Saturday Stories

Last week I experienced one of those events in life that makes everything real.  One of those happenings that wake you up, that splash cold water on your face, and makes you sober.

I work for a church in Texas as their stage manager.  It’s a great job and I love what I do and where I work but my position requires me to stay on target and make sure the schedule is running in order, there isn’t much time with my job to simply sit and experience things, to experience the service and the people.  I am always running around on Sunday mornings trying to make sure everyone knows what is going on and that there are no issues.  The job of a stage manager is not to relax and enjoy the service, the job of a stage manager is to run and worry about the details.

In the church I also volunteer with the youth ministry where I do a variety of things one of which is teaching a spiritual growth class and preparing for an upcoming missions trip to Los Angels.  It is a stark contrast between the two positions; in my job it’s more about schedule and operations and in my volunteering it is more about people and relationship.

Last Saturday we had a training session for the youth who are going on the missions trip to L.A.  The youth pastor did something brilliant, something I never would have thought of, he handed out a piece of paper and a pen and gave everyone some time to write down their story.  The goal was for each person to become comfortable and familiar enough with his or her personal story so they would be relatable to those we would be ministering to in Los Angels.

As everyone wrote out their stories I walked around and looked over the shoulder of some of the youth who were writing away, one student had a diagram he’d drawn on his page.  On one said of the line he’d written “Before Christ” and on the other side he’d written “After Christ” and he’d listed some things under each category.  I laughed a bit and thought to myself, “how could a teenager have that much to write about before Christ?”

After everyone finished writing their story the youth pastor split the whole group into smaller groups and sent the young men with myself and another guy in the leadership of the youth department, Jeremiah.

We took the group of six young men and had them pair off to role-play how to approach a stranger on the street and start a conversation.  It was a bit awkward for everyone and after a few failed attempts I asked the group to come back together. 

Instead of trying the role-playing approach we decided to each take a turn sharing our personal story we’d just written down.  Everyone got two minutes to talk and to take us through their personal stories.  I started with mine and we went around the circle.  I didn’t hold any of the details back from my story I just told the group my experiences of going from drinking and smoking cigarettes to smoking pot and sleeping with girlfriends and I finished my time talking about how I got back into a church and met with my Pastor and how he helped me turn my life around.

As the next young man spoke he talked about abusive parents and divorce and rape and drugs and being placed in foster care and then being adopted and brought to church, the very church we were standing in.  The next young man spoke of similar scenarios and then the next and the next and the next and so on until we’d completed the circle.  Every single one had stories of the most horrible things involving situations and relationships that had changed their lives.

“My parents got divorced two years ago and I started getting angry and getting in fights in school.  I mean, how could two people who love each other just split up like that and wreck their home and their family?”  One young man said as he choked back tears.

“My dad killed himself when I was just a kid, I don’t think he meant to do it, he was going through a lot of hard stuff at the time.  I got really depressed and they sent me to a shrink and gave me some pills but none of it helped.”  Another young man shared.

At the end of each story, they spoke of someone in their lives who’d brought them to our church, Destiny World Outreach, and how they got connected and their lives haven’t been the same since.

It was truly heartbreaking for me to hear these stories, to hear that children and teenagers have gone through such horrible things.  In that moment I realized that life and working for a church isn’t about the schedule or the agenda, it’s not about the order of service or the time clock or even the amount of people in the service, it’s about the lives that are changed, it’s about providing a place of refuge and healing and strength for the people who are broken and hurting and who have nowhere else to go.

When you are conditioned to strictly follow a schedule you rarely just sit back and relax.  Over the last year I have transitioned from someone who makes every decision based on emotion to someone who makes every decision based on logic and reason.  When I asked everyone to share their stories I wasn’t attempting to make an emotional decision, I was making a logical decision without expecting to have the experience I had.  That’s the thing with our routines, God will typically find a way to interrupt our schedules and awaken us to His goodness and grace all over again.  That is what happened to me on that Saturday.

How to NOT become Hitler.

    Sometimes I can be judgmental.  Actually, I am judgmental most of the time.  It’s not easy for me to not be judgmental; honestly it’s very easy, it’s second nature.  Within my judgment I create the ability to be more than judgmental, I create the space for bitterness, envy, anger, hate, jealousy, and just about any other similar emotion or thought you could think of.  That’s what judgment does; it creates room for something greater.  Think of a courtroom and the judgment passed out by a jury or a judge.  Their decision, or judgment, creates more room for either freedom or captivity.

