Wednesdays Word.....Chaos

I've heard this following song numerous times over the years but up until yesterday the words hadn't hit me.

Now if you've been following along you'd have noticed I generally save the lyrics to a song to the end to help clarify what I'm blogging about but hopefully these lyrics to the song What Ever You're Doing by Sanctus Real will further justify my thoughts because they truly speak for themselves.

It's time for healing time to move on

It's time to fix what's been broken too long

Time make right what has been wrong

It's time to find my way to where I belong

There's a wave that's crashing over me

All I can do is surrender

Whatever you're doing inside of me

It feels like chaos somehow there's peace

It's hard to surrender to what I can't see

but I'm giving in to something heavenly

Time for a milestone

Time to begin again

Reevaluate who I really am

Am I doing everything to follow your will

or just climbing aimlessly over these hills

So show me what it is you want from me

I give everything I surrender...

Time to face up

Clean this old house

Time to breathe in and let everything out

That I've wanted to say for so many years

Time to to release all my held back tears

Whatever you're doing inside of me

It feels like chaos but I believe

You're up to something bigger than me

Larger than life something heavenly

Whatever you're doing inside of me

It feels like chaos but now I can see

This something bigger than me

Larger than life something heavenly

Something heavenly

It's time to face up

Clean this old house

Time breathe in and let everything out

How can you experience chaos and peace simultaneously?  Most of us struggle to find even a glimmer of peace in this chaotic and hectic world that we live in. So many things tend to weigh us down. From our crazy schedules, job duties, school pressures, spousal and parental responsibilities. Then you throw in some guilt and top it off with worries and you have a recipe for a meltdown.

If you have ever experienced this sort of turmoil going on inside of you then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It is a sure sign that the Holy Spirit and God are working something out within you. There could be so many different reasons for this happening but it is always something we need to let go of and to finally hand it over to God in order to truly find peace about your "it".

That 1st verse is probably more true for everyone than maybe some will admit but we all have some brokenness in our lives that we've allowed to linger for far too long that has come to eat away at our daily lives and has had a negative affect on our relationships with those around us but more importantly with God. So many times it takes us finding ourselves in that drowning moment before we finally reach out for saving. All it takes is for us to surrender that problem over to God so we can end the struggle and to start the healing process.

This is when that moment of chaos begins to stir in us. The Holy Spirit begins His attempt to remove the issue but it has become such a part of us that we are are scared to give it up because it has grown like a cancer and has reached into so many other aspects of our life. We know too that if we truly hand it all over to God we can no longer use it as our excuse for everything. Sadly sometimes we are afraid to give it up because it has consumed so much time and energy in our lives that we scared of not knowing what to do without it. But if we let the Holy Spirit have His way we begin to feel that push, that pull and that tugging at our hearts that we understand it is for our own good that we give in. We have the reassurance that what ever our struggle is that as soon as it is gone that a greater thing will take its place and that God's overwhelming love will fill that void and we will experience true peace through His grace. .

There are so many milestones we can keep track of in our Christian walk. That first one very well maybe when we take the time to reevaluate our life. Not just about who we are and what we've done but whose we are and where we go from here. Don't get me wrong it's not a simple process. It's not a straight and wide path that's easy to follow. It's narrow, winding and has many peaks and valleys you must travel through. You may have to go through this process several times but it's the 1st one, that first step, that 1st time you reach out for help because you understand you can't do it on your own will always be the hardest.

As you reconcile your past and clean up "your house" you'll feel that you're literally able to breathe again and you'll never forget that feeling. Once you release all the years of angst, bitterness, anger, hate, guilt and pain you can start to see the beginnings of something truly miraculous as you become the person you were always meant to be as you begin to see the bigger picture and purpose that God has always had planned for you.

If you've made it this far thank you for reading and sharing in some of my random thoughts...here's the song.

