*Sigh*.....it was easier when.....

So, there I was, just minding my own business. I wasn't hurting anyone; I wasn't messing with anyone.....well, I was conversing with some friends on Facebook and Blackberry Messenger....

But anyway, it pops out again, like it has at random times in the last year...."So, did you remove me from your blog list?"

I feel the anxiety again, and wonder why. I don't have anything to be ashamed about. I haven't done anything wrong. I've been busy. Plus, there are plenty of people out there writing about their experiences with God and how He walks with them through good times and bad.

Heck, 3 of the men I count as spiritual mentors in my life have a blog now. I mean, they are PASTORS, for Heaven's sake! What could I possibly add to their already enormous mountain of knowledge and wisdom.

I've got better things to do, than....than.....share my God with people.

Boy, it sounded better in my head than it looks out here in black and white on the digital page. I didn't expect it to be so stark and ugly.

Let's face it...this hasn't been a ministry to me for a while. It turned into a way to be out there among the people and have them look at me. It was a way for me to be in front of the audience, instead of in the back, serving and helping. It's the ugly truth, but it is just that....the truth.

I hope you will forgive me. I couldn't think of a reason to put myself out there, because I didn't think I said anything. Even when you encouraged me that I was speaking straight into your heart, I had a hard time believing that I said anything to anyone.

You've been here, right? Don't leave me alone in this. It was easier before. I made it into a job instead of an opportunity. I made it into something I DID instead of something I LOVED. I took something God created in me, and turned it to my own selfish whims.

Okay, enough of that. Let's move on, shall we?

Where are you today? Where have you awakened to find yourself and your relationship with God? I am not going to dwell on my past failures and hurts and pains. If I did that, I wouldn't even be here writing this. They are still there; but God has provided a way to get rid of them for me. He'll take the pain, if I would only ask Him. I'm His son; I'm His favorite child...and He loves me deeply and unconditionally.

He loves you too. He wants more than anything for you to be with Him and to be a part of your life. He desires you to find Him MORE than you desire to find Him. We try and pretty up and clean up our act and gussy up for Him. He wants us just like we are. He will do the clean-up if we will just let Him.

I'm going to try and keep from going down the path of self-indulgence again. So, there may not be as many different fonts and styles and formatting of my posts as before. It may just be words on a screen. But I want to know that they are my words; the words from my heart. The words of a man grateful for what His God has done for Him and continues to do for him on a daily basis.

I also want to know your thoughts. If you have a question, ask it. I don't want to be put in the position of ALWAYS just talking at you. A conversation needs at least TWO people. I'm going to go out again, and hope that it gives you courage to attempt whatever it is that God has placed onto your heart. If you want to sit and just take it all in though, that's perfectly fine too. I have lots of Blackberry sites where I'm just a lurker in the background; learning from those who have blazed the trail before me.

I've sat on the sidelines for far too long. The time has come. A year, a whole year. It would be easy to say it was wasted, but I know it wasn't. No time; absolutely NONE is wasted in my God's timeline. He uses each and EVERY moment to achieve His aim of bringing as many back into fellowship with Him as possible.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23 (NKJV)-"For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak, I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel's sake, that I may be a partaker of it with you."

Thanks for using me, God.

Be blessed in the Lord, today.

Matthew 23:11-12 (NKJV)

Matthew 23:11-12 (NKJV)-“But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Jesus was speaking this to the scribes and the Pharisees of His day. He was teaching the multitudes and His disciples that the religious leaders of their day were not all that and a bag of chips.

We like getting attention don’t we? We like it when someone notices something we’ve done, or acknowledges that we went out of our way, don’t we?

Even if we tell ourselves that we shouldn’t seek the accolades of other people, we do it anyway. On some level, we WANT those around us to notice us and tell us, “Thanks for doing that! You did a great job!”

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: we want mercy for ourselves and justice for everyone else.

