Once you find it...never let it go!

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There is so much clutter in our lives.  Sometimes I believe our goal in life is to be so distracted with stuff that it numbs the pain of our existence.  We work very hard at making life work for us and somewhere in the middle of our existence there is something so precious and valuable. Something worth fighting for! Yet it can get pushed out of the way if we are not careful.  Search for it!  It’s found in the middle of all the clutter.

And when you find it…never let it go!

The Source of Satisfaction

Lately I have been in a place in my life where I am struggling to find satisfaction.  God is good, life is great but there is something deep within me that longs for something more.  Henry David Thoreau says it this way, 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  What a quote, huh?  Quietly desperate.  Desperate for more.  More of what? Who knows. Just desperate. 

Life seems so purposeless and mundane at times.  The routine of it all seems bleak. I long for the day when I can shed this desperation like old skin?  Where do I turn to find the satisfaction that I desperately long for.  Church?  Hobbies? Work?  Facebook? Movies? 

Not even close do these things come to satisfying the deep parts of our soul. These things are like layers of mediocrity compared to what we truly need. The surface of the ocean doesn't even come close to the beauty of what is underneath it.  I find myself spending so much time skimming the top of my life and never really understanding the beauty that lies underneath the surface of it.  

Satisfaction is not circumstantial.  It doesn't come based on whatever circumstance we find ourselves in. It has to come from a deeper place. A deeper source.

Enter stage right:  Jesus Christ.  Every single time I get to a place of quiet desperation I quietly find myself at the feet of the only one who can bring deep satisfaction.  It is then and there that my heart rests.  That I begin to hope again.  The surface becomes the deep. The source becomes the satisfaction.

Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Luke 6:21

Africa, Detroit or to the uttermost....

Last night I woke up with a scary thought!  What if God chose to send me to Detroit!  Would I go?  I mean really...to me, Africa seems better than Detroit. 

You see, I never have wanted to fully surrender to God's destiny in my life because it might include being stuck in Africa where McDonald's and Wal-Mart don't exist.  Heaven forbid! God, please!  I will do anything else but not Africa. I mean after all I am an American and I can do more for you in America!  I promise I could...let me just show you.

Wait...hang on a second...let me add something to this prayer God...I love the South!  I mean after all I am a southern American so I will just serve you in the South. Yeah, that's what I will do. I will serve you in the Southern part of North America. Ok?

But God if I may get a little more specific with you.  There are parts of the South that are just a little too cold for me. I mean after all I was born and raised in Florida and me and cold don't like each other very much, so here is what I will do for you God - I will serve you!  No applause necessary...remember, I am just your humble and obedient servant who is fully surrendered and sold out to declaring your incredible love to people!  Yay me! 

However, if I could do it in the Southern part of America, specifically Florida, then I am all in! And by the way...You are welcome.  I know you want me all to yourself so I am here ready to serve you anyway I can in Florida. 

Yep..that sums it up. I'm good if you are!  Thanks for this little conversation we had tonight God. I feel much better.  Detroit?  That was a good one God!  You are too funny.

GLOW

Do you remember glow in the dark toys?  Your child might have one or two of these glow wonders stuffed somewhere deep down into the trenches of the toy box.  It might be underneath a race car or some train tracks but it is probably still there.

 

If you were to find that toy and turn the light off you probably wouldn’t get real excited at the dark plastic mass in your hand.  Why?  Because that super fun toy has not seen the light of day in months and appears broken. It is not glowing anymore! Well you know as well as I do that it is not broken it just needs a dose of light to glow again.  In minutes after an encounter with the light the glow is back and shining brightly in the darkness of the room.

 

Today, you might find yourself down in the trenches of the toy box. You feel stuffed somewhere between your personal responsibilities and pressure from others and you find that your glow is gone.

 

You just need to find your way back to the light so you can glow again. It only takes minutes in the light to get the glow back.

