Never judge a day by it's morning

For the last fifteen years, on or off, my family has spent our spring break at Fort Myers Beach with my parents. Early on, when the kids were younger my brother and sister and their families came down too. This is the kind of trip that you wait all year for. Not just in the deep of winter, but through the summer too. Honestly, the longing starts on the long ride home!

You have to understand, this is the kind of vacation where your hardest decisions are do I read my book lying on the beach chair or do I just take a nap on the beach chair?  The weather in southwest Florida in March is pristine - cobalt blue skies, low to mid-eighties and a nice breeze in the afternoon. It's something you can always count on. Once in the first fifteen years it rained during the day. Once.

Our week this year started off great. Sunday was typical sunny beach weather. However, Tuesday the wind shifted from the north and stayed that way through Wednesday.  We knew what was coming. We didn't even need to open the AccuWeather app on our phones. A cold day. A non-beach day. Not what I had ordered for the week, that's for sure.

Sure enough, Thursday morning came in at 47 degrees!  We came down here to avoid that kind of temp!  I think the kids were a little depressed. Annie wanted to paddle board Thursday - too cold for that. Wendy wanted to sit in the sun again, too cold for that. What do you do at the beach when it's 47 outside????

You know the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover"?  Well, I offer a new one, "Never judge a day by it's morning". Thursday turned out to be one of the best days we had at the beach in fifteen years. By 1pm, the temperature was almost 60.  After the cold start, that felt great. The kids headed to the beach. By 3pm, the temp was almost 70. Not a cloud in the sky and very little wind.

By the time the day was over everyone got a chance to do what they wanted, Annie paddle boarded and Wendy sat in the sun. It turned out to be another beautiful southwest Florida day. Exactly what we ordered!

So why did we doubt?  Why did we get discouraged?  I think this happens to us more often than we think. We get to work, read our first email and think here we go again. We open up our Fiacebook and think this can't be happening!  We allow that first test of the day set the tone for the whole day. We get discouraged right away and give up on the day.

That's a terrible way to live. Letting the first moment of the day define us and our day. We need to remember that our day is what we make of it. Not what our circumstances make of it.

Heading back to work this week, I'm going to take a little different attitude to that first email of the day. I'm going to remember that there are 24 hours in a day (yes only about 17 that I'm awake!) and that first 10 minutes will not define me!  And if the day doesn't begin well it's up to me to make it end well.

The Grace Card

On Friday night, our Men's Retreat group went to see The Grace Card (www.thegracecardmovie.com). The movie was created by Calvary Church (Cordova, TN) and filmed here in Memphis. The movie is a powerful message of God's grace, love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. The main characters, Mack and Sam, are both Memphis cops. Mack blames death of his first son and the failures of his family on himself. Sam, also a minister, doesn't understand why he seems to be failing at his calling.

So what is a Grace Card and what does it mean for us?

"I promise to pray for you everyday, ask your forgiveness, grant you the same, and be your friend ... always."

The Grace Card is based on Ephesians 2:8 "For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift of God." Grace is a gift and God fills our life with gifts. Free gifts that we don't deserve and we are given so many gifts throughout our lives. As King David said, grace and mercy follow us all the days of our lives (Psalm 23:6). Unfortunately, we often reject them without even realizing it. Just like Mack and Sam, we can't see past our own failures or perceived failures. When we allow our failures to dominate our thoughts and actions, we give the devil the opportunity to separate us from God's people in our lives. Once separated, the devil is there to devour us (1 Peter 5:8).

But the beauty of grace is that God can use us to give this gift to those around us. Forgiveness, prayer, love, friendship - these are gifts we can freely give just as God gives them to us. And just like us, the people we give them to may or may not deserve them. But that's the power of grace. We give not expecting anything in return. We give not expecting to lord it over others but to reconcile with them.

The Grace Card is a paradigm shift from expecting to freely giving. From self-view, what we want, to God-view, what God wants. The Grace Card is giving our pain and hurt over a relationship to God and living the peace of God (Phil 4:7). It frees us to forgive, love, and befriend someone we could not under our own power.

Is there someone who you have not been able to forgive? Have you gotten to the point in a relationship that only by God's grace that it can be reconciled? Then, maybe it's time you pull the Grace Card ...

Forgiveness Revisited

Reading through the Lord's Prayer the last couple of days has provided me a new insight on forgiveness I thought I would share. Jesus tells us to ask for forgiveness equal to the forgiveness we receive from Him. He says it very clearly, if we don't forgive others we will not be forgiven (Mt 6:13-14). So how does Jesus forgive us?

There are three key things we must do in order to forgive others - understand, love, and forget.

• We must understand their position, situation, or reasoning for sinning against us. As Steven Covey puts it, we must seek first to understand then to be understood. Jesus took our position in life, as a carpenter, to fully understand what it means to be human. That's the ulitmate form of understanding!
• Understanding others opens us up to love them. This isn't the love of our spouse or family but rather the agape love, or unconquerable love, that God has for us.
• Once we realize that we can love others no matter what they do (after all we are commanded to love our enemies) than we can truly forget what they have done. As it's said, God buries our sins at the bottom of the ocean. He forgets them. So must we.

We really have to progress across all three in order to truly forgive others. Living only one of these will NOT allow us to forgive. If we expect God to forgive us, so must we forgive others.

So when I ask God for forgiveness, I must remember ... have I forgiven others? Before I ask for forgiveness, I need to stop and forgive others just as I am asking for forgiveness.