We want others to pat us on the back. However, how often do we remember to turn the favor around and do that for someone else? How often do we tell those around us that we appreciate something they did for us?

How about someone in your family?

I don’t think this is more apparent anywhere than in our social groupings of family, whether they are close or extended. We expect everyone in our family to cater to us at times, but far be it from me to serve someone.

At work, you run around and do things and perform to the best of your abilities. Why? Ever hear of a little thing called a MERIT raise or a PERFORMANCE bonus? See, the world has conditioned us to raise the bar for our own standards, so that we can get more money out of it.

The more I work, the better I work, the more my raise will be; the bigger my end of the year bonus. You want that job? You’ve got to show your boss that you want it more than the other people in your department/division/group. You’ve got to perform! And the more people who see how well you perform, the better off you are in your workplace.

Jesus was radical. He suggested a different way. He says that if we want to get exaltation, we should submit ourselves not only to those perceived to be “above” us, but those who are on the same level as we are, and those “below” us.

Jesus wants us to follow a different standard; one that puts the needs of others out in front of our own. It’s a different way of doing life, and sometimes it stinks.

Come on; don’t look at this like I just wrote out the mother of all curse words there. You know in your heart of hearts that I’m telling the truth. We all do it. You are not gonna leave me alone to dangle in the wind on this one!

When we do stuff, we want to be acknowledged. Even if it’s just a pat on the back in affirmation, it helps. I want to know that my sacrifice has been noticed and accepted.

The only problem, in my opinion, is that the ultimate sacrifice has already been made. Nothing I do can even come close to that!

I realize, as usual, there are some of you that don’t wrassle with the same issues that I do, and I accept you in your perfection. Please don’t waste your time with correcting me and reminding me of how far I need to go in my Christian walk. I only hope that you can continue to be patient as God works out his righteousness through my life.

I need to remember that I am not the only person who feels the way I do. So, when I feel slighted when no one notices something I did, I need to step back and assess the situation. Am I upset because no one patted me on the head and gave me a treat because I performed a trick? Or am I hurt that my actions were noticed and obtained a rebuke or harsh word because I didn’t do it the way someone thought I should have?

If it’s the first part, I need to step back and ask myself, “Am I good at encouraging others? When was the last time I gave someone an uplifting word for something they did for me?”

If it’s the second, I also need to take a gander at my life as well. Only this time, I need to see how scathing a beat down I gave someone because they did something I didn’t ask them to in order to help me, and they did it in a completely different way than I would have.

Did I thank them for their effort, or did I chastise them because they obviously didn’t pay attention to what they were doing? Did I exalt their servant’s heart, or berate their lack of attention to detail?

It’s interesting how things look when compared in the lens of our own experiences. I want to believe that I do everything that I complain about everyone else not doing. I want to believe that everyone is just not as perfected as I am now. I want to believe….

Oh, hi Jesus. You want to talk to me? Umm, how did I get myself up on this pedestal like this? Uh oh, this could be bad…..

Be blessed in the Lord today.

Bo J.

1 Timothy 6:6-7 (NKJV)

1 Timothy 6:6-7 (NKJV)-“Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.”

Paul, the apostle, wrote this letter to his young disciple Timothy. Timothy was trying to steer the newly founded church at Ephesus, fighting against false teachings and devious ministers.

He also wrote this to me. I’ve been on a downer lately; so let’s see if we can spice things up a bit, shall we?

I have Jesus. I am saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, and blessed beyond measure. Am I happy? I think that is a resounding NO. Am I content? Ah….now that is the question we should be asking.

You see, we tend to get this confused at times. Happiness and contentment are two completely different animals. They are at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as our Christian walk is concerned.

Happiness is derived from our EMOTIONS. It comes from how we feel; and that can change day in and day out. If I am looking for happiness every day from my Christian walk, chances are that I’m not gonna find it.

Now hold on…don’t stone me yet! Let me finish. First of all, remember something; this is my OPINION. If you are receiving it, you asked for it. I’m not pushing this as gospel. I’m telling you the interpretation in my spirit from my walk with God.

