Continued from "A Sacrifice..." 

 

As I was leaving the KFC, I expected to feel great about what I had just done. One of the missionaries had been in Kentucky for twenty-two months and I'd be willing to bet he hadn't eaten at very many restaurants. Also, I had just blessed some people in the name of Jesus.

 

It doesn't get any better than that, right?

 

I thought about this the whole way home and then some, but couldn't figure out why I didn't get that wonderful 'glow' that you get when you've done what you're supposed to do.

 

About six months later, I was sitting in church and the pastor was talking about King David and the time he took a census so he could see how powerful he was (click on the link to read the whole story). David tried to purchase Ornan's threshing floor so he could build an altar and make a sacrifice to God because this was where the angel was when he stopped killing David's people. Ornan tried to give him the land, but David insisted on paying for it, saying "I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing."

 

I had one of those "AHA!" moments as I thought back to the events in that KFC. I had made a sacrifice that cost me nothing, but still expected the benefit. As a result, I'm not (as) afraid of sacrificing things, because that is what is required.

Background: My friend, Elizabeth, was born and raised a Mormon. Carla and I had lunch with her one day and she shared the story of her conversion to Christianity. If you ever get a chance and you know who she is, ask her to tell the story, it's powerful. At the end of the story, I asked her what I should do if any missionaries came calling at my house. She said, "feed them, they only get $10,000 a year to live and have to depend on local churches and families for food." 

 

In July of 2006, we were heading back to Texas from a Kentucky mission trip. We stopped off at Kentucky Fried Chicken for our final lunch; my theory was, if you're in Kentucky, you should go to KFC*. I know, it's deep.

 

Anyway, after we were done stuffing ourselves, we headed to the restrooms because we had a long drive ahead of us.

 

As I was standing in the dining room, waiting for the girls, two Mormon missionaries came into the restaurant. One of them went into the bathroom while the other stayed out in the dining room with me. We chatted a bit and then he switched places with his buddy. I talked with the second guy and then the first one came out of the restroom. Got the picture? Markie was hanging in the restaurant dining area with two Mormon missionaries.

 

So, as I was standing in the KFC, I started to get an idea. I still had money left over from the mission trip; I could use benevolence money to buy lunch for my new friends.

 

I asked the oldest one "Are ya'll here to buy lunch?"

 

He said, "No, we're just here to smell."

 

After that pathetic response, I knew I had him. I said, "Let me buy you lunch."

 

He protested, but his heart wasn't in it.* We had been talking religious matters, so I used some Christianese and asked him to "not deny me the blessing of buying him lunch." He said "OK," and I paid for lunch and a drink for each of them.*

 

I gave them some righteous platitude about how Jesus loved them, no matter what works they did, and I left them to enjoy their lunch in peace.

 

To Be Continued...

 

*They had buffets!! Shoot me now.

I've found a website that I want to recommend to you. Stuff Christians Like is a great blog that deals with many issues of the Christian life. I don't really know what else to say except that he (Jon Acuff) writes many of the things I wish I had written and writes them in a way that I wish I could.

 

Have fun wasting some time on the site...

When Kaylie was about five and Tori was seven, we went on an Indian Princess camping trip. Many of the girls on the trip brought their bicycles so we spent the weekend dodging gangs of Princess biker chicks.

 

When we got home, Kaylie asked me to take the training wheels off of her bike and, within in a day, she was riding sans training wheels. About a week later, Tori (the older one...) gave in to the inevitable and reluctantly asked me to take off her training wheels also and she was riding free within a day or two. (Sorry, I don't have any actual pictures of them riding)

 

A couple of important points:

1. Both of them asked me to take off the training wheels. I could have tried to force them to learn to ride without training wheels. This might have worked on Kaylie, but Hell would have frozen over before Tori even got on another bike.
2. Kaylie learned how to ride a bike because she saw something cool and wanted a part of it. It was hard for her to walk around that weekend when everyone else was riding.
3. Tori learned how to ride a bike because circumstances dictated that she should. Of course, she could have eschewed bike riding forever (I LOVE that word), but believe me, if your younger sibling learns something before you do, there are few more powerful motivators in the world.*
4. Now, they both know how to ride a bike.

