A New Favorite Added To My Collection

I know that this is a bit of a break, but I need to post about my latest favorite movie. It isn't Spartacus. It isn't Gladiator. It isn't even Braveheart, although I love that one. No, it's... Wall-E. I can hear the "What?!" from here. Yes, Wall-E. Why would I pick this movie? I guess it's because it's a great film and I can deeply relate to it.

Wall-E is someone who soldiers on in an incredible task, even when the work couldn't possibly be done by him. Perhaps he goes by faith that it will all be worth it, or maybe he just finds pleasure in doing a job. I understand both. He replaces his worn out parts, much like I want to, in order to keep going. He finds comfort in the little idiosyncrasies and odd little interests in life.

Then, the woman of his dreams shows up, and he's smitten. I'm still smitten, even after 16 years. He lets her into his life and he loves her, taking risks for her, even if there's no gain for him, although I've found the opposite. Later, he finds more purpose in her "Directive" than he even finds in his own survival. He values Ev-ah's mission that ultimately gives people a glimpse of what life can be (the plant). Like the captain says, "I don't want to survive. I want to live!" I want people to find life in Christ, and that is worth facing my own demise.

That and flying through space with a fire extinguisher looks pretty cool too.

I may be looking at an ocean when the world sees a pond, but I get a lot out of this kids movie because I'm still a kid in so many ways.

A Father's Words To His Son

Yesterday evening, I made a mistake. I flat out sinned. I let my anger about my disability boil over and I yelled at my 10 year-old son, who didn't feel like helping out with an extra chore before bed. Whatever he did, he did not deserve the angry words that I let out of my mouth. The moment they were out, I wanted them back. Watching my brave boy fighting the tears, my anger crumbled and I could see that I had just wounded my son's heart. Anything else quickly faded away as I realized that I must immediately reverse course and begin to rebuild my connection to my son.

I reached out by saying, "Oh son, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that." That was a beginning, but he needed much more. "What I said was wrong. That's not my heart towards you! I love you and I treasure you!" I said. Addressing the spiritual component, I prayed in repentance, "God, please forgive me for hurting your son," --he and I are both kid brothers of Jesus Christ-- "and for wounding his heart. Please bring healing and help me not to do that again." Hot tears flowed and slowly we were on the mend.

This is all to say that I am another human failing and in need of a "Successor," and that any wisdom I've shown is God working through me, not me being some kind of an uber-dad. The above also tempers the following, which is an open letter to my son that I read to him about a week ago. Dads, please feel free to take this letter as a basis for your own to pass on to your sons and daughters.*

Dear [son],

Every day of my time with you, I have tried to live my life as an example of the man I hope you will be someday. While one letter won’t make a huge difference in this, I hope it does pass on some of the stuff I might have missed saying to you, some of the things we just don’t talk about from day to day. In this letter, I hope to go over the things I’ve learned through experience, and maybe some of the stuff I knew but didn’t fully realize how important that stuff really was.

For example, I didn’t realize that a person’s life is shaped by the little choices they make every day as much as it is by the big decisions like what you will do for a career, where you will live, and so on. The little choices that you make, the mundane and overlooked ones, such as what you’ll have for lunch today, what you’ll buy, or how you treat your friend, will have a cumulative effect, one so powerful that it can limit or even eliminate your options in a big decision you want to make.

Speaking of big decisions, there is none greater than who you will marry. You can be successful in every other area of your life, and it can all be poisoned by a difficult marriage. How will you know who to marry? We will go over a lot of that together in the next few years, as well as making you ready for your future wife. However, I know of one test that will help you know for sure if she is the one. The people who know you best, the people who can be honest, will know if she is the one for you. These people will have known you for several years and they will need to get to know her. Trust their advice! On the other hand, if you don’t have any of these people in your life, maybe you are too detached to be thinking about getting married. If that’s the case, it’s better to slow things down, put down some roots, and start rebuilding friendships you can rely on.

I’ve told you often that relationships are what life is all about. If your relationships are good, then everything else in your life can go wrong, and you will still be okay. Having the right people on your team truly is make-or-break. Here are some good qualities to find in friends: wisdom, honesty, loyalty, godliness, graciousness, patience, and compassion. A lot of these are found in 1 Corinthians 13. If God blesses you, you may have maybe three or four friends over your lifetime that embody all of these traits. Hold onto them! If you’re having trouble finding friends like this, make sure you are already showing these traits in your own life. Be a friend to gain a friend. It’s true that “birds of a feather flock together,” and people will be naturally attracted to others with the same traits.

Be careful about friendships with the opposite sex. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have them, but I am saying they require extra care. What may exist in your mind as a perfectly legitimate friendship may be entirely different on her side. Do not be careless with other people’s hearts.

