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Listening To The Prophets

July 28, 2008 in Semi Serious In Nature,Spiritual with Respond Now!

Last year I got one of those 1 year Bibles for Christmas.  I got into it for a little while, but trailed off as we tend to do many times.  So this year, I decided that I really wanted to get back into it and continue to create that habit of reading every day (the Bible that is…not just reading in general…I still try to steer clear of that).  So every night I take my time after KK has gone to sleep to read.  Yeah!  Congrats!  Blah, blah, blah, you say, but that’s not the point of this post.  I still have my times that I don’t read or forget or fall asleep in the middle of reading.  Anyway, on to the point.

The 1 year Bible that I am reading is The Message: Remix Pause.  It matches up a reading from the Old Testament with some from the New Testament and then poses some questions for thought at the end.  It doesn’t necessarily go in order, but for the last couple months the OT readings have been the major and minor prophets.  For those of you that didn’t grow up in church, that is a bunch of guys that the Lord sent to Israel and Judah to tell them how bad they suck.  So basically, that is what all these guys messages have been to the two countries.
So, many times I have found myself complaining about the fact that I have been reading these books of the Bible where God seems to be continuously saying the same freakin’ thing to them over and over and over and over again.  Many times I have found myself asking why the crap they don’t listen to the messages from God and change their lives.  Good times.  But the more I read it and the more I actually think about what was going on when they were preaching these messages, the more I start to think, am I actually listening to the things that God is telling me?
A good friend of mine is on his way back from London and has blogged about the perspective that he has gained from seeing and experiencing many of the things that he did there.  I think that reading these sections of Scripture is doing the same for me.  It is easy to look back and say, what the crap were you thinking?  The Lord is sending obvious messages but because it wasn’t what you wanted to hear, you tuned Him out and ignored Him.  Think about that!  Gain some perspective on what you might want to say to yourself looking back at your life in 20 years.  Over the past year or so, being the head of the household and trying to be the spiritual leader God has called me to be, I have had ample opportunity to rely on God and Him alone and listen to what He was saying…even when it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.  As a pastor, as a husband, as a friends, as part of a family, we MUST continue to listen to what the Lord is saying.  Even when it calls us to action or calls us to make that hard choice.  I don’t know.  That’s just what I’m thinking about at the moment.

I'm The Lead Singer Of My Band…

July 27, 2008 in Music,Semi Serious In Nature with Respond Now!

This will be a shorter post, but I really just wanted to brag on my band today.  I doubt that any of them read this, but I just wanted to say how awesome they are.  Not only are they awesome musicians, but they are studs too.  We just had a gig out at the Naval base for the 56th Brigade and the band rocked.  They signed on to this as a micro mission for the soldiers and their families and played in 105 degree Texas sun and heat with no shade whatsoever.  Not only that but they have been going at it since 8:00 this morning!  That’s really all I have.  They are amazing.  I love them.

The First Year Of Marriage….

July 25, 2008 in Marriage,Semi Serious In Nature with Respond Now!

is always the hardest.  That’s what we always here.  Not just my wife and I, but it seems like that’s what the world preaches to us.  Why is that?  Is there a specific reason that the first year is supposed to suck?  It’s because you haven’t lived with each other yet and you don’t REALLY know how they are until then, right?  Well, you don’t really let your true colors shine until you are with each other 24/7, right?

My wife and I haven’t made it through our first year yet and actually not quite made it halfway, but I have to say that I don’t believe this is the case.  Yes, it is very different living with a girl.  I think they have a weird 6th sense or x-ray vision or something that tells them when something is just barely starting to get dirty.  I swear.  I do not understand this and probably never will.  I will never know how a girl can look at a bathtub that is white and say, “gross. It’s like soo dirty, right?”  It just dumbfounds me.  When you look at it and you can see soap scum or dirt or something like that, yes, it is dirty.  But somehow the girls just know when anything in the kitchen, bathroom, utility room, closet, drawers, under the bed, inside my nightstand, etc. is starting to get close to possibly in the next month or so potentially needing to be cleaned because it is kinda dirty.
I digress.
Back to the point of the post for today.  I believe that this first year (so far mind you) has been the best.  I don’t wanna just speak for us, but I have talked to other newly weds that have said the same thing.  One of them just yesterday.  Don’t get me wrong.  There have been difficult things.  But those for the most part seemed to be outside issues that we would have had to deal with sooner or later without each other.  We have dealt with finances, looking for jobs, quiting jobs, dealing with stupid people, health issues, surgeries, car problems, buying new-to-us cars, getting married, etc.  Those are probably the things that we have gone through that have been the most difficult.  Sooner or later those things are still going to happen to us, but dealing with them during marriage, to me, seems to be even better because we constantly have someone to lean on.  You can’t beat that.  This past year or so of our relationship has brought us closer together than anything I could have planned (other than moving away forever to an island so beautiful, with perfect surfing waves, amazing sand, crystal clear water, indoor plumbing, a shower, satellite TV and fast internet).
I have recently started reading blogs from other young relatively newly married couples and they seem to be the same way.  Is that just a misconception?  Do we just try to hide those things from everyone else?  I don’t know.  I’m new at this.  I still tell my buddies when the wifey is mad at me…in front of her.  We still have disagreements…well, I should probably say, we still have times that she is upset with me because I respond to something as a stupid guy and not a sensitive husband.  But we always seem to get past it.
If in some crazy way we look back in 10, 20, 50 years and say wow, everything has gotten better every single year since then and now we can say that the first year of marriage was our least favorite because of all the years that have followed, then I will be cool with the phrase.  Until then, I hope I don’t agree with it at all.

Patience

July 23, 2008 in Semi Serious In Nature,Spiritual with Respond Now!

So I’m told patience is a virtue.  It’s an easy thing to tell someone, “well you just need to be patient.”  I have always thought of myself as a pretty patient person when it comes to life issues (exluding morons on the road that can’t drive or people that are waiting in line just like you when you are asking the subway sandwich maker what comes on a sandwich or idiots that feel like they have to beat you to a parking spot when you are actually leaving and not parking…these people I have no patience for).  But sometimes waiting on the Lord is hard.  As my wife and I have dealt with several difficult situations over the past year or so, we have to continue hanging on to verses like Romans 5:3-4.  In the end, I think we always have to know that our God has so much more planned for us than we can ever imagine.  Anything we can come up with, He can easily blow out of the water.  I like that.

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