The same goes for understanding Jesus.  He won’t make a lot of sense unless you have the proper eye wear (or in this case eyes).  Before seeing a blurry, unintelligible Jesus and then proclaiming that He doesn’t make sense or that you don’t believe in Him, ask for the spiritual glasses it takes to see Him clearly.  Because when you, do it makes all the difference.

I had a discussion with a guy about Christianity and this issue was his main beef.  He had a major problem buying into something that taught that women should be silent and submissive in all things and that men should be domineering, dictatorial leaders.  Here is the thing.  I have a major problem with his description too and I think it is a misconception about the Bible’s teaching on roles in marriage that needs to be addressed.  Both insiders and outsiders hold this misconception and so we must go back to the Bible to see what it says before we define these roles.

Eph. 5:22 – 30

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.  Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.  In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself.  For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

Col. 3:18 -19

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.  Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.

Husbands

Let me focus on the husbands first as I think that a clearer understanding of their role makes understanding the role of the wives easier.

There is a constant parallel drawn in scripture between the way a husband should lead and the way Christ led.  I don’t think anyone could argue that Christ led with a puffed out chest.  It says in Eph. 5 that husbands should love their wives as Christ love the church and gave himself up.  This is not a selfish kind of leadership.  In fact it is sacrificial love that is evident here.

Here is my summary: a husband should lead in such a way that would best serve his wife. Not selfishly.  Not dictatorially.  Not harshly.  Instead we husbands should be thinking first about our wives.  We should cherish them as we do our own bodies.  We shouldn’t lead in a way that best serves us.  We should lead in a way that serves them, laying ourselves down.

This kind of leadership starts with submission to God.  It is not something a person can call forth from themselves.  If a man is to lead he must learn his proper place before God.  A tough thing to do for sure but none of this will work if you aren’t in submission to God.

Something else, husbands.  If we are to love our wives as we do our own bodies we should listen to them.  They have valuable input to give.  What man puts his hand on a burner, hears his body tell him that he should move it, and then leaves it there as the smoke rises from the skin?  If we are to love them as our own bodies then we need to listen to them to know how to best serve them.

Wives

“Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”  The question we must answer if we are to see how this submission looks is how do we submit to the Lord?  Or why do we submit to the Lord?  We submit ourselves to Christ because we trust Him.  We trust our lives to him.  So even when we aren’t completely sure of the outcome of a situation we trust that He has our best interest at heart.  Not necessarily our happiness, but our ultimate well-being.

Let me tell you, that scares the snot out of me.  Knowing that I have to live up to that standard.  So it is not something I take lightly.  At all!  But the scariest part is knowing that I can never succeed perfectly.  I have to trust that Christ will make up for my deficiencies.  Talk about humbling.

My wife’s submission needs to look like trust.  Trust that I am leading her in a way that best serves her. If you are trusting like this there is no reason to look out for number one because you know that someone else is looking out for you.  And fortunately (as I mentioned above) Christ will make up for my mistakes.  So trusting that Christ has your best at heart helps you in trusting your husband.

Wives, how many of you would like a husband you could trust to have your best interests at heart?  If he is leading in a biblical way then you should be able to.  Husbands, are you leading in a way that inspires trust in your wife?

Again, this role starts with submission to God first.  If submission to God is not present first the rest will be difficult if not impossible.  This starts (hopefully) before marriage.

What about a situation where the husband is not leading in a Christ-like manner?  1 Peter 3 tells us that a wife should still submit in hopes that her conduct will be seen by her husband and that this will point him to Christ.  This is not an easy one to swallow in today’s society but it does make sense.  It can be a very humbling thing for someone else to act right even when we are acting wrong.

Here is the kicker, I am human.  I make mistakes.  But if I do my best to approach every opportunity to lead my wife as an opportunity to serve her to the best of my ability the I am on the right track.  Perfect?  Not hardly.  And if my wife knows this about me she can trust that I am trying to lead in a loving way.

Yikes!  This got a bit long.  But it is important.  Comments?

Brian

Ps. 42:1-2

As a deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Ps. 63:1

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Since I have been in church my whole life I am far from ignorant of whom God is.  He is all satisfying.  He is thirst quenching.  Besides him there is nothing that is good and everything that is good flows from him.  I know these things.  I know them well.  But knowing is not enough.

I realized as I read those verses that I know that God is an all satisfying stream but that very rarely do I recognize myself as thirsty.  I very rarely see myself as in a “dry and weary land where there is no water”.   Instead I see myself in a land that has wonders aplenty and that satisfaction is but a debit card swipe away.

