A little bit ago, I posted about Mary and how it must have been to be pregnant before she was married in a time when people were stoned for that sort of thing. I have also been wondering what it must have been like to be Joseph. Not much is really known about Joseph. We know that the Bible tells us that he was a righteous man and a carpenter, and not really much else. We also know that after seeing an angel in a dream, he took Mary as his wife and helped raise Jesus until at least Jesus was twelve years old and then nothing else is mentioned about him. But do we need to know more about him to understand what kind of man he was?

All of my brother-in-laws are carpenters, which affords me a certain unique perspective into the trade. Especially since I can barely hammer two boards together without hitting my own hand or aligning them correctly. In fact, it takes a great amount of skill to be a carpenter and fashion what really amount to sculptures out of wood from ordinary piles of two by fours. However, one of my brothers-in-laws, Raymond, is a bit different. Raymond worked as a carpenter all his life easily excelling at his trade to the rank of master carpenter. Several years ago, he ventured out starting his own business by getting his contracting license and now not only employs several people but also is one of the most sought after people in the whole area. My only complaint is that he is not close enough to us to build us our home.

But what is the difference between Raymond and other carpenters who swing a hammer. I mean all carpenters worth their nails can build a deck or repair a wall or raise a house, but what makes Raymond so different that he gains respect of his workers and garners a loyal following of his customers? I believe the difference is vision. Any carpenter should be able to look at a drawing or blueprint and determine about how much in materials is needed to do the job, but a visionary should be able to look at an empty back yard and see a deck. A visionary should be able to look at an empty lot and see a house. A visionary should be able to look at a small or run down house and not see an eye soar but the possibilities. This is the kind of man that Raymond is and why he is apart from the rest and why he is such a good contractor and businessman and one of the many reasons that I am proud to call him family.

I believe that Joseph was just such a man. After all, he had a dream in which he was visited by an angel. Now, I realize that it was not an ordinary dream, but it was still a dream and from that he got up and trust Mary. From that, he got up and believed that the baby was the Son of God. In order for that to happen, Joseph had to be a man of vision otherwise it would have been far too easy to dismiss the angel in the dream as nothing more then a fantasy. Think about the best most real and exciting dream you have ever had and then remember it was still a dream. The Bible tells us that it was a dream that the angel visited Joseph in and yet it changed him and I believe that was because Joseph was not an ordinary carpenter, he was like my brother-in-law Raymond, a visionary. In short, Joseph was the right man for the job, the job that God created him for.

In life, God calls us all to do things that he has created and called us to do making us the right man or woman for the job. When that moment comes, will we step up to the plate like Joseph did or will we shy away. Many times, just like Joseph, that moment may not be an easy one to walk through, but it will be the right one and remember that God walks through it with you.

I am beginning a weight loss trek and will be blogging about it. This will mark the first post about it.

I went to the cardiologist yesterday and was surprised and then shocked. First, about four weeks ago when I was at my primary car doctor, I was weighed in at 371lbs and I was a bit bummed. Since then, my wife and I were fasting for God to move in our finances and stuff. Yesterday, I found out that I was 352lbs and I was excited that I lost almost 20lbs. Then the doctor spoke to me about my weight and the high concern he has because of my symptoms and family history. In fact, he said that if I can not get my weight loss under control in a month, he will actually have me go for surgery which he told me he never recommends. Well, that got my attention. Now, some of you may remember almost two years ago when I did weight watchers and lost just over 50lbs so I know I can do it as long as I put my mind to it and pray about it.

So, please pray for me and keep watching my blog for more information about my weight. I do not know when my next weigh in will be, but as soon as it is I will be sure to post my new weight.

God is so awesome. This weekend, we tried a new church and I will just tell you that I hate trying churches. Especially when you try churches that are good ones. Because bad churches are easy to spot for the most part, but good ones that are just not where God wants you to become a part are much harder to tell. So, I hate the process to trying churches and praying and trying to determine if this is the church for my family. If this is the church that God is calling us to make our new home. So, in a way I was dreading going to church this weekend and I hate that feeling as well.

