve gotten so wrapped up in busy-ness, that I have lost that which is dearest to me. My realtionship with God and my wife have suffered immensely. So now, I sit and ponder and I wonder why? God would send…oh wait sorry…got TobyMac in my head now…I wonder why I let myself get to this point and more importantly–how do I get back to the place where God was my best friend, my Father, my Abba. And then…it is quite simple. I need to lose my self.