    Judgment stems from some form of insecurity.  Conscientiously or not, I have a bit of insecurity inside of me and it plays itself out in my judgment of the people in my environment.  Everyone deals with insecurity and judging others to some degree.  However, insecurity and judgment, when left out of check, can breed all those feelings and issues mentioned above; hate, anger bitterness, etc.

    From what I remember of my world history classes in school, Hitler was a very angry man.  Obviously we all know the horrific atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi party.  It’s easy to say that Hitler was very simply an evil man.  Don’t misunderstand what I am saying; I am in no way defending Hitler.  (I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence.)  Anyways, my memory tells me that Hitler wanted to become an artist one day.  He went to school and studied art.  He spent the next years working on his craft and one day believed he had a painting worthy of praise.  He decided to bring his piece to a local gallery where the curator laughed at him and sent him away telling him he was no good.

    He had worked so hard at his craft, his dreams and is desires were to be an accomplished artist and in one meeting his dreams and his years of work and study came crashing down.  What happens next in his life is where things turn horribly ugly. 

    Because of his hatred, his bitterness, his envy, his insecurity, and his anger, Hitler eventually murders millions of innocent people.  His hatred was sparked by this one encounter and given the time and fuel it needed, that spark turned into a massive flame that overtook a man and destroyed millions of lives.  I don’t believe Hitler was born as the evil person he became.  I think the evil took root when he allowed the insecurity and judgment and hatred to enter and breed.

    It is far too easy for anyone of us to become a person we were not meant to become when we allow our hurts and insecurities turn into judgment which can very easily lead to hatred, bitterness, anger, and strife.  I am not saying anyone of us has the ability to become the next Hitler.  I am saying that we have the ability to become something we were never created to become when we don’t check ourselves.

Some of the easiest ways to fuel our issues are to isolate and meditate.  When we become angry and bitter we often meditate on the encounter that caused us to become bitter, and angry, and hateful.  We play out the scenario in our minds and we talk to ourselves and imagine what we would say if the person were standing in the same room.  The other fuel is isolation.  We can become embarrassed or even more insecure and so we isolate ourselves from community and from familiar environments.  In our isolation we very easily add fuel to the fire of our bitterness.

    Don’t let bitterness, anger, hatred, judgment, and insecurity rob you of becoming who you are and who you were meant to be.  Don’t let isolation keep you from growing in community.  Forgive those who’ve hurt you no matter what the offense has been.  Move on with your life.  Extinguish the spark before it turns into a fire you cannot control.  Forgive. 

    Jesus told His disciples that if they walk into church and remember an offense they have against someone or an offense their brother has against them, they should walk out of the church right then and there, go find their brother and make restitution.  He told Peter, the most offensive man in the bible, to forgive those who hurt him 7 X 70.  In other words, always forgive.  There is NEVER a good enough reason to withhold forgiveness from ANYONE.

    Go ahead, pick up your phone and call the people in your life who’ve hurt you or those people you’ve hurt.  Find them and make restitution.  Allow forgiveness to take hold in your life.  Because we want the world to know us by the love we share with one another.

Have We Forsaken Humanity?

