It Is Not Good For Man To be alone

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Genesis 2:18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is right for him.“
God knew that man did not need to be alone and I got to thinking about that. What is wrong with us being alone? Here are a few scenarios that I came up with.
1. The garden of Eden would have had a man cave. Man caves are places where men don’t worry about things that women tell us not to do. In a man cave, if you need to pass gas, you just do it. You don’t need to blame the dog or a child. Adam would have had the dog there, and because there would not be a woman, there would have been no children. But we wouldn’t need children, because instead of blaming the dog, we would be competing with the dog. Not only the dog, but without a woman around we could bring in the hippos. What man has not dreamed about having a hippo submit to our superiority, especially when it comes to passing gas. I mean, if you can get that to happen, then it would be time to bring on the king of the beasts, the lions.
2. Not only could we pass gas as we please, but we could have our own horse racing in our man cave. I struggled with what sport to watch because without women there are no other guys, so that means no football, but God did make horses and the garden was big enough for the man cave to be whatever size man wanted it to be and therefore horse racing would be in high def. live in front of us. And if the horses make a mess, no one is around to tell us to clean it up right in the middle of a race. In fact, we could go out after the race to get some munchies and clean up the mess when ever we want to.
3. The garden would have female monkey mud wrestling. Some are thinking why not have this sport in the man cave? Duh…a man needs to go out every now and then. And if we are going out, can you think of anything better to do if the aren’t any women? I know it’s not the same as what some of you are used to, but you also don’t have a wife to get mad at you for going to female mud wrestling. And instead of dollars, they would do it for a banana and because you are in the garden of Eden you have plenty of those.
4. Because men like to fix things, and women like to complain about us not fixing things, or how we broke even worse what we were supposed to be fixing, we would walk around making lists of improvements that we would get around to doing. Everything that God made was good, that’s what the Bible says. But every man knows, that with a little tweaking, we can make anything better. I am not sure if God would actually let us fix anything, so a list would be the next best thing. Making “to do” lists is as good as fixing anything. Men feel like we have accomplished a lot when we have a big list of things to do. Here is a list of things to do in the garden, without woman.
Pull up all those flowers and plant trees that have vines hanging from them. They look more manly and we can later swing from them. But we would need to dig a big hole and fill it with water around some of the trees so we could jump off the vines into the water.
Next we would need to get rid of all those cats. Men just don’t need them. After all, the mice God created were good, so no need for cats.
Then someone has to figure out how the duck-billed platypus works. So we would start taking it apart as soon as we build a table and some shelves to put the left over parts on in case we need them for a later project.
Finally, we would get back to work on the man cave, because we are going to need a wall to put a TV on when they get invented. You know that without a woman, a man must have a TV, with remote.
Now you know why it is not good for man to be alone. Thanks God, for that woman you gave us.

My Greatest Blog

I had the honor of doing a wedding this weekend for a young couple. Weddings always make me reminisce about that special day for me long ago. It is hard to believe that this year I will celebrate my 32nd wedding anniversary. My wife is a very lucky woman. I am a very special man, and she knows it.
I was just reading  1 Corinthians chapter 13, which I read at every wedding. It describes real love, the love of God and gives a definition of love that does not mention warm fuzzy feelings. This is what it says:
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
1 I may speak in the languages of humans and of angels. But if I don’t have love, I am a loud gong or a clashing cymbal.
2 I may have the gift to speak what God has revealed, and I may understand all mysteries and have all knowledge. I may even have enough faith to move mountains. But if I don’t have love, I am nothing.
3 I may even give away all that I have and give up my body to be burned. But if I don’t have love, none of these things will help me.
4 Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant.
5 It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs.
6 It isn’t happy when injustice is done, but it is happy with the truth.
7 Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up.
8 Love never comes to an end. There is the gift of speaking what God has revealed, but it will no longer be used. There is the gift of speaking in other languages, but it will stop by itself. There is the gift of knowledge, but it will no longer be used.
9 Our knowledge is incomplete and our ability to speak what God has revealed is incomplete.
10 But when what is complete comes, then what is incomplete will no longer be used.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I no longer used childish ways.
12 Now we see a blurred image in a mirror. Then we will see very clearly. Now my knowledge is incomplete. Then I will have complete knowledge as God has complete knowledge of me.
13 So these three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the best one of these is love.
I want to love my wife like this.
I may have just finished my greatest blog ever.