A good definition of insanity I have heard is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.  In that respect I am indeed insane. I keep going to the fountains of the world hoping to be satisfied only to find that they are spewing sand.  Maybe flavored sand but sand all the same.  Mmmmmm.  That sand tastes a little different from the last.  But it is still sand.  All the wonders of the world promise to quench my thirst but they all fail in the end.  And yet I keep going back to them.  Insanity.

But since I keep fluttering from one world-fountain to the next I get this feeling like I am satisfied.  Illusion of illusions.  And scary to boot.  So when I come to worship the Lord I recognize his awesome power but I don’t recognize that I am thirsty and that he is the only thing that could possibly eternally satisfy me.

What I need to realize is that I think I am satisfied on sand but I am not.  I am dying of thirst and in need of the living God.  I need his soul-quenching, heart-washing water to flood over me and satisfy me completely.  If a man dying of thirst realized that he was filling his mouth with sand when there was a spring of water welling up next to him would he still go to the sand?  Not if he realized that he was thirsty.

I need to know this: that I am dying of thirst every day and Christ is there every day to satisfy my thirst if I will but go to Him.  Nothing else will quench apart from the pure water that springs forth from God.  I run to him.  I can do nothing else.

Brian

Isaiah 55:1-2

Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk without price.  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?  Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in rich food.

As many of you know, I am an avid reader and watcher of movies. To be specific I am a story connoisseur.  It really doesn’t matter what the genre, if it has a compelling story driven by well-rounded characters I will enjoy it.  One thing I have noticed about stories is that most of them end happily.  That movie mentioned above wouldn’t be made.  We humans are hard-wired to want happy endings.  We want to see the characters in our fiction end their story on a happy note.

In the same way we are looking for happy endings in our own lives.  Do you remember being a kid and anticipating Christmas?  There was that one thing that if you got it your life would be whole and complete.  Then Christmas Day comes and you got it!  Happy ending.  We love to anticipate things and events and watch them come to pass.  Our lives are full of little stories and we want them all to end happy.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But some end up happy and some don’t.  When they don’t we move on as best we can and look toward the next happy ending.

Here is the rub.  Our lives can be full of small stories that end happily but when it comes to our life as a whole there is no other ending but a bad one.  We will all die.  Loved ones will be taken from us and we will all someday be taken from those we love on this earth.  So, ultimately, every one of our stories here will have a sad or bad ending.

So how do we reconcile these two things?  We all desire happy endings but all we will get is death on this earth.  And even when death is a relief it is still a bad ending.

Could it be that we were made to desire happy endings and that they were meant to be fulfilled?  But how is that when the only thing absolutely sure in life is death?

If we get a bad ending in life we look beyond that to our next story.  There is something bigger than that one event.  If all we did was focus on that one bad event we would be consumed with the fact that our life is pointless and  not fulfilling.  In the same way, if we look at the end of our life as the end of our story we could easily become depressed because we want the happy ending.  There must be a bigger story going on.

The reconciliation point between these two things is Jesus Christ.  If we try to solely fulfill ourselves here on this earth we will ultimately be dissatisfied.  Everything we work for will be lost when we die.  If instead we realize that our hope for a happy ending is with Christ then we have something glorious to look forward to.  We will get our happy ending in Christ.

If we look at the end of our life as the end of the story we will be disappointed.  If we look at the end of our life as just another ending in the bigger and better story of our eternity then our desire for a happy ending will be fulfilled.  We will have an eternity to be happy in Christ.

Death is not the end of the story.  If it is we have nothing to look forward to.  If Christ is our treasure then we have everything to look forward to.

When a death occurs around us we are briefly reminded of our mortality.  Oh yeah, my time here really is limited.  It’s amazing how easy it is to forget.  Usually we are so caught up in life that we don’t think about death.  Why think about the event that will end the life we love? Most people just avoid thinking about it altogether.  But maybe we should.  Maybe we should use the inevitability of our deaths in a positive way.

I don’t mean that we should live our lives obsessing about our deaths.  It should not dominate our thoughts.  But it should always be in the back of our brains motivating us to do things that matter.  That is deaths purpose in our everyday lives.  It is a motivator; a reminder that life is not permanent so we should use it like the precious resource that it is.  It should motivate us to live life as if tomorrow might not exist.

Thinking like this should motivate the believer in Christ even more.  Our time on this earth is short.  Eternity is not.  Everyone faces the same certainty of death.  Those who trust in Christ will go to be with Him and our lives should be about helping others know Him.

So, ponder your death but instead of letting it depress you let it motivate you to do great things with the life you have been given.  Find something worth dying for and live for it.