In fact, the night before, I asked God that this be the church just because I hate having to look for a church. I know that is the not the right reason to ask that the church I was about to visit be the church that God wanted to be our home, but I just wanted the search to be over. I am sure that any of you Christians who have had to search for a new church know exactly what I am talking about. So, I asked God to make this church the church that was to be our home church and to confirm that for us. Of course, I did tell god that not my will but his will be done and if this was not the church to let that be known to me as well, but the majority of my hour of prayer time was making my request known to God.

Before I get into what the church service was all about, I had spent much of the week prior contacting my father in the faith, the man who lead me to Jesus who now pastor’s a church in Utah. He was at a conference, but was ever so gracious to find time to converse with me over email which is a real testament the love of God that is in his life because I sent him what amounted to about an eight page email just unloading about everything that had been going on and how I felt and what I was going through and how I need some advise and direction. He replied that night, in the middle of the night burning the midnight oil on my behalf (Lord continue to richly bless him) with some initial thoughts and a question that really got me thinking. The question was simple, “What is the main goal of a Christian?” I quickly fired off an email reply with some trite clich? response.

However, the question did not leave my mind. I spent the better part of the day thinking about the question over and over and about Jesus and God and the Scriptures. I knew that I knew an answer and to be honest I really didn’t want to get this wrong. That is not that I was too proud to admit that I could be or was wrong, just that I really didn’t want to get such a basic concept of Christianity incorrect. So, the question just kept going around and around in my head until I had come to what I believed was the answer and just had to fire off my response to my father in the faith. Here was my reply.

I believed that I was right, but I can not tell you how good it felt to have my father in the faith confirm it for me. With all that I had been through lately, there was a great sense of peace to know that at the core of everything I had not strayed from God or the truth. My father in the faith added that now I had to find a church that believed this and lived.

This brings me back to this past Sunday morning. We arrived at the church a little earlier then expected because I misjudged how close it was. That is not a bad thing, but there was a sense of perhaps we had arrived too early. So, we waited for about five minutes in the parking lot asking God to show us if this was to be our church home before going in. As we walked in, we were greeted by several people, which was nice. Then things began to change.

A man walked up to introduce himself; I wish I could remember his name, but there were just too many names to remember. As he did, another man said, watch out for him because he is from New York. Well, we quickly informed him that we were from New York and New Jersey and immediately struck up a conversation. There was something very home feeling almost brotherly that came from talking with this man.

Soon the service started and we stood up to sing. As we did, people were still coming up to introduce themselves to us. In addition to this, both my wife and I commented how even though there have been good churches that we have been in since we left New Jersey, we have not felt the power and flow of the Holy Spirit as strong as we did in this churches worship service. On this alone, we were strongly feeling that this might be our new church home.

Something that amazed me was that during that worship time, the pastor made a point of walking up to me and introducing himself and speaking with me and there was just something in his eyes that I knew was genuine. It was not out of obligation of being pastor, but just out of love that he walked over and spoke with me and I could feel it in his handshake and his speech and it make me feel good inside and in my spirit.

The service was great although the pastor mentioned several times that this was not a normal service. In fact, at one point he even turned to me and asked if there was anything else that I would need to know that God was calling me to know that this was a good church to be my new church home. I believe that God set this particular service up for our need so that we would know that this is our new church. And if all of this was not enough, God did one more thing.

At almost the end of the service, the pastor talked about a member of the church who was in need and how the family was in financial need because of medical issues the family was going through. He spoke about the fact that we as Christians should be focused on loving on another and that we should be known by our love. That Jesus told us to love and that was our “Goal” as a Christian to love. I was sold. Not that I needed more at this point, but that was the nail in the coffin for me and the final confirmation that I would need to tell me that this was the church that God is calling me to be at and I am very thankful to God for having this church there and calling us to it.