Billionaires

I read today that there are now 1226 in the world. It pains me to report that I am not on that list. I remember when Mr and Mrs. Howell were considered extravagantly rich. I guess being stranded on a deserted island with only 5 other people makes a millionaire seem really rich. I miss Gilligan’s Island. This same report said that the richest of these billionaires can lose as much as 11 billion in one day. I wish they would lose a billion my way.
I would be lying if I said that I would not want to be rich. Being rich offers a lot of benefits. It lets you eat the food you want to eat. It lets you vacation in better hotels and locations. It allows you to pay your mortgage and power bill while filling your gas tank all on the same day. Being rich can even allow you to get season tickets to see your favorite team and not have to park a mile down the road where it only costs $20. If I were rich I would park in the $50 parking just because I could.
But I am not jealous of those super rich. I have been blessed with more than I ever deserve. First, I have a beautiful family. My wife and I have been happily married for over 30 years. Money had little to do with it. We have three grown children who all have children of their own. We have a home that we can afford and automobiles that will get us to the jobs that we have. We have a church family that loves us and loves other people. We have friends who like us because of who we are and could care less how much money we have; thankfully. We are in relatively good health and don’t have too many enemies. Most of all, we know Jesus Christ personally as our Lord and Savior.
Being rich is not the way to happiness. God wants to give us happiness and have it not depend on how much money we can make. Jesus says that He wants us to have the joy that He has and to look to Him for our blessings. We are told that the things we have on this earth like money and houses and cars will all fade away. But things like family and friends are eternal when they are built on faith in Him.
No, I did not get my name on the list of those 1226 billionaires in the world, but I do have my name written in the Lamb’s book of life. Yep, I am rich beyond measure!

Child Addiction

My wife is addicted to little children. Our own children are grown and cannot or will not produce babes fast enough for her. So she has a plan to have every baby and little kid at our church think that she is their Mimi too. I am pretty sure that this is not dangerous, but I do think it is an addiction.
Last night she went to help a couple with a baby that is only a month or so old. Both of them are sick and they are new parents and they were just worn out. My wife is a very compassionate woman. She will help almost anyone. But when she sees an opportunity to hold and spoil a baby she quickly jumps to feed her habit. I got the call that she was going to their house about an hour before she got off from work and was told that they were desperate and needed her help. I immediately knew that she just needed a baby fix.
Guess what she is doing tonight? Going to visit our son who lives a couple of hours from here so that she can “help” them. And guess what they have at their house? Yep. A baby. She is staying there for the weekend and my suspicion is that she is gonna be so wired up on baby that she won’t be able to drive home and that is why she is staying the weekend. She really does not know how to take babies in moderation. As an ex addict myself, not to babies, I know the signs. You always try to justify what you are doing, but no matter how much you try you always end up over indulging. There have been times when she would come home from “helping a friend” and she would smell like baby or small child.
Don’t misunderstand, she is not dangerous and I am not scared of her when she is using. Rarely has she ever missed work and she has never lost a job because of it. She has never threatened me seriously with violence and for the most part it does not interfere with our marriage. There are times when I will choose to sleep on the couch because she is so strung out on babies and children, but it has not approached the point to where it threatens our relationship. From time to time she will stretch the truth about her habit. The other week she said that she was only going to have one or two kids and it ended up being six kids at once. I can tell you that one kid will take the edge off, but she is not satisfied until she is totally loaded with kids.
She tries to limit getting children from only people that she knows. Family and friends are her biggest suppliers. But she will quickly run to anyone who comes into our church with a child and try to, as she likes to call it, “love on them”. I have seen her trying to talk to strangers about their children but for now, I feel she can restrain herself.
I have to watch her closely. We cannot have children anymore. I thought that doctor had fixed the problem, but occasionally she will mention adopting. I am strong for her and I remind her that she is an addict and does not need children in the house all the time. Sure, I should probably put my foot down and get her some help, but without children, she can be difficult to live with, so I turn a blind eye and just try to help manage her addiction.

