Cars and Character

The other day I was reading an old sermon given by Charles Spurgeon that was very thought provoking. Spurgeon wrote about the power of the Holy Spirit. However, he created a whole new visual, a real manly visual, of how the Holy Spirit working in our lives parallels how cars and trucks are built. Those of you who know me will agree that I am a car and truck guy. This idea got me excited. I started to think about the cars that I love and would, if I had the money, fill my garage with.

My favorite car of all time has to be the 65 Chevelle Malibu SS. The hard body lines. The 327 motor. WOW! What a sweet car. Every time I see one, I have to at least do a double take. If I’m honest, I have even done u-turns to get a better look at times. Then there are the trucks I love. I love to see an old Jeep CJ7 that has been modified to handle the rigors of serious off road adventures. And, the original Dodge Power Wagon has to be one of the coolest trucks ever produced. As I think about these vehicles in light of my own life and my own character, I notice a couple parallels.

The first parallel I notice is that on average most of the vehicles I love have been worn out over a period of time. Most of them are older than I am, and the years and miles of life have worn out parts, worn down motors and even taken their toll on the body of the vehicle. This is something that I, and I am sure all of us, can relate to. As we go through life we get worn down. Jobs, finances, bosses, wives, kids and friends take their toll on us. The demands of life wear us down and sometimes wear us out.

The second parallel is when placed in the hands of the right person these great old vehicles can be restored to like-new or even better condition. I have seen what time and a good plan can do for a worn out 65 Malibu. My good friend is in the process of building an old Land Cruiser that will be sweeter than new when finished. I would like to think I could be restored in the same way. When I turn myself over to the Holy Spirit, He begins working His plan and using His skills to make my life and my character better than I can imagine.

The process of rebuilding a vehicle is not cheap or easy. It definitely is not pain free. I have had my share of vehicle projects take their toll on my knuckles. The same can be said for our lives and our character. It’s not an overnight process. It is not a cheap and easy fix. We have all seen examples of cars that have been patched together and called “restored”. The end result of that quick-fix project is not very rewarding, and the insides of the car still need further repair. The quick-fix vehicle doesn’t last or run like it should This is true for our lives, too. We can quickly put on a show and talk the talk, but does that amount of effort stand the test of time? If we want to be real men, the kind that stand strong for those around us; the kind our wives and children are proud to stand by, it takes time, dedication and sometimes hard and painful work. My hope and prayer is that, like me, you will commit to the process. Give yourself to the Holy Spirit and let Him work His wrenching magic in your life and character.  You just might turn out better than you ever thought possible.

The Eleventh Hour

The eleventh hour. Typically this is the last possible moment you have available to accomplish a goal or task. As a natural born procrastinator, I have spent most of my life frantically working in the eleventh hour. I recently had an eleventh hour hunting experience that taught me a lesson about my relationship with Christ.

One area of my life in the last three years I have not procrastinated in is bow hunting. I am usually so psyched for the season to begin every September that, according to my hunting buddies, I get started too early. This year was no exception, however, my eagerness did not create an early opportunity to shoot a nice buck. I hunted five to ten days a month for three straight months without getting the opportunity to shoot a buck.

Like most things in my life, I found myself hunting on the last day of the season. That night I sat for three hours while the temperature dropped and the wind blew at me so hard and cold I was sure it was trying to knock me out of my tree stand. Finally, at the time of day when I could barely see my sight pins, the buck I had seen three weeks earlier (the buck I had wanted to shoot all year) walked within ten yards of my stand. As I pulled my bow to full draw he stopped in perfect position for a deadly shot. This was my time. This was what I had waited for, practiced for and rehearsed in my mind all year for. The eleventh hour; the hunter gets his reward for a long hard year of hunting. This was my time.

I settled my sights as best I could, aimed and fired. As soon as I let the arrow go I watched the buck’s reaction. I was hoping he would trot 40 yards start to get dizzy and fall over lifeless. When I saw him trot off 40 yards, stop and try to figure out what in the world just happened, I got excited. Then, he walked calmly out of my life. I had blown it! I had the opportunity I was hoping for. The opportunity most hunters dream of. An opportunity for redemption. An opportunity to prove I have what it takes in the heat of the moment. When everything was resting on me to get things done, I had failed.

