Getting Schooled

Whenever I can, I substitute teach. Yesterday I had to opportunity to teach at the local high school in an English class. During lunch several students came in to eat their lunch in my classroom. It seems that the teacher I was subbing for is a well liked teacher and allows students to spend their lunch time with her. One male student was talking, and explaining the mysteries of life to a few of the other students, and of course was talking loud enough so all of us in the room could benefit from his vast experience and wisdom. It seems that one of his other teachers is a Christen and was trying to share Christ, in a little bit of a pushy way, with one of her classes. He was giving us the low down of the conversation and sharing his displeasure with her and her message. He exclaimed that he was an atheist, and that he was not going to believe in some God who only wanted to make everyone exactly like himself, and that doing so even went against his very own laws. Of course, fighting against my shy nature, I had to say something about the subject to the young man. I told him that it sounded like he did not know much about the subject of God, and that he should be more informed before he made such statements. To which he did not have anything to say. He just kind of looked at me with a blank expression. Then I think his mind wandered, because he turned around and started talking about something else after saying something under his breath about his other teacher and her pushing her beliefs on to him.

Two things about this situation bug me. One is that people always seem to think that everyone around them automatically shares there views and opinions. It's like we are so self centered that it never even occurs to us that someone might have a different opinion then we do. Why would they? Doesn't everyone agree with me? Aren't I the most important person in this room? My mommy thinks I am! It has also been my experience that teenagers are not the only ones who think this way. I can not count the amount of times that an adult has just started in on some subject, just assuming that I would share their views on the subject, never even considering that I might totally disagree with them. Then I have to consider the very likely possibility that I have done the very same thing on many occasions. I am all for speaking up for things you believe and feel strongly about, but when you start speaking, you should always be aware of others, and never assume that they share your views just because they are with in ear shot.

The second things is when people speak from their ignorance. It was very obvious to me that this young man did not know anything about God or the Bible. He was sharing his personal opinion, and what he assumes to be true. He may have even herd some stuff from other people who where also wrong. Why do people do that? If I don't know anything about a subject, I would not go spouting my thoughts to people. I would never go up to Jake Hillis and start telling him about how refrigerators work, and what is inherently wrong with the whole system. Because in truth he has a lot of knowledge about the subject, and I have almost none. I have not studied how they work and why they work like they do. Just like that young man has not done any studying about God and who He is and what He does, or why He does it. That young man does not know what God's laws are, and for sure he does not know anything about what God wants from him or for him. But, for some reason he felt able to make some unfounded statement about God, and not only that, he felt he actually had the right to make some kind of judgement about the creator. How stupid is that? I wanted to stand up and push the kid out of the room, and tell him "sorry, no stupid people allowed." and all God wants to do is to show him how much He loves him. Once again we are all reminded why it's a good thing I am not God, and that God is God.

Good at friendship

I don't get to preach on Sunday mornings very often, so when I do, I enjoy it and try to make the most of it. This past Sunday I got an opportunity and I spoke on friendship. At first it may not seem like that important of a subject, but if you take the time to think about it, you will discover that relationships are really important to our lives, and of major importance to God. Jesus actually had many relationships while on Earth, and because he was never married, all of his relationships were friendships. He was the best there was at being a good and true friend. There are many examples Jesus gave us that we can model to show us how to be really good at relationships, but I think the most important thing we can get from Jesus on this matter is to make sure that we are getting our needs met from God and not looking for them to be met by other people in our lives.

Have you ever been friends with a person who needed your attention all the time. Who whenever you talked with them, it was all about them. No matter what struggles you were going through in your life, they were always going through something worse, and not only that, but no one could possibly understand what they were going through. Have you ever had a friend that needed your attention so bad that you were afraid to be caught talking to someone else. They were so possessive of you that if you were friends with someone else, they felt like you were cheating on them. You were a friend cheater, a feater if you will. Have you ever felt trapped by a friendship? Like if you were not their friend their whole life would just fall apart. It's almost like you become their life line and if you were to leave, they would not be able to cope with every day life. These are the type of friends that make you feel exhausted every time you spend time with them.

If you have never had a friend like that, maybe it is because you are that friend. No one can be everything to someone. We were not meant to get our needs met by other people. People can not meet our needs for long, and if we continually try to get our needs met by our friends we invariable become needy. From there it becomes this vicious cycle of being needy, trying to get your needs met by friends, which in turn leaves you feeling more needy. Now repeat and rinse, presto, you are a really needy annoying friend.