Brian

You walk in to a room full of smiling people in nice clothes.  Everyone loves Jesus.  You wonder why it is that you are struggling so much and everyone else appears to be three levels above you on the spiritual scale.  So you act like you are too.

Shouldn’t Christians be the most real people?  Why does it seem that, many times, they aren’t?  Christians should be the ones that realize they are really messed up.  If we aren’t, as many posture, what was the point of Jesus coming, dying, and rising again?  Didn’t Jesus say that, as a physician, he came for the broken and the sick?  People who are well don’t need a physician.  So when we act as if we aren’t hopelessly lost we are essentially saying that we don’t need Christ.

Am I saying that we should all walk around with droopy mouths and down on ourselves all the time?  Nope.  If we have our hope in Christ then we will have immeasurable joy.  But that joy doesn’t come from our perfection, ‘cause we aren’t perfect.  Instead, it comes from the grace that is poured out on us from Christ.  When we were enemies with God he showed us great love by offering us a way to him through his Son.  There is nothing that we could do to merit this.  It is a free gift.  That is the source of our joy, not our fake perfection. Acting perfect doesn’t work.  So quit.  If you are struggling then please don’t act like you aren’t.  One of the greatest joys in the Christian life comes from supporting those in need.  If we can’t see when someone is in need we can’t gather around them to encourage them.

Churches should not be the place that perfect people gather.  Instead it should be a place that people who understand their brokenness gather and share the joys and sorrows of their walk toward Christ.  Don’t put on a mask.  Put on Christ and realize that the reason you must do this is your imperfection.

Brian

When I went to file our taxes this year it turned out that we owed our lovely government some more cash. Under normal circumstances this would not be a huge deal. We have put ourselves in a situation where we have no debt (except our house) so we would have some extra cash around. Well, these are not normal circumstances. My wife is back in school and we are trying to keep ourselves out of debt by paying for it as we go. So our cash is pretty tight. We could pay the tax bill but it would have to come out of school money which would push that goal further back. We have also been following Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University so we had our emergency fund set up.

So the money could either come from our emergency fund (which would not get replenished for a while because of school costs) or we could take it out of the school money. Both of these were doable but neither was optimal.

I decided I would wait to pay the tax bill until I had to. We had about a month until the deadline. About a week later we got an envelope in the mail from our mortgage company. I had been waiting for this letter to come since last year. I was expecting a small drop in our mortgage payment since we had Homesteaded our house. Sure enough we got a drop in payment, but here is where we got to see the Lord’s had at work in our lives.

Along with the letter declaring our new payment there was a check. An escrow refund check. The amount of the check was two dollars over the amount of our tax bill! I couldn’t believe it (I don’t know why I should have doubted). The Lord had come through for us on our tax bill. It amazed me that even in a thing as piddly as our taxes, He cared. He cares for His children!

The point is this: God cares about the details. He may not always do what we want, but it will always be what we need. Every time. Sometimes it might not look like money, but you can trust that it will be what you need. Even in the details of life.

Brian

It helps me to visualize things in a way that is familiar to my everyday life.  In this case I visualized these occurrences (temptations to sin) as forks in the road of our lives.  We come to a place where the road we are on diverges; one leads north, the other leads south.  We stop and look.  To the south is a short road leading to what looks like pleasure (an idol).  To the north is the path we are on if we have trusted Christ.  It is the road that continues on toward God.

The choice is ours.  Do we take the shorter road to temporal pleasure?  Or do we continue on toward God and eternal reward?  It is a testing of our faith.  Do we really believe that pressing on toward God is better (as He promises it is)?  Or do we disbelieve Him and pursue the quick fix?

As we are about to make our decision we hear a voice call out quietly, “Do you love Me?” Do you ignore that voice and the promise you say you believe and walk toward the idol?  Or do you trust Him and walk in the way of righteousness?

The choice is yours and mine.  This is what it comes down to.  Do we love the one who created us and rescued us more?  Or do we love a quick pleasure more?  We know the truth, but do we believe it?  Which path do you take?

Brian

So what do shoes and evangelism have in common?  I suppose not much if they are just shoes.  Great shoes, however, have much to do with evangelism.  Actually, anything we find in our lives that we think is great has everything to do with evangelism.  Why?  Because if you find something that you feel has great value, you want to tell others about it.

How many of us have found the latest and greatest (fill in the blank) and proceeded to tell all of our friends, coworkers, neighbors, or anyone who will listen without walking away about that (fill in the blank)?  In my case, that (fill in the blank) is my Vibram FiveFinger shoes.  I have written all about them on my blog.  I have told countless people how great they are, why I use them, and why they should.