After a few days of being able to reflect on what went wrong I realized that this moment was much like the lives of most of the men I know, myself included. We are always looking for that moment to be the hero. We want to come through in the clutch. We want the people in our lives to know they can count on us to come through for them; that we are prepared to make an impact.

The teaching moment for me sounded like this: Most guys don’t succeed due to a lack of preparation for that moment.  It is true! Think about the times when you have succeeded in the heat of the moment: a job interview, a big sales pitch, that walk off home run in your softball tournament. You spent a lot of time practicing, rehearsing and preparing for that moment. The question becomes why don’t we prepare for everyday moments like we would for those big moments? 

If I’m honest, I feel like most of my everyday life is made up of little eleventh hour moments: moments with my wife, moments with my kids and even moments with my co-workers. Those little moments when I have been put in the perfect situation to come through for someone else. I can speak to someone’s heart or act out the love of Jesus. At the time, these moments don’t always seem all that significant, but I have no idea how significant my response can actually be. These little everyday moments may be the opportunity to impact the lives of people around me, and, sadly, most of the time I blow it!

I have found that the only way to prepare for these everyday moments in my life is to spend time preparing for them with God. The only way I know how to react to my children the way Jesus would is to spend time with my heavenly father. The only way to know what Jesus would say to my wife in a critical heart moment is to spend time with Him. Spending time with Jesus to prepare myself for life’s moments is the only way I can prepare to come through in the clutch of everyday life. I hope and pray that you, too, will see that our success in the clutch, the big or little moment, is dependent on how well we prepare. Our preparation for life’s moments only comes from spending time with the one who was perfect in the clutch, Jesus Christ. I know this year I am going to be spending more time preparing for those moments with Jesus. (And more time preparing for that buck next hunting season.)

Heart Surgen

Have you ever been injured? Not just hurt or banged up, but really injured? The kind of injury that makes you put your active life on hold. This past winter I was playing basketball when a reoccurring injury happened to me again. I dislocated my patella after having rebounded the ball. (And it was an amazing rebound, if I do say so myself.) I have dislocated my patella in varying degrees of severity about four times since I was a freshman in high school. Every time this happens to me I wind up laying on the ground writhing in pain, and it is not uncommon for me to scream and yell (sometimes cry) like a girl. This time was no different in that respect. Just as it had in the past, along with the pain came some internal damage to the knee joint. This time doctors were confident that with some physical therapy to strengthen the muscles I would be good to go in a few months. After a few months of intense therapy, it did look like my leg was back to normal. I had full range of motion and my muscles looked pretty even. I’ll admit that it looked good from the outside. However, deep inside I could tell something wasn’t right. Something else was hindering a full recovery. The doctor finally agreed with me and took a look inside and found some areas that needed cleaned up.

It dawned on me the other day that I, along with most men, treat my failings and short comings in life the same way. When we stumble in our walk or fall into a sin, we often  assume a few exercises is all we’ll need to make our behavior stronger. We’re men, after all, we can tough it out and will ourselves back to better behavior. The problem I have found with this attitude and approach is that even if we are able to change and function in a “good enough” manner, we are still damaged and injured people on the inside. No matter how good we get on the outside we will always be held back by the issues under the surface.

To fully fix the root of my knee injury, I needed a surgeon to dig in and clean up the inside of my knee. I had arthroscopic surgery to remove a couple large pieces of cartilage, repair the torn meniscus and perform a lateral release of the patella. The knee joint swelled to nearly three centimeters larger in diameter. I was in intense pain and needed major pain killers to function.  However, I could tell immediately that the joint was much smoother and my knee was moving correctly. In the long run, I will be much better off for having a trusted doctor go inside my joint and clean the garbage out.

Similarly, to fully fix the damage in our hearts, we need someone willing to dig into our lives and hold us accountable. My problem, like most men, is finding that true friend to share life with. However, it is vital to my overall health as a father, husband, employee and man. I hope you are looking for this accountability in your life, too.

Abandoned?

