The last time i was REALLY good at something...

Everyone has had those times in their lives when they realize that what they are doing is EXACTLY what they were made to be doing. Some of us find this talent or ability and pursue it the rest of our lives, making it our ambition to be the best we can be at this particular thing. Many of us only bask in the glory of it for a while until it has run its course or it is no longer fashionable to do so. I am now 26 years old (thats more than a quarter of a century, i know...i'm not really that old but hush) and there are a few things that i feel like i'm pretty good at. But there is one part of my past, one ability that i had, one talent that i feel like will always outshine all of my other abilities. It was the last thing i can recall actually being REALLY good at. Now that you are on the edge of your seat:

Four square.

yes, thats right, four square. The game we all played in middle school intramurals that infuriated most but captured the hearts and minds of many. For whatever reason, i was DANG GOOD at this game. If you were unfortunate enough to be sharing a 4 square court with me then you may as well just give up on the king square, cause its MINE baby! me and my buddy josh knox (i wonder where he is today) used to dominate the courts. We were unbeatable. And whats more, we played by all the REAL rules. If people would complain and ask for bus stops, then that just made us even better!

Honestly, i have no idea why i was so good at the sport.

See, i have a theory. I think that there are some sports that guys like me (you know, hefty folk) prefer over others. Some of these include, but are not limited to, four square, volleyball, racquetball, tennis, and ping pong. I have several theories as to why big guys prefer these sports. One, none of these really require you to "make the team." You can play all these on your own with a friend. Because lets be honest, if you're a big guy, chances are you wouldn't make the team, so sports like basketball and football are out of the question. Second, these sports involve a court that is much smaller than a playing field. The most running that is required of the hefty person is just a quick sprint across a court. There is a reason why big guys don't play soccer. 3rd, most of these do not require much commitment or equipment to play. Thats good, because equipment costs money, and money can be used for other things....like food.

so yeah, i was good at four square, really really good.

and there are times that i sit back and think...why would i give up something that I'm so good at? well, i guess with four square thats an easy one...it just wouldn't be cool for me to go down to the closest middle school and beast on 7th graders.

Now what happens when we lose touch with that which we are best at? We can either sit and moan about it, do stuff that we are only sort of good at, or we can get out there and find something else we excel at. The way i see it, much of our lives are going to be spent doing something that we are only pretty good at. So, how do we fix this problem.

I think the problem exists on where the focus is.

I find myself thinking about the things i was good at and realized most of them were all self-seeking and self-glorifying. What if we began looking at the things we did and how they effected others. We may find out that while we may not be REALLY good at something, the impact it has on others is still tremendous.

So, i'd say, lets focus on the stuff that we can do that is going to be REALLY good for others, and stop trying to just be REALLY good at something.

for now though, i think maybe i'll go beast on some middle schoolers. I haven't made any 6th graders cry recently. that sounds fun.

from the pages of my journal...

The other night i was laying in bed and didn't feel like reading anything educational. I was more in the mood for mind-numbing dribble...so decided to break out my journal from 2007 and read through some of it.

I think journals are cool, because unless you write stuff down (your thoughts, actions, desires) how are you going to know if you're really growing or getting anywhere years later?

Also, i do not think i'm girly for journaling!

okay. this is only a portion of this day's entry. I was in a kind of sad/depressed mood this day, but i still thought it was rather interesting. I dont necessarily hold these same feelings any more. it was just interesting to see that...at this time...i did.

July 9th, 2007:

"I think it was 4 days ago, I was driving to go get some food, probably more disgusting fast food, and i was alone, and had no plans for the evening and nothing to return to. And i thought to myself: "All of my life, up to this point, every action, moment, every spiritual, physical emotional or even financial transaction had brought me to this EXACT point. Everything right now is exactly as it was meant to be!" Lonely, overweight, financially pinched and going to get unhealthy food just to take back to a dirty room. I said to myself that even though I had 2 good jobs, I would not be an integral loss to either of them if i left. I knew i had goals and dreams, but for the life of me, I could think of nothing. Would I ever be successful, important...needed?