Perhaps the biggest risk I have taken in raising you is that I have intentionally avoided things which might have scarred or put blisters and calluses on your heart. Because of that, I have some specific advice for you. The world runs on rules that, even if we don’t live by them, we have to be mindful of. The first of which is that the material world in which we live functions on money. Everything you see, hear, taste, smell, or feel, everything is related to money. The ground you walk on, the air you breathe, and the food you eat are all for sale. And, they can all be purchased by someone other than you. Everything material has a price tag. Despite all of this, do not let the material things replace the immaterial things, such as love, respect and the human heart.

On your birthday, I was the first to hold you besides the doctors and nurses. I consider that a great honor. When you hold your own child, you will become a father, and there is something mystical, wonderful and miraculous that goes on in your heart that day. It switches from “my wife and I,” to “we.” Your fatherly instincts kick in, and you know you would move heaven and earth if they were in the way of your little child. A father will do anything he can to preserve his child from harm. This instinct is something you must experience to fully understand.

Remember that this world is broken. It was broken more than 5000 years ago. It will still be broken when we die. The only thing that will change all that is the “in the flesh” return of Jesus Christ. Only God can repair all the damage that sin has done to this world. When He does, the only things that we will have left are the relationships around us. The Kingdom of Heaven is all about relationships. Live in that reality!

Son, there will likely be other letters, other times when we will talk, just like we did recently. I want to give you these tools and tricks of the trade of Fatherhood, just like I would hand you my tool box someday and let you go out into the world. Put these things in your own children’s toolboxes, and you could be as happy and content as I am today.

Finally, Son, if it’s not apparent by now, I want you to know that I truly love you as my son. There is nothing you can do to change that fact, and I promise I will continue to love you as long as I live and for eternity. You are my son, and I couldn’t be prouder of you.

Sincerely,

Your Dad

There it is. That's my open letter. I promised it over a month ago and yes! I actually delivered! Thanks, God.

This post is incredibly long, but let me close out with this. If there are any fathers (or sons) who want prayer for their relationship to be healed or restored, please leave a comment. I know that there are others with me on this blog who would be willing to pray for you.












*Please note that this offer does not release rights to the letter, in whole or in part, for any other kind of redistribution including publication. All copyrights still apply.

Life And Death

In case you missed your memo from the ACLU, tomorrow, March 10th, is National Thank Your Abortion Provider Day. I'm not kidding. One week before the celebration of St. Patrick's Day, a Catholic saint, we have a celebration of death and destruction.

I'm trying to keep from being physically sick here.

If we're really going to celebrate death, why not a Jack Kevorkian day, or a 6 day long celebration of the Jewish Holocaust, one for every million people that Hitler killed? If we were to get really Malthusian about it, we could even give money to people that succeed in committing suicide during those days. That might seem too close to Muslim extremism, though. Wait a minute! Those guys kill lots of people. Like abortionists, these guys should have their own day too.

Forgive my sarcasm. This isn't about rights, people. It's about lives being cut apart and dismantled inside a mother's womb. What should be the safest place on earth is the most dangerous. Tell me that Satan isn't pleased by this twisted corrupting of creation. It should be mourned in the extreme, not celebrated.

God said to us long ago, "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." Choose Life. It's such a simple and natural directive. How long will we choose death and thank the executioner? How long?

More information and help:

• Silent No More USA
• SNMAC's effort to turn March 10th on it's head
• Heartbeat International - pro-life pregnancy centers

And some original artwork with a point:

Twitty Observation

I'm a twit. My heart is a-twitter. There really is no good way to say that I'm tweeting lately. My latest tweet was actually quite good, but not fully developed. It should have said, "If I live by the pen, and the pen is mightier than the sword, then if those who live by the sword also die by the sword, then am I living dangerously?" Yikes! It's the attack of the aphorisms! Maybe I should wear my pithy helmet before I tweet.

I don't even know if the tweet has a logical conclusion. It's one of the dangers of twitter. You start off with the notion, develop the thought and by the time you've put half of it into the twitter box, it's a blinkin' blog post. One of my followers said it best when she said that to be a successful twitter-er, you have to be succinct, which--she says--she is not.

Ditto... I think.

Examining the Scriptures - James 1: Part 1 - Trials & Temptations

The first chapter of James (NIV, NAS, MSG) is one of those landmark passages in the Bible that exposes much about the Christian life. Many Christians can find themselves nodding when they read James because they know exactly what he's talking about. They have lived it because, as Hebrews 8 says, God has written His law on their hearts. It is a chapter with something in it for every Christian, and that's why I want to examine it here on my blog.

1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings.

James is writing to his fellow Christian Jews. They share the commonality of the old covenant and the fledgling faith in the new covenant. What stands out to me is that James isn't standing on his credentials here. He simply writes that he's a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't need to emphasize his experience or his education. He is simply a servant.