This post is about a topic I've been rolling around for the last week or so. I hope my thoughts and words come across clearly. Understanding and love are the backbone of my message. I never want to seem as though I'm judging or condemning anyone for their faults. As I was getting ready for work last week, I began thinking of someone I used to be close with and how I had not spoken with him in quite some time. He and I attended church together for a few years until I decided one day to leave the church. This person and I were never "best friends" but we were friends and spoke regularly. It dawned on me that I had not spoken with him in awhile and I wondered why. I had left this specific church and honestly didn't want to associate myself with people from that church, partially because I felt ashamed for the way things went down on my departure. I wondered if when I departed the church I had hurt him or others in the process. The possibility that people had been hurt emotionally by my actions came crashing down on my heart in an instant. I quickly repented and began thinking of other people in my life I had lost contact with throughout the years. Was this an issue with me personally or was there a larger issue running loose in society and inside the church that had somehow managed to distort my view of humanity. I see this issue spread out amongst churches I used to visit. I spent time helping out with worship at various churches around my city some time ago. The common theme in almost every church I went was that of betrayal. I would see various people I knew from other churches in my past and would be informed "discreetly" about the issues they experienced at other churches around town. I would mention "I was just visiting this church and saw Jimmy." Their response sounded something like "Oh, Jimmy and I don't really get along. It's a long story. He did something to hurt me." Then I would have the unfortunate pleasure of hearing the long story. I am not trying to say that people don't get hurt. It's an unfortunate reality associated with being alive that at some point in your life someone will hurt you; a friend, family member, or a perfect stranger. I'm not saying it's unrealistic to be hurt and offended. I just wonder if we are too slow to forgive and too quick to discard people from our lives. I know this is not simply an issue with the church. Everyday fathers and mothers discard their children. They throw them away to the broken school system, to the adoption agency, to the orphanage, to the gang. They abandon their children, creating generations of hurt and broken individuals. I understand that society in general tends to not value the life of an individual. I just think if there's one place in all the world for people to be forgiven, accepted, loved, cared for, encouraged, and set free, that place should always and undoubtedly be the church. I understand we live in a broken world filled with sin and no one is perfect, not even those inside of the church. I don't think we genuinely value humanity. We can be friends with someone for years experiencing the good times along the path of life, yet one error in judgment from your friend can cause you to never speak with them again, to harbor un-forgiveness, resentment, and anger. There is a grieving process that we'll experience after a wound from a friend has been handed out. It's important to understand this is a process and not a permanent way of life. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Says Matthew 5:4 we will mourn the wound from a friend. We will also be comforted when the mourning is over. Being hurt was always meant to be a process and not a way of life, no matter what the offense. A process that leads to freedom, forgiveness, and restitution focused in love. Is it logical to believe not every friend will be a best friend? Yes. Is it logical to believe that people will grow apart and people will change and separate? Yes. I don't believe there is anything wrong with that being the case. I'll use something that happened to me today as an example. I was in the grocery store doing some shopping. I saw someone I attended church with once. Actually I attended church with this person twice at two different churches. The last I spoke with this person everything was fine. I left the second church we attended together because I wasn't ready to reenter church and this person left shortly after for their own reasons. I actually talked to the person after both of us left the church. Things did not end badly on either side. But when I saw this person in the store they did a 180 degree turn after seeing me and avoided me. I was actually happy to see them until I realized what they had done in avoiding me. Am I hurt by this action? No. I just thought it was interesting and a little funny. I've seen someone in the mall before that I, at one time, despised, yet I still made a conscious effort to say hello to that person and take an interest in their life. Forgiveness can be difficult, especially when the wound has dug its roots deep within. Look at Peter, one of the most offensive men in the bible. "Then Peter came up to Him and said, Lord, how many times may my brother sin against me and I forgive him and let it go? [As many as] up to seven times? Jesus answered him, I tell you, not up to seven times, but seventy times seven!" (Matthew 18:21, 22 AMP) There is no magical number when we can stop forgiving people, we should always forgive those that have caused us hurt and then move forward to restoring that relationship in a healthy way. Let's take a boyfriend and girlfriend that were having sex outside of marriage for example. Their relationship takes its share of twists and turns and they end their relationship in ugly sorts. Over time they both decide to apologize and forgive one another. I'm not saying they need to restore their impure sexual relationship. They should, however, restore their relationship to some form of loving friendship. A husband and wife split up because the husband was abusive. Over time, when the wife has forgiven her husband she should not reenter that same abusive relationship. Forgiving someone does not mean you accept their abuse and attacks on your life. It means you forgive the wounds inside them that caused that individual to hurt you in the first place. So am I saying that we need to connect with abusive people in our lives for fear of throwing them away? No. If they are still attacking your life that is a completely different story. You should love them and pray for their healing and redemption, but you do not have to submit to their abuse. Almost everything I've talked about in this post, and in all my posts, is issues I've handled in my own life or have happened to close friends. I am not trying to judge anyone or point the finger of blame. I just cannot help but gasp at how society and the church place such little value on humanity, especially on so called "friends". Will this world ever be perfect? No, it will not. By loving and valuing humanity will you change the entire world yourself? No, you will not. But that doesn't give you any excuse for not attempting to make a change. You must be the change you want to see in the world. It doesn't matter if you infect one person's life or one million, with the love of Jesus. Go through your cell phone, your Facebook, your Twitter accounts. Find an old friend, someone you haven't spoken to in a while. Call them and talk with them, express interest in their life and share love with them. Begin to value people you encounter in life. When you watch the news and see someone was murdered, stop and say a prayer for their family. Give money and food to the next homeless person you see on the streets. Buy coffee for the person behind you at Starbucks. Hold the door open for someone at the store. Volunteer your time at the local shelter. It's time we get back to viewing each and every person as Jesus. I'll leave you with one of my favorite passages of scripture. "For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you brought Me together with yourselves and welcomed and entertained and lodged Me, I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me with help and ministering care, I was in prison and you came to see Me. Then the just and upright will answer Him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger and welcomed and entertained You, or naked and clothed You? And when did we see You sick or in prison and came to visit You? And the King will reply to them, 'Truly I tell you, in so far as you did it for one of the least [in the estimation of men] of these my brethren, you did it for Me." (Matthew 25:35-40 AMP)

