On Life

If you don’t pitch a fit every once and a while, are you truly alive?  You go through life, and nothing makes you really happy or really sad, or really mad?

The only way I know is not to care.  Don’t have skin in the game.  Stay where it’s safe.

I don’t want to be like that.  I want to take sides.  Believe in something.

Here’s to pitching a fit, whether you’re right or wrong.

Oh, yeah, How ’bout Them Dawgs!!!

If you don’t know me by now

“Disappointments are inevitable, discouragement is a choice”.

That quote was heavy on my mind, as I navigated the truck from Columbia back to Loganville.  As I worked my way through the Kubler-Ross Model, I admit that I lingered on step 2 for quite a while.

Throughout my life, I’ve kept so many sayings, quotes, and stories that I often lose attribution, who said that?

What I have learned in the past shapes the person I will be in the future, so it is in these crossroad moments of disappointment, that I make choices to heed the learnings or ignore the learnings.  My capacity for “breaking bad” is high.

Finally, I confronted step 4 and that saying popped in my mind: “Disappointments are inevitable, discouragement is a choice”.  The choice was obvious for me: I won’t get discouraged.

This morning I googled the saying to get who said it.  Wow #20!.  The bread cast out over the waters has come back.

In my bible study this morning, a Spurgeon devotional:

When we sail in Christ’s company, we may not make sure of fair weather, for great storms may toss the vessel which carries the Lord himself, and we must not expect to find the sea less boisterous around our little boat. If we go with Jesus we must be content to fare as he fares; and when the waves are rough to him, they will be rough to us. It is by tempest and tossing that we shall come to land, as he did before us.- Spurgeon

And now I have another story in my head, waiting to console me, at the next inevitable disappointment.

A testimony

It is comforting to read other’s testimonies that are like my own:

That’s because, for the last 35 years – whether in pain, suffering, joy, or jubilation, it makes no difference – I have known there was a purpose. I have known that I belong to Christ and that I am here on earth to advance His Kingdom.

 

Chuck Colson Reflects On His Conversion

Published August 25, 2008 Uncategorized 6 Comments

From an email:

Thirty-Five Years in the Light: Reflections on My Conversion
(by Chuck Colson, August 12, 2008)

A lot of people have asked me what I think about when I remember back to that hot, humid August night in 1973 when Tom Phillips, then the president of the Raytheon Company, witnessed to me in his home. I left his house that night shaken by the words he had read from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity about pride. It felt as if Lewis were writing about me, former Marine captain, Special Counsel to the President of the United States, now in the midst of the Watergate scandal. I had an overwhelming sense that I was unclean.

After talking to Tom, I found that when I got to the automobile to drive away, I couldn’t. I was crying too hard – and I was not one to ever cry. I spent an hour calling out to God. I did not even know the right words. I simply knew that I wanted Him. And I knew for certain that the God who created the universe heard my cry.

From the next morning to this day, I have never looked back. I can honestly say that the worst day of the last 35 years has been better than the best days of the 41 years that preceded it. That’s a pretty bold statement, given my time in prison, three major surgeries, and two kids with cancer at the same time, but it is absolutely true.

That’s because, for the last 35 years – whether in pain, suffering, joy, or jubilation, it makes no difference – I have known there was a purpose. I have known that I belong to Christ and that I am here on earth to advance His Kingdom.

Would I have ever known that if Tom had not witnessed to me?

The reason I visited Tom that fateful night was that I was coming back to his company as counsel. But before he met with me, Tom prayed about how he should treat me. After all, here was his lawyer, mixed up in the Watergate affair. Tom later told me that God spoke to him: “Tell Chuck Colson about me, because he needs a friend.” God was certainly right! I was as desperate and lonely as a man could be.

But get this: Never before in Tom Phillips’s life had God told him to share the Gospel. Never before had he done so.

But in total obedience, Tom followed God’s lead, and the result? A ministry that now spreads all around the world to 114 countries, tens of thousands of men and women coming out of prison being redeemed by the blood of Christ, and then finding their place in community; and the whole Church being sensitized to the needs of the least of these in our midst.

I also wonder what might have happened to me, personally, had I not encountered the living God that night or some other time. I do not really think I would be alive today. Before my conversion I drank, partied, and smoked heavily. I do not think I would be seeing my 77th birthday, which I will this October.

And if I managed somehow to survive the high-powered party life in Washington among the rich, famous, and powerful, I would have been so miserable I don’t think I could have lived with myself. If I did not know for sure that the God who created us sent His Son to die on a cross that my sins might be forgiven, I would have long ago suffocated in the stench of my own sin.

So how do you celebrate 35 years as a Christian? By recommitting yourself to use every available moment, every ounce of energy, in service of the King. For what He has done for me, how could I ever do less?

For your comfort

Psalm 91

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.[a]
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
    my God, in whom I trust.”

Surely he will save you
    from the fowler’s snare
    and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
You will not fear the terror of night,
    nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
    nor the plague that destroys at midday.
A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
You will only observe with your eyes
    and see the punishment of the wicked.

If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
    and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
    no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
    you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

14 “Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
    I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble,
    I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.”

Ok, now here is my evangelical moment.

You have Isaiah: because of your sins, he does not hear you

You have Revelations: whomsoever will

Without the revelation, you don’t get the promises of Psalm 91, right?