From Me To You

This will be my last blog for a few days. It will be Christmas soon and we are traveling several times. Although they are short trips of less than two hours, it is still traveling. I only get to spend time with my family like this a few times a year and this is always special since my kids have married and moved away. Christmas just keeps getting more special to me, a guy who use to despise it and regretted the whole family ordeal.
Christmas for many of my early adult years was spent acting like I enjoyed the facade of family when in reality I was bitter and hateful. After marrying my wife and meeting her family it was hard to watch so many people loving each other so openly and I had a hard time with it. But they were not putting on a front, they were real and I learned to like it. Then as I got older and God became more real to me and called me into the ministry I began to see things with a better light. It was about family and it was about getting together, but more so it was about Jesus and Jesus has given me even more family through kids and grand kids and my church. I am richly blessed!
This is the time of year when Christ is in the forefront. It is the celebration of His birth, regardless of what anyone says. And it is because of His love for me that I am no longer bitter and angry at Christmas, but joyful and at peace. It took time, but God is patient.
So for Christmas this year I get to drive to three different places on three different days and hang out with family and friends. I get to see kids smile and adults laughing and I can look in the mirror and see a once broken and bitter man now filled with Christ’s love and joy. This only happens because I took a long look in the mirror too often and saw something that I didn’t like and couldn’t fix. It was not until I personally met Jesus and allowed Him to be the meaning of Christmas and the Lord of my life that I was able to find the peace that I had longed for.
I hope that you have joy and love and peace this Christmas. I hope that your families are able to get together and celebrate and I hope that Jesus is the reason that you are celebrating. But if you are like I was and you struggle with this, take some time to get alone and see if God will meet you there. He only wants to know if you believe in Him. He will only help if you ask. God does not intrude where He is not wanted, but will meet you anytime you ask. The transformation takes time and the joy is hard to recognize at first. But with time and you seeking to know Him, God reveals this joy, gives this peace, and fills with love, even the hardest and most bitter heart, like mine.
Merry Christmas to you. Peace, joy, and love, from Christ the Savior.

