One of my favorite songs growing up

One of my favorite songs growing up was Here I Go Again by Whitesnake. I remember the first time I drove by myself without an adult in the car. It was my dad’s Jeep Grand  Cherokee Loredo and I got to drive it by myself around town. As I was driving, Here I Go Again came on the radio and I was pretty certain the car was going to take flight!! I felt like I was the master of the universe!

Something about that song felt like my theme song. “Here I go again on my own. Going down the only road I’ve ever know . Like a drifter I was born to walk alone….” I loved that. Me against the world. I don’t need anyone or anything. I am the master of my destiny and nothing… nothing is going to get in my way.

Now I’m a follower of Christ and I am not the master of my destiny. I have given my heart to Christ and he is the ruler of my life. Not only is my life about a relationship with God but its also about relationships with others. This is still tough for me.

There is a strong part of me that wants to keep God and other people out of my life. Something in me still wants the control and doesn’t want to be hurt…ever.

Ultimately I want to have an open heart to God and others because that is where life is. But it also feels like risk. When you really think about it though, the real risk is in keeping your heart closed to all the love of God and others out of pride and fear.

Here I go again on my own… not anymore.

Where are you on this? Does it feel like you’re on your own? It doesn’t have to be that way.

 

My dream last night

I had a very interesting dream last night that could have been discouraging but I’m choosing to learn from it instead. There was someone close to me in the dream that was communicating to me a very discouraging message. They were saying that I had a ton of potential but that I turned out to be a dud. I was disappointing. I wasn’t worth the investment.

I know that’s not true but it made me realize that God has more for me than I imagine. I allow my world of possibilities to be shaped by a ton of different factors. Unfortunately one of those factors consists of some of the negative messages I received in my past. I start to believe that I have what it takes to be moderately successful but that I shouldn’t get my hopes up too high so that I won’t be disappointed.

Is it possible that our wildest dreams are almost insulting to God because his plans for us so far exceed our expectations? If his plans for us so far exceed our expectations, who in the world are we to doubt what God can do through us? It really is a funky manifestation of pride to say that I’m too messed up to be used mightily by God. If we really believe half the stuff we say about how God can use anyone to do anything, what difference does it make how checkered our past may be?

So how big are your dreams? Do you still allow yourself to dream? Instead of feeding yourself the message that your dreams are way too big to come true, maybe you need to think the exact opposite. Maybe your dreams are too small and they need to take a backseat to a limitless and powerful God.

5 lessons I’ve learned from my kids

1. I don’t know or understand as much as I thought I did.

All it takes is a toddler asking the “Why” question enough and you realize you don’t know as much as you thought. Isaac is 3 and wants to know all kinds of stuff. He is approaching the world with a wonder that I definitely need to learn from. As he asks his questions I am reminded that I need to approach the day with more humility. Things aren’t as cut and dry as I sometimes like to pretend that they are.

2. Parenting is not as simple as I thought

I love Isaac and Jonathan so much. I am not the kind of dude that goes nuts every time I see a baby but there is something about your own kids that just melts your heart. I want the best for them more than I can even say. I don’t ever want them to get hurt and I will fight to set them up for success in life with every fiber of my being. That being said, I don’t always know how to do that. I see where they are right now and I have some ideas as to where I want their character to be in the future but they are foggy at best. I pretty much have to take it a day at a time and seek God’s wisdom regarding the future.

3. There is a lot of truth in the whole Wild at Heart thing

If you haven’t read John Eldredge’s book Wild at Heart, you may not understand this point. In this book Eldredge attempts to drill down into the essential heart of manhood. He masterfully articulates that there is something in boys and men that needs to know that we have what it takes. There is something wild in our hearts that wants adventure and wants to be a warrior. Isaac and Jonathan love to wrestle me and seem to light up when I throw them around. They like to try things that are beyond their physical capacity to the detriment of my wife’s sanity and to the potential detriment of their own physical well-being (-; Part of my job is to lead them safely into that adventure that will continue throughout their lives.

4. Discipline can be tricky

Figuring out how to discipline your kids is not simple business. You have to consider the personality of your kids. You must take into account how you want to communicate the lesson that they need to get. You don’t want to be overly angry but you don’t want them to think you’re a pushover. You want them to know you love them but you want them to know that you’re not happy with their behavior. Sometimes you may need to spank them but you have to question what the proper discipline is given the nature of what they did. What is the purpose behind the discipline in that situation and does the punishment fit the crime? These can be very difficult questions and it is important for mom and dad to be on the same page. We are still trying to navigate these waters and it is very challenging. I guess I thought that the universe magically endowed parents with omniscience when they became parents but if that happens, I definitely missed it!