If we have come to know Christ as our all in all, our end all be all, our everything then shouldn’t our response be the same?  He is our hope, our salvation, our substitute.  He makes our relationship with the God who created the universe possible.  If we accept his sacrifice and, through His power, make our life’s goal to be like Him then we will go to an eternity with Him.  All joy is found in Him.  Everything we have comes from Him.  What greater thing do we have to tell others about?

Back to evangelism and shoes.  What did I learn?  I’ll tell you.

Know and Tell

Before I got my FiveFingers I did some reading on them.  Why are they beneficial?  Why should I use them?  After I purchased them I dug even deeper.  I liked them.  I was excited about them.  I researched the benefits.  I watched videos and read blogs.  And I will probably end up reading a book about the subject.

The same can be said about telling others about Christ.  Once we know Him we should be compelled to know Him MORE.  The knowledge that we gain from His word and from the Holy Spirit will equip us to tell others why He is so important in our lives.  We will want others to know what we do so that they can know Him too.

If I just got my shoes and didn’t know anything about them I would have nothing to tell people when they ask.  Someone might come up and say, “Hey, those are weird shoes.  Why do you have them?”  My response would be to shrug.  If someone asks why I follow Christ I need to be able to answer.  I need to know about Christ.

Different Attracts

When I wear my shoes around, I get weird looks and questions.  People want to know about them. Or they think I am strange.  Either way they see the shoes and have a response to them.

In the same way, our lives as Christians should look different to people who aren’t.  Christ changes people.  He has set us apart.  If we just blend in with those around us, what good are we?  I want people to see, through my actions and words, that Christ has changed me.  If they give me weird looks, that is fine.  If I love Christ the way I should it won’t matter how people look at me because I am satisfied in Him.  If they ask me questions that is an opportunity to tell them about the great hope I have in Christ.  Either way, I have put before people the thing I value most: Christ.

When we are sold on something we tell others about it.  There are no two ways about it.  Whatever your passion of the moment is, you tell people.  If you see a movie and walk out of the theater thinking that it was the greatest thing to ever grace the silver screen, you will tell people about it.  You were sold on it. Well, I want to be so sold on Christ that He just tumbles out of my life onto others around me.

Lord, help me do this.  And thanks for teaching me through shoes.

Danger: Spoilers lie ahead!

I love a movie with a good twist ending especially when it is one I couldn’t guess.  It makes a good movie great and makes subsequent viewings shine all the more as you pick out the foreshadowing to the ending.  This only works when the twist is well foreshadowed and adds depth to the rest of the film.  The Book of Eli accomplishes this with flying colors.

Throughout the movie we see Eli act like a normal person.  He engages in combat and seems very aware of what is going on around him.  So when we find out at the end of the movie that Eli is blind it makes you sit up and think.  But as you go back and think about situations he was in you realize that it makes sense.  For example, how does a blind man engage in a gun fight?  Eli has already proven through out the film that he can handle himself in combat and apparently he has been doing this for at least 30 years.  In the gun fight he doesn’t shoot anyone until they shoot at him.  He uses the sound of their gunshot to locate the person.

Another example of this is the first fight we see Eli engage in.  Just before the fight begins he backs into the deep shadows cast by a bridge.  On first viewing it seems like just a cool set piece for a fight scene to take place in.  In light of the twist we get a deeper meaning to it.  Eli doesn’t need light to fight but his attackers do.  So he is putting himself at an advantage.

Things like this exist throughout the movie pointing us toward the end so that when we get there and find out that he is blind we can think back on the movie and see how it all makes sense.  This is why I want to see the movie again.  Incredible!

Now on to the themes of the film.  Just to be clear I know that the allegories in this movie are not perfect but they do speak to great spiritual truths.

The Book of Eli does a great job of painting the human soul the way it really is: utterly sinful.  A popular notion in today’s society is that people are generally good or that everyone has some good in them.  The Book of Eli strips away any notion that people have any good in them. In a way it takes the nice face that society has allowed us to put on and show us who we are under that face.  We are all deceptive, ugly, and selfish at heart.

There is one man who is in contrast to this basal state everyone else is in.  The difference is the book he carries: the Bible  So it is his belief in the Word of God that sets him apart.  However he is not portrayed as a perfect man but as a sinful man who is in need of forgiveness.

So what is the importance of the Bible in this movie? After the war that made the world the desolate place it is people burned all the Bibles, blaming it’s teachings for the war and destruction.  The one Eli has in his possession is the last one as far as the viewer knows.  Eli’s mission is to get that Bible to an unknown destination (even to him).  This is where the theme of faith comes in.