It Sucks. Yep, I Said It

The last few days have been tough. It seems like every way that I turn, something is going wacky. I heard someone use a term one time and not sure how nice it is, but it goes something like this: This sucks! Now of course I would never use this term for any other reason than to make the point of this blog. No one can ever accuse me of acting like anything other than the perfect Christian guy. If they do, they suck.
Hear is are a few things that have happened lately that have provoked this blog.
Last Friday, I woke up to back spasms, again. You would think that I would get use to this, but I haven’t. They are a common part of my everyday life, only some days they are worse than others. I know, if you have followed my blogs for a while you may have heard about them before, but like my blog, they are my spasms and I can whine about them when I want too. Friday they were pretty intense and I had to go pick up the red-head twins for the weekend with Mimi, who just happens to live at my house.
When I got there to pick them up, it was right in front of the USC Gamecock stadium and I was reminded that I really wanted to stay there and see the game , but neither of the red-head twins are old enough to drive yet so I had to load them in my truck and drive an hour back to my house. The whole time they were yelling and screaming and acting like little kids and I was trying to yell with them and I actually hurt my vocal chords while we were seeing who could yell the loudest. (It was a game)
Saturday, was not that bad, except for trying to get those leaves out of my yard. When I woke up Saturday, my back felt better and that was a relief, but as I was trying to get an extension cord untangled, my dog thought it would be funny to sneak up behind me and see me trip over her. Guess what that started? Back spasms. So I got the leaves out of the yard and went in to watch the football game that I really wanted to see live. It was a good game and my team won.
Some time during the game the dog wanted to play again and as I was wrestling with her, something popped in my elbow and it has not stopped hurting since. As if that wasn’t enough, I took a couple of Tylenol to ease the pain and did not realize that there were two other letters on the bottle, PM. So I took a nap on the couch. It was only a short nap because soon the wife come home with the red-head twins and two others who were still playing the game, let’s see how loud we can yell. As I sat up from my nap, I had a back spasm which caused me to flinch and I got a “crick” in my neck.
Because I had a nap so late in the day, I did not sleep much Saturday night and Sunday morning came way to soon. It was a big day at the church with several things that were starting up. I am on edge on Sunday mornings anyway, just because I want everything to go well. Some people started not showing up at the times that they were supposed to and one person went home early and another said they couldn’t do what they were supposed to. On top of everything else, I was not preaching that morning. I get bummed out when I don’t get to preach. Not because the person who is preaching will not do a great job, but because after all that had been going wrong, the one thing I believe I can do right is preach. It allows me to forget everything else and talk about the One who is always right. God.
Later that day, I was called by a friend to tell me that a family member was in ICU, and another friend of mine was having some other personal issues that I didn’t have an answer for him. I think my phone rang 4 or 5 times with bad or disturbing news.
Monday, was a new week and had to get better; wrong. As if it weren’t bad enough that my run of bad luck seemed to be continuing, the wife had a really bad day. I hate it when she has a bad day cause if I’m not careful it can turn even worse because I am so sensitive. Okay, maybe sensitive is the wrong word, but I can’t use the one she called me. So add it all up and the last few days have been worth taking the risk to say, this sucks.
So Monday night we have our men’s Bible study and God decides to show off and remind me that no matter how much I think it sucks, He doesn’t. He reminded me that His grace is sufficient and that His love can overcome anything that I allow to bother me. He reminded me that it is not the things that bothered me that sucked. What sucked was that I let them bother me so long before turning my focus to HIM.

Not Today

I am packing and about to head out for my weekend of tent camping with my wife and a bunch from the church. So I am too busy to blog today. As soon as I think that I am through packing and ready to go, the wife lets me know that she needs something else. I had to go to the grocery store earlier, Wal-Mart, and probably somewhere else before I can head down early to set up camp. The good news is that the rain has almost stopped. As soon as this front passes, it should turn colder and that means I must find wood that will burn after a good soaking of rain.
Now I am looking out at my dog, the Jack Russel, who is not going camping with us, as she is trying to climb the fence in the back yard. She is obsessed with squirrels and pecans and my neighbor has 2 pecan trees and lots of squirrels in his yard. This drives my dog crazy and she will obsess with this until something else catches her attention or she figures out how to climb over the fence. This will drive me crazy while I am gone, because we have to leave the doggy door open for them to use the bathroom until my daughter gets here later. We will leave all the other doors in the house shut so that if she catches a squirrel, we can find it quicker in case she decides to bring it in the house.
The wife just left from having lunch with me. I love it when she comes home on her lunch hour and I am free to join her. I try to cook a meal for us and we look at it as saving money and sticking to our Dave Ramsey plan. But now that she is gone, I have to wash dishes before I can leave to set up camp, after I stop by a couple of stores now that the rain is almost gone. Oh wait; its raining hard again.
I thought that I would take a quick break in all I am doing to let you know that I would not have a blog. Not today. So until Monday, or after I recover from this weekend, take care.

