Bad.

  Growing up I had a little brother. He was always smaller than me, and I could beat him up. He looked up to me and feared me all at the same time, it was awesome!

Being his big brother, I always thought that I would naturally be better than him at everything, nevertheless, that was not the case! As it turned out, he was better than me at everything! I struggled in school, everything was difficult for me, but for Gary, school was easy, and he excelled. I wanted so bad to be an athlete, but I was slow, uncoordinated and lacked talent. Gary was a gifted athlete, he could run, hit, catch, shoot, everything! All this I took in stride until high school.

My mom, after much pestering, finally enrolled us both in karate. I thought I found my calling! My life purpose! However, as things typically went, Gary was just naturally better, and it made me mad. I became jealous of my brother and I began to resent him. It was bad. He was my little brother and I was envious of him. 

Often times I live with this monster inside of me. Its name is Pride. I look around at my peers and I see what they are doing and what I am not doing, and I become envious.  I will say things to myself like, “Really? Him? I remember him, he wasn’t that great! Why him? I am way better than that guy!” and before you know it, I am obsessing over my brother, resenting him, and wondering why I am not in his position. Sadly, these are the things that will keep me up at night. 

Last week I talked about our "real life." We have this ideal of what success is, sold to us by our culture, and when we have not achieved it, we feel like failures. However my point was that we need to begin looking around us and redefining what success is. And in order to do that, the first step we must take is to let it go. "Let it go, and so, to find way to let it go."  


We allow jealousy, envy, and covetousness, lust, rivalry, anger, and divisions to come into our lives, and they dominate our thoughts, our actions, and our feelings. They disrupt relationships, cause strife, and lead to hatred. This is the path to destruction, and can lead to ruin. The bible has much to say on this:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
(Galatians 5:19-26 ESV)

A long time ago I had to make a choice. I could choose to resent my brother and his success, thus killing our relationship (much as Cain did!), or I could let it go and become my brother's biggest fan. Support him, help him to achieve what he was so good at. In short, I could hate him or love him. In the end, I chose to love him. 


Perhaps there is someone in your life, a brother, sister,  spouse,  friend,  co-worker,  peer, someone who seems to get all the breaks, and meanwhile you sit on the sidelines. They get the glory, you go unnoticed. You have two choices, you can continue the path of envy and hatred, and thus fall into ruin. Or you could let it go and choose to love them. 


Here is the deal, success isn't about how well you are known, or how much money you make, or about how the world sees you. Success is you daily dying to yourself, overcoming the flesh and living in the Spirit. We do this by letting go of the bad, and embracing the good! As Bono says, we need to find away, and wake up to our "real life!"
                                                                                                            Peace and love,
                                                                                                               Steve

My real life.

When we were kids we would dream. We would dream of being something and someone, one day. We dreamt of being soldiers, firemen, astronauts, and maybe rogue smugglers who drove a fast ship and had a wookie for a best friend!
As we grew our dreams may have changed to movie stars, pro athletes, and rock stars, what ever the case, we kept on dreaming that one day we would be a success! It had to happen. If Hollywood taught us anything it's that one day our ship would come in!

All my life I felt that I was destined for greatness! Man I had to because I was me! Perhaps it was a mild case of narcissism, or just hubris, but I really felt this. I would lay awake and dream for hours about how awesome I would be. When I was a kid I wanted to be a super hero like Batman, or something daring like a firemen. When I was a teenager it was a rock star like Vince Neil or Prince. But somewhere in there I had the great idea of being a comic book artist! I carried this dream for a long time. I developed my love for comic art during my time in the Navy. After the Navy I met a girl and we got married. She encouraged my drawing, she even bought me a drawing table and other art supplies that I needed. I created, and I drew. But it was not paying the bills. In fact it paid nothing, so I had to get a real job. And life took over and my dream slowly drifted out to sea.

I was raised in the church. Grandson of a preacher. However I was never truly committed to Christ until after I was married. It was during this time that I answered the call to ministry. And my dreams changed. I went to college with high hopes and big dreams. I learned that there were churches of hundreds and thousands; that preachers were famous and wrote books; and I wanted it all. My dream was to be part of a huge church and be a sought after speaker (and serve God too, of course!). My dream after graduation was to begin preaching in a mid sized city church and go up from there! It wouldn't be long and I would be on my way... but that didn't happen. Instead I took a ministry in a small church, in the middle of farm country. And God has used this place to humble me. I kicked against it for the first few years, I kept waiting for "my real life to begin". I tried to quit (within the first year I turned in my resignation), thankfully God was merciful, and the Church kept me on. It would take another 4 years before I would wake up and stop feeling sorry for myself. I needed to stop waiting for that call that was surely coming, to stop checking the horizon for my ship that was definitely coming in. I had to grow up and realize that my idea of success needed to change. (If you haven't listened to Colin Hays song, "Waiting for My Real Life to Begin" you need to!)

We are all taught what success is. In school they would bring in successful people who would tell us that we too could be successful. We see them on TV on magazines and on billboards. There are books and books and books about how you can be successful if you follow these steps... yet the problem is we are never the guy on the book, we are never the guy on the stage, we are never the guy who gets invited to speak, we are just us. We are not famous, and we probably never will be. We are not the top dog we are just us. I know so many guys who want to be the top dog, and they are killing themselves to get there, they are killing their families to get there, and the sad thing is that they are not there. They just spin their wheels waiting for that moment, when their "real life" will begin. As Colin Hay said, "It's gonna happen soon." But it never does.

My purpose in starting this blog is to explore the idea that success can be defined in a new way, and to break the paradigms of success that the world has sold us. That my "real life" is what is happening right now with my family, my ministry, my job, and my own walk with God. Success is not being the guy who gets "the life", but the guy who receives life from the giver of life. In John 10:10 Jesus says,"...I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." The question is, can I be satisfied with a life that is not on top of the world? Can I be satisfied with a life that is simple and trusts in Jesus?

So what are you waiting for? Are you still waiting for that call, as Colin Hay sang in his song? Jesus offers you life, a real life. Pray that God opens your eyes to the truth and that you would see that life is happening all around you.
                                                                                                                   Peace and Love,
                                                                                                                                   Steve