Let's Be Honest

There is a lot of unrest in our country right now. It might be the election, racial equality, devastation from fires and hurricanes, a supreme court nominee, COVID or just plain hatred. We need to step back and know where we came from to appreciate where we are today. We grew up in the United States of America where every day at the beginning of grade school we would stand and say the pledge of Allegiance to one nation under God. God has blessed this country. Men and women have died so we can enjoy the freedoms we have today. 

 It wasn’t that long ago when we let our kids ride their bikes anywhere, parents trusted the kids to come back around lunch and dinner time.  I was one of those kids. I would leave with my friends and we would ride all over town, have donuts, ice cream, stop for a hamburger at McDonalds and just hang out in the park until we all rode home.  My parents trusted society and did not think anything about it.   Yes, they were simpler times and we have lost the trust we once had. 

I remember a time when you turned on the news and there was one man that America trusted in what he said “and that’s the way it was” with Walter Cronkite.  I watched in 1963 when he came on and with tears in his eyes told America the President of the United States had been assassinated.  You could see and feel his emotions, but he delivered unbiased news.

I am so disappointed there is nobody in America who delivers the news which I can say I trust. Sure, there are reporters who might have started off with an un-biased opinion, but when they were hired to X network the network tells them “YOU WILL TAKE THE NETWORK STANCE.” Yes, you can go all over the internet now and find someone who has your opinion.  But is that what we really want?    It is so sad. But we just want someone to look at the camera and not lie.  There was only one perfect person we can believe and trust and that is Jesus.

Proverbs 10:9

The man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes crooked paths will be found out.

Proverbs 11:1

The lord abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weighs are his delight.  

We as parents have to wonder what do our kids think?  I am sure you have answered a question or two you did not want to answer. Who they can trust or respect? We are constantly bombarded with social media, TV, or sports stars who have their own agenda.  What happened to role models?  As parents we can be that!

We as parents want to make sure we give out kids the best chance to succeed in life.  Not every child gets a trophy either.  As they grow up and get in the real world and they find out the hard way not everyone wins. Life can be a real eye opener.  

Even though the news fails us, we all need someone we can trust and who will be honest with answers and be bold enough to be a role model that we can respect.  

Once I witnessed to a man getting let go from his job.  He was a hard worker, and the boss thought he was trying to get his job.  So, the boss fired him out of his insecurity.  When the man left, he looked at his boss and said “I leave here with my head held high with the respect of all of my co-workers. However, that is something you will never have.”

It takes years to gain the respect and a loose tongue or action only a few minutes to remove it.

Psalm 86: 11

Teach me your way, O lord and I will walk in your truth.

Psalm 119:30

I have chosen the way of truth: I have set my heart on your laws.

A good friend of mine passed away a few weeks ago.  He was the most honest, caring, loving father and husband I have ever known. At his celebration of life service his son said, “I am proud you were my father”.  Simple truthful words which echo with me every day. 

It is in our power to be honest and truthful. We might not be looking into a camera lens, but the eyes we are looking into are the most important.

God Bless,
Mike

Buckin Bales

I grew up in a fairly small town in the Southeast part of Missouri called Cape Girardeau, right on the Mississippi river. I remember in the fall we all looked forward to the college homecoming parade down Broadway.  I believe the whole town came out to see the bands and floats, and afterward would be the football game with the SEMO Indians and some other team.  It was small town America, where when a funeral approached, we always stopped and showed respect.  Also, when you heard a siren you got out of the way fast. 

During two weeks of every summer, I would go work on my grandpa’s farm.  I’m not sure how much I helped but he always included me in every project.  Most of the time I was at the farm when he was baling hay.  When I was younger, I would be in charge of driving the truck in the field in “granny low” as he called it.  But I was helping.  There would be one man on each side and a man on the truck bed stacking the hay.  When I got older, I asked grandpa if I could help “Buck” the bales.  He asked if I was ready for hard work and I assured him I was.  Mind you I was not going to let him or myself down.  I worked bailing hay and bucking bales for a week (that almost killed me) but I was not going to let him know. At the end of the week he gave me $20.00 and said, “you did a good job this week”.  For me $20.00 was a lot but it did not compare to the words he told me.  

Paul writes in Ephesians 4

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.  Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  

I know that he was patient and kind to me and his words and actions I hold dear to my heart.