Remember the movie Cast Away? Tom Hanks’ Character has been in a plane crash and is the only survivor stranded on a tropical island. Eventually, he finds a volleyball that washed up to shore from the wreckage. The ball, through a random course of events, becomes his only companion, Wilson. He is able to keep his sanity by talking through his troubles and fears with Wilson. At one point in the movie Wilson is swept out to sea and Tom Hanks’ character freaks out with the sudden realization he’s all alone on this island. He has no one to talk to; no one to share his plight with. The only “person” he has been able to talk to for years is now gone. The impact of being truly alone nearly crushes his sanity.

The other day I felt a little like Tom Hanks; alone on an island. I had recently received a short rash of bad news, and I was looking for someone to talk to. I picked up my phone and started going down the list of friends. Not a single one picked up their phone when I called. It seemed that I was all alone. Like all negative thoughts do, this feeling seemed to escalate. It quickly jumped from, “What a bummer I don’t have a buddy that can talk right now.” to “Man I am completely alone on this planet. I don’t have a single friend. Has God even abandoned me?” Have you ever felt this way? I knew it was completely irrational, but that’s how I felt.

After about three days of this, I read something in my daily bible written by David in Psalm 22. The Psalm is written as a song, that starts with, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” This was exactly how I was feeling. I read through the rest of the song and it seemed to say exactly what my heart was feeling. When I was finished reading the song I realized it was also a prophetic Psalm, meaning that David wrote about things that would happen to Christ. For example, the last line of the Psalm reads, “They divide my garments among themselves and throw dice for my clothing.” This is one of the things that happened to Jesus while he was on the Cross. These prophetic lines, along with the opening line of the Psalm, got me thinking about my aloneness in a different perspective.

I knew God was telling me that no matter how I feel, I am NOT alone. Look at the life of David. This man who had such a longing for knowing God that he was called ‘a man after God’s own heart.’ This man must have known God’s presence. Yet at times, even he felt alone enough to cry out “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Then there’s the situation with Jesus himself. Clearly he felt the presence of God in his life at all times. Surely he felt intimate with God in ways that I can only imagine. Yet, in the darkest hour of his life he cries the same words, “MY GOD, MY GOD why have you forsaken me!” These two men, as close to God as they were, still had times in their lives where they felt abandoned by God.

This knowledge gave me an objective view of my own situation. I was not being chased by a kings army wanting to kill me like David was. I was not being crucified for the sins of all mankind and facing hell on the other side of death like Jesus. I was simply struggling with life not going the way I would have liked. Even in my trivial experiences, though, it dawned on me that the times of feeling abandoned are, like with David and Jesus, necessary for the completion of God’s plan in our lives. He is guiding us through these situations to further develop our character and deepen our relationship. There are good times to come. Losing Wilson forced Tom Hanks’ character to get off the island, which led to his rescue. David became one of the greatest kings Israel has ever known. Jesus was raised from his death saving all mankind from their sin and then went back to heaven to reign over heaven and earth with God. Those times when we feel furthest from God seem to be the dark before the dawn of times we feel closest to Him.

Daddy Moments

It was a moment, a moment that I hope will change my children’s lives. It was a simple moment. It was a moment that I could have easily let slip away. I was on the couch reading when my daughter came into the room in the way that only 2 year old girls can. As she ran into the room she sang very loudly, “Watch me do flips, Daddy. Watch me do flips, Daddy.” My first reaction was to explain to her that I was busy reading and that I could watch her later. Instead, I dropped my book and turned my full attention to her. I watched her attempt somersaults about three times. I then told her what a wonderful job she was doing at ‘flipping.’ At that point, I thought the moment was over. I was wrong. She seemed to be addicted to my attention. The more I watched, the more flips she wanted to do, and the more flips she did, the more I was supposed to watch. After about the fifth series of flips I wanted to get back to my book, however, something inside me knew I was supposed to watch her until she was done; giving her all the attention and support she could handle. So, I did. 

In that moment I felt the Holy Spirt telling me this is what my kids need most from me. They need my full attention in the little moments. I need to give them my undivided attention even when what they want me to watch are poor attempts at somersaults. They need to see they are the highest priority in my life. All of the little things in life that steal my moments can be put on hold. So many times I have dismissed what my kids were showing me. I have half-heartedly shown an interest in a drawing or a color page or distractedly praised the lego car they made. In that moment I was convicted of this attitude. 

