It's been a while

Today is Tuesday, March 16th, and it's been well over two months, I think, since my last blog. As much as I love writing, I just haven't been too motivated lately, I suppose.

I've heard good advice from a couple of different sources - good friends of mine; slow down!!

But slowing down has been exceptionally difficult for me lately. It seems that many things are pulling me in different directions, and I will have to come to the crossroads of knowing what to say 'no' or 'stop' to.

But i must.

These Things

When Jesus noticed how large the crowd was growing, he instructed his disciples to cross to the other side of the lake. Then one of the teachers of religious law said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you no matter where you go!" - Matthew 8:18-20

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jesus’ reply seems heartless. The scholar pledges to follow Jesus, regardless of where the journey takes them. Most people think that what Jesus said was, in essence, “Plan to be homeless. Are you willing to do that?”

Let’s say that I said, ‘let’s play Follow the Leader’. Would you?

Let’s say you followed me downstairs, out the door and walked along Peak Blvd til we got to York Street. Would you follow me that far?

What if I led you north up York Street, and headed to the Kum n Go, then turned left and went all the way down to the place where they sell fireworks by the big red barn every June and July. Would you follow me that far?

What if I led you back south to Peak Blvd, then turned right, walking past Hilldale Elementary to 64 Hwy, then north into town? Would you still follow me?

Okay, now think back to when I asked you to follow me. Why did you choose to do so? I can think of a couple of reasons: 1) Because you wanted to see where we were going; 2) Because you had nothing better to do; and 3) Because you trusted me.

The Scholar in this story said he would follow Jesus wherever he went.

Okay, now let’s take this ‘Follow the Leader’ game a little bigger:

Let’s say that I said, “Rise up, leave everything but your testimony behind, and follow me.” Would you?

What if I led you out onto 69 Hwy, south to Interstate 40? What if we would sleep under the bridges and eat from the generosity of others? What if we were going to help homeless people and smelly people and people with bad attitudes?

Would you still follow me?

When the Scholar said he’d follow Jesus wherever He went, I don’t think he knew exactly what he was saying, nor committing himself to.

You can read the stories of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; envision the miracles and the stories and the scenes of the life of Jesus, and you can be certain that His life was far from boring.

You can also be certain that those who stayed on as faithful followers were well rewarded.

What Jesus was saying when he responded to the religious teacher’s vow was this: “I consider myself as homeless in this lifetime BECAUSE my home is with my Father in Heaven. This isn’t a mission trip that lasts for a couple of weeks, or an 8-to-5 job where I go home at night, and will someday retire and buy an RV to tour the countryside, living the good life, stopping in Vegas and Branson like other retired old people do. My reward is not going to happen on this Earth. And if you’re going to follow me wherever I go, then you have to realize that your ultimate Reward is not going to happen on this Earth.”

There’s a story in Luke 18:18-23, of a guy known as the Rich Young Ruler. He asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit the Kingdom of God, to which Jesus replied, “keep all the commandments.” The Rich Young Ruler was happy and proud to report, “I have kept all of these since my youth.”

Jesus said to him, “There’s one thing you must do: sell all you possess and give it to the poor. Then you will have TREASURE IN HEAVEN. Then come, follow me.”

And the Rich Young Ruler couldn’t do it.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to sell everything and give it to the poor. I mean, if God says do it, then that’s between you and Him.

But I am saying that being a Follower of Jesus, a Believer in God, you have to have the mindset that the Big Picture is bigger than YOUR life and YOUR stuff and YOUR future here on Planet Earth. Jesus said not to worry about what you eat or drink because God will take care of His own. Instead, Jesus said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.”

Okay, that’s what all good Christians are supposed to do, ain’t it? But how seriously are we supposed to be in our seeking, our following? Two days a week with occasional Teen Camps and Xtreme Conferences and mission projects every year? Do we know what we’re really saying when we say, “I’ll follow Jesus wherever He leads me”?

Jesus followed that up with, “And all of these things will be added unto you.”