What's the answer? Get your needs met by God, and free up your relationships to be what they were meant to be. It sounds easy, but if we are used to getting our needs met by other people it can take some real effort and time to break this bad habit. It make take some time, but it is well worth it.

One thing Saraya loves to do is to make cookies from scratch with me. She had been bugging me for a couple of days to make some cookies with her, so I came home a little early from work and we got to it. What we usually do is that I will make a full recipe, and I will measure out and let her mix a partial batch. Usually I just try to estimate the amounts of flour sugar, eggs and other ingredients, and as a result, her cookies never come out the same. This time I tried really hard to measure out 1/8 of what I was making. I did pretty good to, except I messed up a little on the butter, and the egg was tough to split in 1/4. As a result her cookies came out pretty good. After they came out of the oven and cooled, her mom suggested that she take a cookie to her teacher, whom she really likes. Saraya took the idea one step further and wanted to bring enough for her whole class to have a cookie for snack the next day. So the next morning we took enough cookies for her whole class to have. She got to hand them out to each kid, and her teachers made a big deal out of it. Saraya loved it!

You know, Saraya could have just kept them all for herself and eaten them over the next couple of days, and she loves a good cookie. But she decided to take them all to share, and I think she enjoyed that experience even more. That's the place I am trying to get to with my money and possessions. I really enjoy spending all of my money, and using all of my stuff, but God keeps telling me to share because He knows that the experience of sharing my stuff would be so much greater. For some reason it is so hard to get in my head. I am the kind of guy that just would not take all of my cookies to school to share with everyone. I would want to keep them all at home so I could eat on them for the next couple of days and enjoy the fruits of my labor. Why should I share with you? You didn't make the cookies, you didn't even have the idea to make them. All you ever do is go to the store and buy those cheap Walmart made cookies and put them on a plate like you made them or something! You know what I would rather do? I would really like to bring you one cookie so you could see how great my cookies are and really know how bad you have it. Then I would go home and eat about ten of them in front of my TV, all the while knowing how much better my cookies are then yours.

It's incredible how sinful I am some times!

Peter Pan syndrome

I was putting my daughter Saraya to bed last night, and after we finished with the whole bed time routine, brushing teeth, reading a few books, and praying, she started talking about her pretend brother. She doesn't bring him up as much anymore, but he will pop up in a conversation at least once a day. I asked her if she would like a real little brother some day and she said that she wanted 2 brothers and one sister. She said that I was going to have one, she was going to have one and her mom was going to have one. I asked her what she meant by all of us having one, and she said that we were all going to have one in our bellies. I then told her that only mommies carried babies in their tummies, and that when she got to be an adult that she could get married and maybe one day have a baby in her tummy. She then told me that she did not want to eat healthy food anymore. At this point I was a little confused at how we had arrived at eating healthy food, so I asked her why she didn't want to eat healthy food anymore. She then proceeded to tell me that she didn't want to be an adult and that she wasn't going to get married. She said she wants to be a little kid and not an adult. That is when I understood her not wanting to eat healthy food anymore. At our house healthy food helps you grow up big and strong. So in her head, if you don't eat healthy food you wont have to grow up. I tried to reassure her that she was not going to grow up anytime soon, and that she could stay a little kid for a long time, and that she was always going to be my little girl no matter what. That seemed to be satisfied with that and felt good enough to go to sleep, that is after I went down stairs and found her Dalmatian puppy penny that she had left in my room.

A lot of Christians seem to have the Peter Pan syndrome. They become Christians, and then they never really grow up. They very rairly read their Bible, or pray, and they for sure never study deeply or meditate on the Word of God. Which leads to not a lot of self examination or growth. They refuse to eat healthy food and insist upon just drinking milk. As a result a lot of Churches are filled not with baby Christians, but with fat lazy Christians. You see, baby's are young, newly born. That is not what we have. We have older Christians who have refused to mature. When you refuse to eat right you don't stop growing, you just become unhealthy. Your muscles don't get as strong as they should, your bones don't grow or become as dense as they should. You brain doesn't mature and grow like it should. So the end result is not a 30 year old baby, it's a very unhealthy 30 year old.

