God And P.F. Flyers.

Luke 1:37
For with God nothing will be impossible.

There use to be a rite of passage that took place every spring as I was growing up.
It involved the purchasing of a pair of tennis shoes. The first new pair of the year. Back then, tennis shoes were your primary source of footwear. They were what my mother use to call "Your rough housing shoes". In other words, they weren't your Sunday-go-to-meeting shoes.

It was a major event to go to town and pick out that first pair of tennis shoes as spring was approaching. Why? Because of all the possibilities. Unlike today, the selection of shoes, during my growing up days, was limited to two different brands. KEDS and P.F. FLYERS.  

As a boy, I wanted a pair of P.F. Flyers bad. Again, you may be asking, "What's so important about P.F. Flyers?" You had to have seen the advertising that accompanied these winged wonders. If you were the luck owner of  P.F. Flyers, then you could run faster...you could jump higher...you could do thing that were never possible before. In other words, these wonderful sneakers were the answer to all my problems that I faced within my circle of friends. I would no longer finish last in any footrace. I would streak by whoever was trying cover me when we played football. I would be able to beat the throw to home and score the winning run. After all, the man on the commercial said I would...didn't he?

There in that magical place known as "The Shoe Store"...a man would step into the back room (heaven knows what magic existed in that place), and come back bearing the box that contained my size of shoe. He would remove the lid carefully from the box and there, wrapped in white tissue paper, were those magical shoes.....P.F. Flyers.
First the right foot.....lace them up....tie them tight.
Then the left.....
You could just feel the energy flowing as you walked around the store so your mother could see how they looked and fit.
You were now ready to face the world, because with those shoes on your feet....nothing was impossible.

Of course we now know that P.F. Flyers was no different from "Joe Schmoe's' Tennis shoes. You may be asking why I chose to write about this topic. Well, the verse from Luke Chapter one pretty much sums it up.
Like the advertising for P.F. Flyers....Luke tells us that nothing will be impossible for God to accomplish in our lives. Unlike P.F. Flyers...God is able to back up His "advertising." 

You see the problem I face is this.....
Either the word of God is true....
Or it isn't.
Well, I just happen to fall into the category that it is true.
Nothing will be impossible for God to accomplish or carry out, or bring forth, or create, or make happen, or just plain show off that He truly is the God of the Bible. There----I said it.
As much as I wanted that pair of P.F. Flyers....
I want God more.
Who could ask for anything else?
Thank you, Father that you have truth in advertising when it comes to Your word and Your promises.

God on you this rainy morning.
mb

Recovery Has A Face

Psalm 80:3
Restore us, O God! Cause Your face to shine and we shall be saved!

The room was filled with people.
Food was great....
Conversation was pleasant and cordial.
But everyone knew why we had gathered last night.
We had come together to CELEBRATE RECOVERY.
A banquet to share with others who might not have really known what Celebrate Recovery was all about.

When I close my eyes and try to visualize what Celebrate Recovery looks like, I always see faces, because CR is about faces. 
I see Elmo.
No one would have given him a chance. Local drug dealer. Mean streak a mile wide. Hard and not caring, but here he was on this night, dressed up and a huge smile on his face.
His life completely turned around. You see, Elmo had an encounter with Jesus and thing were never the same. Now Elmo is plugged into Celebrate Recovery because it is a place he can give back to others. 

I see Jessica.
How could you not feel good when you get around her. Always smiling with a smile that would light up the darkest room. But the smile comes from a heart of gratitude for what Christ has done for her. She was saved from the total destruction that addiction always ends with. But on this night, she is radiant with joy and gratitude. When I look at Jessica, I see Jesus.

I see Garrett.
Young, rebellious, thinking he was smarter than everyone else, but like everyone in addiction, he too was headed down that slippery slope to death, jail or institution.
But on this night, he had come to support Celebrate Recovery. God put it on Garrett's heart to start a meeting for young people. Known as the VIBE, it attracts kids from all over the county to hear the truth about drugs and alcohol and to have an encounter with Jesus Christ. Most people would have pushed Garrett aside, written him off as being no good. But not Jesus. Jesus knew what was in the heart of this young man and He knew that only He had the power to bring it out and  make it real.