It was depressing to think about the 23 years, almost 24, of my existence leading up to nothing important at all. Some have managed to change the world in moments and in my 24 years so far i had managed to do...nothing.

What i need is an "its a wonderful life moment." I need something to remind me that my life is important, that i am needed, and that i do make a difference in the lives of some people.

But really, that just sounds like some sort of deflated vanity. Who am I to assume that I am important in anyw ay? Doesn't scripture only attribute us as vapors? We are only a breathe in this great expanse that exists in time?

I think, then, that we may not be significant at all...but what IS important are the things that God does through us. It is more important that we allow God to work through us than to do anything this world may attribute as great. Every moment of our lives should be spent with an openness and willingness for God to put our worthless, no value, unimportant and wispy days to use for something invaluable, something eternal...something good.

blessings

I love to preach. God knows that. So, whenever He allows me to do that, its an incredible blessing.

Since i started at Arapaho Road Baptist Church God has given me 4 opportunities to preach. Its been wonderful. I'm not saying that the sermons themselves are wonderful, but just the fact that God would allow a silly, unworthy guy like me to be the messenger of His Word.

My most recent sermon was on Nov. 9th. its one of those good ol fashioned REPENT sermons. for reals. I preached it...mostly because i needed to hear it.

and hey, now you can listen to it. and let me know what you think, really. cause, i need some criticism if i'm going to improve. here's the link for it:

http://www.arbcgarland.com/sermons/20081109.htm - Mark 1:1-8 Building God's highway

And, just for kicks, here are the links to the three other sermons.

http://www.arbcgarland.com/sermons/20080713.htm

http://www.arbcgarland.com/sermons/20080720.htm

http://www.arbcgarland.com/sermons/20081019.htm



so, while your'e kickin around, studying, or whatever...give em a listen. :)

my sermon

a couple of weeks ago i preached from Ephesians 5 at my church. It was a very difficult sermon, but one God had convicted me of.

you can go listen to it at arbcgarland's website here.

give it a listen, give me some feedback.

i'm a young preacher, so i'd also welcome some feedback on style, pointers, stuff like that.

oh and if that link doesn't work, for some reason, just go to http://www.arbcgarland.com/sermons/20081019.htm

josh's thoughts on the election

well, in light of the election there have been many blogs/notes/whatever posted. so i thought i would contribute with a short one.

ooookie dokie.



thats it. what'd ya think?

Wuv....twue wuv

I could sit through the entire movie just to see the scene with the old guy priest conducting the ceremony between that scaliwag humperdink and princess buttercup. It’s a great movie, it truly is.

I'll be honest, "wuv" or….love…isn't necessarily one of the things that I know a lot about. I can tell you with complete honesty that the truest love I have ever known has been the love between my family members. When I was just a little bigger than a wee little tot (there was a time when I was little…it was somewhere between the ages of 3rd trimester and 2 years old) my dad and I developed a code language. Dad thought it would be cool if he and I could say "I love you to one another" in a way that wouldn't be embarrassing around my friends. The code we developed was "how bout them cowboys!?" to this day, we still sign emails and stuff like that with "how bout them cowboys!?" (despite the fact that they stink like doo doo.) What my dad may have never realized is that I was never, and have never been embarrassed to tell him that I love him.

So outside of the family relationship, I'll be honest and say that I'm pretty undecided about whether or not I've actually been "in love." Sometimes I believe I have been, but then sometimes I'm just not sure. A lot of people give us their opinions on what "true love" is. I always throw up a little when I hear one of these silly clichés. "love is your heart finding its counterpart in another"….pause….*josh vomits*

On the topic of love, we all know the Bible says MUCHO. Now, I'm going to surprise you and NOT go straight to 1 Corinthians 13. We've heard that every year on the Sunday before valentine's day and every wedding that we've all been forced to go to. (single people hate weddings by the way. Nothing quite as exciting as getting up a little earlier than normal on Saturday, getting all dressed up and going to feel lonely for a couple of hours. Sure, we're happy for you, but please…just don’t tell us how happy you are. Cause we're jealous.)