Years later I moved from Missouri to Orlando, Florida.  Now I really do not know how but I just gravitated to water and the beach and could not get enough of being on a boat.  That was a piece of mind I could see myself adjusting to well.  However, the stress of the big city is something I look back on now and wonder how we maintained sanity.  Something is just not right when you go into town and it’s a success if you come home unharmed.  Now that is a bit of an exaggeration, but the fear is always there. Most people are too busy and caught up in their own world to stop and look around.  There is a whole different attitude living in the city which I never got used to.  We have friends that we are still in touch with and will always treasure them.  We had a friend visit us from Missouri and his analogy was spot on he said, “People down here are in such a hurry to get somewhere so they can relax”.

Paul continues in Ephesians chapter 4

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism;

We have been forced to live in different times.  We pray together for God to stop this pandemic. We pray for all of the nurses, doctors and first responders who put their lives on the line for our well-being. Since we have been in the panhandle, we have noticed people are looking out after people.  We care that Bill down the street who owns the local restaurant is struggling and we want to help his business out.  Or you see the Domino’s pizza manager standing in the middle of Highway 90 giving out water during the fires when everyone was stranded because traffic was not moving.  

We should look for the good and how we can help rather than have our blinders on.

Maybe its time we walk along a truck and buck a few bales.

God Bless

Mike

Quarantine

Ok, how are you doing in this time?  A little stir crazy?  I love all the funny posts on social media about before and after quarantine. Or the joke where a man is given the choice, A he can spend the time with his wife and kids or B, and he immediately says B not knowing what it is.  A friend of mine told me he does not watch the news, because that will make you more paranoid, he just checks the news.  I like that better.  

Each morning I get up early and I will sit at the kitchen table and there is a bird feeder outside of the window.  The birds are not social distancing!  (joke) This bird feeder must be the place to be in the morning because the activity is nonstop.  The cool thing is most birds which are eating is cardinals.  They are a beautiful bird with the bright red being the male. I have always loved cardinals growing up near St Louis (another Joke). They are early morning eaters and when cardinals pair up together they are together for life and their life span is about three years.  We have a bird house that sits on the fence at the side of the yard.  Each night I see the cardinal sitting on the fence outside of the bird house to protect his/her family and eggs which they are sitting on. I will take my dogs out to go to the bathroom at 2 or 3 in the morning and I will shine the light and the cardinal is still sitting on the fence.

I cannot help but think that our Heavenly Father is guarding over and protecting us in the same way. What ever our circumstances are, do you feel blessed?  

It speaks many times in the Bible where there were always dark days before the light shines.  Starting at the beginning “God said let there be light” and there was. Plagues in the Bible, Noah and 40 days of rain and floods.  And most certainly Holy week.  Jesus suffered and it was dark and painful, but on the third day he rose again.  Our sins were forgiven, and our destiny was changed.

The other night the wind was blowing and lighting was flashing and it got kind of scary the dogs were huddled up right next to me, and then the rain came and it poured for a while, and then it was over.  When I got up the next morning and walked outside the air and the sky seemed cleansed.  The freshness was overwhelming. 

We have 1st responders, nurses, doctors, grocery store workers, restaurant workers and many more that put their health on the line each and everyday for the well being of others.  I have noticed where the attitude has changed.  I hear many more thank you’s for what they are doing.  People being kind to one another, checking on friends we have not checked on in a while. As Pastor Alan has challenged each one of us to stop and pray at 8 each night, pray for those who are suffering from Covid -19 and those families who have lost loved ones because of it. And pray for our circumstances. God is listening.

When this pandemic is over and we return to a new normal, it is my hope we will have a new since of gratitude and thankfulness.  We will have more appreciation walking down a grocery store with stocked shelves or sit down and a restaurant to have a meal, see an old friend and give them a hug, worship together.  Maybe this is a re-boot where we get our priorities in line with God.

In John Chapter 4:23 states, 

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

When we gather back together I hope and pray we will not forget or go back to the old ways of taking many things for granted and worship the father in spirit and in truth with a new hunger for the heart of God.

May God Bless you and protect you.

