I don’t know how many times I have heard someone say that God will not give us more than we can handle.  Stamp that with a big Dwight K. Shrute “FALSE”.  The thought is taken from 1 Corinthians, but the verse says that we will not be tempted beyond what we can handle.  That is quite a bit different.  The Message says it this way.

No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it.

1 Corinthians 10:13

But if you keep on trucking through the New Testament you get to Ephesians and Paul gives us a different warning.  He tells us that we are up against more than we can handle!

Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet.

Ephesians 6:13

Many times we are given more than we can handle (on our own) so that we finally shut up and realize that it is more than we can handle.  Then we turn to Him.  I know I’m tired of trying to handle things on my own and believing that I CAN handle it all on my own.  I should be using all the weapons He has provided me to help me stand up.  No more lone wolf for me!

We all know the Star-spangled Banner.  Some of us don’t know the words quite as well as the rest and we mumble several lines.  Others know the words but can’t tell you what some of them (o’er, ramparts, oh say, free, etc.) mean.  Still others think it’s about a Spanish guy (Jose, can you see?)!  But we all know how it ends.  Land of the free and the home of the brave.  Right?

Well, there is controversy brewing (and in some people’s mind it has been for quite some time) in Oklahoma.  At the University Of Oklahoma football games the band plays The Star-spangled Banner before every game.  At the end of the song many of the fans sing “land of the free and the home of the…Sooners!”.  I have gone to MANY of these games over the years.  I have heard this yelled out for years.  But for some reason, this year they are making a big deal about it.  Maybe it’s because there was a game on 9/11.  Maybe it’s because they play Air Force this weekend.  There are videos shown prior to the game about being respectful.  They have always had these videos (normally trying to convince the fans not to boo the other team as they come out on the field), but they don’t do anything.

So there are some outraged fans, vets, media and others that are calling for change.  The university has said it has considered pulling the song altogether so that it can’t happen.  That hasn’t happened yet, but at least outwardly they are trying to come up with a solution.  Maybe the fans will listen to former greats.  Maybe they will listen to vets.  Maybe they will listen to the coach.  Maybe, but personally I doubt it.

I could go on to explain my thoughts on the situation, but I wanna know where you stand.  Are you offended by the “home of the Sooners”?  Is it just a lack of respect, yet a right to freedom of speech?  Is it mob mentality?  Are we just getting our panties in a twist over something small?

Ready?  Set… Soap box!

Many of you have no doubt already seen this video, but for those of you that haven’t, it’s pretty funny.  It’s a spoof of the cut-and-paste, packaged modern church.  Definitely makes you stop to think if you are in ministry!  But enough of my rambling because…Sunday’s Coming!

I hate being forced to do things.  I don’t do my best work when I am forced.  My motivations aren’t there.  The work is done just for the sake of being done.  Your boss tells you to do something.  Your significant other tells you to pick up your socks.  Your parents tell you to do your home work.  Being forced into something usually requires consequences that we don’t like.  Sometimes those are just implied and other times they are spelled out for you.

I am wrestling with this right now.  Just 30 minutes ago I was staring at a blank blog post page.  I made a commitment 333 days ago to blog everyday, but now I’m just forcing it.  Of course Family Guy and Friends were on and that makes it quite difficult for me to concentrate, but tonight it didn’t really matter.  Nothing was coming out.  Sure there were plenty of things I wanted to say but I just couldn’t remember what they were.

So I tried to force something.  I wasn’t in the mood to write something very serious, especially something that wasn’t on my heart and mind, but I had some notes that I knew I could shove into a post.  So I grabbed some of those and started typing away.  But it was still one of those things.  One of those forced things.  You know, where it is happening but the whole time you are thinking I don’t wanna be writing this right now.  There has to be something better.  The problem was that I knew the notes were good and I could still probably force out a decent post if I just stuck with it.

Then the dog interrupted my forced blogging needing a bathroom break.