Forgiving vs. Forgetting

Every year, we go down to Ft Myers and meet my family at the beach. I get a chance to see my sister and her family and sometimes my brother and his family. As usual when families get together we often reminisce. One time, my brother-in-law said to me "I'm really sorry" ... why ... "for all the things your sister did you when you were kids" ... The crazy thing is, I don't really remember the things he was talking about.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness. Webster says that forgiveness is ceasing to feel resentment against another. Jesus said that holding on to resentment was just as bad as physically harming someone (Mt 5). Resentment can stay with us for a long time. Resentment can eat us up and control us. And the sad thing is, often the other person can live on as if nothing bothered them. So forgiveness can free us the grip of resentment. Forgiveness allows us to go on in peace.

But what about forgetting? Certainly, we can go on. In fact, we can live a long time without even thinking about what caused the resentment. But is it really gone? At some point, the resentment will rise back up. At some point, we will remember the cause and either let it surface in anger or to show in other relationships. In the end, the resentment doesn't go away, it just hides. At some point, the resentment will control us again.

Forgiveness is something we all need to practice. True forgiveness, not just forgetting, is healthy for us and our relationships. So how do we know the difference. I wish I knew the answer to that! I guess we know through our experiences. I guess we need to think about forgiveness and try to truly practice it. It's not going to be easy and sometimes it won't seem worth it, but it will make life better for us.

Temptation isn't bad?

I have never liked temptation. It has always been something I have wanted to avoid. I usually do everything possible to avoid temptation. I pray that I can stay away from it and be able to stand up to it. So I've always thought that temptation was bad. Well, temptation always has a bad connotation to it. But is temptation is really bad?

I was recently reading Matthew 4 and studying Jesus' three temptations. Jesus had just been baptized and given the Holy Spirit. Now it was time for him to start his ministry but first he had to change from His life to God's life. Jesus had to change from doing His own will to God's will.

Temptation is not an opportunity to fail but one to conquer sin. It is an opportunity to turn to God. Temptation gives us desire to focus on God and do His will. Isn't that what Gods wants anyway? Doesn't God want us to desire His will? Temptation points out what isn't God's will and what is.

Temptation most often comes when 1) we are at our highest, most successful point and feel the devil can't reach us; 2) we are in our strongest point, in the middle of our gifts and talents that we think are off limits to the devil; 3) when we are alone and without our friends and support system; and 4) we think we have reached the point in our life when temptation is no longer relavent for us.

So what have I learned? Temptation is not a penalty. It is an opportunity to come closer to God. It is an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with God. Temptation is not bad, it is our choices as a result of it can be good or bad. Maybe the best way to avoid temptation is to pray not for strength to avoid it but strength to focus on God.

Living in the Gray

In Sunday school today, we reading Matthew chapter 2 and got to talking about King Herod. He was an extremely ruthless man. He was known to have killed two sons and a wife because he thought they were rebelling against his rule. When he was dying, he ordered most of the leading citizens of Jerusalem to be imprisioned to be killed when he died. He wanted to make sure that people were in mourning the day of his death.

Herod was a terrible man. You always knew where Herod stood. He was a pretty black-n-white person. You either served him or you died. There was no gray in his rule.

As guys do, our class drifted towards sports. We got to talking about Calipari, Tennessee "hostesses", and other recruiting indescretions. We noticed how much gray there was with recruiting. People get away with so many thing because the live in the gray. Where is the right and wrong anymore? It's wrong to give ameture athletes anything that they could not have gotton on their own. But people try to justify their actions by saying that it's not as bad as out-right paying them. Are you kidding me?

I think the problem is that people don't want to acknowledge that there is a right and wrong in life. People want to live in the gray. We want to be able to explain off our actions. We don't want to know that we are in the wrong. Unfortunately, each time we decide to stay in the gray, the gray widens. More and more, our decisions to live in the gray open us up to more riskier choices. Each choice to stretch the gray a little bit makes it easier the next time.

So how do we leave the gray? How do we make the right choices? First, we need to acknowledge that there is right and wrong and that we don't have to play in the gray. We need to actively choose the right path. Then we need to learn what's right and wrong through studing God's word and talking and sharing our life and decisions. We need to surround ourselves with others that are committed to avoiding the gray. Only with support can we overcome the gray.

Football Dreams

Since a kid, I have loved football. Behind my house was a big field, almost 100 yards long. I loved to go out back with my friend from down the street and play catch or pretend we were in a real game. I used to own an imitation Tampa Bay Bucaneers helmet (don't ask me why it wasn't a Browns helmet) and shoulder pads. My friend had a set too (don't remember the team). They didn't have real padding in them (the helmet only had thin foam) but we acted as if it were real. We would play simulated games where the Browns always won.

I played real football starting in 7th grade and loved it. My jersey number was 44 and I played tight end and monster back. I think I played mostly because I was my brother's brother, but I didn't care. I only played through 10th grade. I remember getting knocked out of the game in 10th grade by two pulling guards from St. Ignatius (their Juniors played JV on Saturday if they didn't play varsity Friday night). It wasn't a serious injury, I just had my bell rung. But looking back on it, that was probably the beginning of the end. I played 6 more games and decided to hang it up when I didn't even get to play our rivals across town because, as the coach said ... you'll get to play next year but he is too small to play varsity ... by the way, we lost the game ... against our rival ... the biggest game of our season ... what kind of excuse is that?

Now I just watch football ... as much as I can/allowed. I love the game. But as I sit and watch Brett Farve and Kurt Warner play, I wonder "Could I have played at this age?" These are two guys my age. I couldn't take a hit when I was 15. How do these guys take it at 40+? Every year the game seems to get rougher. I've seen some pretty nasty injuries over the years - like Joe Theisman - and there was another one tonight. As I watch the Cardinals & Vikings, a Viking linebaker just bent his knee in a way that isn't supposed to be possible ... Ouch! ...

I think I just stick to watching the games. It is definitely more safer for me!