What is Your Story?

 I am excited for this Thursday night. Me and my wife will be going to a red carpet showing of "This is Our Story",a project of EIU that will highlight several stories about Ashmore, Oakland, and Kansas. If you would like more information on this project and watch it when it comes on the air check out this link.

As I was thinking about this project and looking forward to seeing the finished product. I thought about how everyone really enjoys stories. This is something that I have learned in the past several years and something that I have added to my ministry/ preaching. Most of Jesus teaching ministry was focused on telling stories. In fact the vast majority of the bible is story after story, many of which have stood the test of time. 

The reason this is the case is because stories connect us together. Stories speak to us, we relate to them on a personal level. The stories we hear and love relate to us because it speaks to our common problems, or our common loves, or hopes or dreams. Sure the details and the particulars maybe different, but we can relate to them because of our similar stories. 

For example the story of David and Goliath was a story I love even when I was a boy and I know that is true for many other people. We don't relate to that story because he have ever had to face down a blood thirsty giant with just a slingshot. We relate to that story because we have all felt at times insignificant and ill equipped to face a problem that seemed to big to handle. 

As I thought about this project that will come out for everyone to watch next week. I thought you know Ashmore, Kansas, and Oakland are not really big cities. These villages are small and quite. From the outside looking in one might think there is not must to talk about. We don't have a University like Champaign/Urbana, we don't have a zoo like St. Louis, Mo.  Someone might ask "What could possibly be interesting about a small town. 

However, that would be a mistake to think that small towns don't have a story that needs to be told.  I love Ashmore, and there are so many neat stories about this small village that unless you live here you may never hear about. Stories like the Bill Cox, a baseball player, and politician who is buried in the Ashmore cemetery. There are many other stories about Ashmore, as well as Kansas, and Oakland. Stories that need to be told, and thanks to EIU and this project will be told. 

You know just like Ashmore, Kansas, and Oakland have stories that need to be told. So do you and so do I. You have a story that someone needs to hear. This is especially true if you are a believer in Christ. There are people all around you that need to hear how you came to know Christ. There are people around you that need to know how God had made a diffrence in your life. There are people all around you that need to hear how God answered your prayers. Your stories are not insignificant, your stories are special, they are unique and they too need to be told. Someone is waiting to hear them. 

So I guess what I am saying is simply this Go and tell your Story.  

 

Don’t be so quick to Judge

I ran across an article the other day that showed several movies that people thought would be a flop but really turned out to be a fantastic movie after all. 

I thought the article was interesting because many of the movies that were listed are some of my favorite movies I like to watch. If you want to read the article your self just follow this link.

As I thought about this article it got me thinking about how sometimes we can be so quick to judge something before we even look into it our selves. We seem to be so quick to believe the worst in people, before hearing them out first. So quick to jump to conclusions before ever getting to the truth or getting all of the facts.

Look at what the Bible says about this: 

“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.”-(Prov 18:13)

I don't know about you but I can safely say that I have experienced that passage more times than I would like to admit. So many times in my life I had mad a rash judgment about something, and said things without knowing all the facts. Then days or weeks later I realize (after having all the facts) that it was not how I thought it was at all. Then I wind up eating crow for the next several days and apologizing for my actions or words.  That is why the writer in Proverbs says "it is folly and shame unto him".

   So how can we avoid this folly, and how can we avoid being ashamed for our poor misinformed actions and words. Well speaking as one who has fallen into this folly my self let me give you a few thoughts on how we might avoid this problem in the future. 

1.         Be Patient

    I know that the word patience  should be labeled as a curse word, and I hate it as much as anyone. However I think a lot of us jump to conclusions and arrive at decisions because we rather not wait for all the facts to come out. You see sometimes, many times it takes a little bit of time to get all the facts to come out on any given matter.  It is far easier to take in what we know now and then form our own judgments. However If we will take the time to wait and listen to all the facts, hear from everyone, it may help us to see the situation a little more clearly and arrive at a more well informed conclusion. 

2.        Believe the Best

    You know what they say "bad news travel's faster than good news".  Lets be honest we kind of enjoy hearing the bad news more than the good news. This is why when a celebrity is going through a divorce, or going through a drug rehab program that gets front page news. However a celebrity who gives money to some sort of charity it does not have the same kind of appeal, so you end up finding that story on page 15 instead of on the front page. 

