Restored

Most people who know me personally know that I have a passion for restoring kitchens and old furniture. Equally exciting is taking a boring and ordinary item and repurposing it.

Maybe I like it so much because the process of refurbishing a piece of furniture is similar to the process God uses when He restores us. Every cabinet, furniture piece, or raw material in need of transformation undergoes the same basic process.

First, you have to determine what you want the item to look like at the end of the transformation. In the case of humans. God determined that we should look as much like Jesus as possible.

The next reasonable step would be to determine what needs to change or be removed in order to get the thing to look like you want it to. When I'm restoring an antique, Most of the time I will have to use a gentle chemical stripper to remove the years of built up grime and dirt. Jesus will also gently begin removing years of hurt, failure, regret, and shame. The process, to be honest, can be brutally nerveracking and unpleasant but the end product always stimulates the change.

Next, I put a protective finish of some kind on the piece depending on what it needs. God doesn't change everyone in the same way at the same pace. He gives us exactly what we need exactly when we need it!

Last, the final touches are added. In the case of furniture, this usually inlvolves handles decorative glazes, sealers, and more. After we move past the core changes in our walk with God He continually adds His finishing touches on us. He changes our attitude, work ethic, appearance, and other things to fine tune us into the image of Christ until He returns to get us.

So smile! You are a work in progress. You're not supposed to be done growing. You have a master refinisher stripping away all the bad in you and restoring you into something great if you'll let Him! Hope you have a great Christmas this year and remember God loves you no matter where you come from or what you've done. So do I.

A Season for Everything

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon talks about how in life there is a time and a season for everything. Sometimes it's easy to lose track of the fact that like the tide, life ebbs and flows. It has mountaintop experiences and dark valley experiences.

This is important to remember for several reasons. First, when our circumstances are good we tend to think they will always be good. When I bought my first car in my early twenties I went all out and got all the bells and whistles included. Leather, sunroof, aluminum rims, spoiler, everything! It jacked up the monthly payment by about an extra $150 dollars but hey, I didn't care. I was doing ok financially and I drove the car I loved. Nothing wrong with that right? Until through a series of events I had to move to a new apartment where the rent was an extra $700 a month. Ouch! Now that car payment was kind of a big deal.

This is what can happen when we lose sight of the fact good times don't last forever. We should save during the good times to prepare for the lean times. We should plan and prepare as if tomorrow may change everything because it might!

Not only should we remember life's seasons when times are good but also when they are bad. When we go through difficult times it is easy to think life will always be that terrible. We might even get mad at God because we feel He  abandoned us. It always breaks my heart when people take their own lives because suicide is basically giving up on the fact that life can and usually does get better. The sky is always darker before the dawn!

Last, we must remember the seasons of life in regards to our neighbor. Just like you, everyone else is in one season or another. So if you met Moses on a certain day you might have written him off as a murderer. If you met David on a certain day you may have concluded him as an adulterer. Peter, you might have written him off as a cursing liar. My point is that we all go through good times and bad times and we must not write people off forever because we met them in their coldest winter season.

Chances are, you've been judged in your worst season. It's not cool. Love others in the good times and the bad! Christ did this with such love and gentleness and we ought to model ourselves after Him! If we cut people a break on their bad days we will reap the benefits of that on ours!

That's all for today. Have a great week whatever season you find yourselves in at this time in your life!

Beware the Passion Killers

Ever know someone who delighted in telling you why your ideas or methods were inferior or that they would never work? I'll bet we all have! These people inadvertantly make it their life mission to poo-poo on your parade.

I'd like to tell you about a specific kind of party pooper that will suck the life and the passion right out of your relationship with God if you let them. Now there are many kinds of joy killers out there but I want to zoom in on three of them. So here they are:

1. The Judges

These people will examine everything about you: What you drive, what you wear, how you talk, what you say, even what kind of toilet paper you'd prefer all in an effort to show you how you are doing it wrong.