As a side note, as a parent, you want your kids to enjoy church. This is especially true when you have teenagers. The pastor mentioned that our oldest was a teenager and two amazing things happened. First, we discovered that God had us sitting in front of the youth group and second more then half of them came up and introduced themselves and invited my child out to youth. They made her feel so welcome that she not only wants to come back to the church but she is really looking forward to coming out to youth on Wednesday night.

God is so awesome and I am so thankful that he has led us to this church and I am looking forward to becoming part of this church as we move forward. I want to encourage you that if you are looking for a church or find yourself looking for a church in the future pray and keep searching because God will bring you to that perfect church where you will feel the love and presence of God flowing.

I love the new Battlestar Galactica and have been a fan since the new show came on the air. I have a theory about what is happening with Starbuck and I emailed this theory to friends, family and those people who have blogs/podcasts that I subscribe to. I am totally psyched that Slice Of SciFi (www.sliceofscifi.com) has taken my theory and posted it as an article (BSG – Theory on Starbuck). Be sure to click over and take a look at the article and don’t forget to also click to dig the article (Digg The Article).

Thanks SliceOfSciFi for posting the article!!

I had a strange dream last night.

When I woke up and was lying in my bed this morning, I was thinking about this dream. How many times do we go through something that is difficult and want to take the easy road out when that may not be the right choice. It reminded me of a scripture that a friend recently shared with me to hold to while I was going through my medical issues.

None of us want or desire trials, but in life they come and when they come the Bible tells us to face them because as we go through them we will grow. Even Jesus face trials, and he didn’t walk away from them, but he faced them. And the devil knows when to hits us when we are at our weakest. After all, he went after Jesus after he had been fasting for forty days and forty nights and yet our Lord stood strong and he grew and was ministered too by angels. We too need to stand strong, use the word as our sword and remember that we do not walk this alone and know that we are growing.

I have been thinking a lot about the following verse:

The Bible tells us that God is love and I think that this is very important if not the important thing that we need to understand and realize about God. The reason begins with understanding that the Bible does not say that God just shows love although he does. Or that God just has love although he does. But that God is love. In other words, God’s nature is love meaning that it would be impossible for God to be separated from love. It is like the fact that we are humans. We are never not human and every minute of every day we are humans. Nothing we ever do will ever separate us from being human because it is in our nature it is in our being it is who we are. The same is true with God being love. It is in his nature it is in his being it is who he is. Therefore, God is never separated from being love. Every minute of every day, God is lover. Put another way, God never ever does anything without doing it in love.

For some of us that may come as a bit of a shock to think of God as always being and acting in love but that is the truth. We may not always understand how God’s actions relate to love at the moment we are in them, but they do. Take Mary, the mother of Jesus for example. When we think of her, we hold her with the highest of respect and reverence as well we should for she was chosen from all women from all time to carry the very son of God. Think about that for a moment, God looked down on the Earth throughout all time because God was not limited to a specific time and found Mary because, as the Bible says, she found favor with God (Luke 2:28-30) that alone deserves our respect. Then God placed his only begotten and unique son within her to carry and raise on this earth until it was time for him to be revealed to everyone who he was and what his mission was. But before Jesus was revealed think about what Mary had to go through. Sure today, we give reverence to her as the mother of Jesus and the great miracle she got to carry and raise, but think about what life was like for her after the angel left her. Think for a moment what the conversation with Joseph must have been like. Teenage pregnancy has become fairly accepted today in our society over two thousand years later, but think about what it must have been like way back. Heck only forty years ago women would have had to drop out of school and had been shunned with almost a scarlet letter pasted on their chest imagine what it would have been like over two thousand years ago. This is one of the reasons that the Bible tells us that Joseph had “being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.” (Matthew 1:19) The second reason would be that the punishment under the Mosaic Law would be death (Leviticus 19:20) because we must remember that in the time of Jesus’ birth a betrothal was seen to be just as binding as a marriage contract. So, in the eyes of the Jewish law, the Jewish society and even in the eyes of God, Mary and Joseph were for all intent and purposes married and if Mary had been with another man she under their law should be put to death. Now, we know that she had not been with another man, but that God supernaturally placed Jesus inside her, but whom do you think would believe her. If that even happened today who would believe you? And today you would have the benefit of at least the fact that it happened once before, but back then it had never before happened ever and here comes Mary, who was pure and innocent by all regards favored by God, telling her husband to be that God was the one who placed the baby in her belly. There is not a man that has ever lived who would have believed her prior to receiving the vision from God. In fact, Joseph would have had to be quite the man to not have blown up at her right there on the spot. And I am not speaking physically, just shouting at her at being a harlot for lying with another man because by all accounts in his mind she would have had to be with another man and the story about an angel was a cover. No matter how convincing she sounded, he would have felt betrayed and hurt and angry and yet this pregnancy was done out of love. But do think when Mary was standing there after explaining this to Joseph and having those condemning eyes staring back at her she was able to remember and hold on to that? Perhaps she was and perhaps that was why she was so favored by God, but I can saw it was not easy.

