I asked a question a couple of days ago and invited all of you to participate.  The response was not overwhelming and I kind of expected that.  The question, while simple, was a decidedly hard one to answer.  Not because most of us do not know the answer but because we are not that willing to share it.  The question was, “What is wrong with you?”

The simple facts surrounding the answer to this question is that most of us are unwilling to share with others what we feel are our deficiencies, flaws or defects.  And there are some who do not even recognize that they have any.  I know that I do and I also believe when we wake up to the fact that we have these shortcomings, we can begin to deal with them.  Further, I believe when we are transparent about them, when we share them with others in our Kingdom family, we can not only find help in dealing with them but we will find out we can help someone also.  A lot of us might think we are the only ones dealing with a certain flaw.  That is not so.  We all have them and there are a lot more of us than there are flaws.  So someone out there has the same problem that you and I have.

I am going to share one of my own here.  I am at times too confrontational.  I sometimes feel that I do not come across as the loving person that I want to become known as.  I teach a couple of classes a week at my church and I am sometimes too direct and always very plain spoken.  I might occasionally use a “big” word but it is usually because I am trying to incorporate it into my speech.  It is not to impress and definitely not to confuse.  If there is one thing I want it is that I want everyone to understand or “get” what I am saying.

I am also passionate about the things of God.  I get loud and even heated sometimes even when there is no one arguing, disagreeing, or even talking for that matter.  And I have told my class many times that I don’t care.

When I say those words, I don’t care, my wife hates it.  She is the one that cares about me the most and she does not ever want anyone to think less of me or see me in a negative light.  And I just don’t care.  She has scolded me and offered suggestions for better ways to say what I mean such as “it doesn’t matter.”  And believe me, I have tried.  But it doesn’t matter because I don’t care.

No one has to say anything to me to get me to declare this and it is not what you may think.  I blurt out those words when I think that some might have an objection to what I am saying.  I also use them when I am describing something a well known theologian or an early church father has said and I believe they are wrong.  An example would be; I don’t care what John Calvin concluded, God is not some sovereign, unloving toymaker in the sky remotely causing every act that people perpetrate on this planet.

Sure, it doesn’t matter might sound better in this instance but is there really any difference.  I don’t think so and I don’t really care if there is.  I am blunt sometimes, to the point and even a little hurtful.  I wish I wasn’t.  I have a friend, Shannon, that seems to be able to respond in a way that is not confrontational to everything and everyone.  He can comment about things that I know are directly opposite of what he believes in a way that lets you know he disagrees but you still come away with a smile.  With me it is probably a frown.

One of my flaws that I am working on is to be less confrontational and to not be quite as blunt as I am.  I am not overly concerned about this though because of one thing.  That is that my Lord and King could be blunt at times to.  I believe Jesus did not really care about Peter’s feelings when He said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” in Mark 8:33.  Or at least it didn’t matter.

Even if this is a flaw that I have, a defect in my speaking technique, it is something that I can live with while I try to change.  And as Jesus demonstrates, sometimes we just have to not care whether feelings are hurt when eternity is at stake.

When I am teaching or discussing the things that pertain to the Kingdom and I say that I don’t care it is actually because I do care.

Love you all

“It’s a sanctuary where they don’t get shot, they don’t get stabbed, they don’t have to worry about somebody trying to sell them drugs.”

Can you guess who made this statement?  The man who said this and is the one behind the “school of rock” that it references also wrote and sang the following lyrics:

Welcome to my nightmare
I think you’re gonna like it
I think you’re gonna feel that you belong…

He is also known for his horrific theatrics in the performance of his shock rock shows.  Songs about necrophilia and tearing apart baby dolls, snakes and spiders, lots of fake blood and torture; all of these made many parents pray their kids would not listen or see this man perform in the seventies.

But now that man is praying with us.  He is a brother in Christ and has been since the eighties.  I remember hearing about it back then and thinking he had sold out.  His music changed a little (most of you would not recognize it but promiscuous sex, alcohol, satanic glorification, and others are not a part of his show or songs) and he started performing less.

Alice Cooper, yes that is who I said, Alice Cooper teaches a Wednesday night class at his church, has never cheated on his wife of 32 years, has three children, loves golf and is pretty good at winning for charity, and in 1995 started the Solid Rock Foundation which provides money for children’s causes and Christian student scholarships.  He also conceived and initiated The Rock which is a 20,000-square-foot recreational hall on the urban campus of Grand Canyon University. It will be open to children 12 to 18 at no charge; the prime target is at-risk teens, whose parents may be in jail or on drugs, and whose brothers are thugs.

Cooper says alcohol and tobacco will be banned at The Rock. There won’t be a chapel, but counselors will proselytize by example and offer religious guidance to kids who want to learn about the faith.  He says, “We are overtly Christian, but we’re not going to beat you over the head with a Bible.”

Praise God for using any and all of us who are willing.  I so wish that we would learn to stop judging and leaping to conclusions about people because of what they look like or do.  Coopers shows are still bloody, ghoulish and sometimes shocking.  But read some Shakespeare if you think this is new.  He is not a “Christian celebrity” but is open about his faith and wants the focus to be on Christ and not on Alice.

If Alice Cooper had cut his hair, quit performing and singing, and had started a church like a lot of us would have wanted and a lot did, in the eighties, he probably would not be relevant at all today.

Serve where you are.  Be who you are.  God wants you for these very reasons.

