are you sitting on your hands?????

Ephesians 4: I want you to get out there and walk-better yet, run!-on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands.

James 1:22-24Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

I can honestly say that I love the church. I love going to church. I love being at church. I love worshiping with other believers. I love the relationships that are built around the church. I love the church.

But one thing I don’t like about church is that 20% of the people usually do 100% of the work. In most churches, the same people do everything. In an emergency like we had last week, we go the ones that are always there, always working hard, and are always dependable. (Remember, we had to get Hank to the airport to go see his mom who hasn’t been doing well…)

And those 20% get tired. They may find themselves feeling overworked and under appreciated.

I truly believe that God places everyone and everything you need in a local church body. All of the talent and treasure that is required to fulfill God’s plans for that church body is usually sitting on the pews.

What would happen if we quit “sitting on our hands” and worked together to accomplish all that God has called us to do?

our children would always have the teachers they need.
our teens would be mentored by caring adults.
our praise bands would be filled with talented musicians.
our praise teams would be filled to capacity with anointed and gifted singers.
our fundraising programs would be a thing of the past because everyone in the church tithed.
our guests would be greeted at the door with welcoming smiles and open hearts.
our community food banks and homeless shelters would be staffed with spirit-filled men and women.
our neighbors would know that someone cares about them.
our jails would be places of revival because of the ministers who poured their lives and experiences into those who need to hear their testimonies.

Let’s quit sitting on our hands and do what God has called and equipped us to do. Please don’t waste your time. Please don’t bury your talent beneath your fears. And please don’t spend your treasure only on your own needs. Please contribute your time, talent, and treasure to your local church body and the community that you live in. Pat attention the warning that Christ gave us in Matthew 25.

responsibilities

yesterday was a crazy busy day. although hank and i began our sunday with our usual routine of coffee in bed, prayer, and getting ready for service, it quickly got busier than we could ever imagine.

hank’s mom has recently had surgery and had developed an infection in her lungs after the surgery. apparently, this infection is causing chaos in her body and it seemed as if she was not going to recover. we booked hank a flight to mississippi after church and, after driving like mad, got him there with only 30 minutes to spare. apparently all she needed was a visit from “her son, the preacher” cause she perked up when she heard his voice. hank’s prayer has always been for his mom to live in health and die without pain. he is truly believing that she will recover from this illness and he’ll get to go for another walk with her.

hannah and i will be leaving gallup sometime this week to join hank in mississippi to spend a few days with his mom before we have to go to florida to prepare the house for rental.

please pray for us. pray that his mom recovers. pray for our safe travel as we drive across the country. pray that everything goes well as we prepare the house to be rental property. pray for the church while we are away.

personally, please pray for me. while i love hank’s family, i’ve always struggled with being so different from them. pray that i demonstrate love, acceptance, and encouragement.

plans

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

Jeremiah 29: 11 For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 In those days when you pray, I will listen. 13 If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.

God has always had a plan for my life. Before God laid the foundations of the earth, He had planned out my life. As He did in the life of Joseph, he has done for me. He has worked out all things for my good. Every difficult thing that I have gone through in life has proven itself to have value in my ministry. God has wasted nothing.

Now this could not have happened without my participation. If I looked back on my life with regret, anger, or judgment, God could not use those experiences to help someone else. I have had to look back at my life and ask myself some difficult questions:

–What can I learn?
—Who can I forgive?
—-What can I do differently?
—–Who can I help?

Take a moment and look back at your life. Are you going to allow God to use them to accomplish his purpose in your life? Are you going to allow God to use them to help someone else? Now this is the really good part, God generally doesn’t use the pain of our past to help someone else until the healing has started.