Now, I can be happy without ever being content. Happiness, as I said before, is based on your emotions. It requires an external stimulus to evoke that response in your body. The only problem, as I see it, is that what makes you happy one day may be entirely different than what makes you happy the next day.

You may have some completely different experiences that bring you happiness from one hour to the next. You can be happy if you win the lottery, and then sad when you realize how much money your Uncle Sam is going to remove from your winnings. The same object (money) has brought about both feelings of happiness and sorrow.

You can be happy about having sexual relations with a good looking woman (or guy if you’re a girl). But that happiness, because it’s based on external motivations, will only last for so long. If you’re just looking for the “next, best thing”, there will always be one out there. You’ll always be comparing the one you’re with to the next one.

Contentment is completely different. It approaches from the aspect that life is fleeting. As the Scripture states, I didn’t bring anything with me, and I can’t take anything with me. I’ll leave the world exactly as I came in. The only question now is: will my life make a difference in the world?

God provides for my basic needs. Yes, I have a job and make a wage. However, it is God who gave me the talent to perform my job and allowed me to obtain the wage that I make. It is NOT me; it is Him working through me.

Beyond my basic needs, what do I have that is a requirement? My relationship with God, that’s what. God created me ultimately to bring Him glory. You can argue that all you want, but that’s how I feel. God doesn’t need me to keep Him company; He doesn’t need me to help Him run the universe.

He created me because it pleased Him to do so, and I bring glory to His name by the way I live my life. By the same token, so do you. We are all here to glorify God’s name in the universe.

Godliness is described as the characteristics of God as shown in our lives. Contentment is my acceptance of God’s will in my life. No matter what happens in my life, I should be content in God because He is my all in all. If all I am looking for God to do in my life is give me the next greatest thing, my faith is on shaky ground indeed.

Now, once again, I ask you to be patient with me.

This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t bless me with stuff. On the contrary, He flits about the world, looking specifically for things that He knows will set Willie Bo Jr. on fire. He knows I especially like techno gadgets and electronics and stuff….man!

He gets me things I never dreamed I could have. And he gives me understanding of their workings and designs. If you don’t believe me, ask my family. If I suddenly die or become incapacitated, every technological gadget in this house, from computers to iPods would fall into disuse and disrepair.

God blesses you and me with stuff; He just doesn’t want our stuff to be the basis of our relationship with Him. He wants us to be content with Him, and realize the stuff is just a blessing from Him to us. If the stuff becomes an idol that we worship instead of Him, He’ll repo it in a heartbeat, reminding you where you should be focused.

Oh, this is not something we are innately born to do; it’s something we have to learn. We immediately seek gratification for our every urge, instead of being content where we are in life. It’s something we all have, and it’s something we all have to learn to deal with.

I thank God for the help of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in this fight. I know I can’t, and most likely wouldn’t, do it on my own. Being content means putting my life in proper perspective with relation to my God. It doesn’t depend on whether it’s sunny or cloudy; wet or dry; hot or cold.

It doesn’t depend on whether I have the latest and greatest or fastest or biggest or most ornate or loudest or any of that junk. It depends on how I view my God and His blessings.

So, let’s make a deal that we’ll start out trying to be content. Use verse 6, its short enough. If you find that you are slipping into selfishness or happiness or sadness or whatever EMOTIONAL responses remind yourself of this verse with promise. Tell yourself that your current situation doesn’t depend on what you have, but Who you know.

Remind the greed and self-centeredness (that we all have to deal with) that you serve a bigger God than stuff. And remind them that God can give and God can take away, but His name will always be blessed in your life.

Go ahead, try it. Circumstances come and go, but God is always right there and right on time.

Be blessed in the Lord today,

Bo J.

Lamentations 3:25-26 (NKJV)

Lamentations 3:25-26 (NKJV)-“The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”

Those are some hard verses to swallow sometimes, aren’t they? Come on; don’t be all heroic on me, we both know that this can be really tested in our lives.