Eli explains that God spoke to him, told him where to find the Bible, and then told him to go west and trust that he would make it to his destination.  Stepping out in faith, Eli does goes west.  For thirty years he goes west and God continually watches over him.

The theme of faith is punctuated at the end when we find out that Eli is blind and has been blind throughout the whole movie.  When this twist comes the whole film takes on a deeper meaning of faith.  He has been walking for thirty years blindly trusting that God would do what He said.  The faith exhibited by Eli is something that every Christian should hope for.

In contrast to Eli is Carnegie.  He wants the Bible as much as Eli wants to protect it but for different reasons.  He wants to use it as a weapon to gain power over people using belief as a tool to enslave them to his rule.  There are people like this in our world who attempt to use faith to secure power and we need to be aware of people like this.

Another spiritual parallel put forth is the idea of missions and discipleship.  At the end of the movie after Eli dies, Solara is given the opportunity to stay with the civilized humans.  Instead of choosing this easier option she opts to head back to where she came from, presumably to share the good news she learned from Eli.

The importance of scripture memory, or hiding God’s word in your heart, comes across as very important as well. Eli comes to a point when he must part with the book in order to save a life after realizing that he hasn’t been following what the book he carried taught.  But in the end he is able to deliver the entire book to its destination because he has memorized the whole thing.  This begs the question: what would you do if your Bible was taken from you?  We live in a time when this isn’t even a concern for anyone living in America.  I have several Bibles in my bookshelves but what would I have if they were taken from me?  Only what I had memorized.

Another thing the movie tries to highlight is how much we have.  When Eli is asked about the world before the event that destroyed it he responds with something like, “The things that people threw away then we kill for today.”  How much do we have and how blessed are we?  Sometimes it is a hard thing for me to truly know since this is what I have known my whole life.  But this movie is a good reminder and that is a good thing to have every now and again.

There may be people who disagree with me that this movie is worth watching to see the spiritual themes put forth because of the violence and worldliness present.  But at the same time we live in a world that is full of evil.  Do we ignore it or do we acknowledge that it exists?  I think that acknowledging it makes my faith in Christ sweeter.  It shows me what he has saved me from.  We need a good understanding of sin to see how great our salvation is and how beautiful Christ really is.

I have been aware that the people we see on magazine covers in the grocery store checkout lines are tweaked a bit.  I never really thought too much about it though until recently when I have seen several videos about the level of tweaking that goes on.  The end result (probably in more cases than not) is a flawless version of the person that showed up to the photo shoot.  Sad and scary.

Why am I writing about this?  Because I know that there are many women (and men) out there that base their expectations for themselves on these false images.  This will only lead to disappointment and/or depression based on a falsehood.  How tragic that there are women out there depressed that they can’t be the woman in the picture when the woman in the picture isn’t even real.

And even though many know this, they still buy into it.  Why do you think there is such a market for beauty products and fad diets? A quick Google search told me that approximately 100 billion is spent worldwide on beauty products, and that doesn’t even include cosmetic surgery.

The consumer isn’t the only one affected.  I would wager that the models on magazine covers must have severe self esteem issues.  They (supposedly being the most beautiful people) still need some photoshopping even after all the makeup, hair artists, and personal trainers get through with them.  Even they aren’t beautiful enough.  They must see themselves on a magazine cover and think, just like every other woman, “I wish I looked like the woman on the cover.”   So many people wish this but they don’t realize that the models themselves must wish it too.  And yet everyone buys the products and the diets trying to achieve the impossible: beauty that can only be achieved through a computer.  Beauty that isn’t real.

It frustrates me to no end that there are people out there telling my wife that she needs to try harder because she doesn’t look like the fake person on the cover of a magazine.

So, the question I always come to at the end of one of these posts is what do we do about it?  The images won’t stop coming.  The best answer I can give is to find affirmation in another place.

The pictures we see attest to the fact that we, as humans, want to see perfection.  We are trying to find it or give representation to it.  The truth is that we will never find it on our own.  We will always come up short.  We will always be able to look in the mirror and see fault.  But if we have this desire for the perfect and we can’t achieve it in ourselves where do we look?  To Christ.  He is perfection and promises us a future where He has perfected us if we will come to Him.  That perfection won’t come here and now on this earth, but it will come.

Why come to Christ and what does that look like?  When God created us He required that we honor him with our lives by living up to the standard He set.  Just like we can’t obtain the perfection provided by Photoshop we couldn’t live up to God’s standard so  He required payment instead.  Death is that payment.  So in our imperfection the only thing we can expect is death, and not just physical death, but spiritual death as well.

