Sunday, August 12, 2012

Was Jesus a Republican?

Just when you think all the drama of middle school is over, we have another election year.
First we have mudslinging, name calling and rumor spreading by the men and woman we want to lead us into the future.
And then we have a guy named Jesus, a gentle Jewish carpenter- rabbi who lived two thousand years ago thousands of miles away from us.
And then again we have His people; church-goers from all walks of life who have had the responsibility of choosing sides and trying to figure out how exactly the teachings of this Jesus apply to the decisions demanded of them by the hundreds of campaign commercials they are bombarded with on a daily basis.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Faith Like Nike

A long time ago there was a race of people who were super athletes. They called themselves the Greeks.
They started this thing called the Olympics and it got pretty popular; you might have heard about it.
This race of super athletes was also a race of super warriors and one day as the Greeks were fighting against the Persians, they won. Communication did not come easily back in the day and word of the victory from the battlefield was sent by the fastest means of transportation available- human. I would think that a horse would be faster than a person, but then again I am not a super human Greek warrior.
So a guy named Pheidippedes was somehow elected to run about 26 miles to Athens from what was called  “The Battle of Marathon,” of which we derive the name of the race of roughly the same distance.

Upon his arrival, he shouted one single word to announce his message, a word that has been a part of our vocabulary for decades. It was a word that loosely translated meant “victory” and over years of translation and some spelling adaptations has come down to us simply as “Nike.” Then he fell over dead, which was kind of disappointing.
And so birthed the legend of Nike. Starting as just a shoe company, Nike has gone on to revolutionize American athleticism.
Beyond selling shoes, they have made a name for themselves by showing off to the world the athletes of every sport who took the company’s motto to heart and won victory. They just did it.
Pheidippedes didn’t question the distance he was expected to run to deliver such a simple message. He just did it.
Michael Jordan didn’t let the fact that he failed to make his high school basketball team stop him from lacing up and becoming the greatest basketball player of all time. He just did it.
There are heroes, and then there are the rest of us.
The rest of us let excuses plague us our whole lives.
We dream about who we want to be but wait for the stars to line up in just the way before we even make a step toward our dream.  We say things like “someday I will have the faith to _________” or “Someday I will be so strong in my relationship to God that ___________.”
If you have a goal, just do it.
There will never be a time in your life when everything makes sense and every circumstance lines up so perfectly as to just launch you into your dream life.
Just do it.
Many times God gives us what we understand to be an “end- goal” and we struggle to find how where we are currently could ever turn into what God is showing us. We know where we are right now and where we want to end up but usually have no idea how to get there.
Just do it. Don’t know how? Do it anyway. Sometimes failure with the right motive takes us further than success with the wrong motive.
What about those things that God has been dealing with us for years about that we haven’t really gotten around to fixing? What about that person that we have always wanted to be but haven’t gotten around to being yet?
Just do it.
I want God to have to keep giving me brand new dreams on a routine basis because I keep reaching all the other dreams He had for me. That can’t happen when I spend every moment reminding myself of why all the things I want to happen logically can’t happen. I will never run out of excuses but I will someday run out of time.
I just want to do it.
It is scary to think about the incredible amount of people who will live their whole lives without ever achieving a single goal but will collect a million regrets. Jesus didn’t die on a cross for me to experience a mediocre existence.
You don’t have to wait until January to make some resolutions. Rearrange your schedule, rearrange your budget and rearrange your life if you have to to take a step toward the destination you know God is taking you to.
Just do it.