This picture was made on April 13, 2013...
The very first meeting of Vineyard ReCovery....
Sam Colegrove, long time friend and fellow laborer in the kingdom, took it and added the caption. Hmmmm....my beard is full of wisdom. Usually my wife will tell me, "You've got something in your beard," Which is code for there is BBQ Sauce, or pizza sauce, and we won't even mention ice cream....stuck in my beard. She has never looked into my eyes and said, "Honey...There's some wisdom stuck in the corner of your mouth."
Yesterday, I was at the church having a conversation with Jim Bentley and Debbie Handy, when another individual came through the room and stopped to chat with us. Once again a reference was made as to the three of us being wise. How did I suddenly attain the status of "wise man"? Did I take an on line course and didn't even know it? Did I spend time at Wisdom University? No, I think I would have remembered that. And just for the record, I don't feel wise.
No secret...if someone mentions that you seem wise, then chances are it is because you are older, have seen more, have had more failure, and have learned from said failure.Sometimes we cringe at the word "Failure"...it such a loser word. We like risk-taker better, don't we? Failure is a good school, when it comes to following God. Failure means that you're trying to hear God and then carry out those instructions. So let's go back through the hall of memories and see some that I've built.
Can-Change-It
2000 - We had started our recovery meeting, House of Blue, and were rocking along, when we suddenly began to see an increase of people who were coming out of addiction and needed somewhere to live. A transition house, if you will.
Gadsden Vineyard had purchased Santos Printing, which is what we call the Great hall now. If one and one equals two, then the very idea that suddenly we had this huge building, complete with an upstairs of what use to be offices, then God must surely want us to convert that space into living quarters for people. Oh my goodness, we kicked it into overdrive....we began to ask people to put aside their pocket change and use that as a means to convert the upstairs space. There was a great feeling of actually starting to make some progress in this endeavor. But what I found out was that this whole plan was not really what was on God's heart. In the end it became very evident that it wasn't really feasible to build this. So what did we do with the money we collected? We took care of the poor with it. I learned a lot about myself during that whole episode.
I have always said, and still maintain, that there is a lot of grace to mess up and get it wrong in the name of Jesus. That if you are trying to follow God and you miss it....then learn from it. Don't sit around beating yourself up over the mistake, take the lesson and learn from it. The devil and his whole crowd just love it when we load ourselves down with depression and despair over a mistake we've made. He wants us to remain in that place of self evaluation and doubt, because he knows if we stay there long enough, we will simply give up.
Jesus knows our human tendencies and our propensity to fail, yet He keeps working with us and in us. In fact if you read Matthew 11:29, Jesus says, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me..." Did you catch that? Learn from Him....to learn is to practice and apply. Do you really believe that Jesus thought we knock a home run every time we came to the plate? No. Come on...this is the same species that ate the fruit in the garden. Hello....
But His love for us is greater than any mistake we can make if we are chasing after Him. Take heart in this the next time you feel like you failed in your daily walk. He'll pick you up and dust you off, tell you to try again.
How can you not love Jesus.....
God on you....
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