Sometimes I want to TRY!!!

I've been reading the CEV recently and today's Proverb 27 says in verse 22:

No matter how hard you beat a fool, you can't pound out foolishness.

In my mind, I'm hearing Beat the fool all you want and your arm will only get tired

But there are days I would like to try! :-)

We have to stick!

I just got back from the park with my kids.

I was taking a trip around the exterior track with my youngest on his bike and me on my boy's Razor.

Monkey would get ahead of me and look back with his big grin yelling "Hurry up, Dads!"

Then I'd get in front of him and he'd yell at me "Daddy, we have to stick!"

What a parallel for our lives in Christ. We know God's timing is perfect, but don't we sometimes get out in front of Him and in our minds want to yell "hurry up, God, I'm out here all alone and need you!"

Then, when God is pushing us and wants us to step outside ourself and start doing something for him, it's scary. We want to yell "God, we need to stick!"

And as long as God isn't too far ahead, we hurry up and get there with Him and it's great!

Is God asking you to step out and get something done? Is He just in front of you and you need to stick?

Passion

On Sunday we spoke about passion.

We talked about how Jesus was easily the most passionate man to walk the earth.

We talked about how it is appropriate for us as followers of Jesus to be passionate.

I am passionate about helping others to be the best they can be. I do a weekly podcast for our leaders of the connection groups, and I hope those of you who listen to it have seen a difference in your connection groups by putting some of these principals into action. I am working hard to have a plan in place and give you something practical each week but keep the overall length reasonable.
The podcast is not only for the leaders in the groups, but for anyone interested in learning. Just because a person currently leads a group doesn't mean other members of that group couldn't start leading in the future.

At RCC we really want to encourage all of our members that they are ministers just as much as anybody else it and need to accept that role. The good news is not everybody is meant to lead a CG but we believe everybody should be in one. This is our time to just be ourselves and have a time to learn and grow. So if you are a leader or interested in leading a CG or just interested in joining a CG, check out the podcast and see what we're talking about.

It is aliiiiiive!

Boy, am I excited! The Jeep has decided to live! WHOO HOO!

A lesson learned here is don't fill your new fuel filter with the fuel in the old fuel filter....it's filled with ick! Diesels need good filtered fuel, and that crud isn't good for it.

Another lesson I learned was how to allow others to do something for me. This was the hardest one for me. Having to rely on others to haul me around because I was unable to get myself around. My wife has been awesome in hauling me to work daily and to appointments when necessary. Then I was able to spend some more time with some of my neighbors as I grabbed a ride with them to get home from work. That was a lot of fun being able to spend some time with everybody. Thanks to all!

Silly Day

My day started out as usual with me in my office going through the morning ritual (email, reading the bible, prayer) and my wife is in her office going through her morning ritual. Then I receive an email from her:

From: Chris Buckley
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 7:03 AM
Subject: Good morning!!

We are one strange family! She is all of 20 steps away down the hall!

Then a friend of mine who obviously knows me too well sends me a link to the following:

The good news is the Earth has currently not been destroyed.

How to Destroy the Earth

Sunday Recap

What a fun day Sunday was! I got to speak on Proverbs 2:1-8 and I used The Message. There is a passage in there about searching for wisdom like a "prospector panning for gold" that I really liked. I had seen some documentary on channel 7 about Utah prospectors and what they do. These guys are passionate about their play time! You see, it isn't finding the flakes of gold that are worth tons of money that keeps them going, it's just seeing that glint in the bottom of the pan.

Well, after church a couple came up to me to introduce themselves. They are prospectors! Is that amazing or what?! He confirmed that he is completely nuts about it, has a ton of gear, joined a club that has around 200 members with several mining claims, and that the search for the flake is the motivating factor not actually making anything off it.

What a great day! I really enjoy it when there was something in the message specifically for another person and I had no idea. God is good!

Why is it Hard to Ask for Help?

I don't like asking for help.

I know part of this is because I'm a guy. I'm just wired to want to fix anything on my own. But I can't always do it. I need help some days.

Recently, with my truck and Jeep down, I've had to ask my friends for help. My wife has been driving me to work, my neighbors have been driving me home. It's been a tough time for me since I hate putting people out to help me. Now the good side is most people want to help out. They almost beg to help, and I get to learn to say yes a lot more often.

Today, my neighbor helped by towing my truck to the mechanic. That was great, and now I'll have a running vehicle soon! And I was able to allow somebody to help me (which they wanted to do).

But I still don't like asking for help.

What is Open Source?

I have been talking a lot recently about God being open source. I'm seeing huge parallels with open source software (OSS) and I wanted to comment on that a bit.