These people tend to think they have all their junk together since they never miss a service at church and tithe regularly (Maybe). Although they appear good and religious they cause massive damage to the kingdom by turning people away from God when that person doesn't fit their idea of a 'real' Christian.

For these passion killers let me give you the answer the apostles told them. "We ought to obey God rather than man".

2. The Answer people

These people may not mean to discourage you but they still do. These people think they know everything there is to know about God. What a sad place to be!!! When people are hurting and need real compassion these people will throw one hundred Bible verses at the person thinking they are helping them.

I had a friend who just recently lost her baby. (It was her fourth loss!) In a time of exreme grief she posted on FB how she didn't understand why it happened and wondered where God was in all of it. It wasn't long before flocks of answer people 'helped' her out by sharing their wonderful Christian cliches that never helped anyone. I messaged her privately and told her that I thought it was great to see her willingness to be real and not fabricating a false sense of spirituality and slapping a plastic smile on like everything is ok when it's not.

Answer people belch out church answers they've heard in church their whole life instead of meeting people in their place of hurt. They have no idea how to truly help a hurting person.

3. The Negative Nancys

These people aren't judgemental of you and they rarely have any answers or offer up helpful solutions. No, the Negative Nancy's have one goal: to prove to everyone that this world, this country, this church, this boss is broken and flawed beyond all repair. They will find things wrong where there is nothing wrong at all.

If you spend too much time around these people you will find yourself starting to complain more, getting mad about your present circumstances, and even murmuring about how you've been wronged in some way.

Beware the complainers lest you become one yourself! There is more good to be grateful about than there is bad to whine about!

Hope this is a great reminder to beware the passion killers! Never let anyone get in the way of you pursuing God! What is more important than you pursuing God? I can't think of anything. If these people get in your way you have my permission to tell them "Get lost"...but I still love you...as a brother...in Christ ;)

Plan 'B'

I'm so excited that I serve a God with a plan B!

Ever screw up royally? I have. In fact, maybe bigger than most. I have failed time and time again. Sometimes my failure was between myself and God. Sometimes it was very public.

Guess what though? I'm still here. I'm still serving God despite my utter and sometimes completely devastating failure. Why? Because I serve a God of second chances. God does not behave like a human. When we fall down He reaches out His hand not as a clenched fist ready to stike us down for missing the mark. Instead He uses His hand to dust us off and lift us up again. It is crucial that we understand that His heart is all about forgiveness and not condemnation.

Our lives are not over after defeat. There is still a plan. There is still a purpose. Let me share with you what I've learned about God's redeeming grace.

1. God always has a plan 'B' When we screwed up 'A'

2. He also has a plan 'C', 'D', 'E' when we need one

3. The subsequent plan is never as good as the one which came before it. (It pays to do the right thing the first time)

In life, sometimes God makes us sit in time out for a while in hopes that we learn from our mistakes. Sometimes He spanks us depending on the severity of the offense and it can hurt pretty bad.

So if you've messed up big time I want you to know that it's not over for you. You haven't been shunned for all of eternity by God. There is always redeeming grace when you need it. He has an amazing plan for you even still. A story that's better than you probably could have come up with on your own! Make it right with God today and ask Him to begin the best new chapter in your life yet!

What's your story?

It always amazes me to see how much we  often want to be someone else. Shows like TMZ, tabloids on the magazine rack, and even news networks frequently cover the knitty gritty details of famous people because there is always a captive audience.

Why is it that we can have such a low opinion of ourselves thinking if only I was a few inches slimmer, a few thousand dollars richer, or endowed with this talent or that skill then I could be happy?

We have a knack for being dissatisfied with ourselves. So what is my problem with that? My problem is that it just so happens that we have a higher price tag on us than we realize. We were designed to be one of God's most important creations, something even angels want to watch.

God has never once looked at us and thought "If only she could sing better like Whitney Houston or write songs like Taylor Swift...then she would be a beautiful creature". He's never looked at any of us and said, "Just about ten more grand is all. If he would make ten more thousand dollars a year he can drive a nicer vehicle and finally be acceptable to me". Yet we tend to live in that way trying to appease that unquenchable thirst for more.