5. It may sound cliche but time flies.

Isaac just turned 3 and I was tempted to make him be 2 for a second year. He’s growing up too fast!! You have to enjoy each day and each moment of the day. Jonathan is walking and I feel like he was just born yesterday! Do creative things with your kids. Pray for them. Have fun with them. Manage the tension between work and family time carefully. Be the parent today that you dreamed of being because you won’t get today back. We already know this stuff but it’s so true. We spend so much of our lives wishing it was tomorrow or next week or next year but this is a tragic mistake. Learn how to embrace today as the gift that it is.

I’m sure there will be a ton more lessons to come but I wanted to share a few that I’ve been learning.

Confessions of a Pastor’s Wife

I’ve learned more from my sweet wife, Abbi, over the years than I could possibly communicate. I’m certain you’ll enjoy her authenticity and wisdom in this post:

Being a Pastor’s Wife carries with it some interesting challenges. In some ways I imagine it’s kind of like wearing a police badge in public. Some people see that badge and steer clear. Some put on a sweet smile, nod politely or engage in small talk, and save their authenticity for others. Some may hang back, observing every action, motion, and word, quietly deciding if the badge is deserved. And many others know that a badge means nothing more than a role and that the person wearing it is just that: a person.

I for one never thought that Pastor’s Wife would be part of my job description. If you knew me more than ten years ago, you probably thought the same thing. But here I am today, a grown up (which still feels a bit awkward to admit), a mother, and married to a pastor. And as I learn what exactly that means, I have a few confessions.

Being a pastor’s wife doesn’t mean you always know what to do.

I know that my husband is full of wisdom and spirituality, and I am trying to follow Jesus myself; however there are times that I just don’t know what to do. And that’s just it: I seek the Lord just like any other believer that is seeking to grow in relationship with Him. Chris and I don’t have a super-secret prayer hotline that dials straight in to the Father’s headquarters. We use the same lines to reach God and grow closer to Him as everyone else. And a pastor’s prayer (or his wife’s!) is no more special to God than everyone else’s; we are ALL his children and he longs to hear from each of us the same.

Being a pastor’s wife doesn’t mean I always love people.

Just being real here: I’m not always a people person. I am an introvert. I’d be embarrassed if you knew the exact number of times that I told my husband, “But I don’t feel like being around people today!” You’d probably think that constantly loving people is vital to the job description for every pastor and his wife, but that just isn’t true. God calls all different kinds of people into pastoring roles. I do love people and have the desire to see people redeemed and transformed, but I still need time to myself to recharge.

Being a pastor’s wife doesn’t mean that your life is a supporting role.

As a wife, it’s vitally important to support your husband. When your husband is a pastor, it’s even more crucial to be there for him because of the challenging nature of this mission. I believe that one of the most important callings that God has placed on me is to serve my husband as he ministers. However, I am learning that God has a unique mission that is specifically for my life as well. My purpose in life works in concert with my husband’s, and honestly I am still discovering the path God has for me. A couple of years ago it clicked for me in a new way when I realized that when I get to heaven, my husband’s relationship with God won’t be enough; the Lord will ask me, “Abbi, did YOU know me?” That thought revealed to me that I was leaning on my husband a little too much for my relationship with God instead of seeking God myself. If I’m going to receive the full extent of the Lord’s purpose for my life, then I need to spend time with Him and learn to hear His voice. And really, the only way I can truly support my husband is if I’m communicating with God on my own.

What do you want?

I’ve been asking myself a little bit lately…“What do I want?” Do you ever ask yourself that? I’m not really talking about what you want in this moment or in the next couple of days. I mean…what do you want overall?

Success? Money? Fame? Significance? Freedom? Love? Connections? To be a celebrity?

What do you want? I feel like I really needed to answer that question lately and I think I know my answer.

I want love. I want complete and perfect love. I want to feel valued and appreciated. I want to be unconditionally accepted. I want to feel included. I want to be consumed by the freedom that comes from love.

This desire of mine has been masked behind a lot of things. I want to be in this or that meeting. I want to have this or that opportunity. I want to be accepted by those people and to be included with that crowd. I want lots of popularity and recognition. Why?

The bottom line is that I want perfect love. I haven’t always sought that in the right places but that’s what I want.

God has been showing me lately that what I most deeply want is what he most essentially is. What I most deeply want is what he most essentially is.

This is so important to understand. Much of the pain and difficulty that I’ve experienced over the years has come from resisting what God has for me. Quite often however, the reason that I’ve resisted him is because I’ve thought that what he has is not what I most essentially want. The more that I realize that what I most deeply want is what he’s most essentially about, the more I will experience his best for my life.