 

My dad and I went camping a few years back and for some reason we woke up at the same time.  Our tent was pitched in a clearing on top of a mountain and the view was extraordinary.  We unzipped the tent and walked out onto the camp site and the moon was as full as I have ever seen it.  It was so full that it looked like we could have just reached out and touched it.  We stood there in awe for a few minutes staring at the glory of the moon.  And the truth about the moon is that it would have no glory to it at all if the sun wasn’t shining on it.  The sun illuminates the moon making it absolutely breathtaking.  Without the sun shining on the surface of the moon the moon would look like a giant rock floating in the air.  It takes the light of the sun to make it glorious.

 

Your light source is Christ and you are a reflection of His light in this dark world. Get back to your source of light and then share that light with everyone around you.

 

Here comes trouble

My senior year of college was going great! I was very busy with my double major of intramural sports and girls.  However I started to realize that my demanding schedule was beginning to leave me breathless at the end of the day.  At the age of 23 I was ten feet tall and bullet proof with a strong feeling of immortality.  But all of that came crashing down in an instant when I went to the doctor for a checkup.  After running multiple tests the results came back and were very clear. They had discovered that I had a very rare heart disease called “Ebsteins Anomoly.”  The doctor told me that I needed open heart surgery and needed it right away.  The only thing I could remember at the time was a sense of complete devastation. How could this be? I had my whole life in front of me. 

The brother of Jesus was very specific when he wrote to us.  He said, “Dear brothers and sisters, when trouble comes your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.”  James 1:2

JOY?!  How in the world can our troubles turn into joy?  I mean don’t we spend most of our lives trying to avoid the troubles of life.  We work so diligently at trying to make our lives as comfortable as possible so we will be filled with joy, right?

There are some attributes of trouble that I believe are very true.

1)   Troubles are going to happen to us whether we like it or not. 

2)   Trouble tends to come out of nowhere.  Have you ever been blind sided in life?  Everything seems to be going just right and then all of sudden, “WHAM”, out of nowhere you are faced with a crisis in your life.

3)   Trouble tends to cause us to doubt God.  After we are faced with our crisis the first place we look is up with one question on our hearts.  Why me, Lord?  Haven’t I been faithful to you? Haven’t I tried to live a life pleasing to you?

4)   Troubles tend to force us to look upwards.  After the doubt in our heart subsides and we have nowhere else to go we begin asking God for relief.  Psalm 4:1 says, Answer me when I call to you. O my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress.

5)   Troubles have a tendency to allow us to find strength in God.  We slowly begin finding our strength in the One who loves us the most. After the questions and doubt leave then we turn to God for help.

6)   Troubles have a tendency to show us what pure joy really is.  It is not God’s nature to abandon His children.  We might think that He does at times but what He’s really up to is a process of completing our joy by carrying us through the trouble.

Always know that through any storm in your life God is always at work!

Who's Carrying You

One of the greatest memories I have of being a new dad was carrying Zack around in a baby carrier.  This carrier was new to me. It attached to my chest and it allowed Zack to perch right up in front of me.  It was like a backpack with a kid in it. You know what I am talking about and if you are a parent you probably have one stuck up in your attic or closet somewhere. 

Zack loved this thing!  Without it, all he could see was the back of a stroller, but when daddy carried him in his new little buddy contraption he could see everything. Now I loved this handy dandy toy as much as he did.  Everywhere we went I had my ZackPack (that’s what I called it) with me.   If we went to the grocery store I wore it. If we were at the mall Zack was right there with me.  I carried him everywhere.  I enjoyed seeing his face light up at everything he saw.  I also enjoyed having him close to my chest.  It was an awesome thing for a new dad. 

Zack was too weak to walk but he wanted to experience life and I could tell that he experienced life to the fullest when dad was carrying him around in the ZackPack.

Did you know that God wants to carry you?  We are too weak to experience life by ourselves.  We might think we aren’t but in reality we are.  We cannot walk the path the Father has given us to walk without Him carrying us.

