Pete Wilson

Plan B (With Apologies to Pete Wilson)

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No, this has nothing to do with the book by Pete Wilson. Hence, the title.

My plan for the better part of the day was to leave work and go to Uncle Julio’s, a new Mexican restaurant in the Brentwood area. I had it all worked out in my mind how the evening was going to go.

I forgot to factor in Nashville traffic. Oops.

What should have taken 45 minutes or less took an hour and a half. While I don’t necessarily mind sitting in interstate traffic when I have Bing Crosby Christmas music playing, it put a bit of a crimp in my plans.

By the time I arrived at said restaurant, the wait was an hour and 15 minutes. Hence the need for a plan B.

Plan B ended up being a tasty burrito at Chipotle with chips and guacamole.

I came away from this Friday night with a few takeaways.

  1. Nashville traffic sucks. It always slows down at the worst possible time and there’s usually never a justifiable reason for the slowness.
  2. Maybe it’s not the best idea to decide to try out a trendy new restaurant on a Friday night.
  3. Plan B doesn’t have to mean a bad night. Sometimes, Plan Bs can be just as good as the original plan.

One thing I know is that with God, there are no plan Bs, especially when it comes to you and me. He is working out His perfect design in each of our lives and knows exactly what He’s doing. Everything– and I do mean everything– that happens happens for a reason. God still works all things together for our good.

You are not a Plan B. You are God’s original design, fearfully and wonderfully made. There will never be another you and there will be another who can play the part God wrote for you in the grand play of life better than you.

In case you were wondering, the chips and guacamole were perfection.

 

Busted Brackets

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I did my civic duty tonight. No, I didn’t vote. I filled out my NCAA basketball tournament brackets (nine in all).

Some of them I played straight. I picked all the #1 seeds to win. On some others, I just went plain crazy. I picked just about every game to be an upset.

It hit me as I was filling in these brackets. As you know, no 16 seed has ever beaten a 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Ever.

There have been a few #15 seeds upset the #2 seeds and a few more #14 seeds pull a shocker over their 3 seed counterpart, but no 16 seed has ever beaten a 1 seed since the tournament expanded to 64 teams back in the 80’s.

What hit me was this: what God did for me in saving me was the equivalent of a #16 seed winning the whole enchilada. Or if you will, the 64th best team (think Austin Peay) winning the national championship.

I’m definitely not saying that God’s the underdog in this story. I am. On my own, I had absolutely no shot of making it out of the first round. I was the equivalent of a team of corpses.

But God made me alive in Christ. He raised me up with supernatural power. in Jesus, I have become more than a conqueror. My salvation story is akin to that Austin Peay team reaching the finals and beating those mighty Kansas Jayhawks in the national championship game.

A pipe dream? Maybe. But I know that in God what seems impossible to me and you is possible for God. In fact, it’s not even remotely difficult for God (thanks again to Pete Wilson for that one).

I have a feeling that most of my brackets will be busted and broken by the Sweet Sixteen. I know that spiritually speaking, my life in God will never ever be busted and broken because I serve a God who knows the way out of hell and the grave.

The end.

 

Two questions from Kairos

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I love Kairos. Tonight, we had another fabulous guest speaker, the one and only Pete Wilson, pastor of Crosspoint Church.

He spoke from Galatians 6:7-9 and asked two questions: 1) What am I sowing right now that I’m not going to want to reap? 2) Where am I weary of doing good?

The first question can be a scary one. You might think those little bad habits don’t matter, but you probably wouldn’t think much of those seeds you plant in a garden. But little seeds can turn into big plants, and those little habits can have greater consequences than you realize.

I heard once that you always reap what you sow, later than you sow, and more than you sow. Or something like that.

The second question probably hits home with most of us. I think all of us have felt weary in doing good. Or more accurately, we felt weary in doing good that seems to have little effect and which no one seems to notice. At some point, you’re tempted to say, “Why bother?”

So many feel irrelevent, like who they are and what they do don’t matter. They feel like the world wouldn’t miss them or even that the world would be better off without them.

But God knows. God sees. What you do in love is never ever in vain.

I love what Pete said about God not being mocked. It’s like if you had a child who had the choice between right and wrong, doing good or choosing the wrong. Even if he took the wrong path, he’d still be your child.

Even in those inevitable moments when you’re weak and turn the wrong way and make the wrong choice, you’re still a child of God. He still loves you.

I love what he said: you never graduate from the grace of God. You will never outgrow your need of it or come to depend upon it less. Ever.

So all in all, I’d say it was a good night. You can check out the podcast at http://kairosnashville.com/media/series/the-best-of-nashville.

For The Ones You Can’t Save

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bpitt

“Each one of here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them – we can love completely without complete understanding.”

That’s from one of my favorite movies, A River Runs Through It, where a pastor is eulogizing the son he couldn’t help. That son kept making bad choices and one bad choice proved to be fatal. But it was not for a lack of people trying to help him.

I have known people like that. No matter how much you try to help, nothing ever gets better. That person, as lovable and kind as they might be, keeps making bad choices. You think anything you do for that person is a waste. It’s not.

Anything done out of love is never wasted. Generous selfless love is never in vain. I really truly believe that person who seems to blow off your kind efforts and fight your efforts to help deep down knows that you love him or her. They may not be able to express it or acknowledge it, but they know.

God knows, too. He sees the smallest act of charity done to the least of these as done to Him. When you try to help someone close to you who’s down and out, you’re serving Jesus.

When you are loving those who can’t love you back, you are most like Jesus. When you give freely, expecting nothing in return, you show the very best qualities of the Father. When your love is spurned time and time again and thrown back in your face and you still choose to love, that is the Spirit of God really loving through you.

I don’t know what prompted this blog, except that movie quote popped in my head today. Maybe it was for me, to remind me that what to me seems hopeless and impossible is not even remotely difficult to God (thanks to Pastor Pete for that one). And yes, love does win in the end.