I see Nick.
Older. Been at it longer than some. But he too ran into Jesus and a system of steps that put purpose and guidance into his life. Nick has a heart as big as all outdoor's for those still trapped in addiction. He is more than ready and willing to help anyone who wants help. Nick truly walks out Step# 12 daily. God has birthed a no-nonsense kind of guy in Nick. Like the others, Nick shines in his love for Christ.

Last but not least, I see Seth.
He is the one God tapped to lead this particular Celebrate Recovery. As he moved around the room talking with various people, I thought back to the first time I met him. He was coming from jail to begin the program at Rapha. Little did I know then, nor could I have ever dreamed that this would be a young man that God took off the garbage pile of addiction, and would use to lead a Celebrate Recovery. But like the others, God knew what was in Seth's heart. He knew that Seth would have a tremendous love for those who were addicted. He  knew that Seth's personality would be a perfect fit for a leader's role in His kingdom.  Why? Because Seth is a servant. You see, with Seth it really isn't about him, it's about "What can I do to save this guy or girl?"

It was a good night last night.
I went away with a heart of gratitude for how big our God is and what He is capable of doing.
Give us more, Lord!
Bring in all of those that no one wants to be around.
Bring us all of the throw-away's and the rejects.
Fill us with you love so we can love them.

God on you....
mb

No One Is Beyond Saving

Psalm 107:10-11
Those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, bound in affliction and irons because they rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High.

There are some people who will read the verse above and think to themselves, "So!"
But what I have found over the years, is that what is written in Psalm 107:10-11 is at the very core and center of addiction in a person's life.
A rejection of God to embrace their own wants and desires. 
Unfortunately, our wants and desires come from a dark nature that every person is born with. The apostle Paul refers to it as the "flesh" or "The old man". It is a nature to go against God and what He stands for.
It is a nature that whispers to us we are independent from God. We don't need no stinkin' God telling us what to do. This nature causes us to view God with a jaded understanding. This warped nature tell us, "God is out to get you!" We readily reject God and anything to do with Him..........church.....the Bible........other people who have a relationship with Jesus. We steer clear of that whole scene, all the while falling deeper and deeper into the darkness of addiction.

Being in control of our own lives (or at least we think we are), we turn to drugs and alcohol to eliminate pain or to create a new reality in our lives because the current one is to hard to deal with. We trade family and friends for a new community of people who, like us, are going down that same dark road to destruction. It truly takes a Power greater than ourselves to halt that downward slide. Jesus is that Power. The turn around we need in our life is not beyond the reach or ability of this Jesus I claim to know and live for. How do I know this? Well, I know what He has done for me in my own life, and over these past 15 years, I have watched Him take others out of that darkness.

A week doesn't go by that I don't get a phone call or run into someone who has made that turn around to a new way of living. The one thing that is common to them is a profound sense of gratitude. Gratitude to Christ for what He has done in their life. These meetings to me are "payday". To have seen someone at their worst and now see them at their best.....it doesn't get any better. 

Someone asked me,"Don't you ever get discouraged with all the one who don't make it. Who go back out and keep using?" I'd be lest than honest if I said that it didn't bother me, or I didn't get discouraged. I do. But usually when I find myself drifting to that place of discouragement, that is when God sends someone who has regained their life, to just remind me that He is still in the business of saving and making whole those lives who were thrown onto the garbage heap of the world. Cast aside because they were "to bad" or "to far gone" or had burned every bridge with family and friends, these are the ones that God will rescue.

That is why God created Vineyard Recovery Church. So that they can plug into another group who are just crazy enough to believe this God thing actually works.

God on you.....
mb

Cursive Or Print? Neither---Flesh!