Instead, look at Colossians 3. Verse 12 through 14 are pretty cool. Verse 12 gives us several traits that we should exhibit as Christians like compassion and gentleness. All in all, it seems like verse 12 is ordering us to be nice people. Crazy that we would need to be nice huh? There are times when we need to take a look at the sun (or if you're worried about your retinas, look at the moon) and be reminded…those things aren't revolving around me. For crying out loud, we can all be so selfish sometimes. (some of you reading this are thinking, "josh, you are the king of selfishness." to you i say, you're right and i'm sorry.) What do you think would happen if suddenly, for one day, everyone was only concerned with making others happy? Now, you need to understand that verse 13 builds on 12 when Paul commands us to be forgiving of one another. Colossians says that we need to forgive others just like Christ forgave us. Now stop and think, is there anything that Christ hasn't forgiven you for? If you're a little slow…the answer is no. So…is there anything that we shouldn't forgive others for!? Again…for the slow kids…no.

I know, that’s not easy. People do really mean and hurtful things. People are stupid and idiotic. People are sinful.

Forgiving them is NOT easy…but its what we're told to do. If you are saying in your head right now "no, if someone did this to me…I could never forgive them." you may feel that way now, but can you honestly tell me, in light of this scripture, that its okay to not forgive someone? I don’t think so. I'm not saying I'm good at doing this, I'm just thinking that this is what the scripture says. And since 13 builds on 12, then it looks like we'd never be able to forgive people for ANYTHING if we're not exhibiting all the traits in 12 first! How can you be a forgiving person if you're not a compassionate person? Or a gentle person? A humble person? A patient person?

This takes us now to 14. Back to Wuv…twue wuv. Paul tells us to love one another, that love is the "perfect bond of unity." nice. That means if you're genuinely loving someone then unity is going to be easy. Strife can be dealt with, we can get upset but it never threatens the unity that we have.

Now when I read this…it didn't dawn on me at first, but after realizing that these 3 verses build on one another, I had a "come to Jesus meeting" about what I believe about true love. Listen to this: just as much as we can't be forgiving people without exhibiting the traits of v. 12, but we will NEVER experience true love until we can be forgiving. To love someone else you have to remove selfishness and exhibit v.12 traits. But when it comes to love, we can never love someone until we know we can forgive them.

The truth I believe that can be found in this passage is this: You should never ever ever look at someone and tell them you love them without knowing that there is NOTHING that person could do that you could never forgive them for. No matter how they treat you, no matter what they do, no matter where they go, desertion, cheating, lying, stealing, abuse, all of that.

I know, its not easy, and I'm not saying that if someone is doing this that you have to put up with it, but you DO have to forgive them (I didn't say that, Paul did, God did.) God has forgiven us for everything, He isn't going to tolerate everything, but He has forgiven us.

I hope that one day I'll be able to look at someone and tell them "I love you." But I never want to do that until I can do v.12 and v.13 exactly right. Have I loved before? Based on this criteria…I think so. I think so. When I think of those I have said I love, I know that I could never stop loaving them, no matter what circumstance I'm in or where they are. With my family….of course. I will always love them.

Okay, so…thoughts?

preaching on the streets: do or don't?

Hey here’s something interesting. As I write this I’m 34,000 ft in the air! I’ll be honest, I’m not a big fan of flying, but here I am. I’m like many people, if God had intended us to fly he would have given or super powers, or we’d have been born with rocket-packs on our backs. I have neither. Well, I do have a super power. X-ray vision. That’s right, x-ray vision. Except, I don’t really have good control over it, so I never use it. I may try to see through a wall or something and I just end up seeing through the whole building and usually, when I look at people, all I see are their skeletons, and that’s just not cool. You’d think it’d be a neat superpower, instead it just makes me sick.