If that was not enough, imagine what it must have been like to be Mary. After the first three months of staying with Elizabeth, we can only assume that she returned to her home obviously showing. Whether married to Joseph at this time or not, you know that she was now know as the woman who was found to be with child. People then are as people are now and people will talk especially when there is gossip to be had and while I am sure that Joseph, a righteous man as the Bible declares, probably said the baby was his, people still murmured and rumored and whispered. How Mary must have felt as people constantly spoke behind her back and whispered and pointed towards her. Even after Jesus was born and they returned to their hometown, the people speaking and point as Mary had to endure because she knew in her heart that this was not only done out of love and that her son would save the world. Yet, how many times did it not look like it when she had to walk out her day to day. How many times did she have to hold on to the angels words and the things she treasured in her heart because of the way the enemy attacked to attempt to hide the fact that God was love and was moving on the face of the Earth in love. It must have been tough, it must have been unbearable and insurmountable and impossible to achieve on her own. But thank God that we never walk this walk on our own.

But look at how Mary was seen and treated after Jesus began his ministry. See how his disciples treated her as if she was the queen mother herself because after all she is the very Son of God, who is the King of Heaven’s, mother. Today, she is respected and revered and even in some circled unfortunately worshipped which is far more then God ever intended because for all she was she was never more then a servant of the most high God. But she did serve and no matter how hard the walk she had to face was she remember one important face as she walked and that was that God is love and that he never does anything apart from love because that is his very nature. That fact alone allowed her to walk through the darkest of valleys when the times were the toughest and people were the cruelest because she could see the light of love shining brightly in her spirit and in her heart and later in her son’s eyes. Oh, how we need to hold on to the very same things that Mary did and remember that everything that God does he does in love and hold on to that and see the shining light of Jesus’ love in our spirit as we walk through whatever he has called us to walk through.

I pray that I would be able to see that light of love as I continue to walk through what I am presently walking through and I pray that you can do the same.

The idea of being broken is bittersweet to a Christian because we know that when we are broken before the Lord that we are truly open to be his, but we are also shattered to our self and what we perceived was the plan for our lives that it is hard sometimes to see the light of day. This is why whenever we have to walk through a time of being broken again it is a time of pain and yet renewal, a time of sorrow and yet revival, a time of hurt and yet joy, a time of great introspective and great learning. And this is a time that I am finding myself going through again.

There are times in our lives when we come to a point where things are going smooth. We think we know all the angles on everything and have everything safety planned out. We know where we are and where we are going. Everything is neatly on course and we are happy. However, it is in these times that we often fail to see that we are standing in the middle of a frozen pond and the ice is cracking. We should be hearing the sound of the coming disaster as the ice melts, but we are too busy arrogantly telling ourselves that we have everything under control. Then as the cracks in the ice move in, our pride takes hold of us and we refuse to acknowledge what our eyes see and cry out to the Lord for help and instead, we run seeking our own answers. Looking for patches of solid ice on the pond as if we really had any idea at all what was going on when the reality of the matter is we are a sinking ship in the middle of desperate situation over our heads. Finally, everything crashes around us and we fall and shatter into a million pieces.