In OSS, there is always a baseline that everybody starts at. This is the basic outline of whatever project you are working with. Each person or company "checks out" the base project, makes whatever changes they want to it and runs it. Only a select few can actually change the base project, and that is after their changes are scrutinized very closely to make sure it doesn't really mess up the base.

I've been thinking a lot about the "God is Open Source" project and what the base project looks like. What items need to be in the base project? Who owns it and who can change the base?

Are the 16 fundamental truths in the base?
Nope, that is just my denomination adding to it's own project. It is definitely part of the AG's check out, but not in the base.

Is it the trinity?
Naw, that is just more added stuff to a check out of the project. Rob Bell describes this well in his book Velvet Elvis that while I believe in the trinity, that is not the base project.

I think the base project is just God or I am or whatever way you have to describe the basic belief in God. Denominations and religions just check out this base project of the existence of a God and add their own bits to it. We as people come along, find a denomination that tends to echo our own thoughts and we join it to be around people who have the same beliefs as us. But the things we argue about with other denominations...the things that tend to get us up in arms...these are not part of the project God is Open Source. These problems we see are the things we add to the project to make it proprietary. Anything beyond just God makes it a proprietary project.

Some of the best stuff can happen after we accept that people just have checked out the project and added what they know to it. If we can just take people where they are rather than trying to force them into our mold, we can truly enter into a relationship with them and learn as well as teach. That's okay. We can still have the base project God. I just hang different stuff on it than they do.

So who can change the base? Who is in charge of the project to allow any changes back in?

God

And I don't think He's taking changes these days. I think God is perfectly happy with His open sourceness right now as it is, and is willing to allow us to spend time talking about it, wondering about it and spending time on it.

Those are my thoughts on the God is Open Source project...why don't you check it out and make it yours?

Oh, the weather outside is frightful....

And it's cold inside too!

Man, the snow came down the other day, and out in Benjamin the plows don't run very often. Things were a bit hairy last night for our CG because my street was nearly a perfect sheet of ice. Not everybody made it out because of the weather, but we carried on anyway!

Jeep update: Still working on it...battery dies quickly, so it's on the charger now. Maybe tonight.

I am NOT a mechanic!

My truck has been down for three weeks now. I went out to start it and get it in for inspection and it just made a grinding noise. I knew I needed to get it in to the mechanic, but of course something always came up. Well, this morning, old reliable, the little green wart decided to die on me.

* HEAVY SIGH *

So, after three neighbors and my wife and children came out to help, we towed the wart back home and called my mechanic. Now, be aware, I have the world's BEST mechanic! He told me to get the truck into him and gave me a couple of things to do to the Jeep, so tonight I get to play mechanic and tomorrow I get to beg help from another neighbor to haul the truck in!

Now, if I can just get to work the rest of the week....

Get to Work

I've been engaged in a ton of discussions regarding the definition of volunteer. We've gone from the churchy end of disciple all the way to job and hit a couple of points in between. The discussions have all been regarding people getting stuff done for the church, but the the same traits we value in that world are universal values anywhere. We want somebody who takes responsibility, who is willing to go the extra mile for their area because it is theirs! This is a job, but there are so many other jobs besides where we go for a paycheck or what we do on Sunday.

Some of us tend to treat our hobbies as a job. We love them, give them our time, take responsibility for them and are willing to go the extra mile. For some people, NFL Football is their hobby-job, for others it is fishing or hunting or...? As a father, that is also a job I have. I need to take responsibility for how my kids are being brought up!

I love the way The Message puts it:

Point your kids in the right direction--when they're old they won't be lost.

The promise is not that our children won't make bad decisions. The promise is if we raise them up properly they will have a solid foundation to turn towards when they are older and wanting to make some better decisions. For what its worth, it has been my observation that the reverse is also true:

Mess your kids up when they're young and they'll be messed up when they're old.

Stop messing your kids up!

Our children have to pay a lifetime of consequences for how we raise them as their fathers. If we do our jobs correctly, our daughters will hold every potential suitor up to the yardstick of Daddy to see if they can match up. Our sons will grow up to treat their wives the same way we treat their mother...do it right now! Don't make your kids have to change, but model the proper behavior for them when they are young.

I love my CG!!!

We had three people missing, but the camera was out, so we had to take the photo! What a great bunch of people. We have been together since connection groups started and have grown very close in that time. Proverbs 27:17 says "You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another." and we've been sharpening each other since we started.

This is the point of our CGs. We are trying to help people get together, share what is going on in their lives and sharpen each other as we go through life together. This is why we chose 10 weeks as a semester. We wanted there to be an entry and exit point for the CGs so if somebody got into a group that wasn't a fit, they could easily get out and look for another group. And 10 weeks was enough time for life to happen. RCC believes wholeheartedly in the ministry of each individual believer and CGs provide an opportunity for us to lift each other up and love one another through whatever circumstances we are in.