It’s the ‘These Things’ part that gets us. ‘These things’ means what we need to live, our provisions while we are upright and breathing. Three hots and a cot. What we wear and what we’ve got.

Education, Graduation, Vocation, Compensation, Identification, Medication, Communication, Marital Unification, Consummation, Procreation, Affirmation, Preservation, Sequestration (look it up) and then finally, Permanent Vacation.

If we choose to follow Christ, seeking His Kingdom first, THEN ALL of our needs will be met and our earthly lives will be blessed.

The priority is to follow Christ first.

And this is why Jesus said 'these things'; he later said, in Luke 12:34, “For where your treasure is, there your heart is also.”

Going back to the first story of the Religious Teacher: He said he’d follow Jesus anywhere. Do you think he really knew what he was saying?

When we say, ‘I choose to Follow Christ wherever He leads me’, we have to be willing to trust Him with everything.

First, seek His Kingdom. His Righteousness.

Then - as in ‘after seeking Him First’ - will He add ‘these things’ to you.

Yes, 'Redneck' Is A Gang!

When I was in the seventh grade, my parents transferred me to a little country podunk school, thinking it would 'protect me from the bad stuff in the bigger schools'; things like drugs and alcohol and gang violence.

Yeah, right...

When I was young, the Crips and the Bloods were starting to become more prevalent in the school system in Muskogee, and it was a sincere concern for my parents that their children not be threatened or involved in any way with gangs.

Like I'd try to get involved with gangs. My momma had nothing to worry about me getting involved with gangs because I am just not, nor every will be, gang member material.

First of all, I'm as white as white can get. I didn't just look white, I acted white, dressed white, even smelled white. The closest to dressing gangster - and remember, this was the late 70's was a pair of platform dress shoes that had a two-inch heel that my momma bought me for church.

I had Sore Thumb Syndrome; I stuck out, kinda glowed a little bit, even on a sunny day.

Second, I was NOT cool. I was tall and skinny, meaning that my pants were always too short. My momma would buy me jeans, and in a couple of weeks, maybe days, they'd be high-waters. My momma was notorious for buying my brother and I the same shirt off the same rack, just different colors. It didn't happen often, but sometimes we'd show up at school looking like Twinkies.

My momma would cut my hair, and man, in the 70's, there really wasn't a cool hair style for guys. I mean, we thought parting it down the middle and feathering it back was it, but, seriously??

And third, I just couldn't do anything to break my mom's heart. She caught me smoking when I was in the third grade, and watching her cry was more punishment than the belt from my dad when he got home. At that minute, I swore I would never BREATHE again, much less smoke cigarettes or drink or do drugs.

So off to po-dunk school we went.

On my very first day of being in Junior High at this po-dunk school, I found out that even small schools have gangs; they're called 'Rednecks'.

They wore Wranglers and boots and ball caps with logos like MFA Feed, Cat, Massey Ferguson, John Deere, Red Man, and Bubba's Pipe Line Equipment. Major League Baseball caps were nowhere to be found. Sometimes they wore cowboy hats.

And every one of them, every last one, had a faded ring in their back pocket where they kept their Skoal can.

I'm standing there at the doors of the Junior High, a white, geeky, momma's boy, scared to death as I watched this new and different type of gang move about the playground, terrorizing all the seventh graders with 'Initiation' - a Wedgie - and knowing that sooner or later, I'd come into their sights.

Later, I found that their customs were not too different from other gangs. They would talk about the Brotherhood Rituals of Redneck: going hunting and shooting deer, fishing, drinking and getting drunk (yes, even in the seventh grade! I was awestruck.), and the ever popular subjects of girls and sex and fighting and being tough.

It wasn't long that I noticed a more elite gang that moved with ease throughout the school with no fear of the administration - probably because their leader was actually on staff!

They were called FFA-ers. Future Farmer's of America.

They wore corduroy jackets with their gang sign on the back, the state and town of their chapter, and their names boldly printed over the right chest.