No matter how long we have walked this walk with the Lord, the fall always comes as a surprise and always causes us pain. I think it is because there is no real growth without some level of pain associated with it even though one would think that as the years go on one would get used to the flow of the Lord’s pruning shears. One would think that after years you would get used to the Lord’s way of raising you to the next level, but then if we did would we really grow, would we really excel and would we really ever fly and soar like the butterfly I mentioned in my last post.

After we have fallen, the father comes and gently sorts through the pieces that are left. Finding some that are no longer needed, he tosses those away. Others, he careful picks up and places them in new positions while adding new pieces that he specially fashioned just for us making a brand new mosaic that was more brilliant then the one before. As his Son shines through us and illuminates the world, we never looked so good and it is then that we realized that it was all worth the cost and wondered why we ran, why we questioned and why we didn’t embrace the brokenness that God wanted us to go through.

I don’t know if I will ever embrace the brokenness like I should, but I know that every time I am broken before the Lord, be builds me up better then before.

This weekend we visited a church that had a guest speaker from Germany who spoke about the subject of a butterfly or more specific, the cocoon. Before the butterfly can soar high above the ground and go from flower to flower dancing across this great landscape the God created, it’s begins it’s life as a lowly caterpillar crawling along the ground. Seeing nothing but dirt and grim for a time that only God knows and then decides to create the protective shell of the cocoon where it will undergo a miraculous change.

Inside the cocoon, the caterpillar grows it’s wings, changes from a ground creature to an air creature and has it’s purpose completely reborn. In many ways, this is like the born again Christian whom after receiving Christ becomes a new creature. This is also often the process the God will bring us through when he is preparing us for something new and often greater level of service in his kingdom. The cocoon is a wonder and needed life altering process where only God knows the proper time spent within incubating. Too little time, and the new creature would not be formed and strong enough to face the challenges ahead. Too long, and the new creature will be embittered and battle worn before even have flapped their wings for the first time.

While in the cocoon, the caterpillar drastically alters its physical appearance making crucial the protective shell that is spun around during the transformation. Keying the perfect harmony of nature that God created around us as I realize that I am in a cocoon. I feel the pain of changing from one thing to another. I feel the tearing from one way of worshipping to another. I feel the pulling of communing with God in one way to another. I feel the suffocating claustrophobic tightening of the shell that God has encased me in as I transform from what I was to what I will be. As I am cleansed and moved from what I used to be to what God wants me to be so that I am ready to do what God has called me to do.

And I am afraid and excited, terrified and relieved, horrified and anticipating. For the first time in a long time, I can’t see the future. I can’t see where God is taking me. I have feelings and impressions of where I am going. I have had visions of where I believe I am going to end up with no idea of how to get there. It is like the caterpillar that deep down knows it will be a butterfly and knows that it will fly by instinct, but when it is in the cocoon has to rely on God because all it can see is the cocoon. That is where I am. All I can see is the cocoon. I know that I will fly and by instinct I know I am a butterfly, but all I see right now is the cocoon and I have to trust in God that he has all the rest under control.

The other night while reading my devotion I was overcome with emotion. The reason was because I realized that I was heartbroken. The devotion was concern the topic of finding yourself not where you’re expected to be through nothing of your own doing. In other words, you did everything that was expected of you, at least to the best of your human abilities at the time, and some how you still failed and wound in a place not of your choosing. This is exactly where I am with everything that is going on in my life right now. The devotion said that this is a time to just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep on going. I know that is the right thing to do, but as I began to pray about this it dawned on me that I am missing a very important and I think helpful component, friends.