Gone Fishin

If you know me or have read the above tab "Just a Few Things" then you know that I enjoy fishing. But to be honest these days it's hard to find the time to enjoy wetting a line. Our summer seemed to come and go in a blur and now we are into our busy soccer season so today may have been the last time this year. But it was probably one of my favorite quick fishing trips ever. Generally 1 or more of the kids come with me. If my oldest is coming then we actually fish because he has the patience like me to fish all day and catch nothing and still call it a good day of fishing. The middle 2 boys are another story if they don't catching something in the first couple of casts they are a lost cause and are off doing something else. Elli has kind of been a wild card and I wasn't totally sure she was all in when it came to fishing but today I think I got my answer.

I took the day off and told her when she got out of school that I was going to take just her fishing with me and she was truly excited. Turns out she told her teacher and I may have gotten the biggest hug ever from her.

We grabbed her Disney Princess pole and my bag of 8 different rigs and a couple of tackle boxes and we started jamming to Stellar Kart's song Gone Fishin' just to set the mood. We didn't get 5 minutes away and she got a case of the are we there yets. Didn't help that we went by the river a few times and she was thinking that was where we were going. But soon enough we were there and she helped carry what she could while I looked like a pack mule. 

It was pretty funny that while I was getting her all set up she was amazed at how many different butterflies there were but then she went to catch something and I heard a shriek when the grasshopper she had caught jumped away and she had this confused look on her face. I told her it was just a grasshopper and she was like "oh" and then was OK. But it made me think of my sister and her love of grasshoppers so I had to laugh a little. 

We fished a bit but it was more like teasing and playing with all the frogs as they chased my frog lure around. Elli thought they just wanted to be friends with it and were playing. She didn't believe me when I said they were trying to eat it. She just thought that was pretty dumb of them because it wasn't real. 

We decided to move to the end of the pier to try our luck. Elli had just cast and I had my back turned when she said where did my bobber go? I told her she had a fish. She didn't exactly remember what to do so I told her to just real it in and as soon as she saw her catch she let out a squeal. After she posed for her pictures I told her it was time to give her fish a kiss and put it back and she gave me a pretty dirty look. 

Her very next cast netted the same results. But now she was getting cocky. She proclaimed she was going to be a professional fisherman. I explained to her she would have to touch the fish and she quickly changed her mind.

She didn't rub it in that she skunked me and she was just happy to spend time with me and I didn't care I didn't get a bite because I saw pure joy on her face and we got the chance to share that moment today.

So the final score was Disney Princesses - 2 Pflueger & Browning - 0. I used to work at Bass Pro so I have an obscene amount of gear. But I generally don't throw everything I own unless I'm fishing on my own and I can focus on my twitching and jerking (and no that has nothing to do with Miley Cyrus) and roll through all my color combinations of every lure to find what they're biting on that day. But more importantly when I'm fishing on my own it's my time to talk to God. I've had some great moments and some I've really struggled with during this time but regardless I always feel closer to God when I leave than when I arrived.

Every moment I can ever remember fishing has always been a great memory for me. From fishing with my grandma as a kid at the gravel pit (pictured above), catching Bertha (also in the above picture), taking Cole on the "guy" fishing trips with Michelle's grandpa, uncle and brother to not even picking up my own pole to fish just so I could teach my kids my tricks of the trade. Every moment fishing has had an impact on my life and my hope and prayer is that my kids will be able to say the same thing when they look back on our time spent together gone fishin.

Wednesdays Word.....Guidance

Guidance....we all need it (some of us every day) but where do we look to find it? I think that's where most of us hit a stumbling block and struggle on where to turn to when we need help. We probably have more issues on who or where to seek answers from even more so than what we are needing the help with. Add these things together and chances are we will close ourselves off from the very help we need because of the anxiety we self create surrounding the situation. Especially considering most people turn to the Internet and Facebook for their guidance.