I could talk about this more but I’ll stop there. What do you most deeply want? Does that coincide or conflict with what God most essentially is?

How do you respond in difficult situations?

 Brad Brandon is one of my best friends. He has one of the most compelling walks with Christ that I’ve ever seen! I think you’ll enjoy some of his wisdom in this post and you can follow Brad on Twitter @BradBrandon.

When trouble knocks at our door, every one of us has a choice: Are we going to give people what they deserve or are we going to show them the love of God?

 Philemon 1:6 says, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”

Philemon here was in quite the predicament and had a choice.  One of his slaves stole from him and took off on the run.  After escaping, the slave, Onesimus, meets Paul and becomes a believer in Christ Jesus.  Now Onesimus is going back to his owner, Philemon, with this letter from Paul asking Philemon to treat Onesimus like a brother and not like a slave that under the law deserves to die.  Philemon is a Christian but now has a choice of how to respond in this difficult situation.  Will he give Onesimus the punishment he deserves? …or will he allow his faith in God to shine through by forgiving Onesimus and elevating him to a position of a brother saved by the same grace and mercy in Christ Jesus?

The instructions that Paul writes in Philemon 1:6 is a guide to difficult situations.  His prayer for us during these tough moments is that the faith that exists within our minds would produce outward actions or fruit that would identify to others that we are Christians living by the standard of love.  Paul’s desire is that not only would others experience God’s love when they don’t deserve it but we also would grow in the love and understanding of the love God showed us while we were yet still sinners.  It’s the “WWJD?” standard taken beyond just thinking about what would Jesus do and living out what Jesus would do so that the world would see a living, active faith and praise God for His love that has manifested itself in this world through us.

So now what are we going to choose?  I know I struggle with wanting to give people what they deserve, to get even sometimes, to defend my ‘rights’, to overreact out of emotions, to treat them as they treated me… these are all ‘normal’ reactions from the world’s perspective but now we have a choice to respond in love just as God responded to us in love when we hurt Him by living our own way.  So make a choice to forgive today and give God your hurt and your pain. Allow His love to heal your heart and then go show His love to others.  Your life and this world will never be the same again!  Praise Jesus!!

God is…

So the other week I had some focused time of prayer and there was something troubling me. I want my life to be completely surrendered to God but I kept noticing that there was something deep within me that didn’t want to do that. That part of me clearly thinks that surrender to him or to anyone else is a really bad idea. There was some deep resistance in me to the idea of surrender and I couldn’t figure it out what the source was.

I started praying and I felt like God prompted me with a simple question.

“Do you believe that I am love?”

Pretty straightforward and yet when I went to answer the question, my answer had to be….no.

You see, I know that God is love in my mind but my heart knew a different story. I’ve had some messed up things happen in my life. Things that had essentially taught my heart that I was alone in this universe. That if I ever wanted to make anything happen then I would need to figure it out on my own. The way that I saw things deep down inside was that if there is anyone on the throne, he certainly isn’t worth my time. The script went something like this:

“If there was a God out there that loved you, he would not have allowed certain things to happen. He wouldn’t make life so hard. The world wouldn’t be so messed up. Everything wouldn’t be such a battle. There wouldn’t be so much confusion. If there is a God out there, he can’t be trusted.”

Theologically I know why those thoughts aren’t true but dry theology doesn’t change lives. For beliefs to matter, they have to be what you know deep within your heart.

“Do you believe that I am love?”

I’m starting to. My last post began with the question, “Who is in charge?” If the one who is in charge is the personification of true love, then we can trust him. We can know that there is good at the center of reality. If he is not, then we’re all in a lot of trouble.

I believe that God is love (1 John 4:16). Do you believe that? Really?

Who’s in charge?

I don’t know if you guys are the same as me, but whenever I walk into an environment I generally want to know who is in charge. When I go into a place like Disney World, I’m amazed at the vision that it took to create a place like that. It makes me curious to get inside the mind of Walt Disney. Even though he passed away a long time ago, I pay attention when I see a quote from him because he was obviously a brilliant man. If I hear about a wonderful organization, I’m immediately intrigued by the owner or CEO. I want to know why they created that organization and how it got to be so good.

The opposite is also true. If I stay in a hotel or eat in a restaurant that isn’t up to par, I want to know who is in charge of this dump. What’s wrong with the person or group of people that allowed their business to be run so poorly? Do they just not care? Are they incompetent? These are the types of questions that run through my mind because great customer service sticks out like a sore thumb and bad customer service sticks out like a sore thumb.