That was all I needed.  It broke me free from the prison I was trying to force my mind into.  And then, this post.

Sometimes being forced is a good thing. We force ourselves to exercise, eat our veggies, start new habits, break old habits, look away from something or someone.  It may all be against our body’s desires, but deep down inside we know it is the best thing for us so we force it.  We have to make ourselves do it or it won’t get done.

I have to make myself eat healthy, exercise more, pick up my socks, read my Bible and do the dishes. Right now, in a very anticlimactic and non spiritual way, I am forcing myself to write. What do you have to force yourself to do?

How does this hit you?  It smacked me around a bit.

But when you proclaim his truth in everyday speech, you’re letting others in on the truth so that they can grow and be strong and experience his presence with you. The one who prays using a private “prayer language” certainly gets a lot out of it, but proclaiming God’s truth to the church in its common language brings the whole church into growth and strength…

I want all of you to develop intimacies with God in prayer, but please don’t stop with that. Go on and proclaim his clear truth to others. It’s more important that everyone have access to the knowledge and love of God in language everyone understands than that you go off and cultivate God’s presence in a mysterious prayer language—unless, of course, there is someone who can interpret what you are saying for the benefit of all.

Think, friends: If I come to you and all I do is pray privately to God in a way only he can understand, what are you going to get out of that? If I don’t address you plainly with some insight or truth or proclamation or teaching, what help am I to you? If musical instruments—flutes, say, or harps—aren’t played so that each note is distinct and in tune, how will anyone be able to catch the melody and enjoy the music? If the trumpet call can’t be distinguished, will anyone show up for the battle? So if you speak in a way no one can understand, what’s the point of opening your mouth?

1 Corinthians 14:3-9

(Well, maybe instinct isn’t the correct word, but anyway…)

You know all those things that your body does inside you that you don’t think about?  Maybe you don’t even know about that.  Well, if you study the human body for very long you will see that there are tons of tiny intricacies that your body does that keep you alive, healthy, growing, etc. that your body just does without you ever thinking about it.  Ever notice that when you are swimming you have to think about not taking a breath?  That’s because your body was designed to breath on its own.  You don’t have to be conscious, awake or focused to do it.  Your body just does it.

Have you ever had to think about making more blood?  How about having that blood coagulate?  Do you know how to digest?  Produce more cells?  Grow new skin?  Extract the oxygen from the air and breathe out the rest?  Heal a bone?  Yeah, me either.  I know my body does that stuff, but I sure can’t sit here and tell my body to do these things and hundreds of others.  I can’t tell it to do them on command.  I can’t tell it to do them differently.  I can’t teach my daughter how to show her body how.  It’s just something that we are created to do.

Our bodies are created to keep us alive and kicking!  It is amazing to think about all these things and how they just go.  From the moment a baby is conceived the body just has things it does without having to check with the conscious brain.  To see those things and deny that there is a God out there that is extremely creative is a pretty massive leap of faith.  Just think about some of your friends (or maybe yourself) that just can’t seem to remember to do things.  We lose our keys.  We get lost.  We cause ourselves pain.  We forget what we were…where was I?

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure I’m glad I don’t have to remember to breath.  I sure wouldn’t get much accomplished if I had to focus on digesting for an hour after I ate.  God has created us to do some pretty insane things.  Even still we struggle to believe and have faith that He will take care of us or provide for us.  Remember that God created you and has set it all in motion.  He is in control and knows what He is doing.  Have some faith in the God who didn’t make you have to remember to breathe!

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.

Romans 12:1

Seriously I think that verse kicks my butt every time.  Anyone else struggle with living their whole life as a worship?  Maybe it’s just me.  Sometimes I will do great.  But, let’s be honest.  A major part of my life is lived for me.  Painful truth.  He wants more from me than just my Sunday mornings.  More than just my Bible reading times.  More than my prayers.  More than my pre-deathdefiance promises.  He wants (and deserves) it all.  Every single ordinary thing.