He stepped out of eternity....
A place that I can't even fathom.
A place that has no limits or boundaries...
He stepped out of eternity because of the love He felt for His Father and for us, His creation.
He came to set right everything that had gone wrong.
He came as THE payment for sin.
All sin.
Every sin that was ever committed was going to be paid for.
All creation had to do was accept this gift of new life that was going to be offered by Him.
John 1:12 -  But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.

He left the perfection of heaven to embrace a filthy, sinful, on-the-road-to-hell, world that was in need of a Savior.
He came down in the form of a baby boy.
Fooled all the intellectuals and religious folks of the day.
Somehow we see it as God putting one over on all those uppity folks.
God reminded me once that I would probably have one put over on me had I lived back then.
Funny how being on this side of His cross makes me read the scripture's different.
Kind of like knowing how the story is going to turn out so you have little patience with those in the story who don't see what is truly going on.
I have to remind myself daily that the story is still going on.
That story would be the last book of scripture.....Revelation.
Back to Jesus.

John, writer of the book of John, is remembering.
But it isn't remembering like you and I do.
He is remembering under the influence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
These words we read that John wrote, are God-breathed words. They are not the by product of an active imagination. They were not born of romanticized concepts. They were place within John's being by the hand of God Himself.
Look at the beauty and majesty of John's words.......
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John said, "I have seen eternity clothed in flesh. I have seen the "I AM" of God."
I'm sure that John thought to himself, "How can the enormity of God fit within a mortal body of man?" But here He was. Walking, talking, eating, sleeping and teaching among them. Jesus the Christ. Jesus the Messiah. Jesus the anointed One sent by God the Father to be the once and for all time perfect sacrifice for the sin of the world. And He has given the right to become CHILDREN OF GOD to those who believe.

Grab your Bible and spend some time on the first fourteen verses of John Chapter One.
Let it roll around in your spirit.
Chew on it and savor the richness of what you read.
Digest the dynamics between God  and humanity.
Then place yourself at the center of this conversation and find gratitude for being given the right to be a child of God.
Kind of mind blowing isn't it.
Good way to start Monday off....

God on you....
mb

Coming Back

Awesome job by Seth Barber last night at Vineyard Recovery Church.
Seth spoke about "Come back's. Giving examples of tremendous come back's in sports, Seth pointed out that this years winner of the World Series, The Boston Red Sox, were the worst team in baseball last year. Boston finished dead last in their division and were written off by most of the experts in this years season. Yet Boston had a come back of epic proportions.

Seth went on to share that being a NASCAR fan, he attended a lot of the races held at Talledega Super Speedway. He was privy to see another come back at a race which Dale Earnhardt was driving in. Earnhardt was in the 17th position with five laps left in the race. Everyone had written him off and projected Jeff Gordon to be the winner. Not so quick there........Earnhardt charged through the pack and passed Gordon to take the checkered flag, and the victory, finishing one of the greatest come backs in NASCAR history.

God is all about the come backs in people's lives. But Seth shared a very interesting point.
Before you can have a come back...........you've got to have a set back. You've got to find yourself in a position of being desperate to leave your situation and circumstance behind and move forward.

Using Joshua 7 and 8 as the scripture for the message, Seth told the story of the defeat of Israel's army by a little no name town called AI. This was shortly after Israel had just knocked off the big city of Jericho. Feeling their oats, Israel didn't even dispatch all their army to deal with this piddling little town of AI. Thinking they would knock this one off by lunch, they set off to take care of business. But there was sin in the camp. And this sin was done by a man who didn't think God was serious about doing the right thing. I won't go into the whole story, but the battle that day did not turn out good for Israel. They were routed and sent fleeing for their lives.  This was the set back. 