I’ve thought the same way about the world at large before. This type of thinking has actually driven a significant portion of my spiritual pursuits. I’ll look at a beautiful starry night and wonder about the mind that must be behind that beauty. I’ll look at the ocean and wonder about the kind of hand that could create something so vast and majestic. That being said, I’d be lying if I told you that it didn’t work the other way as well. 9/11 happens and many people, including myself, wonder why God didn’t prevent that. I’ll learn about something like the holocaust and it’s hard to imagine how a good God could allow something like that to take place. Perhaps many of us have been tempted to ask at times, “Who is in charge?”

Who is in charge? Most of us probably believe that someone is in charge but what is he like? Is he really good? Is he really loving? Many of our experiences have most likely communicated to us that the one in charge doesn’t care a whole lot. He’s got way too much universe to run to be concerned about your little bitty problems. The theologian A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” The level of our spirituality rests on what we actually believe God to be like. If we believe that a jerk is on the throne of the universe, then we had better protect ourselves because we have no divine support coming our way. If a nice God without a lot of power is seated on the throne, we can feel comforted by his love but we can’t have any confidence that he is able to help us.

What comes to your mind when you think about God? Really. Does he seem loving? Disinterested? Non-existent? Judgmental? Powerful? Incompetent? Caring? Where do these thoughts come from? What’s the truth?

I’ll respond with what I believe in my next post.

 

Been with Jesus

This is a guest post by Pastor Ernest Smith. Ernest has been a friend and mentor of mine for a long time. The first word that comes to mind when I think of Ernest is Integrity. This dude lives what he says and I hope you appreciate his insights here. You can follow Ernest on Twitter @Ernest_Smith or you can follow his blog at http://www.ernestsmith.net/.

 

One of the most powerful passages in Scripture that has been captivating my heart and mind lately is Acts 4:13.  It is in this passage we read, “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

Think about that.  The people took notice that Peter and John had been with Jesus.  It wasn’t their intellect that captured the attention of the people.  It wasn’t that they were extraordinary in their appearance, demeanor or skill.

What made Peter and John stand out to everyone else was the fact that they had been with Jesus.

What a powerful truth!  To have been changed so drastically and to be living such a life that people know that you have been with Jesus; this should be the ultimate goal of every follower of Christ.

So many times, I focus on trying to impress people.  I try to impress them with my intellect (which is very difficult to do when you don’t have much).  I try to impress people with my humor.  I try to impress people with my speaking ability.  I try to impress people with my leadership.  The list can go on and on.  The truth is, I try to impress people with what I can do, rather than impress people with who I’ve been with.

Peter and John may not have been the best at a whole lot, but they focused on keeping the main thing, the main thing.  They stayed focused on making Jesus the priority in their life.  They knew that if they spent time with Jesus, that men would take notice.

My priorities need to be in line with Peter and John’s.  My desire should be to spend time with Jesus, knowing that He is what is going to impress people.  It is only Jesus shining through me that will capture the attention of others.

May I be a man that people can look at and say “He has been with Jesus.”

Do you try to impress others by what you do? 

Is your relationship with Christ at a place where others take note when you have been with Jesus?

Open door policy

Revelation 3:20 says, “²⁰ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

Perhaps for some of us the deal is that we simply don’t hear him knocking and that feeling is something to explore. I would say that many of us however, probably have some sense that God is pursuing relationship with us. As I think about the different areas of my life, I can see that God wants more of my heart. I’ve let him in overall but there are still places that I would prefer he not go.

When it comes to certain areas of rejection and hurt, I don’t want to open the door. His invitation to come and eat with us means intimate fellowship. It means that he wants close relationship with us which will inevitably lead to our healing.

Just to be perfectly honest though, I don’t want to open the door sometimes. Even with everything Jesus has done for me, I still occasionally doubt his intentions. I start to think that he is going to mess everything up in my life and I would just prefer to keep him out. In my head I know that this is not true but my heart is still learning how to trust him.

My primary vision for 2013 when it comes to my relationship with God is to create an open door policy with him. I want him to have total access to every area of my life without even having to knock. I want that door open all the time because I don’t want to exclude myself from fellowship with my Creator. Right now however, this is a daily decision.

Do I want to open the door today? Sort of. I’m generally convinced that he has my best interest at heart but there is that guarded side of my personality that isn’t quite so sure. These are things that I need to continually address but at least I have taken the first step by being honest about it.

What about you? Do you have an open door policy when it comes to your relationship with God? If not, why not? Is trust easy or hard for you? Do you imagine God as loving or judgmental and cruel? Why?