So get started…

saturday

it’s been a busy week. you know, one of those weeks when you really don’t know what all you’ve accomplished but you know that you’ve been busy.

we’ve refinanced our house and closed on friday. next week we will pay off granny’s house in panama city beach. then we’ll head down on sunday after church to prepare the house for rental. (if you know anyone who wants to rent a two bedroom house in panama city, let me know.) while i struggled with the idea of buying a house over 1500 miles away (according to mapquest, 23 hours and 57 minutes away), i know that this is an amazing opportunity.

i’ve been watching a lot of hgtv to prepare for decorating this little house. the house has an outside shower and i’m thinking about using corrugated steel as the siding and laying flagstone and gravel as the base. it’ll be pretty, cheap, and functional! the bedrooms will be very simple — queen sized beds with white headboards. two small nightstands, and a simple dresser. now the living room will be interesting —- i think i want a sleeper sofa and a flat screen tv over the fireplace.

i’m thinking about using my own photography for the artwork in the house… the only question is am i confident enough in my work to do so?

we really want to use this house as vacation rental property. if we were to rent it on a yearly basis, we would not be able to use it for ourselves. we would like the opportunity to get away a few times a year. plus, it would be great as a rental property for the snowbirds who come down every year. hopefully this will make enough money for us to eventually be able to build our dream home in gallup.

490 times

At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?”
Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven. Matthew 18:21-22

Wednesday’s Word was titled “Forgiveness 101.”

I think I’m a lot like Peter. I want God to tell me what I need to do and be explicit about it. Peter was looking for clear and concise directions to his question. He really wanted know exactly how many times he needed to forgive someone. (And I’m thinking he had that someone in mind.)

I think Jesus’ answer blew his mind. 490 times? 490 times a day? 490 times a week? 490 times a year? 490 times in a lifetime? And just how was he supposed to keep up with just how many times he had already forgiven that person?

Was Jesus really asking that we keep up with how often we have forgiven someone? NO! I think Jesus was saying that if we have anger, hurt, or unforgiveness towards someone we should forgive them every time we think about them. We choose to forgive until we don’t have to think about it anymore — because we’re no longer hurt or angry with that person.

In Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea says that you know whether or not you’ve forgiven someone by whether or not you want to “beat the hell out of them” every time you see them. I’d say you know whether or not you’ve forgiven someone by the feeling in the pit of your stomach…

I challenged everyone to begin forgiving that person who hurt you. Are you willing to take the challenge?

hgtv thoughts

i have to admit that i am addicted to hgtv. my favorite shows are the home improvement shows. they make me want to fix up the house that i have rather than covet that which i can’t afford —

but i do watch house hunters, house hunters international, and my first place.

sometimes i think i’d really like one of those houses — especially the ones with the really, really big kitchens and wide open floor plans.

and somewhere in between is my big amazing renovation. with that show you simply take your little bitty house and renovate it to the point that it’s a mansion on a small lot.

after seeing some of these shows, i have to ask myself if i can be content with what i have. maybe the question is not “can i” but “will i?”

i choose contentment. i choose to be happy with what i have while dreaming about what could be. one day we’ll build the house of our dreams. until then, i’ll enjoy what we have… a house filled with love, laughter, and commitment.

and that’s the best decorating a house can have!

a wee bit stressed

last week i got a bill from the internal revenue service. although i was expecting it, i am still feeling a wee bit stressed. plus we are in the process of buying the house in panama city. and we need to furnish it and get it ready to rent. yes, i’m feeling a wee bit stressed. yet, i know that all of these things will work out. all i need to do is breathe deep and remember that my heavenly father has always provided for me. and i need to keep our spending to a minimum until we get this paid off. realistically, this debt can be paid off in less than one month…

the main thing i need to do is not get stressed out. i don’t need to be frustrated with hank or hannah because of these small debts. i need to relax.

breathe deep.

deep breaths.

it’s okay.

i’ll make it.

father's day

is it a day of celebration or is it a day of regrets? it’s different for each of us…

some celebrate the great dad they’ve had — they buy him gifts and kooky cards. the family comes together to either celebrate or remember dad. stories are told. steaks are grilled. laughter is shared.

others mourn the dad they never knew. we wonder what he would have liked for father’s day. is (or was) he a car guy or a fisherman? did he like steak or salmon? what stories are being told at his house today? what stories will we never know?

then there are those of us who do both on the same day. we celebrate the man who chose to be our dad. we take a moment to be thankful that someone loved our mom enough to marry a woman with children. (remember in madea’s family reunion how uncle joe kept telling frankie that she had two children????) and the greatest of these men give us their own name. truly, we become their children. and yet we wonder about our biological father.