The come back came when the sin was discovered and dealt with. We pick up the story of the come back in Joshua 8:1 - Now the LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you, and arise, go up to AI. See I have given into your hands, the kind of AI, his people, his city and his land. Life is filled with set backs of all types. Financial set backs. Physical set backs. Emotional set backs. And yes, addictive set backs. But God is never overcome and stopped by such things. In fact His heart is to empower you, aid you and direct you through the minefield that your set back has created in your life. Lead you through it and keep you on the path of relationship with Him and your recovery. 

I'll be posting the audio part of Seth's message a little later in the coming week.
Be sure to look for it.
Let God turn your set back into a come back.
God on you....
mb

Fooling With Time

We set the clocks back tonight. Happy, happy! It's my wife's favorite time of the year. As she so aptly puts it, "I get my hour back."
Truth be known, time is stationary. The cycle of the earth revolving around the sun never changes. The way we count hours in the day shifts each year when we "fall ahead" in the spring, and "fall back" in the fall.
So our perception and the way we approach the day is what changes.
The actual measurement of time doesn't change.

Isn't that the way it is with addiction.
Addiction never changes. 
There is a stability to it that is like the rotation of the earth around the sun.
Addiction produces the same results in every life.
No matter what the socio-economic background...
No matter the education.....
No matter what race you are.
Addiction takes everyone down to the same level.
I guess you could say that addiction is the great equalizer.
Or as I like to put it, "Addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer."

The danger comes when we try to approach addiction through using mental deduction.
We begin to make excuses for our using.
We rationalize the bad choices we make.
We justify our actions.
It really is like when we adjust our clocks to make time the way we want it.
Doesn't matter. The end results are still the same.
destruction.
Unless something breaks the spiritual, physical and mental hold that addiction brings to a life, there is no hope of ever being free.
I see person after person truly believe that they are the solution to their addiction problem. 
"If I just try a little harder."
"I don't need those steps or a 'higher power'. I just need to change what I've been using. I won't use heroin any more....just weed."
The problem with all of this is that a person cannot be the problem and the solution at the same time.
It truly does take a POWER greater than myself to restore me to sanity.
That POWER is none other than Jesus.

I like the way Psalms 57:2 reads: I will cry to God Most High. To God who performs all things for me. 
Performs? Puts in place....provides for me so I can walk out this new life of sobriety and salvation. In other words, my Higher Power , Jesus, does for me what I could not do for myself.

So instead of "setting" and "resetting" your recovery clock.
Let it alone and simply surrender....
give up....
But realize you are giving up for something far better than what you already had.....life with Christ.

God on you.....
And don't forget to run Your clocks back tonight.

mb

The Future Is Just Around The Bend

Words to live by....
Don't just read them.....
Let them soak down inside of you....

John 14:1-4
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also my be where I am. You know the way to the place I am going.

In this life, we will have trouble. There will be times when we are very troubled because of event's, situations, or circumstances. Being the earthbound creatures that we are, we cannot (in our own power and effort) rise above the gravity of our sin nature. Jesus knows this, so He teaches us from His mind and His life, through the Holy Spirit who lives in us and empower us.

Think about this.....
We were never created to die. We were created to live in eternity and fellowship with God. Hard to wrap your head around that one isn't it? Especially living here on good ol' planet earth.

Life happens on this side of eternity.
It is filled with cancer and car wrecks. Divorce and death. Earthquakes and entertainment. Birth's and baptism's. Yet through all the darkness that covers this world shines the presence and person of Christ.
Like fireworks on the 4th, we see the power and purity of God exploding all around us and in us. We get to lay hold of the promises of God. That He is who He claims to be and will do what He said He would. 

Lay hold of Christ! Through this thing we refer to as life, in Him find the art of living. The simplest of instructions I ever received from Jesus was this..."Take my hand and follow me." Follow where ever it may take me. See this life all the way to the end and never let go of Jesus.

The verses in John 14 should be burned into our minds and spirits.
Jesus comforted His disciples with the HOPE of eternity. Such hope translates into my everyday life. I am empowered to not give up. I am strengthened to keep on keeping on. Such are the ways of the Kingdom of God.

God on you.....
mb