Continued from "Help, I Need God!" 

 

Do you remember the first time you:

1. Went into the deep end of the pool?
   
2. Jumped off the high dive?
   
3. Rode your bike without training wheels?
4. Drove a car by yourself?
5. Spoke in front of a crowd and didn't die?
6. Spent the night in your house alone?
7. Spoke to someone at a party/event without them talking to you first?

I remember going to summer camp in Fairbanks, AK. At Camp LiWa (Living Waters) my senior year, the camp director was a guy named Myron Richardson. A good friend, passionate human, sometime youth pastor and former Marine, he did what he could to share his life experiences with us by giving us opportunities to do cool stuff. One of those things was rappelling; you know, falling down a cliff on purpose.

 

Because I was extremely afraid of heights, I volunteered to hold the ropes at the bottom of the cliff. (I know it has a name, 'belay' or something like that.) The whole time I was holding the ropes, something inside me was trying to talk me into going to the top of the cliff and rappelling down. I managed to stave off the crazy man inside me and walked away from the cliff without injury.

 

But regrets? I've had a few...

 

As I walked away, I had this thought; "What if that was the last time I ever have a chance to rappel?"

 

God used this event to shape my life. Now, when I'm presented with an opportunity to do something that I might not get to do later, I usually do it (I draw the line at most carnival rides...). I got an opportunity to test this about a year later on a confidence course. I was standing on a log suspended between two trees about thirty feet above the ground and had to step onto a 3x3 platform with no rope. It took me fifteen minutes of staring at the platform, but I did it. And no, I haven't had a chance to go rappelling in the twenty-five years that have passed.

 

It seems like everything in life is a metaphor for something else. I'm sure that most of you know that in order to grow, we need change and/or struggle. If you don't drive by yourself, you will be forever dependent on others for your transportation. So, you risk getting into an accident to gain the independence of driving. It's not easy to ride without training wheels, but you will NEVER learn to ride with the training wheels on. Therefore, you have to risk getting a skinned knee to get the benefit of riding a bike.

 

Here's the twist; when you take the training wheels off your bicycle, you are learning that YOU can ride without training wheels. But a life lived by faith isn't about you at all; it's about God. Taking the training wheels off of your Christian life isn't about learning to do it yourself and growing in independence; it's about becoming dependent.

 

What about your Christian life? Are you still riding with your training wheels? Are you still swimming in the shallow end of the pool, afraid that you will drown if you venture beyond the rope? It's time to ask your Father to take off the training wheels and teach you how to be dependent on Him. It's time to go some place where the training wheels don't fit and you might fall and skin your knees. But, the really cool thing is, your Father will be there, ready to pick you up and take care of your knees. And, because he's your Father, he won't put the training wheels back on...

 

It started and ran for the entire day, doing its thing; you know, mixing.

 

At the end of the day, the mechanic showed up and looked the machine over to see if he could find out why it hadn't started. He discovered that it did not have a spark plug. None. It functioned the whole day without fire and compression, something that is absolutely impossible. (Quick mechanics lesson; the spark plug provides a spark to ignite the fuel and seals the hole to make it airtight.)

 

My friend, Jumbo, was associated with an organization in South Africa called UCSA (a Christian mission/camp/life change organization in SA.) He told me of a team they sent into Zimbabwe in 2003 to work in a village of 80 people. After working there for two weeks, they decided to have a going away soup evening. They prepared a pot of soup that would feed 80 people. Somehow, word got out and, in a country that was/is devastated and desperate, more than 800 people showed up.

 

Picture it; this isn't downtown Chicago/Atlanta/Dallas where one can zip over to the Sam's Club and buy more soup. And, if someone wasn't fed, they would go home hungry, not merely inconvenienced.

 

There was no back up plan because it wasn't even possible to HAVE a backup plan.

 

So, they prayed for the soup and started dishing it out. 800+ bowls of soup later, they still had some in the pot.

 

I promise that this isn't about football.

 

For those of you who haven't been following the Bret Favre/Green Bay saga, here's the SHORT update (sorry Bubba). Favre retired last year (for the second time) and then changed his mind (ditto). Green Bay doesn't really want him back so they offered him $20 million to stay home and not play football anymore. Today, he's back in Green Bay...

