I love Grace! I’m not talking about a woman’s name or the thing we say before our meals. Grace. Forgiveness you give to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Grace. It’s the extended hand you give to someone in need. Grace. It’s treating someone like their human regardless of their past mistakes or their current lot in life. Grace. We all want it but at times it can be so hard to give because we’ve been taught to get even, to settle the score, to get our way no matter what the cost. To focus on our tasks and worry only about ourselves.

I don’t know this man in the video, but his story is a beautiful depiction of how life should be and how we, as humans, should see those around us.

I must admit that I had a little bit of pride swell up inside of me when I saw that this took place in my hometown of Columbus, OH. If you haven’t followed the rest of the story this man was offered a job to do voice work for the Cleveland Cavs and they offered to put him and his family up in a free house. That might strike some of you with the attitude, “That’s not solving anything”. Maybe it won’t in the long run, but to extend grace to someone is a beautiful thing!

After following this man’s story the last day or two it’s taken on a deeper meaning for me. For those of you who don’t know me, my father was a huge radio personality in Columbus for many years. He had a “Golden voice” just like this man. My dad has been gone now for over 10 years but when I think about my dad the word that comes to mind is Grace.

"My Pops"

My dad was the most loving, caring and gracious person I ever knew. He just knew how to connect with people regardless of who they were and where they came from. He would extend a hand of friendship to anyone he met…..pizza delivery person, gas station attendant, the single mom, a teacher, a CEO, a person out of rehab…..it didn’t matter. He made them feel human. He made them feel as if they mattered. He extended GRACE. To his wife, his sons, his siblings, his extended family, the neighborhood kids, strangers, to all!

The last couple of days I’ve followed this man’s story I know that if my dad was still around he would have been the first to extend grace to him. He would have offered him a warm meal, hot shower, change of clothes and I bet he would figured out someway to tag team with this guy to be on his radio show.

I miss my dad, but most of all I miss watching him extend grace to all people. I miss seeing people changed by a love that didn’t come from my dad, it overflowed from the love he received through Jesus Christ. It was Christ living in him. It was my dad being Jesus to people who didn’t deserve it most of the time. He did it because God had extended grace to him.

My hope is that my life would not only be filled with grace, but that it would overflow with the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Thank you dad for being a living example of what it means to live life! Thank you for showing me how to treat people. And thank you Jesus for extending Grace to us all, even when we don’t deserve it.

So, today I went to the Apple Store, which is like the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory for Mac peeps! I thought I had seen somewhere, or read somewhere, or possibly dreamed up somewhere a program that would magically take all your duplicate files on your computer and help organize and arrange them.

For those of you that truly know me, know that organizing things and color coding and all the things that make the world go round is something that I have to constantly work on and strive for! It doesn’t come naturally for me. I remember my first ministry position in good ole Bowling Green, OH and I went into it thinking that the only thing you needed to do in Student Ministry was learning how to eat fast food and pizza and drink a coke while hanging out with students.

Fast forward 8 years now and I have come to realize that Student ministry, but Ministry in general (Much like any job) is way much more then what is seen! There is so many things that must go on at a systems level, an organizational level to make any group of individuals work together towards a common goal. It’s HARD WORK! There’s no easy way out as much as we’d like there to be one.

Relationships are like that too! Not all the time, sometimes you meet another soul and it’s like you’ve been together you’re entire life. You speak the same lingo, understand the same jokes, are moved by similar things and it’s just easy. Other times it takes a lot of HARD WORK to make relationships work. It’s messy, it’s emotionally draining, it’s not always fun and sometimes you just want to give up. You wish there was an Easy Button to make things work or clean up spilled bad blood, or make things right. But that’s usually not the case.

It takes….

Hard Work
Sacrifice
Focus
A love for the common good
Desire and Determination

All those seem to not be fun words! But at the end of the day it is so well worth it to look back and say…. “We’ve come a long way”….. “I’m stronger, we’re stronger because of this!”

My hope is that I always strive to turn away from the “Easy Button”. That I don’t shy away from learning things because they seem to difficult, or turn my back on opportunities to grow and be changed just because it’s not comfortable!

There’s lots of things that I need to work on…….Including looking for the “Easy Button”

It’s back to blogging! Started to pick this up pre summer and then summer hit and it was like a track meet for 6 weeks! Good to be back! More thoughts coming!

So, last week I asked my beautiful wife if she would come to my office and completely reorganize it and how I do things! Of course she was as giddy as a junior high girl being given a credit card with all access pass to the local shopping mall. She absolutely loves to organize!

Now, if you ask me, organizing rates up there with things like picking up dog poo, doing laundry and watching paint dry. It’s not something you look forward to, but you know you have to do it! You can’t not organize things because then life becomes too chaotic. So, I see the value of organizing, but I don’t look forward to it.