Oh, I know a lot of people, but I really don’t have any friends. Not the real kind. Not the kind that would come over and just sit with me when I am down. Not the kind that I can call when I need an ear or when I need a shoulder to cry on. Not the kind that stand by me and speak those needed words of encouragement in times when the world crashes around you for no reason at all and all you want to do is crawl under a rock and scream. I realized that I have a lot of a acquaintances but no real friends. I realized that I know a lot of people, but I have no real pals and because of that at times like this right now in my life when this world is dealing me a lot of pain from all corners (medical, financial, even church) there is no one there to help pick me up.

Now please don’t get me wrong, my family is here. My wife is the most wonderful woman on the planet. However, she is woman, and very skilled at helping me be the best man I can be. But she does not know how to reach in and make me a better man the way a man can. There is a reason that God wanted men to help other men and develop men’s groups like women develop women’s groups. There are just some things that my wife for all that she loves me can not help me with because she just does not understand or have the references to see it the way a husband and father does. It is the same with my children. They are great kids, but they do not see it the same way that I do and therefore in many ways cannot help me. They cannot speak into my life they way the men friends would be able to.

This is why I am heartbroken. I have spent almost eight years living in this area and I have known many people, but none of them have had the time to become my friend or pal on a level where they could help me at this time in my life. Yes, some have gotten to know some things about me and some may even call me friend, but when it gets down to it, I sit here in the dark alone with no one to call who would come over and just let me cry on their should and scream.

Last night we had a bunch of storms come through our area and we lost power. Sitting by candlelight between lightning flashes, I began to be marveled by the power of the human eye. It got me to thinking about light and dark and about how much we can really see.

The human eye is really something to be amazed about. Think about it for a moment. It can see in the brightest of days and the darkest of night with very little time to adjust. Imagine for a moment that you are outside in the middle of the day. The sun is out and there is not a cloud in the sky. You eye doesn’t have to work hard to see what is around. Walk inside where there is shade from the sun, but plenty of light and within an fraction of a second your eye adjusts to the level of light allowing you to see in lower lever of ambient light. As the day progresses on, and the sun goes down, your eye makes adjustments however small to make sure that you can see until finally the sun goes down. Inside your home, lights will have been lit in order to see where you are going. Slowly as the night wanes you turn one light off and then another until finally you turn off the last light all the time your eyes adjusting to the new light levels so that you can see. Sure you can see as good as you could see at the previous light level when it was brighter, but you can still see all the way down to almost no light at all. When I sat there with one candle lit in our dinning room flickering, I was amazed at how much I could see and yet at each flash of lightning I was reminded of how much I could not see. If the candle went out, there was still a very small amount of ambient light coming from only God knew where that my eyes adjusted to allowing me to see shadows and silhouettes. I could barely see anything but again I could at least see something again demonstrating the amazing power of the eye a marvel of God’s design.

As I lay today in physical therapy, I was struck by how our lives are very much like the eye. When we accept Christ, we discover that our lives are fresh and clean by the blood of the lamb and that we are cleanse. It is like we are standing in the sun at noon with the brightest of light around us. But slowly as time goes on, we let some shadows in here and there and our lives, like our eyes adjust to the darkness being there. An unacceptable picture here, a bad word there, an inappropriate scene in a movie, shadows dance and darkness slowly creep in over time ever so slow and again like our eye our lives adjust to the new level of less brightness of Godlessness. After a while, the brightness of our salvation and joy of Christ that used to shine like the sun is barely shining like a single candle in a room. Lightning will flash as we hear a sermon or see something convicting us of our faith reminding us of how bright we once were not to condemn but to point a way back to the father. Tragically, many just let the candle go out and become consumed by the darkness around them.

However, it does not have to be that way.

God does not want anyone to walk in darkness one minute more then you have to. If you have found yourself in darkness all you have to do is turn back to God and call on him. He will meet you right where you are with loving open arms and welcome you back into the kingdom of light, his kingdom. Just ask him today.