jobs

Fathers And All That

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stjoseph

I can imagine Joseph on a break from his carpentry job, hanging around the water cooler that just happens to be on the construction site. Go with me on this.

He’s listening to the other guys brag about their sons:

“My son made the honor roll again. That boy is just plain smart.”

“Yeah? Well, my boy is All-State in both football and basketball. He’ll be getting a free ride to any college he wants.”

“My boy is going into the ROTC and into the Army after he graduates from college. He wants to dedicate his life to defending freedom.”

Then Joseph can’t resist any longer. “My boy is Savior of the World.”

They all roll their eyes. One of them says, “Yeah, yeah. We know. Jesus is soooo great. He can walk on water. He’s the perfect Man, God incarnate, yada, yada, yada. You don’t have to keep reminding us of how great your son is.”

OK. That probably never happened. But I do think Joseph is a good example of a good father.

He’s the one who raised a child he didn’t father. Sure, it was a miraculous event, but still, Jesus was not his biological child. But he was man enough to take responsibility. He did the best thing any good father can do by loving his wife, Mary, day in and day out.

Also, he raised Jesus in the right way. Jesus knew how to work hard with his hands and was taught the importance of integrity and honesty. When the Bible says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, Joseph had a part in that.

Actually, the Bible never records any of Joseph’s actual words. It merely says that when Joseph heard what the angel said, he obeyed. Jesus learned obedience from a human perspective by watching his earthly father. Joseph knew that most of the most important life lessons are caught rather than taught, so he lived out his faith and his integrity and back up what he said by what he did.

Fathers, take a few notes from Joseph. Learn to lead by example and to be the man you want your son to become and your daughter to marry.

In Everything Give Thanks

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Four little words say it all. In everything give thanks.

Notice it doesn’t say to give thanks FOR everything, but IN everything.

When you’re not sure if you will ever find another job, give thanks.

When you see loved ones getting older and weaker and more frail, give thanks.

When you wonder if the dreams God put in your heart will ever come to fruition and you’re hanging on by the most slender of threads, give thanks.

When you want to stomp and rage and cuss like a sailor at the way that person treated you, give thanks.

Give thanks that God is the same through it all. Give thanks that he has not forgotten you. Give thanks that he’s working through your pain and problems. Give thanks that God has been, is, and will always be God.

Give thanks that God works all things together for good. Give thanks that he will complete the good work he started in you. Give thanks that everything will be fine in the end, and if everything’s not fine, it’s not the end (borrowed from a really good movie).

In other words, in everything give thanks.

 

Something Positive I Found While Randomly Surfing the Web

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

computer-cat

Not everything on the web is useless. There are worthwhile things to be found (including, I hope, this little blog of mine). I found this while randomly googling the term “giving people grace.” On a side note, I try to always give people grace and the benefit of the doubt because many times I have needed both myself. Here’s what I found:

“When there is death, grace lives.

When a job is lost, grace can be found.

When memories are forgotten, grace is remembered.

When money is gone, grace remains.

When pain is too much, grace is even more.

When relationships fail, grace triumphs.

When friendship is split, grace repairs.

When lies are told, grace is truth.

When injustice lingers, grace overcomes.

When tears fall, grace uplifts.

When hope walks out, grace stays put.

When vows are broken, grace mends.

When fear keeps you quiet, grace proclaims.

When lies humiliate, grace praises.

When heights are unreachable, grace climbs.

When wars rage, grace fights.

When lust diminishes, grace values.

When pride crushes, grace restores.

When image is tarnished, grace is beauty.

When hearts change, grace continues.

When emotions unload, grace carries.

Grace. Grace. Grace.” (Jake Dudley)

Here’s the original source.

http://www.potsc.com/category/giving-grace/

A Good Reminder to Myself

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I talk to myself sometimes. Out loud. I tend to use a British accent so it’s more fun and less creepy.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself of certain things. Repeatedly.

1) You are not your job (or lack of one). You are not your salary. You are not a title or a profession. You are exactly who God made you to be. And He said you were good.

2) God’s in the past where you messed up and where you got hurt, healing your wounds so they no longer bleed into your present (thanks to Mike Glenn for that one. He’s right there with you in your present. And He’s already in your future, waiting on you with plans that will blow your mind.