And it’s not even the fact that I disbelieve that the Lord is good. I do believe that nugget. Yesterday, a friend of mine was having a really bad day and had received some horrible news relating to their job. I talked with this person and prayed with this person.

I said some things that really surprised me. One of the most poignant was that we really need to grasp that God really does love us. We are cupped in His hands at all times. And I said that to this person and then said that God just wants to know if we believe Him.

God has you cupped in His hands right now. Do you believe Him? I’m not asking you to believe me; I’m asking you to believe Him.

It’s hard to fathom, what with our lives the way they are right now, huh? I mean, we can spout off platitudes all day. At the end of the day, however, do you still hope and wait quietly for the Lord?

Who is your God? What is He capable of doing in your life? In my head knowledge, I know that God is sovereign. He is the Supreme Creator, and my Lord. He made a way for me to be reconciled back to Him because I’m flawed; imperfect. He took someone who was a sinner, and made him a saint.

He validated my life with His own Son.

In my head, I know this. In my heart, sometimes, life intrudes. The storm comes. I’m the man on the cork with a cross stuck in the middle of it, in the middle of a hurricane. And I hear the maddeningly still, small voice of God saying to me, “I have you cupped in my hands even now. Do you believe Me?”

Part of me wants to scream yes, just like part of you does right now. But another part, a part more like the scared animal, wants to scream NO! Not till you get me out of this.

The storms come to test the foundations. God could dismiss the storms with a thought. He could dissipate the hurricane with but a breath from His lips. But would you learn to trust in Him? Would you know that He has you cupped in His hands right now? Would you believe Him?

Those of you who have children know that sometimes the best teacher is experience. You can warn your child and warn them and warn them. But sometimes, as hard as it is to fathom, you have to let them stick the fork in there and realize that you’re not just whistling Dixie at them. It doesn’t mean you love them any less, does it?

Why then, when stuff comes and God says, “Trust Me,” do we feel the need to rush around and fix it? What happened to waiting quietly on the Lord?

We can’t even wait at a traffic light. How many times do you creep up on a red light in anticipation of it turning green so you can get through the intersection first? Don’t lie!

Our society has helped us to turn our faith in God into a microwave meal. We will be patient until our internal timer goes off. Then you’re done! If God hasn’t acted in 90 seconds, we have the assumption that He’s not gonna act at all.

Oh, don’t worry. This is only for a select group of people, including me. I’m sure the bulk of you have this patience thing under control, right? You can just whistle through anything. I see you at church just breezing through, telling everyone how joyous and great life is and all.

Does that penetrate from the outside to the inside?

I admit that I’m number one in need of this lesson; ask my wife. So I’m not asking you to do something that I have already mastered. We’re in this walk together. You see how it affects me-I can barely keep up with our e-mails anymore!

I figure I have one thing going for me, though. I can still hear that voice talking to me. “Bo, I have you cupped in My hands right now. Do you believe Me?”

There was a time when I didn’t hear the voice, and didn’t care. So, as long as I have something to strive toward, I’m doing well. I’m learning to wait quietly and patiently (yeah, I know, I REALLY need to work on the QUIETLY part) on the Lord.

Shhh….can you hear the mountains tremble? Can you hear the voice that sounds like thunder?

“I know what you’re going through. I have you cupped in My hands right now. Do you believe Me?”

Well?

Be blessed in the Lord today,

Bo J.

Isaiah 26:3 (NKJV)

Isaiah 26:3-“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”

I’m still trying to tread water.

I believed what Jesus said, that I could walk on water just like Him. So, I got out of the boat. That was a big mistake.

I can’t.

I can’t even begin to tell you how embarrassing this is for me. I can’t believe that I even have to write this down, but here it is for everyone to see. I can’t do it. I lost my focus.

Please understand, I still have faith; I still believe and know that Jesus is Lord and He can do whatever He wants. I’m just slipping away.