Dru To Be Daddy

I just heard today that a good friend of mine Dru, and his wife are expecting a baby. It is one of the sweetest times a couple can ever share. There is something about that news that never gets old and almost always brings great joy to those who hear it. I thought that I would give a few bits of advice to my friend and you can feel free to share it with others who are new-found parents.
First: prepare for the next few months to be crazy, but remember it is only nine months. Pregnant women are moody. They want to eat weird food at all hours and then cry because they are gaining weight, even if the doctor says she is right on track. If you tell her she is showing, she will cry, if you don’t, she will say you don’t care. You can’t win, so get use to it.
Second: prepare for lots of sleepless nights. Babies will cry and do their best to mix up their nights and days and you will suffer the loss. But, this only lasts a few months and pretty soon they will they figure out that sleeping is far better than the stupid things you will try to do to keep them quite and put them back to sleep.
Third: enjoy the baby years because the terrible twos are, well about two years away. Once a child begins to walk and talk they also learn to play one parent against the next. They learn manipulation and mind control and can and will embarrass when you least expect it.
Forth: Children always grow up but they never go away. NEVER.
Fifth: This is the greatest experience you will ever experience. You can only fully understand this when you look back in 20 years and every hard time will be worth it and every laugh will be louder and every tear will be worth it.
The Bible says that children are a blessing straight from God. If there is anything that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is this. Children are the greatest source of joy, the greatest source of love and the greatest thrill of you life, so enjoy it. They grow up way too fast. But if you are as blessed as I am, you will get the greater blessing of grand-children.
Congratulations! Life as you know will soon cease to exist.

Could It Get Better?

Incredible would be the best word I could use to describe this past weekend. Our church had its annual lady’s retreat and about 30 of our ladies spent the weekend in Tybee Island, Ga. From the pictures I saw on Facebook and the short conversations that I had with my wife, they had a great time and I am sure once I hear the details it will only get better.
Of course when I talk about 30 women being away for the weekend, that meant that they are away from our church too. On most Sunday mornings we will have about 140 people attending and that includes an average of about 30 kids also. So if you take 30 people away from our normal Sunday morning it is noticed simply by looking at the crowd size. But we notice it even more because many of these ladies serve in our church in vital areas. Children’s director, teachers, greeters, check in stations for kids, just to name a few. Add to the ladies being away the fact that we had our audio/video guy and his wife out and about 12 other folks who were away, and it was really noticed that people were missing.
I have to say that rarely do we have people who just lay out of church. The folks here have taken an ownership in what God is doing and for whatever weird reasons, they seem to enjoy coming. Mostly because people find God here, but secondly, they have real friends that come here. Not just people we see once a week, but people that we hang out with and have a real relationship with. So I am not the type of pastor who has to guilt people when they are away and usually when they are away it is for a good reason, not just laziness and lack of desire to come. Have I told you lately that I am a very blessed pastor? God has allowed me to serve a bunch of folks who are real and excited about knowing God.
With so many people away this Sunday I was expecting the worst. Although my wife assured me that things were well taken care of, I couldn’t help but be skeptical. All the other people who were gone had also assured me that they had things covered and that nothing would be missed. They were right. Although the people were missed, things went over without a hitch. I was so amazed, and I really shouldn’t be. That is just what kind of church I serve.
I also thought that because so many of the regular folks were out that the crowd would be rather puny, but it wasn’t. Sure those who are here regularly could tell that people were missing, but only because we knew who they were. We had plenty of folks and if those 40 plus people had shown up we would have been near capacity. Boy, listen to me whine.
My sermon this week was on using grace as the foundation to build your Christianity on. Grace is favor given, not earned. God just loves us and when we seek Him, He gives us grace and therefore we have favor in His sight. Being in His good grace is a special thing that anyone can experience, but sadly too many people don’t because they pervert who God is. God is love, not someone waiting to crush you like a bug when you screw up. Sure, if you continue to deny Him and never ask for His favor, He can and probably will prove He is able to squash you like a bug, but that is not His goal. His grace is an awesome thing that allows us a very personal relationship with the Creator of the universe.
Because of God’s grace, six people became God’s children this weekend. It is not uncommon for our church to see 3 or 4 people each week trust God, but this week with a lot of folks gone, God showed us that He never misses hanging out with people who welcome Him. As we were finishing our morning worship time I informed people that we would be filling the horse trough for baptisms next Sunday because there were 2 or 3 people who had asked about it. As the day progress and we came back for the evening Bible study, about 12 more people had contacted me about getting baptized next week. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see 20 people baptized next Sunday.
If you don’t consider yourself a Christian, maybe you find this hard to get excited about. But it is what God gets excited about. He is not excited about money or buildings or how important a person thinks they are. God is excited about people knowing about His great love and sharing it with others. So if you are not a Christian, first let me thank you for reading my blogs. Secondly, if you live in the Rock Hill SC area, come next week and see all these baptisms and meet some people who will be surprisingly a lot like you. Either way, the first visit is free and if you don’t like it you don’t have to come back.
But WOW!!! This was an incredible weekend. I will be so glad to get my wife home and all those ladies who serve all over our church. They should be really stoked for next weekend. Holy Kaw! Next weekend could be better than this one!