    I think this is one of the reasons why we jump to conclusions. Instead of reserving our judgment, we often want to believe the worst. Instead of believing the best in someone we think they don't have the best of intentions. Instead of believing that the situation is not as bleak as it may appear, we become like chicken little yelling that the sky is falling. 

3.        Don't be Driven by Emotion

    Emotions can cause us to see things that are not there. It can causes to respond to ordinary things in extraordinary ways. For example, think about those Haunted houses that come popping up every October.  We know going in there that everything in that Haunted house is all there to make us scared. If one would just simply turn on the lights you would see the hallways, the paint, the individual's dressed up as a crazy doctor, zombie, vampire or a warewolf. Just turn off the lights, turn on the strobe lights, throw in some screams and some scary music and bam your emotions take over. 

    Our emotions can fuel our perception's of individual's and situations. They can cause us to overlook or ignore facts. When we let our Emotions to run we can then make rash judgments that are not quite fare, or even worse out right false. 

So maybe just maybe when we hear some bad news, or we happen to hear about what someone said or did. Instead of jumping to conclusions and making our own snap judgement. Instead lets be patient and wait for all the facts to come out, lets try to believe the best in people and try not to assume the worst, and lets try not to allow our emotions to overshadow our sensibilities. So maybe just maybe we can avoid the folly of making a rash judgement in the future.  

  

Staying Thirsty For God

     This past Sunday I preaching out of  (Isaiah 44:1-5) and I talked about how God can restore us after we have sinned against him. (You can listen to the sermon here ) In that passage we read this "For I will pour water upon the thirsty and floods upon the dry ground, I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and blessing upon thine offspring".

  

    Now one of the things I touched upon in that sermon was the idea that no matter what our relationship with God looks like right now, we should never be satisfied. Another words we should always have a desire for a closer walk with God no matter how close to God we are right now. If our walk is not what it should be, then by all means we need to desire a closer walk with God. However if our walk with God has never been better, than we do not need to stay satisfied with that, but rather desire a closer walk with God than we currently have. 

    Now here is why I say that. Can you ever get to a point in your relationship with God that you can say "I can't grow any more" or that "There is nothing more I can learn about God"? The answer is a resounding NO! In fact as I think about heaven, and what it will be like I think that one of the awesome things about heaven will be each and every day throughout eternity we will learn more and more about God, and we will draw closer and closer to Him. I don't know about you but for me that is an amazing thought. 

    But here is the question I have since asked myself. How do we do it? How can we stay thirsty for God? How can we stay out of the trap of being satisfied with our walk with God?  

    I find answering these questions are harder for those of us who can truthfully say that "Today my walk with God is the best it has ever been" Because you see, this is when the trap of being satisfied really gets us. When our walk with God is the "best it has ever been" this is the time we tend to step back, and we begin to lose our hunger and thirst for God. In short we become Satisfied.  When that happens it is not too long there after that our relationship with God starts to take a back seat. Another words if your are not swimming up stream, you will just be carried away by it. 

    This all being said, let me give you just two things that I believe can help us stay thirsty for a closer walk with God. 

    1.       Understand that there is no other Substitute for God

When I was a medic in the army, one of my duties was to make sure that everyone was drinking water. When you have a 25-50 pound ruck sack, and running up and down the woods, digging trenches in the hot sun you can work up a sweat. It don't take much of that to get dehydrated. 

I remember one day when I was checking in on the soldiers in my platoon that one of the soldiers would would tell me "Doc I am drinking plenty".  Well as the day went on he was one of the few soldiers that I never saw fill up his canteen, and he did not ask me to go get some water either. So the next time I saw him, I asked him "Are you staying hydrated?" to which he replied "Doc I am drinking plenty". Then I asked him something more specific, I asked "So what do you have in your canteen?" He gave me his canteen and I opened it up to find that we filled his canteen up with Pepsi. While Pepsi might wet your whistle, and it may make you feel you are hydrated it in fact does the exact opposite for you. 

When it comes to our relationship's with God there really is no other substitute to quench your thirst for a closer fellowship with Him. 

2.        Don't just sit there DO SOMETHING! 

One of the things that causes us to really want to drink water is when we are exerting energy. No matter if we are mowing the lawn in a hot summer day, or we are working in a factory, or just in a gym and working out, you will begin to get thirsty.  As we perspire our body begins to send signals to our brain that tells us that we need to get something to drink.  The very act of work causes us to want to drink more water. 

