Boys to Men

Let me make it clear up front, this post is not about a boy band!

I just wanted to take a moment to say how proud I am of the young men my boys have become! You can never say that you are proud of them enough, nor can you ever tell them that you love them enough, but I try, and not just verbally.

We have been blessed by God to have two amazing sons. We have been fortunate to not have had some of the struggles that many families face, and we are thankful to God for that. Joshua and Caleb both love Jesus, and that is what matters most.

Joshua is wise and caring. He is amazing to watch as he interacts with people. He works at Family Christian Stores and is being trained for management. He has many regular customers. I love the stories he tells about people he meets. I love when he calls to get advise or a recommendation for someone he is helping. He is also a sports nut like me, but even more so (He can rattle off stats of baseball players from the 1920's!). He is so fun to go to a game with because he knows the smallest details about most of the players - of almost any sport! Yes, he's still single and living at home, but I know God has great plans for him. He just took a week off of work to help with kids camp and had a blast. He even painted his head when he got back as a "reward" to the kids. He devours books like no one I know. I love just hanging out with him.

Caleb is creative and deep. His artistic ability constantly astounds me, in any medium, including computer work. He is our thinker. He contemplates what he is learning about God and how he can apply it to his life. He is now a junior at Southwestern College (how time flies). He spends most of his free time working on things for church. He leads the tech ministry for our KidZone. I know God has huge plans for him. He has a lady friend, but we will have to see what God has in store for him. He is a movie buff (as is Joshua), and he is hysterically funny when he recites lines from movies (not just then, but especially then). I wouldn't be surprised to see him become a para-military youth pastor!

Both boys can work on their own cars and have a good grasp on fixing things and using tools (I'm very proud of that fact!). They love hanging out together, which at times we wondered if they wouldn't kill each other before getting to this stage. We are so glad that they have grown together. I used to say that they were the worst of enemies and the best of friends. I am so thankful that the best of friends part has won out! They both are deeply insightful and so fun to talk with. Conversations on family vacations have always been more than entertaining.

I know that they both will carry a legacy of faith into their own families, and know that they will be great dads and husbands.

OK, I think that I have embarrassed them enough!

The Battle Within

God revealed to me this weekend why I struggle so much in one area of my life. For nearly all of my younger years, until I was about thirty, I was focused on succeeding in life to impress my father. It seemed that nothing I could do made him proud, at least he lever expressed it if he was. I went from sport to sport, job to job, trying to be the best so that I would get noticed. I was only successful at a couple of sports, but that didn't do it. I was very successful at just about everything I did in business (primarily in engineering and manufacturing). At about thirty, I realized that I was focused on pleasing the wrong person and began focusing on pleasing God and my wife Paige.

I was meditating on the Apostle Paul's teaching that we must decrease and he must increase in our lives. I realized that even though my desire is to have Christ magnified in my life, I still struggle with a desire to be recognized for achieving and being successful. The Bible teaches that we are to do all things for God's glory and to work hard for him. The battle is apparent when I receive praise for a job well done. One part of my brain says that it's one more success story, while another part is humbly praising God for using me to accomplish His purposes.

I don't even think that it's a pride thing. I don't think that I'm saying look at me, for my glory; I think I am still crying to get noticed in some ways. So, the battle rages on. I want so desperately to be used by God, and it encourages me when people can see that happening, but at the same time I cling to the successes as if they make me matter.

I know that this is brutally honest, but as I embark on a journey to end the war, I would appreciate your prayers. I thought that I had resolved the self-esteem issues some time ago, but obviously not. It's time to resolve this.

Goin' Down Memory Lane

I'm going through my bookshelves and getting rid of a lot of books from my early ministry days and youth pastor days. It brought up a lot of memories, mostly good. I also ran across a three inch notebook filled with a project I did for ONE of my master's degree classes. Looking through it I couldn't believe how much work that was, and that it was only for one class. Looking through it I could easily see how much different we do church here at Palm Valley Church. I'm sure that there are still plenty of churches that function the way the church I analyzed eighteen years ago did, but PVC certainly isn't one of them, and our community is better for it.

I even found some magazines from my Kart racing days with pictures of me at Ontario Motor Speedway where we ran an exhibition for the California 500 Indy car race. Boy does that bring back a lot of memories! That was back in the late 70's - man, I am getting OLD! It was cool to see the picture of my niece Jennifer with her "Lewis Brothers Racing" t-shirt on (she was about 1 - totally cute!). Those were good times, except for the fact that neither God, nor Paige, were in my life at the time.