This “ah-ha” moment motivated me to change. I know God has called me to be a father to my children not just in the big moments in life, but in the little moments, too. I have to admit that I’ve been failing. My prayer is that, like me, you will take the time to let go of distractions in your life and grab hold of those moments with your kids. 

Walls of Character

The other day I was building a retaining wall to support a parking pad off the side of my garage. I decided to try and find some Hedge tree fence posts for the structure of the retaining wall. Hedge is known for its ability to withstand rotting for a very long period of time.  I found a large tree on a friend’s property that I could use. Just cutting the wood took me a couple days separated by a couple months and a few minor repairs to my chain saw. Eventually, I had the proper number of fence posts ready to go. I then began the even more labor intensive task of actually building the retaining wall. The wall didn’t have to be very high; only a couple feet at the highest point. I did, however, have to set the main support posts deep into the ground in order to ensure my wall would hold the weight of dirt, gravel and any vehicle. 

As I was building this wall in the 95 degree heat, a thought occurred to me. This wall is like my character and my manhood. As I thought about it more, I drew a connection between building a wall to last and building my character to last. I was sweating to death in the heat, digging deep into hard soil and I just wanted it to get done! I wanted to start taking short cuts. I wanted to stop digging the post holes so deep. I wanted the wall to be done now.

In the same way, I want my character to be built now. I want to be that great man now! 

As I was finishing the wall I felt like God was telling me that it takes time and hard work to build character that lasts. In the end though, that character, like a well built wall, will withstand more than character built on short-sided wants. God is building me to last. This brought encouragement to my heart and my aching body. I think that the Holy Spirit builds all of us like this. It takes time, it takes work, it takes pain and some days you want to take short cuts. However, the Holy Sprit and our God has a great plan for our lives, our manhood and our character. If we will let him build us up with the proper mix of materials, depth of faith and trust in his plan, then in his timing we will be men of God that can withstand any weight that is pressed against us.

Action or Inaction: That is the ?

It occurred to me the other day after another lapse of sin in my life, that as we are living our lives we generally are not trapped by our actions, but rather by our inaction. For example, when we struggle with a sin or a short fall in our lives we look at it like “man why do I keep committing this sin”? I have noticed that in my life my lapses come from not what sin I am acting on, but rather what actions in Christ I am not taking. 

Let me explain. Lets say that I struggle with anger in my life. I have a problem with blowing up at my kids and my wife over little things that happen around the house. Or if I don’t blow up, I say mean resentful comments to those I love when I feel they haven’t performed the way I think they should. Well you and I both agree that I should learn to control my anger I should not be lashing out at my family. That is not how Christ would want me to interact with my family. However, I would say that my biggest short fall is in what I don’t do and not what I do. If I was to run to Christ and pray for protection and seek his peace for my life constantly through out the day I would not struggle to keep my anger in check. If I was to take action when I knew the attacks from the enemy were at their highest I would be more successful at interacting with my family in loving ways. 

However instead of constantly engaging with Christ what I find myself and I am sure you find yourself doing is maybe praying in the morning before the day starts and then never giving another thought about my spiritual life throughout the day. I give into inaction, we all do. We have fallen again through our lack of acting and engaging constantly throughout the day. We have to be on high alert all day everyday if we are to keep ourselves in check and tuned in to the Spirit of God. I know the battle is not easy, but victory is worth every last fight. Victory over an enemy that would love nothing more than for us than to live lives of apathy and continual separation from God’s plan and will for our lives. You can fight, you  can win, you can engage in your spirituality daily. 

All it takes is to be listening for the enemy trying to tempt you. When you hear or see it, don’t just listen or give in, fight back. In the name of Jesus, fight back, make him leave you alone. Then pray for the Holy Spirt to help you with the next attack. As the day goes on you will get quicker and quicker at recognizing the attacks and your defense will become faster and faster. You will gradually become a stronger man for your God, your family and your friends. Try it some day, try it tomorrow. See if yo don’t find yourself not being tripped up and distracted by the little things in life.