You weren't allowed to join the FFA until the ninth grade, and even then, it was a rigorous initiation. But every Redneck wanted to join. It was amazing. When I heard what the initiation was, I had absolutely no desire to be a part. It was so horrible, I can't even describe it to you. But I'll tell you, it had to do with chickens and cows and... okay, that's enough; I can't dwell on it like that. It's too painful.

As I moved through the school year, I never really was accepted as a Redneck, nor did I want to be. But I also wasn't isolated. I made friends with the different gang members, got to play in games like Twenty-One (an all-against-all basketball game) at lunch, and became recognized as a talented musician.

And it's important that you understand that I was in Junior High, in a po-dunk school, and many of these gang members wouldn't have known 'talent' unless it came in a beer can. So, to call me 'talented' just meant that I had 'some', which was way more than most of them did.

In the eighth grade, we studied Oklahoma History, and Mr. Pittman was the teacher.

He had grown up in this little bitty community, and knew every student, their parents, where they lived and what kind of cattle they raised or crop they grew. Before becoming a teacher, Mr. Pittman could have been considered a Redneck gangmember - still was, by definition, I suppose.

All the Rednecks liked him, primarily because he was an easy teacher; easy in that he would lecture, then let the students sit and talk and do whatever.

But one thing about Mr. Pittman that everyone liked was the fact that it was so easy to get him off task. We'd enter the classroom at the bell, sit down, and Mr. Pittman would come in. A student might ask him about his calf that he's fattening up, or the storm that stirred up his pond, or advice on fixing their pickup, and he'd go for more than half of the hour, explaining or talking or advising - then realize how much time had gone by realize that his original plan of lecturing for the day couldn't fit into the remaining time allotted.

They did it all the time. They'd get Mr. Pittman going about something, and he'd get of task, totally distracted. I can't honestly tell you one thing about Oklahoma History that I remember from taking his class. But I did get an 'A', as most students did.

My childhood recollections of Redneck gangs and po-dunk schools andparticularly Mr. Pittman came back to mind as I found my own self being distracted from the to do list that I had floating in my mind. Piddly stuff, irrelevant stuff came and went, eating my time out of my watch, leaving me with a bigger TDL for the morrow.

I'm betting that most of us know of a teacher that we could easily get off subject. My private piano instructor in college, Mr. Rosfeld, was one of my favorite mentors, all time favorite teachers. But when it came to lesson time, I often times hadn't spent the quality time I should have in the practice hall, meaning that my lesson was going to not go well.

So I'd often try to distract him with talks of his personal accomplishments as a writer, composer and arranger. He would look at me and say, "Oh, Monty, what am I going to do with you?" He knew what I was doing, and I could tell in his eyes that it saddened him.

There are a number of Scriptures that talk about being on purpose and intent in serving the LORD, leaning on and knowing Scripture, and serving others, but one thing that must be caught between the lines is that there is someone who wants to distract us from our purpose as Christians.

Ephesians 6:11 says: "Put on all of God's armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil." One of those tricks is to keep us distracted, sometimes with piddly and unimportant and irrelevant stuff. Distractions prevent us from putting on the armor that God has for us, leaving spots and spaces of vulnerability.

It's like going into battle with just a helmet on... no boots, no camos, no gun, no flack jacket.

Know that there is an enemy who wants you to fail, and he tries to sway you from staying the course with petty and miniscule discractions.

The rest of Ephesians 6 uses the word 'stand' repeatedly, meaning stay on task, stay on purpose.

Don't let yourself be distracted.

If Everyone's Special, Then No One Is...

I took my girls to school this morning, winding through the square circled drive that parents use to deliver their children to three different school buildings. There are high school students walking everywhere.

You see all kinds of lifestyles represented in the student body of a school; cowboys, jocks, nerds, skaters. Just this morning, I had the opportunity to run over a girl with a skunk strip in the front of her hair, a gangster hoodie and multi colored and unlaced Converse knock-offs, but I refrained.

One thing that seems to run rampant in schools, regardless of the 'clique' is sexual promiscuity, also referred to as 'casual sex'. It's aggressively talked about between students, even as early as fifth and sixth grade.