3) It’s okay to feel scared and unsure. It’s okay to have doubts because faith by its very nature comes with doubting. If we knew with 100% certainty, we wouldn’t need faith.

4) If you are loved and if you have friends, you are not a failure. If God loves you and calls you friend, then you have already won.

5) Whatever happened today, be it good, bad, or ugly, tomorrow is a new day filled with fresh possibilities and a clean slate. You can start over.

Maybe you’re having a great day and you’re loving life and everything is going your way. That’s wonderful. Maybe not. But everybody will at times go through storms. Everyone will go through deserts where your faith seems dead. Everyone will go through dark nights where God seems impossible to find.

No matter what your feelings or senses tell you, no matter what your circumstances tell you, God is there. He has not left you. He has not forgotten you. And He never will.

By the way, this blog is best read with a British accent. It sounds so much more sophisticated that way.

More Movie Theology

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“I’d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn’t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. . . .Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it’s like you’re broken ” (from the movie Hugo).

Very few people know what they were born to do. Fewer still are actually living out of that purpose. So many have settled for jobs and routines and hobbies and weekends and wonder why they lead lives of quiet desperation (as Thoreau famously put it).

I think God made each one of us with a purpose. No one is a mistake. No one is an afterthought. You and I are uniquely and expressly designed by our Creator to do what no one else can do.

I am finding out my own purpose. I know part of it involves writing and communicating the truth of knowing who you are in Christ. I know that I want people to know that God doesn’t love them out of an obligation or because He’s God; He loves them because He wants to. He chose you and called you by your own name and set His affections on you. He not only loves you, He likes you.

Not only did God create each of us with a purpose, He made us to help each other find and fulfill our purposes. I truly believe that we can only be our true, God-made selves in the middle of a community of believers who both minister to each other and reach out to a lost and broken world.

May we know what it’s like to see people find their purpose, to see broken people find wholeness, to see lost people found, and to see dead people coming alive again. What could be better?

What Next?

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 7 Comments

I’m sure you’ve been through a similar scenario in your life.

You get the call to come to your manager’s office. Or maybe to a neutral office. They sit you down and inform you that your job is being eliminated. In essence, you’ve just become very expendable.

You can call it any number of things. Let go. Laid off. Terminated. Downsized. Whatever you call it still doesn’t change the fact that you still don’t have a job to go to in the morning.

That was me at about 10:30 am today. I had no idea it was coming. I didn’t even know where the room was and had to ask somebody how to get there. I did know when I saw the manager and the HR person both sitting at the table that it probably wasn’t good news.

It still seems surreal that I lost my job today. I took one last walk around the trail close to the office and went to Starbucks and finished the book I was reading. Even now, it feels like a dream.

To me, this feels less like the end and more like a beginning. It’s less like a closing door and more like an open window.

I don’t know what’s next, but I do know that God does. If it’s possible to be anxious, excited, nervous, scared, and bewildered at the same time, then I am all of the above and then some.

I just read the verse in Psalms where it says, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their seed begging for bread.” It means that God takes care of His children.

Maybe this is God gently nudging me out of my nest into that unknown country, like the one God called Abraham to.

At a benefit concert tonight, I heard one of the performers say, “I want my life not to work if you take God out of the equation.”

That’s where I am. If God doesn’t come through, I’m in trouble. But I know based on the last 9,999 times that He will.

 

Thoughts on prayer and healing

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I was thinking today about Job’s situation and how it relates to mine (and possibly yours, too). In Job 42, God tells Job’s friends that they have slandered Job and misrepresented God. He tells them that Job will pray for them, and He will hear him and not deal with them as they deserve. Job prays for his friends, then God gives him back what he lost, doubled.

Job had to pray for those who wronged him before God restored him. Job had to forgive the ones who slandered him and his God. Is there some area of your life that needs healing and/or restoration? It could be that God is waiting for you to pray for the ones who hurt you in that area before he restores to you what you lost or heals you.

As much as I pray for God to forgive those who hurt me, that much will God forgive me (see the Lord’s prayer). As much as I pray for God to bless those who slander me, God will bless me. As much as I pray for the restoration and healing of those whose wounds I carry, God will restore and heal me.

This is me thinking out loud again. So take it for what it’s worth. As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.