and lately i’ve wondered about the dad who was always there but never there. the disconnected dad who worked all the time. the emotionally unavailable dad. the angry dad. what is father’s day like for that family? and does it have to continue to be so uncomfortable?

regardless of what kind of earthly father you and i have had, we do have a father to be celebrated today. each of us has a heavenly father that loves us, cares for us, and provides for us. not only that, he wants us to be a “father’s son” or a “daddy’s girl.” i encourage you to take a moment, climb up into his lap, and simply tell him “happy father’s day.”

i owe no man

i love that scripture:

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. Romans 13:8

the other day i began looking at my life and wondering if i owed anyone anything. i’ll be honest here, i didn’t think about my credit card debt or the loan on my car or my mortgage. i really began to think about what did i owe living, breathing people. i began to pray and ask the father to help me live my life in such a way that i wouldn’t owe anyone anything:

i wouldn’t owe someone forgiveness…
i wouldn’t owe someone acceptance…
i wouldn’t owe someone understanding…
i wouldn’t owe someone encouragement…
i wouldn’t owe someone love…
i wouldn’t owe someone peace…
i wouldn’t owe someone time…
i wouldn’t owe someone hospitality…
i wouldn’t owe someone honesty…

while asking the father about these types of debts, he reminded me of a financial debt that i owed a member of my church. to be honest, i had forgotten all about it. several months ago i had written this person a check to pay for a product that i had ordered from her with the plan of paying her that night at the book club meeting. but she didn’t make that meeting or the next one. i placed the envelope with checks on my desk and forgot all about it. i went to see her yesterday to pay her and she said “forget about it, it was taken care of awhile back.” it seems that i had gotten a rebate that covered the debt.

but there was this other debt that i didn’t know how to repay cause i didn’t know who to give the money to. sounds crazy, uh? how can you owe someone you don’t know? well, about five years ago my dog romeo went missing. (there’s way more to this story than i’ll tell now.) when the gentleman who had found romeo brought him back to us, we wanted to reward him for his kindness and wrote him a check for $50. what we didn’t know was that the bank had made a mistake and had withdrawn our paycheck from our account and put it as a deposit into our church account — his check bounced! while the bank made everything right with the grocery store,we couldn’t make it right with him because we didn’t know his name, where he lived, or how to get in touch with him. well, last night, we were talking to a friend who had stopped by to say hello and she asked was this the dog her brother had found. yes! not only were we able to discover who had found romeo, we were able to give her $50 to take to her brother along with our apologies.

i owe no man but to love him. while i was praying about my lifestyle, my integrity, and my character, God was setting me up to deal with the little debts that i had accumulated.

don’t you love it when God is God in your life?!?!?

i'm changing

in the beginning of this ministry i felt responsible for absolutely everything. if it seemed as if few were joining with us at the stronghold it must have been because of something i was doing wrong. if there was not enough money to meet our bills it must be because i had done something wrong. if anyone criticized us i would spend days worrying about what i had done to offend them.

or worse. i would begin to think that it wasn’t my fault. it was God’s fault. maybe, once again, he was showing me that i didn’t matter enough to him to meet our needs or to reassure me that he was aware of what i was going through.

two extremes.

and, because i could not find a middle ground, i spent most of my time feeling absolutely miserable.

i hate to admit that i rarely enjoyed this great adventure we were on. and, to be completely honest, i got totally pissed when it seemed as if hank was enjoying himself.

and then i read “this is your brain on joy” and discovered that i just didn’t have a healthy brain. i took his advice seriously and have been enjoying the benefits for months…

no longer do i feel personally responsible for absolutely everything. i know that God is God and i trust that he is more than capable of meeting any need that i have.

of course i face trials in this life. there are times when there is not enough money to pay the bills or we can’t afford to buy the things that i feel we need. and there are times when i hear how others are criticizing what we do. or when i come to church excited to see everyone only to find that they’ve gone to the state fair. it’s just that i’ve decided that i will not allow the trials that i am going through to determine how i feel about myself or about my God.

maybe i’m just finally beginning to understand the words of Jesus in John 14:27:

Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled.]

i’m not going to allow life to steal my peace cause i’m finally convinced that Jesus really did come to give me “life and life more abundantly.”

what’s stealing your peace?