But why not? Casual sex seems to surface in every movie, on every TV show, all over the Internet, and even encouraged through the choices in clothing designs.

What's interesting to me is how people want to feel special, wanted, and desired without commitment, making the act of sex with just anybody less than the special and intimate - and even anointed - act between a husband and wife as God intended it to be.

The reason why I share this brief blog with you was this: as I pulled out of the squared circle drive and headed home, I thought of the 'specialness' that marital sex is intended and supposed to have.

Then a line from a movie seemed to come to mind, and I'll leave it with you to ponder with the subject of promiscuity.

In the Disney cartoon, "The Incredibles", the nemesis, Syndrome had captured the entire super family, their hands and feet held captive by some kind of electromagnetic field.

Syndrome is talking about his plan of domination, selling his super inventions to everyone who can pay his price. As he turns to walk out - and here's the line - he says, "And when everyone's special, then no one is."

Chew on that for a while.

I Think We Think We Know What We Want

Yesterday was nuts.

Oh, before I get too deep into this one…

“Bless me, reader, for I have erred. It’s been about two weeks since my last blog entry.”

Okay. Whew! Glad to get that over with!

Now, back to yesterday…

It’s not really a rant that makes me want to share with you about my Monday – it’s more of how the day ended. Yesterday was, in fact, the first Monday of the New Year (Happy Holidays!), so everywhere I went was a busy place and time.

The last thing on my TDL yesterday was a trip to Wal-Mart. Joy. My wife had texted me a list, but failed to be specific on the brand of laundry detergent – something that actually did matter, because a certain brand had caused a furious case of the itchings and scratchings, and I didn’t want to buy THAT brand again.

I called her cell, to which I reached her voice mail. Drat. I’ll have to make this decision on my own.

And there I stood in the housecleaning supplies aisle of Wal-Mart, studying the many kinds and types of laundry detergent. Again, joy. Finally, I selected one that I thought was a smart move, a ‘free from fragrances' and 'hypo-allergenic’ type of stuff. It made sense to me, so I threw it in the basket and finally headed to the checkout lane without my wife’s input or approval on my selection. Scary, actually.

It’s now pushing ten o’clock, and there are maybe three cashier lanes open. I stand behind a couple and their small child while the young girl working the scanner slid each item across the optic sensor. They paid their bill and left, and it was now my turn.

My cell phone rings.

I answer, and it’s my wife, returning my call. “Hi, did you call,” she says. I said, “Yeah, but I got it figured out. I’m checking out and then heading home.” Remember, I haven’t seen her all day except for about a minute and a half when we traded vehicles that afternoon.

She said, “Okay. Love you,” to which I replied, tiredly, but honestly, “I love you, too,” and I closed the cell phone.

The girl cashier, her name tagged her as ‘Chelsea’, looked up at me suddenly, and said, “Aww, how sweet!”

What made my comment to my wife so sweet that an eavesdropping young lady would comment? I don’t know.

Sometimes I think we think we know what we want, but don’t really have a clue. D’ja catch that? Read it again, then move forward.

Sometimes, we allow outside influences to shape our desires and dreams, thinking that true happiness comes from something that you can own or consume. A cell phone. A new car. A bottle of Jack Daniels. A dime bag.

Other times, we think that we can be happy if we are accepted and confirmed by a group that we have assessed and accepted as being the ‘norm’, and will do whatever it takes to get into AND stay in the ‘norm’.

People catch on to examples lived, and when they truly see or hear the real deal, that genuine article of love, I think it makes them reassess their priorities for happiness.

It’s amazing the things that make a positive impact.

Seeing an old couple hold hands as they walk through the store makes me want to look forward to growing old with Sharon - not grow old alone.

Watching children share their candy or hug their mom and dad makes me love my girls more – not wish I didn’t have them.

Hearing someone say, “I love you” into the mouthpiece of a cell phone, well, everyone likes to be told that they are loved. I couldn’t imagine going through life not hearing my wife and children say “I love you.”

Today, may a stranger see you, watch you, and want that specific something that you have that we all really want – a genuine, unadulterated and reciprocated love.

I John III