I believe one simple truth would change us if we believed it. Are you sure you're going to be able to handle this? Here it goes: The majority of things which affect our progression through life are outside of our control. We don't all begin this life on a level playing field. Just think for a second about some of the things which could determine how successful person might be in life:

1. Personality
2. Appearance
3. Family structure
4. Family income
5. Country of birth
6. Natural giftedness/talents

Now I know you want to tell me , "But oh dear Stephen, that's not true because we can change those things". Some maybe. But try to change your personality. I suppose with lots of surgical work, yes, you can change your appearance. Yes, we can rise above our circumstances and our upbringing. But go ahead and change which family you are born into and what country it will be in. Go ahead and pick to be born into that healthy "Leave it to Beaver"-like perfect family instead of your broken dysfunctional one. I think you get the point here.

We can strive to become better at anything but there are always those things given to us by God that make us unique. Our memories, circumstances, and history mixed with our blend of personality, talents, and everything else create a story so unique there is not another one like it.

So my point in all of this is this: God wrote your story for a reason. He placed you where you were and are for a purpose. We aren't all supposed to be movie stars or models or rich. I believe that God expects us to do the very best we can no matter where we began. Many people born with all the potential in the world never do anything and squander their lives away. Some born out of nothing strive and fight their way through life to become something more.

One thing I do know is that if you will strive to grow and change at every opportunity, you will undoubtedly begin to see the unfolding of a beautiful story handwritten by God about you. So what do you have to offer this world? It's waiting for you- the best version of you- to emerge. The world needs your story, your talent, and everything else that makes you you!

The diamond in the rough

Hello friends! I'm not sure how many blogs I plan to write or for how long but I had a few things I felt an urge to write about before I explode from keeping it all on the inside.

Have you ever wondered what things teach us the best lessons in life? For me the things that have seemed to change me the most are reading, experience, and pain. Now if I were able to choose, I would elect to learn by reading only. Reading is easy and it's done at my convenience on my schedule. Experience can take a long time(and I don't like waiting) and that's assuming a person is paying attention to their experiences enough and trying to learn from them at all. Then there is pain.

Perhaps pain is the best teacher of all but the least desirable. That's because pain lingers. We don't forget pain. Pain always changes things. It may change us for the better or for the worse but one thing is for sure. When we experience painful circumstances we will adjust in some way. You may have heard the saying, "You can either get bitter or get better"

The body responds to pain in different ways too. Muscle fibers actually tear when lifting heavy things like weights during a workout. The body adjusts to this by growing more muscle to  compensate for it's deficiency. It adapts.

Our lives are the same way. Let's face it. Sometimes life can suck big time! But nestled in each and every one of those sucky events hides a diamond. Like a diamond, if we will accept the process it will change us into something nearly indestructable and beautiful. Not to cliche you to death but diamonds really are nothing more than lumps of coal that went through extreme  temperatures and intense pressure over a long period of time.

So do you feel like you are being pressured on every side and under constant heat from others and from life in general? The bad news is that's a sucky thing to have to endure. The good news? All of the 'suck' you're going through right now is forging you into someone new. It's transforming you into someone better if you allow it to. But it takes time. Lots of time. So we might have to get up and go work in a place we don't want to be, deal with people we don't like, or experience things that we deem undesirable until that process is complete. You can't break open a cocoon until the metamorphosis is complete.

One of the most frequent questions I hear from people in regards to God's existence is why He let so much bad happen in their lives. That's quite a loaded question- one I'm not qualified to answer probably. In my own life, I can tell you that I have no idea why He allowed certain things to occur. But I can tell you this. I am stronger because of the pain. I love people more because I've experienced the pain. I am a much better me because I had a catalyst called pain that pushed me ever so uncomfortably to change what I was into something more valuable and usable.