Earlier this summer our pastor did a sermon series on the Holy Spirit based on Francis Chan's book called Forgotten God. I had the opportunity to help teach a bible study in correlation to this book and am now leading the same study for our church core group. I really enjoy Chan's insight and writing style so this has been enjoyable for me. I've learned a lot about the misunderstood (hence forgotten) part of the trinity. I grew up going to a Catholic church so I mentioned the Holy Spirit every time I did the sign of the cross when I genuflected getting into the pew but I had no concept of scope of the spirit. 

Some people would consider the Holy Spirit the guide on our walk with Christ. Others would say It's basically our conscience but most truly have no idea or just a vague understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit. Most would agree that the Holy Spirit allows us to communicate with God but we usually struggle in listening and/or understanding what God is trying to tell us. This can be difficult when we are looking for guidance in our life. 

After going through this Forgotten God study I remembered I had picked up a book after a youth conference called 99 Thoughts on Hearing God's Call: Learning to Listen and Respond to God's Voice. In my spare time I help with our church's high school youth group on Sunday nights and work with the middle schoolers on Wednesdays. These ages are a tough time in a young person's life regardless but when you mix in trying to lead a Christian lifestyle and trying to figure out God's plan for your life it can be over whelming. I had the thought of using this book to help our youth try to sort some things out by reading through this book and adding their thoughts to this cute puppy dog journal (I figured no one would steal it) and when they are done I have them initial the cover of the book and we pass it along. My hope is for this book and journal to make it through our youth group by the end of the the school year and that it helps them understand how to better listen to the Holy Spirit but more importantly I pray that they respond. So please check back next year for the follow up blog post to this experiment.

There's a song that's been stuck in my heard/heart lately called Help Me Find It. I've had the opportunity to see the Side Walk Prophets several times over the years and most recently while on a date with my wife and we got to hear them perform their latest hit Help Me Find It. I have genuinely enjoyed all of their music but this song has really stuck with me. I have even said I wish I had half the vocal chops of Dave Frey their lead signer. If you haven't heard any of their songs before just give a listen to the video and be sure to pay attention to the lyrics. 

"Help Me Find It"

I don’t know where to go from here
It all used to seem so clear
I’m finding I can’t do this on my own

I don’t know where to go from here
As long as I know that You are near
I’m done fighting
I’m finally letting go

I will trust in You
You’ve never failed before
I will trust in You

[Chorus:]
If there’s a road I should walk
Help me find it
If I need to be still
Give me peace for the moment
Whatever Your will
Whatever Your will
Can you help me find it
Can you help me find it

I’m giving You fear and You give faith
I giving you doubt
You give me grace
For every step I’ve never been alone

Even when it hurts, You’ll have Your way
Even in the valley I will say
With every breath
You’ve never let me go

I will wait for You
You’ve never failed before
I will wait for You

[Chorus]

I lift my empty hands (come fill me up again)
Have Your way my King (I give my all to You)
I lift my eyes again (Was blind but now I see)
‘Cause You are all I need

Wednesdays Word....Pray

I still find it amazing how multiple things lead to this point when I finally see all of them coming together and I say OK OK I'll put it all down so everyone can see what I see in my head. It's not always the easiest thing to sort out but when I think I can make some sort of semblance of it I always hope that it translates well enough for people to at least kinda sorta get where I'm coming from. And now that I've lost you all.....on with the show.

I've had the privilege this year to help out with various ages of our student ministry at our church. It all started last year on our mission trip to Mexico when I felt God was calling me back to minister or at least be a role model for these kids I had taught Sunday school to years ago who are now all high schoolers and a few of them are graduating this year. So I've been helping out with our senior high youth group on Sunday nights and on Wednesdays I've been helping herd cats....I mean work with a group of middle schoolers. Though I'm not sure which is harder to keep on track the kids or my co-leader. He will claim it the opposite way that I'm the problem but we all know the truth. But the curve ball came when I agreed to help my wife teach Sunday school with my daughter's class of preschoolers. I figured it couldn't be that bad I already run the city's youth soccer program in the winter and summer for 3-5 yr olds so it couldn't be that hard...right?