 

I don't really care that much about the story (sorry again Bubba), what I care about is that they offered him $20,000,000 over ten years to NOT play. Wow.

 

I read a quote from some football guy saying that he wouldn't stay away from football for $1 billion, but that's just him...

 

At first blush, I'm sure that most of us would gladly stay away from football for $2 million a year. But, what about the second blush? Think about what you love to do: teach, speak, build, draw, write, design, create, help, think, communicate, analyze, study, connect, compete.  If someone offered you money to NOT do what you love to do for ten years, would you take it? No, you probably wouldn't. Those ten years would be miserable and you know it, deep in your heart; even though that's some pretty good money...

 

I have another, harder question for you. What about $75k or $35k? Would you sell out for $50k a year? Have you?

Is there something that you love to do, something that God himself specifically designed in your core, but it wasn't safe so you took that job with a good, steady income. Is there maybe something that God CALLED you to do, but you went with the great health plan and the 401k instead?

 

One of the qualifiers that we Christians always use is "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it!!" I hate this because it is usually applied to asking God to do his will in your life. How crazy is that? Wouldn't you rather have your life under God's control than left in your hands or the hands of someone else? But, many believers trade the peace of God's hand for the safety they can see and control. However, when budget cuts come around, you'll be out on the street wondering where your security is and why you devoted so much time to doing something you didn't really like anyway. 

It's not too late. Besides, you've already been bought and paid for (I Corinthians 7:22-24).

Continued from GWGYMTYCH...

 

Picture this: You're on a mission trip. You decide that it would a great idea to have a "neighborhood feeding." This means, in Texas parlance, that you're going to have a BBQ and feed whoever shows up.

 

You do your estimates based on: what people tell you, your own experience, how much money you have, etc. Let's say that you plan to feed 100 people. You go to Sam's/Walmart and purchase the needed food and prepare it for the feeding.

 

At first, there is a slow trickle of people who come. But then, word gets around and you have lots of people lined up. More than likely, you will have more than 100.

 

What do you do?

1. Start to plan how you can tell everyone that there might not be enough? It is unlikely that anyone will starve because you ran out of food.
   
2. Try to figure out if you have enough time to go back to Sam's/Walmart and get more food? You've got the cash or, even better yet, a credit card.
   
3. Try to ration the food you have so that everyone only gets the bare minimum?
4. Pray and ask God to provide more. You know, like the five loaves and two fishes...

I was reading Jay Nordlinger, one of my favorite pundits, this morning. Here's what he said about something that happened in NY city. 

 

 

Hmmm...

Continued from and sort of related to "No, Need To Pray" 

 

You've heard it before; "God won't give you more than you can handle." (henceforth GWGYMTYCH) I don't know about you, but this has been a very influential statement in my life. I've been reassured many times, when I felt down and defeated, that God put me into whatever situation I was in because he knew I could handle it.

 

While I was in Mississippi, I was talking with some of the trip participants (Hi, Amanda!) and this concept came up. I don't remember the exact situation, but I remember thinking "Is GWGYMTYCH really in the Bible or does it just sound good?" (Kind of like all those Poor Richard's Almanac sayings.) The passage I had read in I Corinthians 1 was sort of floating in the back of my head so I went back and read it again, continuing on to verse 11. Below, I've quoted v. 8-9.

 

This verse is apparently talking about temptation. You know, because it says "temptation" once and "tempted" twice...

 

It's not talking about hardships or trials.

 

Now, before you freak out and brand me as a heretic, look at the last line of II Corinthians 1:9; "But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." 

 

Can we dispense with the obligatory qualifications? No, this isn't an excuse to be irresponsible or to act without guidance from God. No, I won't go play on the freeway and expect God to save me.

 

I'm glad we got that out of the way.

 

Could it be that God doesn't want you to think of your own way out; to pull yourself up by your bootstraps? Maybe God doesn't help those who help themselves because they have already been helped... Maybe God wants you to be so desperate that you MUST cry out to him for help. That way, if you get out of whatever mess you're in, you can only give God the credit. (See Gideon, David, Noah, Moses, Joshua, Paul, etc.)

 

To be continued...