I’m losing hope. I’m losing my lifeline. I’m hanging by that proverbial thread, and it’s unraveling quickly. I can sit here watching it, fiber by fiber.

See, I feel like I’m some great huge puppet being jerked around by the great puppet master. He’s not being mean or hateful; he’s just trying to entertain himself and his friends. In the end, the show will be over and I’ll just go back into the trunk.

That’s how I feel, but it’s not what I believe.

See, I believe that what I consider perfect peace, and what God considers perfect peace are two COMPLETELY different things. And one of us needs to change our focus.

I believe that fear is a killer, but it doesn’t come at you all at once, like the boogeyman or a serial killer with a gleaming blade or a gun.

No, fear gnaws away at you. It eats away a little at a time. Then one day, you wake up, and you realize how much fear has actually taken away from you. It’s like the story about how you boil a frog. You don’t immediately throw it in the hot water; you put it in cool water and heat it up slowly so it doesn’t know what’s happening.

Only thing is, I’m not a frog; and I know what’s happening. Why am I still here? I know one reason, and I’m scared to say it as well.

Maybe I don’t believe as much as I think I do. Maybe I’m still walking in sight and not by faith. Maybe my entire life in Christ is built on what He’s done for me, instead of what He means to me.

Maybe I’m just not what I think I am. Maybe I should just give up; I mean, if I don’t have hope, what’s left?

Shhh….did you hear that? It’s a smooth, silky voice. I can’t quite make out what he’s saying though. He’s elusive, like a breeze. I heard him loudly earlier, but then I started telling God honestly how I felt.

Wait, where’d he go?

My heart still has a burden, but it’s not near as heavy as it was earlier. The voice is not nearly as strong.

You know, I’m starting to realize that the voice I heard wasn’t comforting me. It was reminding me that next week is coming and it’s going to be miserable. I’m going to have such a bad week, and I might as well just quit.

Where’d that other voice go? Okay; I started this out by just talking to God. I told Him where I was at and what I thought. I’m weak and frail and I wanted Him to know that so He could kinda……understand……

I remember now. I remember when He first met me a long time ago. I talked to Him in my kitchen in a house we had over 10 years ago. I had reached the end and had nowhere else to go. I wasn’t looking for Him, but He had been waiting for me my whole life.

He told me that if I wanted to, He would take over my life for me. He said it wouldn’t be easy, but it would be worth it. He said He’d never leave me, even when it seemed like He had done just that in my life.

And then He showed me my life behind me. The beach, the sandy beach…and the single solitary set of footprints; Him carrying me because I couldn’t go any further.

I’m on the beach again, and I look down. I see one lone set of feet carrying me, and I feel strong arms holding me close. I look up and see that face, the face of my Lord, and there is no awkwardness or discontent. There is only love.

I’m ashamed, so ashamed. I’m hurt that I can’t even go for a little bit without falling to my knees in weakness and insecurity. I can’t stop thinking about myself and what the world will do to me. I can’t stop crying.

He doesn’t care. He just smiles at me. We’ve stopped.

I look around at the desolate beach, and see how close we are to the water. I look out, and I see a storm brewing. I see a tiny boat out there, with some other friends I know. They are at the end; they want Jesus, but they can’t get to him. They’re trapped in the boat.

Jesus sets me down, and looks lovingly at me. Then He asks me, “Can I get you to go with me out there and rescue them? They need to see Me in someone else’s life so they know they’re not alone.”

But….how would I get out there?

He grabs my hand, and starts to take a step off the beach, into the water.

I’m hesitant. What if I fall again and someone sees me?

"Keep your eyes on Me; you’ll be okay. I promise. Focus on Me, and you can even walk on the water.”

I’m still scared.

He looks at me with a knowing twinkle in His eyes. He’s God, He knows how I feel. He wants me to stop feeling, and start trusting.

I’m taking the step.

Be blessed in the Lord today,

Bo J.