Deuteronomy says it this way;  The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as He did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place. Deuteronomy 1:30-31 (NIV)

God’s people had watched God carry them out of Egypt and deliver them from the hands of the Egyptian army at the Red Sea.  I would have to say on that day God fought for them and they won victoriously. 

As I have looked back over my life I have seen how God has carried me and fought for me. But what is still so sad is that at 39 years of age I still I think I am in control and can fight my own battles.   All of us have examples of when God has carried us through some disaster in our life. But just like the Israelites we forget easily and quickly how God has brought us through victoriously. 

We walk through life with some sense of control and when we reach the age of strength we begin to rely on ourselves. We tend to leave God out of that blend but in reality He is the one who has His hands on us from our first breath until our last.  He is the one that desires more than anything else to carry us and fight for us just like a father carries and fights for his child.

Although my baby boy didn’t realize it at the time, if he was going to move through life I had to be the one who carried him.  He didn’t realize his inability to do it on his own.  It is the same with us.  We think we can handle the battles, but we can’t.  Our Father wants us to recognize that He delights in carrying us.  I can’t remember whose smile was bigger when Zack was close to my chest, mine or his?

Who’s carrying you?  Let go and let God carry you.  You will go much further than you ever dreamed you could.

Joy in the Journey

I can remember one Christmas when our boys were little we decided to head out to Little Rock, Arkansas to go see Kristy’s family for the holidays.  So we met Kristy’s brother and sister, and their families, in Atlanta and decided to caravan out to the Mid-West together.  We piled 6 adults, 4 children, Christmas presents and every bit of our luggage into three minivans and took off.  Kristy and my sister-in-law were pregnant at the time so that made things very interesting to say the least.   

What should have been a two-hour trip from Atlanta to Birmingham turned into a five-hour ordeal.  We made 27 potty breaks and 13 carsickness stops before we even arrived into Alabama.My philosophy of travel is, “May the best mini-van win.”  When we get in the car we don’t need not stop for anything!  My goal is that of any Nascar driver, to beat the competition.

So this little joyful holiday expedition was not turning out in my favor and I was getting more and more frustrated with every stop we made.  What should have taken us nine hours actually turned into a fifteen-hour trip!

When we pulled into Little Rock I was dead tired and angry.  The pregnant ladies were mad with me because they couldn’t understand my lack of compassion for the ones who were carrying our children.  The nerve of them to be angry with me!  We made horrible time and I lost the race. Where was the compassion for me?

You know, I have to tell you something; a few days later after I had fully recovered from that pain-staking journey, I reflected back on the trip and quickly realized that the greatest thing about it was the traveling.  The hotels, Zach doing his thing on the side of the road because he couldn’t hold it any longer, the fellowship over the C.B. radios, the jokes, the food, everything!

I was looking for the end and I missed out on the joy of the journey.

So when it comes to our spiritual journey I think we constantly look for the end results all the while we are missing out on the best part.  The journey itself!  You and I have the best opportunity right now in this very moment to enjoy the best that Jesus has to offer. 

When we decide to focus on the end is when everything gets complicated and frustrating for us.  Jesus says it this way, “Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to love freely and lightly.” Matthew 11-28-30 (the message)   

The key to life is not getting to the end. It is simply enjoying the here and now.  It is possible for us to take so many things for granted when the blessing of living our lives is right in front of us.

W-Wait on His timing. God knows the plan He has for your life so just enjoy the journey leaving the results of the end up to God.

A – Allow for U-turns in your life.  Life can bring its share of curves and we must be willing to adjust our routes so they will line up with God’s will.

L – Lay your burdens down.  Proverbs 12:25 says, “An anxious heart weighs a man down.

K – Keep going.  Don’t stop walking in the reality of who God is in your life.  Trust His heart for your journey. Our lives are a marathon not a sprint.  If you need to rest, then rest.

Remember that the joy of life is in the journey!