Fortunately, God had another plan.  He required payment in death and He sent Christ to die in our place as a perfect sacrifice on the cross so that if we accept that sacrifice and follow Him, God would pass over our sin and not require that spiritual death from us.  In essence he would Photoshop Jesus in over us. Good news, right?

One last thing to keep in mind: whose eyes are we trying to be perfect for?  The only one that matters is the God who created us.  And if we have come to Christ then God doesn’t see the imperfect us.  He sees Christ in our place.  And I can’t think of anything more beautiful.

Belief is not merely an agreement with facts in the head; it is also an appetite for God in the heart, which fastens on Jesus for satisfaction.  Eternal life is not give to people who merely think that Jesus is the Son of God.  It is given to people who drink from Jesus as the Son of God.  Unbelief is a turning away from God and his Son in order to seek satisfaction in other things.  Pride is a turning away from God specifically to take satisfaction in self.  Covetousness is turning away from God, usually to find satisfaction in things.  Lust is turning away from God to find satisfaction in sex.  Bitterness is turning away from God to find satisfaction in revenge.  Impatience is turning away from God to find satisfaction in your own uninterrupted plan of action.  Anxiety, misplaced shame, and despondency are various conditions of the heart when these efforts of unbelief miscarry.

Unbelief is following a mirage in the desert.  It looks good but cannot satisfy.  Belief is coming to the fire hydrant of Jesus in the middle of the desert and being satisfied, not just acknowledging that He is there.

Brian

Picture from www.colorcubic.com

Well folks, it is that time again.  Out with the old and in with the new.  2009 is done and gone, our actions (or inactions) sealed away forever by the sands of time.  The only thing we can change is what is to come.  So by all means look forward, make resolutions, and plan for the future.  I will join you in a moment.  But before I do I want to take a glance back at ol’ 2009 and remember some of the ways God has blessed my life during it.

• We were fortunate enough to have the extra cash to put into our house again this year in the form of a new bathroom (last year was the fireplace). We put in a new tub and redid the walls of the tub area, new floor, new toilet, and new fixtures.  It also got a paint job by my beautiful and talented wife.  It turned out great!
• This one is not a huge deal but it was one of the things that kicked off the year and it was a blast.  My favorite comedian, Brian Regan, came to town and we got to see him live.  If laughter is medicine then I recommend that you watch this guy.  He is hilarious!
• This was a big year for our finances as well.  We went through a Dave Ramsey class and one of his big things is no debt.  Well we sold our truck and we are officially consumer debt free!  The only thing we have left is the house but that will have to wait.  One of the reasons we decided to sell the truck was so that we could put my Lacey back in school starting in 2010.  Exciting times.  The best part about it is that we will not have to incur any debt for her to finish, Lord willing.  That is the plan anyway.  Wish us luck!
• There were many big things that happened this year, but the one that tops the cake was adding a new member to the family.  No, I don’t have any kids, but I do have a new Nephew!  Dalton Tyler Casey was born in early December, an early Christmas present as I see it.  I don’t know if I can adequately describe the feelings I felt when I saw him for the first time.   It was wonderful to see my brother and sister-in-law with him.  They make a beautiful family.  Welcome to the world Dalton.  More than anything else I pray you will come to know Jesus!
• This was a big year of writing for me.  I have wanted to write a novel for years and I finally found that opportunity in National Novel Writing Month.  NaNoWriMo, as it is called to eliminate some syllables, is a contest against yourself to write fifty thousand words in the month of November.  Well, I did it!  50,000 words.  And the novel is only half way done.  I have at least another 50K to write before it is completed.  It is my goal to finish the first draft within the first three months of 2010.  Wish me luck!
• My wife and I love to travel.  We don’t get to go as much as we want but we did get a good bit of traveling in this year.  We went on a Caribbean cruise in January of this year that was a blast!   And we got to go with some dear friends to Colorado.  All in one year.  The Colorado trip was pretty crazy.  We drove all night to get there, slept for a little bit, and then went non-stop for the next couple days.  This was a great year for traveling!
• I love my wife.  The Lord has blessed me greatly and the longer we are married the more thankful I am for her.  We celebrated our third anniversary this year and I got to give her something she really wanted.  I took her to a Texas Ranger game and we stayed over night in a cool hotel.  It was a blast!  Lacey, you make every year better.  I love you!

Notables: Some of my favorite or most interesting books, games, and movies from the year.