So don't be a fat lazy Christian. Start eating healthy food!

kicked out

Well, it finally happened. I got kicked out of a co-ed church league softball game! I believe our Umpire took an immediate disliking to me when at the plate to pray and flip the coin, I asked him if he had brought a brush to clean the plate with. He said he had lots at home, but did not bring one because this was only a rec league. I jokingly said something along the line of, oh I see how it is, we aren't important enough for you to bring a brush. I was trying to joke around with the guy to put him in a good mood so he would have some fun, needless to say, it did not work!

Flash forward about 5 minutes. We are in the outfield, and I am playing short stop. A ground ball is hit my direction, I field said ball and throw the person out at first. However the ump did not see it as clearly as I did or as clearly as anyone else out there did and called the person safe. I must admit, I was shocked at the call and thought that he had totally blew it, but beyond shock, I was not feeling anything else. I surly was not mad or upset in anyway. Me being the funny guy that I am, and still having that Jr. high desire to make my classmates or teammates laugh, threw my glove down in mock dramatic fashion. All the while with a smile on my face, and not taking things to seriously. At this point the ump says something that I didn't hear clearly, so I either said "what?" or I just stood there looking at him with a questioning look on my face until I herd him utter the words "your gone!" again. I was in shock and disbelief. I immediately tried to explain that I was just joking and was not even mad or upset, to which he repeated himself and said that he did not care and that I was to leave the field. At that point all I could do was laugh and head towards the bench. A few of my teammates tried to talk to him and it only seemed to make the guy madder.

We ended up loosing the game and got put out of the tournament, though it was a close game, and we had a really good chance to win even though we were playing a team that had killed us earlier on in the season. But that is not the important part. The important part is that after the game I went up to the man and tried to say I was sorry and explain myself and my intentions to him. Sadly this only seemed to threaten him and make him more angry. He ended up storming off, not wanting to hear anything I had to say. As he was walking off I did tell him one more time that I was sorry for the misunderstanding. I then went over to the opposing team and apologized to them, and let them know that I had not gotten angry and was just trying to have fun. They were much more understanding of the situation, and in fact said that they had not thought that I was upset anyway.

I told that whole story to say this. I have been kicked out of my share of sporting events, and I can honestly say that every single one of them was warranted except for this one. In every single one I had let my anger get out of control, except for this one. In every single one I had let my competitive nature get the better of me, except for this one. In every single occasion I left the field angry, with nothing but disdain for the person that threw me out, except this one. In every single case, I had not apologized, and had not even thought of apologizing to the guy who had to throw me out, except for this one time.

God does not expect us to agree with authority in every situation. But he does expect us to submit to that authority. They may be wrong, but God says that He places all authority in their positions, and that we are to respect it. Not because they are always right, or because they are smarter or better then we are, but because He put it there. I don't know why God put that guy in that position, but He did. Maybe after about 10,000 years in Heaven, when all the important questions have been answered, I will ask God about that guy, and what His reasoning was behind it. I know He has a good reason for it, I just don't know what it is yet.

Presidential election

I would comment on the upcoming Presidential election and the way I feel about the issues, but a friend of mine has already done such a good job of expressing himself on his blog, that I feel I could not do any better of a job then he has already done. So if you would like to hear my opinion on the matter, just click on his name and read what he has said. His name is shaun.

First School day

Today was my daughter Saraya's first day of pre K. We got there a little early and had to wait outside for the doors to open. When we finally went in and took her to her room, she put down her lunch bag in front of her name tag and ran right into the class. We actually had to make her come back and say goodbye to Dana and I. She was ready to go. She had even told me yesterday some of the things she was planning on doing. She told me she was going to paint me a picture and when I picked her up we would have to put it in the trunk because it would still be wet. I think she is a little like her mom in the respect that she has her little plan on what she is going to do way before she does it.

I am really glad that she was excited about going to class today. I don't think I would have dealt with it to well if she were crying and if she had not wanted me to leave her there. I think it helped out a lot that we took her to her class last week and spent a while there getting her used to it and introducing her to her teacher. While I know and trust her teacher, and I know that she will be taught biblical stuff along with regular learning stuff. I still have this thing in me that wants to keep her with us or with the grandparents. I don't want to let her go, but I realize that I am being driven by my desire to protect and control. I can already tell that I am really going to have to watch myself when it comes to letting go and letting God control and protect. I will not be able to teach her to trust in God if I show her I am unwilling to do the same.

I want to hold her close, but I know that it is better if I stand back and let her experiance life. The hardest part about being a parent is not taking care of your kids and putting up with all of the stuff that kids do, it is having the guts to let go when you need to. I totally get why parents home school their kids.