Last week I was sifting through all the junk in my office and to do pile and was frustrated because I had so much to do, yet felt like the world was caving in on me. After chewing on this for a moment, it dawned on me that my life felt chaotic and that’s because I was disorganized. Now, I’ve always been okay at organizing things, but I’ve never been super organized. I wanted to be organized because I’m tired of feeling like life is chaotic. It just gets you stressed out, you can’t focus and you always feel like you haven’t accomplished much. You have less time to focus on what really matters and you waste time on things that don’t or you spend too much time trying to accomplish the things that do matter.

As I was sitting there thinking about it I remembered a leadership principle that I heard years back that went something like this…

“Why waste your time on trying to improve your weaknesses, instead work on becoming the best at your strengths.”

Now, I know it’s good to improve your skills and get better at things you may be weak in, but I think the best thing for any leader is to admit the areas where you’re weak. Don’t try to pretend that you’re good at something you’re not. Don’t try to do something that someone else could do better. Swallow your pride and ask for help. And that’s what I did!

After a few hours of throwing a lot of things away that I really didn’t need and restructuring how I collect info and how I store it, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment, but almost a feeling as if I could breathe more clearly. I felt more focused and more jazzed to tackle my to do list.

Leaders should always humble themselves and ask for help when needed.

Leaders should always look to delegate tasks to others that could do it better then they could

Leaders should look for gifts in others and empower them to use them in their organization.

I admit, I’m weak

What are you weak at?

So, last night our great local police department blessed us with a visit because one of our new neighbors (and by new I mean only a week) complained that our dogs were barking too loud! Welcome to the neighborhood I guess! I was quickly reminded about how much I loved living in a close knit community! *Sarcasm*
I was so mad when Holly told me that and literally wanted to go out and knock on our neighbors doors and pull out the whole “come out and fight like a man” speech. Come out so I can see your face!

Took Jake for a walk and started to cool down! As I prayed and started to state my case to God and my disgust with humanity I started to think about this in regards to my own faith. Is my faith walk loud? Do people hear and see my faith on a daily basis, especially strangers like new neighbors? Does my walk with God catch people’s attention? How much do I really, truly stand up and how much am I ashamed to live out my faith because I want people’s approval.

By the time I was finished with my walk I was fine. Still wanted to go introduce myself to my neighbors, but for a different reason. Of course I want them to not be uptight and call police on my dogs, but more importantly I want them to see Jesus in my actions, my words, my life. Barking your faith at others doesn’t really work, I mean it didn’t for me! However, being bold and speaking loudly about your faith doesn’t have to be very vocal, it can be a whisper, a handshake, an act of kindness, an invitation to a meal, a helping hand in a home project, an interest in what other people do for a living….the list goes on an on.

I need to be more noisy while not scaring people off! But the point is I need to make some noise!

How much noise are you making?

Today, I was listening to a podcast from one of my favorite church leaders/pastors, Andy Stanley, and he raised a set of two questions that I begged for me to answer in my own life.  The first question was……What’s Grabbed Your Attention?  The single premise that Andy was using in his message (Which was part of an overall series called Destinations) was this….

“What you pay attention to, or what grabs your attention, determines the Direction you go which ultimately determines your destination in life”

Now I know that this isn’t rocket science!  It makes perfect sense that we are drawn by things that capture our attention and if we stay drawn towards them it leads us down a certain path to a destination in life.

Examples:

-When you ski if you stare at an object while going down the slope you will tend to move towards it

-When driving if you stare at the cars passing by you you will eventually move towards their direction

-If a certain Hobby grabs you and takes up much of your time it could become a full time job

What’s important to think about though is all the negative things that tend to draw our attention away from the things that really matter.  Even things that are positive and good can eventually turn our attention away from the things that really matter.  And before we know it, our attention has been drawn so far away from what’s important that we’ve gone down a path that we wish we never would have taken.

So, as I sit I think about this…..I cannot help but do some self-evaluation of my own life.  The most precious thing in my life, outside of my friends and family, is my relationship with God.  I can still remember when I finally understood and was open to what God had done for me and how much He loved me.  However, I know that over the last few years I have become comfortable in my faith and that I’ve lost some of that passion to know Him and make Him known.

In many ways I feel as if I’m still heading in the right direction, but I’ve been so distracted by things that don’t matter.  I’ve allowed too many things off the path to “capture my attention” and it’s taken away from me seeing the things, that are on the path, which are the most important.  My next few posts will be my attempt to answer some questions posed by Andy that if all of us answered truthfully it would help us put our priorities in the right order at the very least, but it would also revolutionize our relationship with God.

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So, I’ve decided that I absolutely hate humidity!  I grew up with it in the summers in OH, but humidity in the south is different.  It just cakes on you and you can’t breathe!  Pressure and heat together is not cool!  

Of course, to think of a spiritual analogy here, when the temptations get hot in your life Satan tends to up the pressure doesn’t he?  He ups it to the point where you feel like you can’t breathe!  Things get nasty (Like your pits), stomach gets upset, etc.  

Thank God that He’s like the air conditioning in our lives.  It’s in the coolness and refreshingness of his love, grace, mercy, forgiveness that we find peace, rest, rescue, satisfaction.  Now we just have to learn how to run to God as fast as we run to our cars in the summer