Category: Faith

Start Your Day the Right Way, With a Devotional.

If you’re anything like me, it’s easy for you to get caught in the hustle and bustle before you’re even out of bed. My alarm is on my work phone, so when I pick it up in the morning to shut it off, I check texts, missed calls, and emails before I even have pants on. There are a few things wrong with that.

The first thing wrong is that you haven’t even had your coffee. Whether you start your day with a delicious cup of Black Rifle Coffee or you’re frugal like me and choose the cheaper between Maxwell House and Folgers, it doesn’t matter. You aren’t even awake and out of your bed yet. I’m very adamant that you shouldn’t work in your bed because it’s bad for your brain. Studies have shown the effects that doing work in your bed can have on your sleep, and it’s no bueno.

The second problem is that you’re not even on the clock. Those demanding buttholes, whether it’s bosses, employees, customers, or whatever, can wait a couple of hours for you to get to the office. If their life hinges on you checking emails before you roll out of your bed, you aren’t the only one that needs help. They can wait until you’re “punched in.” Whatever that looks like for you.

The last reason, but really the greatest reason, is that the rest of your day hinges on how you start it. I’m sure that with very little thought you could come up with one morning that went horribly wrong and ruined your day and one morning that started perfectly and the day followed suit. I can think of several examples where I woke up to a text message that sent me into a tizzy before I even kissed my wife goodbye. Our attitudes are pretty fragile, especially before we’re really awake.

Recently, I’ve discovered New Morning Mercies By Paul David Tripp. It’s a daily devotional that was recommended to me by one of the leaders at my Church. He actually read out of it during a small group discussion, which is what caught my attention. It is so well written and not at all like any of the devotionals I’ve ATTEMPTED to read in the past. A lot of people enjoy a devotional, but they are rarely for me. The corny quips and heart warming stories just aren’t my bag. If I’m taking the time to read, I want some meat. I want some walk away. Tripp really does great work of breaking the Bible, or parts of it, into daily bite sized pieces. This really wasn’t meant to be a book review, but I guess you got a freebie out of me.

The real point to all of this is that tomorrow morning, before you get out of bed, don’t check your phone. Get up, brush your teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast, and read a devotional. Read the Bible. Take a few minutes in the morning and ask God what He has in store for you for the day. Ask Him for your daily bread to be a Christian, a father, mother, son, daughter, employee, supervisor, employer, man, woman, nurse, whatever. Whatever it is you do, you need the good Lords breath in your lungs to accomplish it. Why not ask Him to help you be your best version of you? Read Tripps devotional and start your day with some sustenance. You don’t need any help surrounding yourself with negativity, the world does that without provocation. What you do need, is to make the choice to make a change. You can only move in the direction that you’re moving. Passivity is an action. Don’t be passive, change your life, and others, one morning at a time.