Go, Be Free

“Go, be free”. Those words have hit me hard this morning.  Words spoken to me by someone not understanding what they were saying.  It's amazing how God can use things like that to bring a release into our lives.

Almost six months ago I became aware of how my life was repeating the same cycles of dysfunction.  I've written about this process before so I  won't go into all the details in this post.  
One day, a few weeks ago after reading my daily devotions, I began thinking of specific people from my past who I had issues with. People I offended and hurt or who had offended and hurt me.  I would think of their name and my next thought was “call them and ask them to forgive you”.  My thoughts were not about the situations, circumstances, or details.  Just, “call them and ask them to forgive you”.  
To me, It didn't matter if they had done something to me first. It didn't matter if their offense towards me was worse than mine towards them.  It didn't matter if I thought I was justified.  So I started with the first person.  I didn't call them and say, ’I want you to forgive me and I also forgive you’.  I didn't find a script to follow of what to say in these situations.   What I say changes each time.  It usually goes something like, “I have been noticing things in my life I want to change with God.  The other day you came to my mind and I just wanted to apologize and ask you to forgive me for hurting you and handling things wrong”. 
I notice that I am feeling happier, more relaxed, and literally lighter. I feel like pressure is being lifted off of my heart.  It has been a slow progression and today feels better than yesterday.  This process has gone from people that I've hurt recently to people from years ago.  
This morning I called one such person.  Someone I have not spoken with or seen in over three years.  After I nervously stumbled through my apology, The words spoken to me where “Go, be free”. That just about knocked me over.  I haven't thought about it like that.  I know this process is freeing me from my past and aligning me with the plan God has for my life, but those words cleared everything up for me.  Like a spotlight turned on in a dark room. There it was. Simple. “Go, be free”.

Here is what the bible says about forgiveness.
“Be gentle  and  forbearing with on another and, if one has a difference (a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive]”. (Colossians 3:13 AMP)

“Then Peter came up to Him and said, Lord, how many times may my brother sin against me and I forgive him  and  let it go? [As many as] up to seven times?  Jesus answered him, I tell you, not up to seven times, but seventy times seven!” (Matthew 18:21, 22 AMP)
(I have heard it said that the “seventy times seven” actually means forever, or always.  To forgive always.)

“And even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and turns to you seven times and says, I repent [I am sorry], you must forgive him (give up resentment and consider the offense as recalled and annulled).” (Luke 17:4 AMP)

“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him  and  let it drop (leave it, let it go), in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgive you your [own] failings  and  shortcomings  and  let them drop.” (Mark 11:25 AMP)

I prayed many times before this all began and told God that I forgive the people that hurt me.  I told God that I forgive myself for holding bitterness and resentment against those people.  I never asked God to forgive me for handling situations wrong, or hurting those people. I thought because I told God I forgive them I was clear of all hurt.  I thought that was it.  I was free from that person and that pain. I was wrong.

I am not trying to make this post a single source for teaching, understanding, or training on forgiveness.  
The words “Go, be free” hit me to the core.  I simply wanted to share my thoughts and feelings on the event.

I Pray you feel the love The Father has for you. I pray you reach out to those people who need to tell you “Go, be free”.