When we serve God, when we put God's words in action, it begins to cause us to thirst for God more. We begin to see all that God can do in our lives when we are obedient to His word. We begin to realize that we can not do what God has called us to do without God's help. 

One of the problems we have as believers is we take in a sermon, read a devotional, study a passage and that is where it stops. We never do anything with the teachings we learn, we rarely live out the sermons we listen to. God wants us not to just sit and listen, but to get up and do something. Forgive someone you have been holding a grudge against. Go and help someone in need. Start a gospel conversation with someone. I could go on and on, but you get my point, we need to serve God, and by serving God we begin to get thirsty for a closer walk with God. 

      I think one of the things the church is in need of now, is for men and women to desire a closer walk with God than they ever have before.  A desire so deep, so powerful it can only be described as a thirst. I don't know where you are in your walk with God today, but I hope that whatever your walk with God looks like. I hope that you will thirst for more of God and you stay thirsty! 

Restoration

    Some of you may or may not know this, but I have a guilty pleasure. I like to watch those video's when the take an old rusty, beat up item and restore it back to its former glory. I love watching an item that would other wise be thrown out in the trash get a make over. There is something about seeing the before and after shots that intrigues me for some reason. 

    Now I am not very skilled at fixing things. In fact for the most part I am all thumbs when it comes to working with tools (something I am trying to get better at). So for me when I watch those video's I am amazed at the skill and work that it takes to restore items that I probably would overlook or throw away. 

    Now there is something else that I must confess. I don't normally watch the videos all the way through. That's right I love the video's, I watch them regularly, but I rarely if ever watch the video all the way through. For me I want to jump to the part of the video where the project is almost over. I don't want to sit through watching the process, I want to jump right to the results. 

    In my spiritual walk I have to admit that I am not always showroom new. There are times, many times if I am being completely honest, that my walk with God is not what it once was. 

    My paint has been chipped by the outside influences that I allowed to draw me away from God. My gears have been run down and my barrings are shot because of sin that I have allowed to eat away at my relationship with God. At times I have done things that I was never meant to do, which has cause dents, scratches and wear on my spiritual walk. Sometimes my spiritual walk does not look like it did back in the day. 

    Maybe you can relate, perhaps you know exactly what I am talking about. Perhaps your gears have been grinding, your paint is chipped, and you can't say you exactly show room new. 

    Well let me tell you something that you need to hear. WE ARE NOT ALONE! That's right you have entered in a club, that if we are all being honest, we all belong to. There is no such thing as a perfect Christian. There is no such thing as attaining a level of perfection in your life. 

    Furthermore, Let me say that the God we serve is in the restoration business. You see you may be broken, rusty, and falling apart spiritually, but we don't have to stay there. We can be restored! We can be renewed!

    God can clean the dirt and grime of sin that has been eating away us. He can begin stripping the old paint that has been marred by the worldly influences. He can take off the rust and ruin that was the result of bad decisions. It's God who can put a fresh coat of paint on us, and get our relationship with Him back in working order. 

    Go ahead and ask Sampson about God's willingness to restore His strength. Spend some time reading about Jonah who ran from God, but God gave him a second chance. Sit down and talk to the apostle Peter and ask Him about how God used him even after denying knowing Jesus three times. The bible is full of stories that shows us that God does and will restore us. 

    Lastly look at King David. At one time David was following God, doing what God wanted him to do. He was a man of tremendous faith, a man who stared up at a Giant and believed that God could help him fight this beast of a man and win the day. 

    However King David was not without his faults either. He committed adultery with a married woman. When he found out that this woman was pregant, and he could not hide it, he had her husband killed off and just so no one would find it suspicious, he married this widowed woman. He defiantly was not show room new! 

     David believed in the God who can restore us, who can make us show room new again. listen to what David says:

   Psa 51:12  Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

Maybe your experiencing a stagnation in your walk with God. Perhaps your realtionship with God is not what it once was. Here is the good news. GOD CAN RESTORE YOU ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS JUST ASK!

One final thought: Unlike those restoration video's where you can fast forward to the "good part" when you can see the finished piece in all its restoration glory. There is no fast forward with God. You can't just jump to the "good part" in God's restoration it takes time. The process is not easy, there is no quick fix. 

So just be patient, and continue to place your life in God's restorative hands and let that master carpenter from Galilee do what he is best at, fixing broken people.