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Spiritual Crisis

Sometimes you’re just living your life and all of the sudden you crash into a brick wall. It may not be something as serious as death or disease, but enough to rattle you. You can live very contentedly for months or years and then watch it all fall apart while you stand there, most likely with an idiotic look on your face, wondering where it all went wrong.
You guessed it! It happened to me a few weeks ago. I’ll spare you the gory details, but work sucks. It was the happiest I’ve been in a job, to the extent that I happily ignored my family in pursuit of…uhh…I guess retirement at 80? I have no idea. Was it to impress someone? Was it pride? Maybe, maybe not, but it was certainly divine intervention.
I realize that this is all a bit off brand, but as I’m writing this, I realized that I may just change brands. I have been feeling empty. Not in my family or my marriage, but somewhere I couldn’t pinpoint. It’s actually been so long, that it’s part of the reason I started this blog, if you care to look that far back. I assumed that I just needed a career change or something, but was too comfortable where I am to change anything. Sound familiar? Lately though something has really been bugging me. To get to that, we kind of have to go backwards again.
It all started with my divorce. One night while I was sleeping, I woke up at around 2:00 AM. And I mean wide awake. As if I’d been awake for hours already. I had a vision and just started writing things down. I filled about 8 full sheets of paper and then I passed back out for the night. No joke. The vision was of a nonprofit. Now, this was all of 6 years ago and I still have the papers I wrote. What I don’t have is a nonprofit. Every time I get restless like this it comes back to mind and I dabble a bit with it and nothing comes to fruition. That’s most likely my fault. I’m pretty instant gratification when it comes to jumping into things. If I do it, and it works at all in the beginning, I dive in and never come up for air. If it fizzles, I drop it like a…good habit. Bad habits are easy. Anyway, I digress.
So, here I am. Yet another spiritual crisis and at a dead stop with the Harvest. That’s the name of the nonprofit if you wondered. I know what I want to do, but I need someone who can write code to build me a plugin. I asked the only guy I know, he said he could do it, and then radio silence. So I’m still at zero, with about $2,000 to my name that I’m willing to throw at this thing with no questions asked. And nothing. SO. As I’m laying in bed, not asleep because the thoughts are racing around in my head, I had a breakthrough. And if I’m honest, a bit of a break down. I’m not one for crying, due to the innumerable times I was made fun of for it as a child, but in my own home when my wife is asleep, or when I’m driving down the highway I don’t mind. I realized that I was doing nothing to lead my kids to be like Jesus. I talk about it, and they hear it at church, but what do I do? I come home grumpy from my job that makes me pretty miserable these days and I yell and huff and puff and watch TV and go to bed. The only one of those things Jesus did was the bed thing. You know what I hate more than anything in the world? People. So, here I am at 1:00 AM googling ways to serve people as a family.
I don’t do anything. I have so much information and wisdom about God, but what good is it? Right now I’m writing letters to soldiers and to people in nursing homes. Tomorrow I’m going to make cards with my kids to send with them. I’m going to send the soldiers cards here when I’m done and see what happens. I also signed up with soldiers angels to see what they’re about.
The two greatest commandments were love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. Maybe Gods big vision for the Harvest won’t come to fruition until I start somewhere else. Maybe it will never be anything. All I know is that I want my family to be where God wants us. And being there means serving and loving. Ask me what my weaknesses are, I’ll I’ll tell you that Jesus called them the two greatest commandments.

Just remember in these uncertain times:

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9

Wherever you are is where God wants you to be, and NOBODY can snatch you out of his hand.

Wives

I was getting ready for work the other day and I noticed how good I looked in the mirror. No, I’m not being vain…well ok maybe a bit. But when I noticed, I realized that it was only because of my wife. Although this is not a blog about Kristi, her womanhood is an important part of the picture I am about to paint.

Kristi is the best wife that exists. I don’t think they get any better. Sometimes I don’t understand how one human can have such a broad range of emotion, but I’m sure that’s as much for my lack of emotion as it is for her excess.

All of this weight I lost was an attempt that Kristi has made to figure out what foods are bothering my asthma. I quit smoking in January, which led me to realize how poorly I was breathing. It’s bad. She has been spending time finding new recipes, looking for alternative foods, and even working to maintain the same grocery budget through it all.

Why am i telling you a story about my wife?

Good question. I’m telling you because that little glimpse of myself in the mirror made me realize some things about wives.

All of this talk about “empowering women” seems more and more like a joke to me and I’ll explain why. Women have the power, but they see it as weakness.

If it weren’t for wives (women), men would have long been dead. We would have destroyed this planet eons ago over pride or neglect. We were created to create and to build and to work and to dominate. Not to dominate in a negative way, which is par these days, but to subdue the earth. Men were built for that, and I think that’s impressive. What I think is more impressive is that God gave women the power to subdue men…

Take this scene:

You’re at the bar with your girlfriend. A guy you’ve never met walks up to you and starts running his mouth. Your girlfriend could either push you into a fight, or have you out of that bar and laughing with a few words. Women own all of the emotions, so it’s no surprise that they can easily manipulate or subdue ours. While it was instilled in us to tame a world, it was instilled in women to tame us.

Women are the perfect balance to man. They are no less than man and no more. I’ll leave you with this nugget. If you’re a woman, you ARE empowered. If you’re a man who wants to empower women…be a man.