Okay I don’t really have a super-power. I just like to think about what it’d be like if superman was an idiot. I mean, I think we’re pretty lucky that clark kent got the powers and I didn’t. He may be talented enough to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I’m not. Also I’m too lazy. I’d only use my super-powers to occasionally help a friend of mine move or something.

enough about that random stuff. I’m basically only rambling because flying makes me nervous.

I’ve been in Atlanta this weekend for a conference with the ERC. That’s a program of the North American Mission Board where they enable you to witness to people over the phone. It’s a really cool deal. Someone calls because they’ve heard the Gospel and they are responding to it, you just reap the harvest! And then you turn in their information and NAMB will help them get connected with a local church body. (that’s for you nay-sayers who say there is no follow up! So you can quit saying nay!) it’s a great ministry, so if anyone wants in on it, let me know and I can help get you started.

While I was there, I was asked to do several things. Someone in the group caught wind that I used to lead worship so they asked me to lead the worship in the mornings. That was all fine and dandy, except I didn’t have my guitar. My guitar is kinda like my blankey. Its my safety net. I had to lead these people singing accopella! I’m sure that’s not how to spell that. It went okay though. My other assignment was to be on a Q&A panel. I had no idea what the panel was supposed to address, but there I sat in front of everyone. And I was sitting next to Alvin Reid. He’s the guy who wrote a lot of your Evangelism books. I felt really out of place. But he was really cool! As a matter of fact, we’re friends on facebook now. You know, that’s a symbol of true friendship right there.

Speaking of friends, Its hard without them.…………………………………(contemplative pause)

Okay, onto the topic: One of the other guys who came for the conference was from New Orleans Seminary. He was a really nice guy, real clean-cut. Perhaps a little overly nice. You know, one of those guys. Also a little bit of a close-speaker. It was a tad off-putting. But during his presentation he talked about how he was into open air preaching. He said he would go down into New Orleans and hit bourbon street and he and his friends from seminary would preach. I thought….hmmm. I’ve never been sure on how I should feel about street-preaching. It gets a very bad rep from tv and a lot of people I talk to are usually pretty skeptical about it. I’m one of those. My first thought about street preachers are those morons yelling at the girls for wearing “short shorts” and listening to “the devil’s music.” Lately it’s been associated with the morons that tell people that God hates gay people.

So, I thought about it though, cause my impression of this guy up to that point was really good. Seemed like a real nice guy and now all of a sudden I see him as a fundamentalist nailing soap-boxes amidst people dressed like flamingos on bourbon street. And then I happened to think about my hero. No, I’m not talking about the hamburglar, I’m talking about Saint Peter. The first sermon in Acts…where was it? Public. Christ’s sermon on the mount was in the open air, cause I’m pretty sure they didn’t have any temples with mountains in them. Paul broke out preaching in the middle of a pagan temple. So, I mean, it’s the only method that they taught back then apparently! Here’s the thing though…they also did A LOT of preaching in the synagogues and the temple. It seems like that was actually their preferred method.

here’s my thoughts about open-air preaching. I think its okay, but not preferable. Most of the time Jesus and the Apostles would preach in the temple or the Synagogue, where people would willingly come to hear a message or to discuss theological matters. And even when you examine Christ’s sermon ion the mount, Peter’s sermon at Pentecost and Paul’s sermon among the Greeks, you’ll find that those who were present were there for the purpose of hearing teaching or debating. These weren’t people simply trying to find a place to go eat, get a smoothie downtown, or have a drink at a bar.

The Gospel needs to be preached to the world, but when it enters the ears of those who are already wishing they weren’t hearing it, what is the likelihood that it is going to impact someone?

What are you guys’ thoughts?