• Books:
  • The Gathering Storm – Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan
  • Warbreaker – Brandon Sanderson
  • Heaven – Randy Alcorn
  • Same Kind of Different As Me – Ron Hall and Denver Moore
  • Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
  • Future Grace – John Piper
• (Board)Games:
  • Dominion
  • Race for the Galaxy
  • Pandemic
• (Video)Games:
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
  • Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• Movies:
  • Up
  • Star Trek
  • Avatar

And that is about it.  It has been a great year and I look forward to a new one.  Come on 2010!  What are some of the things that made 2009 a great year for you?

Brian

As the scene progresses though we begin to see that Jesus doesn’t just mean to provide physical bread to these people.  He wants to be their bread.  He doesn’t just want to be their miracle worker.  He wants to be their miracle.

In verse 35 Jesus says that he is the bread of life.  Whoever comes to Him will not hunger or thirst.  But even as he draws this parallel to himself and the bread he provided to them, they begin to grumble.  They don’t get it.  They want miracles of physical food but Jesus is trying to show them that they need the miracle of the all satisfying spiritual bread.  They need Him.  But they are seeking their satisfaction in the gifts and not the giver.

So I pose a question to you and me:  what is our bread?  What are the things we seek satisfaction in?  Christ wants to be our all satisfying bread but we tend to make bread out of so many other things.  I do this with things like my wife, my books, my gadgets.  I try to find my satisfaction in these things when they should be pointing me to Christ.

How often do put down my Bible to pick up a book?  How often do I worry about my wife’s happiness when, as a believing husband, I am tasked with her holiness (washing her with the Word)?  How many times to I elevate my comfort above spreading the good news of Jesus Christ? I can’t even count how many times I have sought my satisfaction in other things besides Christ; in the gifts He has given me.  I am sure you can say the same thing.

This should not be.  Jesus wants to be your all sufficient bread.  But we can’t be like the people in the Bible who only wanted signs and wonders.  Jesus didn’t come to satisfy the appetites you had before you were redeemed.  He came to give you new appetites to satisfy that only he can.  He didn’t come to give us the treasures that we crave.  He came to give us a new treasure: Himself.  The all satisfying treasure that will be enough no matter what.

When everything else fails He is your feast.  But perhaps that is one of the great struggles living in an opulent society.  There are very few times when we face such great need.  Life, then, is not our struggle, but making Christ our bread and our treasure even when we have so many things around us that advertise that they can satisfy.

You know that longing for something new you get after you have purchased or received something and the “new” has worn off?  It is a longing to satisfy yourself with something.  But the truth is (and we know it) that nothing we get will permanently fulfill that longing.  Only Christ can.  Make him your bread and your treasure and you won’t be disappointed.  Let Jesus Christ satisfy your every need.

Brian

• I can write every day and enjoy it – One of the primary reasons I participated in this is that I wanted to see if I would enjoy writing day in and day out.  If I had my choice I would write for a living.  So I wanted to see if it might be something I would like to do.  Well, I really enjoyed it.  I can’t say that every day was a bucket of berries but I really enjoyed the process.  I enjoyed pushing through parts I thought were boring and finding ways to make them interesting.  I enjoyed having a hard time starting a chapter, pushing through, and ending up with something I liked.  And the good days were even better.
• I can finish what I start - This is a really important part to me.  I am sure I am not alone in the world of incomplete goals and tasks.  When I start something, my interest in it might fade or I might not make enough time to finish.  Whatever my excuse, I sometimes don’t finish the things I start.  I am trying to change this about me and this month of writing was a big step in the right direction.  I finished what I started.
• My inner editor does not have to get in my way of writing – This has been one of the biggest barriers to me finishing what I start when it comes to writing.  I have started several books in the past.  I would write a chapter and then edit it.  Then edit it again.  There is nothing wrong with editing, I was just doing it at the wrong time.  NaNoWriMo forced me to kill my inner editor.  He was not allowed out of his box.  As a result, I wrote over 50,000 words in a month.
• I do have time to write – Time is one of those quantities in life that will be spent one way or another.  We cannot save it.  It becomes very important, then, to be intentional with the way we spend it.  If writing is more important to me that watching TV then I need to be able to turn off the TV and write.  I told myself that I would write everyday of November until I reached my goal.  I did that except for two days.  I had time to write almost everyday.  I just need to remember that.
• I don’t have to be happy with every part of my story to keep going – This goes back to the inner editor thing.  I know there are parts of my story that are not good – at all!  I had to learn to be OK with that and move on.  This brings me to my next item.
• You can always edit junk but you can’t edit a blank page – This is a sage piece of advice for writers.  Sometimes I would sit there trying to decide what to write, not wanting to write junk.  This is fine as long as you don’t sit there and write nothing at all.  As long as words were appearing on the page there was something I could make better later through editing.
• The story doesn’t always go in the direction you planned it to – before I started the November month of writing abandon I planned out how I thought the story would go.  I had an outline that wasn’t extremely detailed but it did give me direction.  Sometimes though, I would find my characters dictating what would happen.  They would say something or do something unexpected and reveal a part of the story I hadn’t thought of yet.  So even though I planned what I thought would happen as I got to know the characters better they changed that and it was always for the better.