Trials and Temptations
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James starts his letter off with a bang! This is something that probably knocked the scribe off his perch when he first read it. Instead of crying foul and singing the blues over persecution and "trials of many kinds," James goes the other direction entirely. He doesn't just say to be willing to go through it, not just "don't worry, be happy." He says to consider it pure joy! Be as happy as you can be that you're going through a horrible time, because it makes your faith real. Like a muscle, faith has to be exercised to be useful. The more you exercise your faith, the stronger it becomes.

Anyone who has exercised knows that building up muscle is painful and difficult to put up with. Moreover, I've climbed mountains, and I know that only the most conditioned, seasoned veterans can make a serious effort to conquer Everest. The training takes years of work, but candidates for the climb endure it willingly because they want to be ready and able to go. They work to have the endurance to make it to the top. They have put in so many hours strengthening their bodies to endure the greatest challenge in climbing.

Unlike the Everest hopeful, however, the Christian exercising their faith does not have an summit in mind. Instead, James offers a mature and complete faith as the goal for the Christian, being ready for anything that comes. Our perception is extremely limited, and we are in no position to declare, "At last, I've arrived!" The moment we do, it's our undoing because either we let go of the training or we allow pride to set us up for a fall. This is why James immediately advises going to God for wisdom. Wisdom guards the Christian against these mistakes.

5 If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6 But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

Faith leads to believing that God can do what He offers and promises. Doubt is essentially anti-faith. Where faith says, "I believe," doubt says, "I disbelieve." So those who believe in God need to go all-or-nothing. You can't have two minds about anything in life and expect to go anywhere or do anything of consequence. Someone like that will not make use of any gift he is given. God, Who knows our thoughts, won't give what won't be used.

Solomon is a great example. When God offered Solomon anything, he asked only for wisdom, and God greatly blessed him. Solomon would later make great use of the gift. Here the offer of wisdom from God extends to everyone in the faith. This is not the worldly wisdom, the cover-your-tail, get-all-you-can and can-all-you-get wisdom. It is godly wisdom that does not go forward in spite of the supernatural, it goes forward embracing the supernatural. It looks beyond the temporary illusion of this life toward the eternal, lasting and real. James illustrates to this transcendent wisdom in the next few verses.

9 The brother in humble circumstances ought to take pride in his high position. 10 But the one who is rich should take pride in his low position, because he will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business.

Christians can make the error of believing that riches are a sign that God approves of a person's heart. On the other hand, we can also mistakenly believe that only the poor can be spiritual. James makes the point that riches and poverty are not good or evil of themselves, but each offers its own opportunity to move forward in the faith. The poor Christian develops faith by relying on God for daily providence and the rich Christian develops faith by looking beyond temporary riches and seeking God's eternal glory.

If it isn't good or evil, why does James link the poor with high position and the rich with low position? It seems that he is taking Matthew 23:12 into account when Jesus said, "Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." James views his world with the topsy-turvy glasses of the Kingdom and uses the irony of high vs. low to emphasize the difference between worldly and Kingdom perspectives.

James ties it all together in the last verse here,

12 Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

That is the result of our goal! We will have "arrived" only when we receive that crown of life. God makes the award to us when our time is over and we have completed the test. He is the ultimate judge and only He can give something that is eternal. Anything man gives is temporary. Even that Awana award you may have earned in the 5th grade is landfill material. The lasting, eternal award of life is what we truly crave, and we only get it when we've stood the test.

13 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

James is trying to help us understand that while God allows us to be tested, He does not do the temptation. The desires of our hearts drag us away from God and entice us to sin. He doesn't point out Satan as the source of temptation, as dualism would have us believe. No, Satan is an accessory to the crime, not necessary for sin to come forward.

Christians can be lead into a time of testing just like the testing the Spirit led Jesus to face. Jesus had to stare down the darkest desires of His fully human heart and steadfastly resist those desires using the Word of God. He did not use his human strength, but God's strength, to resist the desire. Verse 15 paints a picture that every farmer, shepherd or parent can understand. Desire conceives sin and gives birth to it, and once sin itself is fully developed, it gives birth to death. Sin is something that seems good at the time, but when it plays out, yields death to the user. It's also necessary to point out that having desires is not sinful, but the act of entertaining those desires allows sin to be conceived. We are not sinful for having human desires for power, sex, money, etc. It is when we pay attention to those desires, when we feed and nurture those desires that we blunder forward into sin. Temptation toward death can't come from the same source as the source of life. Instead of God tempting us, God gives us gifts that lead toward life and love.

16 Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of all he created.

The same God who created the sun is unchanging and constant, in other words, completely unlike the Greek gods of the time who saturated Mediterranean culture. Greek gods were capricious and arbitrary in their dealings with men. Instead, God persists in giving life to us, re-birthing us from death to life through the Gospel, making us the forerunners, the standard-bearers of the new heaven and new earth, crowned with this new life.

Stay tuned for part 2