Recently in all these groups we've touched on the topic of prayer. In high school youth group we watched the Francis Chan Basic DVD series and one of the weeks focused on prayer but more importantly on our prayer life. And despite his freakishly creepy large hands he had some great insight. I think we have come to take The Lord's Prayer for granted. I know I sure did growing up Catholic and hearing it as the rosary was prayed, saying it every week in church (well every week we were there) and before every football game. Though I would always mumble through the last part because we never learned the For thine is the kingdom,The power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen. As a congregation we recently switched from forgive us our trespasses to forgive us our sins. Which for me when I read this translation years ago it was one of the times I really got smacked upside the head by God and it made me take a closer look and really focus on what I was saying and made me realize in order to be forgiven myself I had to forgive others with no conditions attached. But Chan's focus was that he really wanted us to redirect our prayers to those very things that Jesus himself would have prayed for instead of some of the superficial things we tend to quickly throw into a prayer.

Now most would think that preschoolers would should have claimed the cat herding award but they actually have better attention spans and less distractions in their life than middle schoolers these days. A while back we had everyone write down a prayer request and despite our attempt at seriousness one of the boys wrote down that he wanted Black Ops 2 and to prove a point to him Brandon (my co-leader) said fine you're gonna get your game and sure enough he did. But we try to make them realize that they should be in constant prayer because their lives are reflection of their beliefs and they should pray about every decision they make. But we also remind them that if they still are questioning something to contact us because between the 2 of us we've done some pretty stupid stuff and we'll help them through the matter prayerfully.

But the kids who tend to teach me the most with their knowledge and understanding are the group of preschoolers. This past week was no exception when we talked about prayer and when and how we can pray. We let them know it doesn't have to be fancy and that you just have to talk to God. But what's even better is when they talk outside of class about the things we talked about. Here's a little example of a conversation between my wife and daughter this morning.  To set the stage they were having breakfast with Kutless playing: so I sing in her ear, "you could be, you could be a hero". She smiles and says "I wanna be a hero". I tell her all she has to do to be a hero is tell people about Jesus. She says "I already do dat. I say Do you know Jesus? Well, you should pray about Him because Jesus is alive. He loves you." She's only 4 (she will tell you 4 1/2...duh) and she gets it.

What finally made me say ok ok I'll blog is that I've been seeing a lot of and have been hearing this song quite often. It's called Pray and it's by Sanctus Real. Just listen the lyrics and I'm sure you can picture yourself saying these same words.

Sorry when this was in my head it seemed so much more epic than what I just read .

Wednesdays Words....Questions or Answers?

Well I'm either 6 days early in preparing this post or a day late. I prefer the early notion but when you are a procrastinator that waits for the proper nudge to get direction for these particular blog entries then it's probably closer to the latter. Regardless this one is going to take some extra time and may get fairly lengthy.

Answers: we have been asked to find them since since we began school and in all actuality since we were babies when our parents would read to us from the big board books with pictures of animals, colors and shapes and ask us what they were. We have pretty much been hardwired since birth with the need to find the answers. This is unfortunate in some ways and can even be a detriment in many circumstances. But as we get a little older our seeking answers turns to asking questions....if you're a parent you pretty much know exactly when that starts and it slowly drives you insane. The worst part is it doesn't just start out as practical need to know questions; everything becomes a question. Eventually it evolves to real questions about real difficult matters but then as we get older it comes full circle and we tend to go back to the searching for answers. 