Following instructions

I usually don't read the instructions. Oh, I know I should, but there are times when I figure how hard can it be!

Well, this morning I left my good thermos at work AGAIN...my RCC thermos is so awesome, it keeps my coffee hot all morning and all I have to do is put hot tap water in it in the morning for about a minute. So I had to use the green thermos. I hate this thermos. It is big, but it doesn't keep anything hot for any length of time. So after I put hot water in it for a minute, then loaded it with coffee and honey, I'm shaking it up and I read on the bottom:

PREHEAT BY FILLING WITH BOILING WATER AND LET STAND FOR FIVE MINUTES

Hmm...maybe the thermos isn't the problem? Maybe the problem is I have NEVER read nor followed the instructions?

Do we do that with the bible sometimes? We just glance at it and go about our day without ever following the instructions? This morning, proverbs 8 was on my reading list. This proverb is talking about wisdom, how she calls to us and how she was created long before the earth came into existance. I was admonished to:

Let instruction and knowledge

mean more to you

than silver

or the finest gold

There's my instructions...I just need to follow them!

Standing Tall!

As RCC was making the move to the theater, we looked at a ton of churches around the country to see what they were doing. We are happy to learn the lessons others have already learned without having to skin our own knees! One of the places we really enjoyed was National Community Church in Washington, DC.

Their lead pastor, Mark Batterson, writes a number of articles, and one I read today really hit home for me. He's talking in this article about technology helping us take the message of Jesus to people around the globe. This is great for me! I'm an old school nerd who ran the A/V equipment during school plays and saved up my lawn mowing money to purchase an Atari 1200XL computer when I was 14...it has always been my lot in life to be the "nerd" but no longer! I can now stand tall and be proud that I fear no technology!

I keep telling my father The Matrix is real and the nerds will run the earth!

I'm going running!

But I don't run...oops!

Well, this is my opportunity to get my hiney back to the gym. I have just over a month to prepare to run a touch over 3 miles with my wife. Check out the web site if you want to join us.

Worship

There are so many ways to worship God. This was the sunset from my front porch...awesome!

The Wisdom of Solomon

We're going through a series at RCC called Wisdom for Dummies. It is going through the book of Proverbs with natural breaks where they make sense rather than at the chapter boundaries. I think this series is slated for 60+ weeks and we are two weeks into it now.

So in preparation for this series, I've been reading Proverbs. I've been doing this for a few months now, just reading one chapter a day...here's the secret: There are only 31 chapters in the book. One a day kills it in just a month! Heck, for February, you only have to read 28 of them! :-)

Anyway, I've been using Bible Gateway to go through a different translation each month and see what wisdom I can glean from it. Last night was my test.

My son is home from the second grade and is at odds with his mother about a getoutofhomeworkfree pass his teacher has handed out. I was able to step in and make my wise pronouncement to solve the dilemma ***CUE trumpets blaring...beam of light from on high...ahhhh, that's it! ***...once he does his homework on his own, he can make decisions on his pass on his own. But I keep wondering...does he understand? Was I able to make it clear to his 8-year-old mind that ultimately HE is responsible for his actions and once he starts accepting that, he gets more leeway? This is the hard part of parenting...knowing when to let go. It's like when they learn to walk...you point them in the right direction, try to help them balance, but eventually you have to let go and let them turf it a few times before they get it...it's a balancing act.

So there was my wise pronoucement last night...my use of Proverbs. It was fun!

Deep Thoughts......by Tom Buckley

Man, am I a nerd! I told this to my wife this morning and she just shook her head and walked away.

So every morning, I pretty much have the same routine. I get up, head to my office, check email, read some scripture and then pray. That way I'm a bit more awake for my prayer time and if there was anything in email that requires more thought I can bring it up during prayer time.

So this morning as I began to pray, I began by jokingly mentioning that maybe I should email this stuff to God so he is first rather than after email. Immediately after that (and here's the nerd connection....don't miss this!) I started wondering about what domain God would be in.

The easy answer of course is heaven.org. God@heaven.org and be done with it. But that doesn't quite cut it, does it? God tells us in Isaiah 66:1 that heaven is his throne. By the same token earth.org doesn't cut it either since the same passage tells us Earth is his footstool. Universe, cosmos, space...they are are unsatisfying since they are created and don't really embody where God is. Oh, we can see Him by looking at the creation, but a domain name is about who you are...where to go to find you.

Then I remembered one of the names God gave Himself 'I AM.' Exodus has the story of God telling Moses to let the Israelites know that 'I am has sent me to you' and that did it. I bet God's email address is God Not held down by a domain name or constrained by our rules, His email is just...God.