Love you all

Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock

“You sure clean up nice.” 

Ever had that said to you?  I have and if you haven’t you have probably heard it or even said it yourself.  In my case, there are some people that have never seen me except when I am installing cabinets.  I can definitely say that I do look a little different when I go to church, or even out to eat. 

But I am not different.  I am the same person with sweaty, sawdust encrusted work clothes that I am when I have a suit and tie on.  You would probably rather be around me in the suit though. 

We look like different people sometimes due to the clothes we put on.  People do have a tendency to evaluate our worthiness based on what we wear; or to go deeper, in our outer appearance.  Is this fair? 

No, it is not.  As I said, what I wear has no bearing on who I am.  How someone perceives me also has no bearing on who I am either.  Therefore it is okay to wear what I want, do what I want, and look like whatever I want.  Right? 

Wrong.  We are to be examples.  As I said and as you probably know from personal experience, some people have, or get, a wrong opinion about us.  And that does nothing to advance the Kingdom.  When I hear a Christian say that they can just do whatever they want I am saddened.  There are a lot of people watching us that are lost and serving the enemy.  A lot of people that might just be persuaded to look at joining us, if we looked any different than they do. 

I read the book of Titus tonight.  There is a lot of information that Paul gives us in this book about how we should look, to the world.  If you haven’t read it lately, please do so.  But I want to pull out a couple of verses.

Tit 2:7  in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified,

Tit 2:8  sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.

Show yourself to be an example…so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.

This is simply more warfare strategy.  I am not sure if Paul is talking about the enemy of our soul or just about the deceivers he mentioned before these verses.  Either way, when we put any true opponent to shame, and limit the bad they can say about us, we have won a small battle for the Kingdom. Our enemy is all about discrediting us.  

As Christians we sometimes wear the wrong clothes.  We sometimes look just like the world around us.  We should stand out. 

Once when I was in the US Army, stationed in Tacoma Washington, there was a gang that was targeting soldiers.  They had beaten a couple of soldiers bad enough to put them in the hospital.  Our commander warned us to not wear our uniforms off base, if we would be alone. He told us that discretion would be the better part of valor. 

Soldiers also wear camouflage in battle to hide or blend in.  But we are soldiers in another army.  We are soldiers in the Army of God.  Jesus never said to be discreet.  Instead boldness is the very way we do battle.  And our uniform can never blend in because it is pure white.

Act 4:31  And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.

Rev 3:5  ‘He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.

Rev 19:14  And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses.

Are you wearing your uniform?

Love you all

Psa 139:14  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. ESV

I work in construction; cabinet sales, design and installation; and before this year started I was overwhelmed with more work than I could stand, almost.  It was financially rewarding but temporally taxing.  I had no time to do much more than work and go to church.  I had no clue what a blog was. 

Then the work came to almost a screeching halt.  A lot of people in the construction industry are not doing too well right now. Please pray with us and for us.

But that is not what I want to write about.  It is simply that I have quite a bit more time on my hands and this is how I started finding blogs and forums and online communities.  At first it was not that interesting to me.  People writing about politics and sports, their families and pets, and a vast array of other topics, didn’t hold my interest very long.  Then I found a site called Evangelical Outpost and I read quite a bit of its archives.  I was hooked.  Then I found some others like Parchment and Pen and Theologica.  All of these led to more than I could keep up with.  It made me want to write.

You see, I love talking about God.  What Jesus did for me is just so amazingly mind boggling that I can’t shut up.  So, since I spend more time alone than with people, this is an excellent way to keep me from just talking to myself or to God about Himself.  Although, that has been quite rewarding itself.  But God does want us to do the work He has left us to do.  To fight the battles that are before us.  This is just one of the ways I am following His orders.   

But there was a big problem.  I didn’t feel like I could possibly have any impact.  I wanted to have the writing skill that my brother in Christ, Shannon Mimbs, has.  I wanted to reflect the deep insight I detect in the posts of Dan at Cerulean Sanctum.  I didn’t want to make spelling or grammatical errors that would be out there for all the world to see.  (Like that might happen)  But finally, and I truly believe God told me this, I realized that it didn’t matter.  I was not supposed to be any of those others. 

David wrote the passage in the Psalms that I used above, and it applies to us all.  You and I were fearfully and wonderfully made.  We are precious in the eyes of God.  (1Pe 2:4)  Each and every one of us has a role to play, a part to do, a mission to accomplish.  (Eph 4:16)  We all have been given gifts to use in service to one another.  (1Pe 4:10) We are unique, one of a kind, and this is how God made us. 

We appraise and valuate a thing based on a few criteria.  A gem will be worth more if it is rare and or unique.  Gold’s valuation is determined on its scarcity and beauty.  An original piece of art is worth so much more than the best copy.  It has always amazed me that a forgery of art that is so good it may not be detected for years, once it is exposed, becomes worthless.  Copies are not worth a thing.  Even if almost perfect. 

So I don’t need to be you.  And you don’t need to be me.  We are the way we are and with the help of the Holy Spirit, any changes that need to be made will be.  But His mission is not to change me into you, it is to change me into a better me. 

All of my brothers and sisters rejoice in who you are, in who God made you to be.  You are precious to God and He wants to use you.  Use the gifts and abilities He has given to you. 

Don’t waste time trying to be someone else or envying their gifting and wasting yours. 

Love you all