What started my thought process on this matter is that I'm reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan and a section caught my attention about how we continue to question God. Generally these questions are the self centered questions that start with "Why" and end with "Me". I could list all of these types of questions but it'd go on for quite some time and we are all familiar enough with our own that we can take a guess at everyone else's self doubt/work questions are. A lot of very serious questions get asked about how God can allow certain things to happen. Or how He can allow there to be such vast poverty and famine, or so many divorces and broken families and how can He let there be so many orphans. But in all seriousness God should be asking us these very same questions. These situations are not a product of God but of us and I would hope this would hit home to some people and convict them to want to make a difference one life at a time where ever they can.

We've also been watching Louie Giglio's Passion Talk Series in our family small group at church and Louie had a line that was very relevant to this in regards to Christianity as a whole. He said Christianity can not be boiled down to simple answers. Generally these big questions can't be answered without asking another question to which there is no simple answer. I've watched the series before but I'm picking up new things and maybe I'll have our high school youth group watch them because they are quite good.

To top things off I had the opportunity this past weekend (in one of those just so happened to be  moments) to talk to Jason Ostrander from Simply Youth Ministry at the Ignite Youth Leadership Conference who wrote a book called 99 Questions Jesus Asked which focuses on 99 of the 300 documented questions Jesus asked in the Bible. I started this blog post well before I knew I was going to this last break out session. Mainly because I didn't know I was going to it until 15 minutes before hand when I crossed off the using drama and acting class to develop ministry with students; which I think everyone else did too because it was packed. I had already been to a couple other sessions that tied right into some of the questions I'd been having lately so it was a great validation of what I've been thinking about in writing this post and that it wasn't something I forced and that God was behind it. When you look at the questions Jesus asked He focused on questioning the questioner with direct and generally life wrecking questions of his own that are still relevant today. 

But when we truly think about it.....what is more important? The Question, the process of finding a possible answer or the Answer itself? It could just be a matter of perspective but most likely it depends on the circumstance. We all have questions, there is no getting around it, but who you go to or how you go about trying to find or work out an answer maybe the most important decision you make. Because when you really take the time to look at the big picture and you are honest with yourself about it; the most important things in this world are not the answers but the truths. The questions and answers may change but God's truths remain the same. I always tell my youth groups that you will eventually get the answers that you seek but by the time you do the questions won't matter anymore because you'll be in the presence of God and you'll be a little busy with your new "job"....worshiping.   

80's on the 8th......TURBO

So I see I haven't done my 80's post in a while but to be honest I haven't had any flashback type moments that inspired me to blog about until last week when I had an exchange of texts with my brother.

It started off me getting a text from him thankful for all the gaming and button mashing as a kid as it has built up stamina for all the mouse clicking he does as a graphic designer when using Photoshop.  To which I asked "are you cheating by using AA batteries to get faster clicks" and he said "no, turbo button worked so much better"....which led me to the end all Kids and their turbo buttons these days.

So if you know what I was talking about then you are a 30 something original Nintendo player that at some point in their gaming career played the game Track and Field and would continually lose against the computer but eventually figured out the battery trick. Now no one truly remembers who the originator of the method of sliding the battery back and forth across the A & B buttons was but everyone used it. It might be even something that all gamers were born with but we may never know. Even trying a quick Google search there are no articles accrediting this phenomenon let alone pictures confirming it.....yet we've all done it.

My brother went on to complain about always being stuck with the big lap sized NES Advantage controller that had turbo control knobs to adjust the speed because we eventually got a regular sized controller with turbo but since he was younger we stuck him with the one we didn't like. He should actually be grateful we even let him have a controller. He probably grew up thinking all controllers were wireless because we used to give him one with the cord cut off and told him he was playing just to keep him quiet. Don't judge....we've all done it and now we use the same trick on our own kids. Granted they all eventually figure it out but at least you gain a few extra years of playing the games you want to play because once they learn the controls they take over the system.

So next time my brother and I are back home we will have to first blow out the game cartridge and be prepared to wedge another game on top if it and test out if we still have our retro cool old school gaming skills or if we been ruined by 8 button, vibration enabled, dual shock high def games.