Mike

Jesus is King

This past week one of the most controversial Christian albums dropped. Kanye West, a rapper known almost more for his controversies than his music, has recently became a Christian and released his first Christian album last Saturday. Since then, my Facebook has been filled with people either praising his work, criticizing it heavily, wondering if it will be CCLI compliant so they can use a song on Sunday, the horror of playing his album on Spotify and then it going to his older profanity filled songs, and so on. So last night on my way back from Pensacola I listened to the entire album. These are my thoughts:

First of all, rap is not my preferred genre of music. I was never a Kanye fan to begin with so I can’t compare this album to his previous work, but I was disappointed. From a production side, I was often annoyed with how the songs ended, the mix, song structure, etc. The guy has talent, but it was hard for me to see where he was going musically on a lot of the songs. 

But let’s take my bias against rap music out of the equation and focus on the lyrics. Yes, there are some horribly corny lyrics. Probably the worst is from a song called “Closed on Sunday” which says:

Closed on Sunday, you my Chick-Fil-A

You’re my number one, with the lemonade

I wish I was joking. However bad those two lines are, the lines right after are: 

Raise our sons, train them in the faith

Through temptations, make sure they’re wide awake

Follow Jesus, listen and obey

No more livin’ for the culture, we nobody’s slave

The two biggest complaints I see are that his lyrics are theologically shallow and that Kanye is just doing this for the money (or in other words he’s not really a Christian but saw an opportunity in the Christian market to make more money). When people talk about the shallow issue, I just have to laugh. No his lyrics aren’t completely accurate or deep, but they are at least on par with the majority of what is on K-Love at the moment and this is coming from a guy who has been a Christian less than a year. Hopefully we hold the long term Christians to the same level of scrutiny, but if we’re being honest we don’t. 

On the second issue of if Kanye is really a Christian… How dare we. Besides it probably being a horrible career move into the Christian music industry, what makes any of us think we are in a position to know what his relationship with God is? We rejoice with the person who goes to the altar in our church and gives their life to God, but when a famous person does it we assume the worst. The sad thing is, Kanye knew this would happen. In the song “Hands On” he says:

What have you been hearing from the Christians?

They’ll be the first one to judge me

Make it seem like nobody love me

I’m not tryna lead you to Visas

But if I try to lead you to Jesus

We get called halfway believers

I’m not sure if I’ll ever willingly listen to his album again, like I said, it’s not my preferred music style. I really dislike a lot of what Kanye has done in the past. But this album, this over talked about album, has already brought people to Christ. Maybe instead of tearing each other down, we should rally around new believers, even the ones who haven’t quite figured out all the theology (ok, especially those people), and build them up and show them Christ’s love.

What Are You Focused On?

As I get ready for a surgery on my knee this week, I have been surrounded by people who have came up to me and said you will be so glad to have it done. There are so many people who have had the same surgery and you would never know it. Folks who have had this surgery said it was a piece of cake but make sure you do the rehab.  It’s all about the rehab!

You know it’s like when you buy a different car, then you get on the road and notice so many other cars just like it.  

As I read my devotional for the day I got encouragement and focus.

“Go gently through this day, keeping your eyes on me.  I will open up the way before you, as you take steps of trust along your path”

We will all have obstacles in front of us, and it is how we address these roadblocks that can define us. 

I will always remember my first time coming into Nashville wanting to be a musician there.  A good friend of mine had been in Nashville for 10 years and had just gotten a job playing piano with George Jones.  He told me “welcome to Nashville you will find out how good you are not” but with that he said all you have to do is find your niche. It was the best advise I ever received.  

Each of us has that person in our lives in which we can vent to, someone to be vulnerable with, someone to hold us accountable.  We need to be thankful for those people in our lives who keep us balanced.

There are days and times where we will have the weight of the world on our shoulders.  Its not “if” it will happen., it is when it will happen and how we react to it.  Most of the time we think we are in control.  One of my favorite quotes is “You want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” When the time comes where the weight of the world is on our shoulders, are we turning to God for guidance?  God’s presence enables you to face each day with confidence.

So as I go to have surgery this week, it is like I have the full confidence in my surgeon and the staff.  But I know through my faith God is present and what ever obstacles I have, God will guide me through them.

See you in a few weeks.  I was going to say I would be in rehab but let me be clear, I will be re-habbing my knee.

What are you focused on?  Who are you focused on?  If you focus on the love of Christ and its will you will succeed.

Ephesians 3: 20-21

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through out all generations, forever and ever amen.