Yeah that’s right.  Billy Graham’s dirty little secret.  So what is Wild Bill’s secret?  Beats me.  Maybe he didn’t have one.  That’s not what this post is actually about.  Honestly I have no idea if he ever had a dirty little secret or for that matter ever sinned past the age of 11.  But the point is that it seems like we are just waiting for the next guy to fall.  Pastors, counselors, worship leaders, priests, etc.  It seems like every few months now we hear of another fallen comrade and we are just waiting to read about it.

Are we just waiting for our leaders to fail?  Ok, maybe we aren’t necessarily looking for it, but we sure wanna know when they do!  We see the headlines or read the Twitter and our first instinct many times is to click to find out more of what they did.  So and so had an affair.  This guy’s getting divorced.  He was arrested for drug use.  Whatever.  I know I’m guilty.  It’s hard not to.

A few weeks ago a leader that has some influence on me came tumbling down.  I had all the same thoughts as I have many times before.  I wanted to know what happened.  I wanted to know the gossip.  But then God changed my heart and showed me what I was thinking.  Showed me what I should be thinking.  My heart shouldn’t be digging for more details, but instead hurting for those involved and praying for God to shine through somehow.

So I have been working on that.  I still don’t know what happened.  I know that something did and I also know that our God is far more powerful than the stupid mistakes that we humans walk right into.  Now every time I remember or think about that person, I am trying to change my mindset and pray for everyone surrounding the situation.  It is not up to me to judge nor is it up to me to gather all of the information.  Any attempt for me to do so is me stepping out of line.  As Billy Graham put it, my job is to love.

They sinned.  Yes.  Let’s let those God has placed in authority over him to deal with him and the rest of us that have nothing to do with it can just pray and love.  Now we are reminded that they are not perfect either.  It doesn’t change how God has used them in the past.  It doesn’t stop God from being able to use them in the future.  God can still do amazing, life-changing, world-changing things through us even though we are screw ups.  So, next time you hear or see that someone fell off the perfect bus, remember you aren’t either.  Love them and pray for them instead of gossiping and tearing them down.

Ever been stuck in traffic so bad that you feel like your grandpa using his walker with tennis balls on it would be going faster?  You sit in the back with countless cars in front of you just praying to go just 20 mph.  You have somewhere to be.  You’ve tried changing lanes when the other is going faster only to watch it stop dead and the first start up.  Yup.  Traffic sucks.

When you are sitting back there behind all the traffic, it looks as though there is no hope.  All you see is brake lights.  No one moving.  Nothing good.  We all know that it is easy to see life this way.  Things get rough and there is no hope.  Nothing giving.  Nothing moving.  Everything seems to be standing still.  Even moving backwards.  Yeah, when all you can see from your point of view is the insurmountable problems in front of you, it is hard to see what is good.

But there is hope.  There is a different view.  There are many other angles to see.  Each one shows the situation to be a little bit different.  If you move to the access road on the side of that packed highway you can see that there are cars moving.  There is space between them.  There is good coming.  Maybe you need to see the good in what was prevented.  You lost your job only to miss out on the scandal that was about to take place.  You got caught in your sin before it took you to a place beyond the reconciliation of your friendships.  Because you had to sit in that traffic you didn’t get to the intersection in time for the car crash that could have taken your family.

It is definitely hard to see the good when everything seems stacked against you, but God sees all the angles that we are incapable of seeing.  He knows the plans that He has for you.  For future.  For hope.  Next time you are backed up behind that impossible traffic, trust that you will get there.  In His timing.

Seeing as today is my birthday I thought I would give you a glimpse of 1980 as I see it!  I know there are so many more pictures and things I would add to this list, but the longer I sit here and do this the more pictures I add.  I will never be able to finish if I don’t just cut it off now.  So here you go.  I Love The ’80!