To sum up, I would say that NaNoWriMo was a very rewarding experience.  It has moved me closer to my goal of being a published author.  It is a small first step but a step in the right direction is never bad.  I look forward to participating next year and to finishing the novel I started in this one.

Just for fun, here is a Wordle of the novel so far.  Enjoy.  (click to enlarge)

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Brian

• Lacey is going back to school. We really feel like the Lord has provided the time and money resources for her to finish her degree so we are taking Him up on the offer.  In order to afford school without taking out loans we needed to free up some cash flow in our budget.  The truck made the most sense so it was the piece that went.
• With the sale of the truck we have no more consumer debt. This one feels really good.  The only piece of debt we have left is our house.  Not having debt to weigh down our budget frees us up to do so many things.  One of those is sending Lacey to back to school with no debt at the end.  If we kept the truck we would still be paying for it when she was done and we would be paying student loans.  With a little sacrifice will will have neither, if the Lord wills.

Like I said, we will have to sacrifice in some ways.  We no longer have a new vehicle that is covered under warranty.  We will be driving our other car more which means repair costs will probably go up some.  Having one car also means that one of us is stuck at work while the other has the car.  This is not a big deal to me.  I don’t mind staying at work for lunch.

I am certain that there will be other positives and negatives that we haven’t even thought of yet but will experience as time goes on.  I can honestly say that I am glad we did it.  And I am glad my wife will get to finish her degree.  Exciting times.

Brian

Three years ago today we were still two,

Moving toward one.

Preparations in place,

We still each had our space,

But the time of two was short.

The doors opened and there you were,

Glowing, beautiful, mine.

Glorious day flew, as well as the two.

Three years gone and we are one,

Moving toward Christ.

Brian

• Weather change!  Cooler temperatures!
• No Mowing!
• Beautiful colors
• Fall clothes
• The Holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas time)
• The heartwarming (read: heart-clogging) food
• Fire in the fireplace
• Hot chocolate
• Cold outside – toasty warm inside
• Crisp morning air
• Time Change – extra hour of sleep
• Cool air – warm sun
• Football Season
• The World Series
• Snuggling under the blankets
• More time inside = more reading/writing
• The smells of the holidays

What are some of your favorite things about the season?

Brian

Alright, folks.  It is time for me to put my money where my mouth is.  I have been trying to write a book for a several years.  I even have a few started and a lot of brainstorming done.  The hurtle I always come up against is, WRITING IT!  I start and then I stop.  Then I start again.  This is not a good pattern for a writer.  To write a book takes concerted effort, something I have not been giving it.

If there is something you keep saying is important to you but you keep not doing it, either it is not as important to you as you say it is or you need to reevaluate what you consider important.  We will always do the things most important to us.

So, to amend the discrepancy between what I say is important to me (writing a book) and what my actions say is not important to me (writing a book) I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month.  This is a semi-contest to see if you can write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.  That is a lot of writing!  If I write 2000 words every weekday and Saturday in November, I will get to 50,000.

I will be posting the amount of words I write each day to Twitter so you can keep up with how I am doing.  I realize that I am taking a very large bite here but I figure that if I don’t ever take the plunge I will forever be baking in the sun on the diving board. I have been there long enough.

Not only will I get a lot of writing done (and maybe a finished book) out of the deal, I will also finally be able to see if I could handle writing everyday as a career.  Writing is something I think I would like to do as a job but you never know if you will like something until you do it.

So, wish me luck as I embark on writing my first book.  I look forward to seeing what can happen in 30 days.

Brian

Philippians 4:8 tells us to think on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, etc.  Well, the only thing that could have fit any of those descriptions in that show was the wedding but they did such a good job of trampling it with trash that it was hardly recognizable in the end.

Even though I could see what the writers thought was humor in the jokes and awkward situations, funny does not equal right or good.  Since this seems to be the trend of the show, I feel it is time to reevaluate being part of The Office’s viewership.  As much as I like the show and characters I grow increasingly tired of it (and other popular media) setting fire to the high standard that Christ calls us to and asking us to accept it as ok.

There is my rant.  Go ahead, pile on the negative comments.  I don’t mind standing alone, thinking that there is still something sacred about marriage.

Brian