Ministry to New Believers - Correcting a Mistake

I was wrong. I know that comes as a shock, but I made a mistake this past weekend that I have already taken steps to correct going forward.

This past weekend we had our Fresh Start Class. Usually we off the class on Saturday and on Sunday. In the past, once we added a Saturday night class, we offered the Saturday class every other month. This past fall, we added a second Saturday service. For Fresh Start, we began offering the class two times each month, and on Saturday once per month. This proved too often to have more than one or two in the class, so we went back to once per month with both Saturday and Sunday classes.

With the beginning of summer here, I thought I would pull back the Saturday class and in June and July, only offer the Sunday class. I got an email this last week from someone who attends Saturday night and works on Sundays. She wanted to attend the FS class. The Holy Spirit convicted me. Even though sometimes no one comes to the Saturday night class, we need to offer it every month, especially since we now have two services.

Yesterday I made sure that we added the Saturday classes to the calendar. One major reason we have Saturday services is because some people can't attend on Sunday. If they can't attend on Sunday, then they can't come to a class then either! This is a good lesson to learn. We can't offer things when we want, we need to offer things when they are needed.

From now on, we will offer both the Saturday and Sunday class each month. Lesson learned.

Sheep vs Dogs

Have you ever wondered why God calls us sheep instead of dogs? Think about it. The Bible uses sheep to illustrate people constantly. Why doesn't he use dogs as the metaphor?

Because sheep are dumb! Sheep follow blindly, even though they can see. Hmmm, didn't Jesus talk about seeing, yet not seeing? Sheep need constant attention, are minimally trainable (if at all really), and they smell funny. People are the same. That's why you have to cast vision constantly, model consistently, and equip regularly.

Why not dogs? Dogs are trainable, see things and hear things most don't, and dogs follow wisely. You can equip dogs to do amazing things. Dogs can think and reason (to a point). Once a dog is trained, it remembers what it has been taught.

As much as we want to be like dogs, alas, we are like sheep. God knows this, yet loves us anyway. Praise God!

Summer Time!

Summer is here! OK, not officially, but schools are either out or about to be out, and people are planning vacations to get out of the heat (It’s coming!). As a kid, I loved summer. I loved running through the sprinklers (pools were a rarity in my so-cal neighborhood), playing games with friends. The greatest thing about summer was hanging out with friends. I still love hanging out with friends. Darius mentioned this in his message this last weekend. We need to take the opportunity to focus on relationships this summer. I can’t think of anything better than to focus on my relationships with those I serve with.

On a similar note, who are you building relationships with this summer? Another of my hopes is to get to know more people with cultural and ethnic backgrounds different from my own. I grew up in a very white neighborhood. In fact, I didn’t even know anyone with another cultural or ethnic background until I was an adult. I also hope that we can add some cultural diversity to our team. We live in a diverse area, with people with heritage from all over the world. We need to embrace that, and reach out to those who look different than us. We also need to make sure that when people of various backgrounds come to the Fresh Start Table, they will see that we are diverse as well. That has huge welcoming impact! This isn’t a political thing; it’s a Biblical/cultural thing. Jesus told us to go to “all the world”. The phrase he used actually means to “all the ethnics”. In other words, it means to go to every people group and every culture. We have many cultures and ethnic groups represented here at Palm Valley Church. Let’s start here.

Working Out!

Let me just say that I have never been much a workout fan. I would much rather get exercise having fun, and staring at the wall while walking or running on a treadmill isn't my definition of fun! I have to say though, that today was pretty cool. In physical therapy today, Pablo "pushed" me to do more than I thought I could, and I'm glad. I've committed to pushing through as much pain as I can stand to try to break through to better health. I wasn't sure about my ability to work out today at all because the myofacial pain in my ribs and sternum were up pretty high, but I was able to push through it. I have a couple of specific goals that I am working on, so I just focused on them, and charged ahead.

While working on my lower back and in traction, I was also working on building strength back up in my arms (kind of a funny thought since my arms have never really been very strong). It must have looked like I was on a medieval rack with my lower body strapped to weights on one end, and my arms hanging on to weights at the other, stretching me out (I joked after that I gained 5 inches).

After the traction and weights I thought I was done, but Pablo had other ideas! He put me on a treadmill for ten minutes (he first said 5, but I was surprisingly doing pretty well, so I went 5 more). I was worried about my knees, since they usually scream at me when I do things like that. It felt good to really work my whole body today, it's been a long time.

The big test will be whether or not I can move tomorrow. I hope so, so that I can keep progressing. I'm still unsure if all this is helping my back, but I'm sure trying.