Talking To Adam

I have to stop taking requests for blog ideas. I get a lot of weird ideas that make me have to think and we all know what happens when I start thinking. Today I was asked to do a blog about who I would want to talk to out of the Bible and why. The only two people I could not choose are God and Jesus. I will assume that this also means the Holy Spirit and will forgive the disrespect to the Holy Trinity from my friend who probably wasn’t thinking.
After pondering this, and yes, I said pondering, I would choose Adam. I would choose Adam because he saw things that no man has ever seen, so let me blog a bit.
Adam was the first to see creation in its perfect state. I would love to have him tell me about the beauty of a world that had no flaws and no dangers. We think of untouched land as forests or jungles that are difficult to walk through but this was made with man in mind and nothing was a threat to Adam. There were no thorns or plants that would cause allergic reactions or if there were, they were not a bother to him ever. He didn’t have shoes, so the ground had to be very comfortable to walk on, because if you think about it, he didn’t have callused feet in the first few days.
Adam got to see every creature on earth and name them. I would love to hear his thought on the first time he saw a possum or an elephant. I know that he was looking for a companion and found none of the animals to be suitable, but I bet he was tempted to pick a couple. I would ask him which ones. Surely he could have had thoughts about hanging out with a grizzly bear or a lion for a while. How did he get the nerve to tell God, “Nah, none of them turn me on”?
I would really love to hear about that woman God gave him. I know that he did not know she was naked, he does now and I would love to ask him about her. She must have been a really hot chick. Before you get all uppity on me, remember that this was not my idea to blog about this and I am only being honest. This is hard to figure out how to say without someone taking it wrong but I will try. Sin has taken its toll on humanity. We are all now flawed because of sin. I think my wife is beautiful and she is flawed by sin. I bet Eve, who was not flawed by sin, was incredible looking. I want to hear about that from Adam. Then, I want to hear his reaction when he finally realized that she was naked. But I am a man and I can’t help myself.
Now that Adam has a had a few thousand years to think about it, I would love to talk to him about why they fell to the temptation. What did the fruit look like? What did it taste like? When did the sensation of knowing good and evil overtake them? Was it when the took the bite or did they have to chew it up and swallow it before they actually knew they had messed up? I can’t imagine being perfect and sinless one second and the very next second knowing you have sinned. And I would have to ask, did you try to take your time putting Eve’s leaves together after you knew she was naked? You know, did he tell her that the first one made her look fat, just so she would have to make another or did he keep “accidentally” tearing the leaves in just the right spots?
One thing I have always been curious about is time. Were they living in a place where time did not matter before they sinned? I know they had night and day, but when we become sinless, time won’t matter to us because we will be in heaven. He was created to live forever and I want to know what he thought about time before the sin. After the sin, did he feel like Eve was always making him late or did she not develop that until they had kids? And what about having the first kids in the whole world? Did you want to beat them? Did they start the whole back talking to parents thing?
But most of all I want to talk to him about God. I want to hear about their walks together and what kind of things did they talk about. What do you say to God about anything? I mean, did Adam look at God and pat Him on the butt and say “good job!” for creating the universe? Did he ask God what was he thinking when He made the duck-billed platypus? Did he talk to God about how hot Eve was?
Yep I would want to talk to Adam if I could.