I Want to Do Bad Things… Pt. 3

Pt. 3 “So, what’s the problem?”


Lurking within us all are 2 animals. One desires good things, the other desires bad things. And the strength of either animal determines your actions … ultimately your destiny.

Now, I think we would all agree that there are different degrees of evil lurking within each individual. For example, take a Jeffery Dahmer, he obviously had some serious evil lurking within, and for whatever reason he was unable to control it. I feel those kinds of evil represent a comparatively small percentage of people (compared to the worlds population of 8 billion). Though, I would estimate that there are people who have similar urges, yet are able to control or suppress them, for whatever reason. (*I do not have all the answers to such a complex subject such as this… but I do think I have some answers for HOW to control/suppress them and ultimately transform and change those desires)

But, for you and me, our “bad animal urges” would be considered somewhat normal, if I can say that… yet they are real, and cause a war within. And here is the reality, no matter how good a person is …there is a war within, and I only say that for 2 reasons; 1) if you have evil desires it doesn’t mean you are bad 2) bad desires are common … if you are human.

Read: Romans 7:15 – 24

So, what to do about it? Check back tomorrow…
I Want to Do Bad Things… Pt. 4 “Taming the lion?”

I Want to Do Bad Things… Pt. 2

Pt. 2 “Where it all starts”


Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ…”

I think this scripture means far more than what it looks like it means at first glance… "For the wages of sin is death…" does that mean we’ll fall over dead if we sin? No. I believe among several things it’s saying it will cause death to whatever we value, whether it's our faith, a relationship, a career or our self-esteem. For example, I value my relationship with God, with Jana, with my kids, with my church, with my friends, with people in this community and around the world who have perceptions of God and ministers…I don’t want to contribute to an already negative perception.

I want to do bad things, and many times I do … but what is it that keeps me from doing them are the “wages they pay”. For example; I want to go to a strip club… but I don’t and actually never have (hard to believe I am sure)… but again it’s not from a lack of desire… it’s the results I don’t want… I do not want to damage all the relationships I mentioned above… besides Jana ending my life, or worse removing my manhood.

And, not just the results (or wages) of Jana being upset with me… actually the results of what that would do to my heart, mind and soul. So, would I go to heaven if I died while in a Strip Club? YES. So, this isn’t a Heaven or Hell issue… except that it may cause “hell on earth” for you. This is an issue of our heart… going to a Strip Club would mess up my heart and the Bible says that I should “Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23

I Want to Do Bad Things… Pt. 3 “So, what’s the problem?”

I Want to Do Bad Things - pt 1

Today I celebrate 14 years of marriage to the same gorgeous women. Neither Jana nor I are perfect… if anyone is close to perfection it would be Jana… and yet in spite of our faults we have managed to build a fulfilling, even happy marriage and home.

I say that to now say this; I am tempted to do things that would attack if not destroy what Jana and I share (i.e. Adultery, look at porn, go to strip clubs, live like a college student on Spring Break, not be Sweet, I only want to touch IF it’s going to lead to something, ignore her feelings, live for myself, etc.) The list could go on of things we all do to destroy our relationships.

Why/How can we keep ourselves from these things? … especially those at the front of the list …Committing Adultery, looking at Porn, going to Strip Clubs, and Living like a college student on Spring Break can be deal breakers for a marriage… as many of you well know, or know of someone who does know. But actually, I think the damage goes deeper than that ... it's the personal "heart" damage we inflict on ourselves that really messes things up!

More on that on the morrow...
I Want to Do Bad Things… Pt. 2 “Where it all starts”

Bible

What a wonderful story that is told from Genesis to Revelations. A love story … a story of God’s love for His children. The story of Hope through God’s son, Jesus Christ.

I think where we get bogged down and even sidetracked is when we isolate verses in a particular book of the bible, and we miss the over-all story of the Bible… a loving God reaching out to restore a broken relationship with humanity. And no matter what we do He is always reaching out to us.

Just know that God loves you today!

God Loves Strippers

I just listened to a podcast that told a very touching story of a girl named Kandi, who was molested as a child (when she told her parents they actually shammed her for it and said it must have been her fault) which led her to being sexually active by age 10 then getting pregnant at 13 and her parents kicking her out of the home (bad parents if you ask me!) then the only way she could see to support herself and her new baby was to take a job as a stripper, making anywhere from $1,000 - $2,000 a week.

She talks about her pain, emotional and physical… and that she prays herself to sleep every night, asking God to help her have a new life somehow someway. She even reads her Bible every night. She talked about a church that she visited with her daughter and when some church people (there is a word for these people, but I can not use it here) found out what she did for a living the shunned her, shammed her, judged her, condemned her and rejected her… she was asked to leave by the elders (someone should punch these elders in the throat) Can I just say that I hate, yes I used the word, I hate when so called Christians do that kind of anti-Christ stuff. Kandi needed love and acceptance… and especially her daughter needed it!

Of course God doesn’t want her to be a stripper, but neither does He want us doing the things we're doing!

The main reason her story touches me is that God Loves Kandi, even while she is a stripper and I so want all those who have been rejected by the church to know that! God loves you… and He hasn’t rejected you!

“...God so Loved the World…For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16 -17 (NIV)

Anxiety

Matthew 6:25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”

Have you ever felt worry, anxiety, bugaboo, burden, complication, consternation, discomfiture, disquietude, fantod, harassment, nightmare, vexation, anguish, badger, bedevil, bothered, brood, burdened, care, concern, despair, disconcert, distress, disturb, disturbance, dread, faze, fear, fidget, fret, fuss, gnaw, harass, harry, hector, importune, millstone, needle, perturb, pester, plague, pother, stew, struggle, suffer, tantalize, tormented, tortured, troubled, uneasiness, unsettle, upset, woe.

God bless the Thesaurus! Though I can’t imagine telling a friend that I road the Mamba at worlds of fun and it “harried” me a little… also I always felt that “tantalize” was a good feeling… I want to feel tantalized from time to time. Anyway, I digress!

I am sure we have all felt “worried” at one time or another, it’s a normal emotion; though if worry is a word that your friends would use to describe you… that’s not good. And what I mean about “not good” is that FEAR and/or WORRY are really disabilities in the pursuit of a full life.

They say that 93% of the things we worry about never end up happening anyway… it’s just wasted time.

Personal Story: A year ago I worried (pothered) that Olathe Life Fellowship wouldn’t grow any bigger than it was at that time. And that it may not ever accomplish all that I felt God wanted it to accomplish. And those negative feelings became my driving force. I was moved by them, motivated by them, and ultimately controlled by them… until one day God spoke to me (not audibly… just I sensed in my heart) that worry wasn’t going to help the church grow and reach more people, actually it would hinder growth, secondly I realized that all I can do is all I can do… the rest is up to God, and I should just rest in that, and finally I wasn’t happy being unhappy all the time (nor where the members of my family)… so now, I don’t worry, I work hard, have fun, put it in God’s hands, I’m happy, my family is happy and guess what?… the church is growing!

Wow, I should learn to take God’s advice more often!

Inadequate

Have you ever felt YOU weren’t enough? Inadequate on some level? Not smart enough, not rich enough, not good-looking enough, not enough……… (You fill in the blank). And you hear in your head, “if I could only do ………… better I would be happy”.

If we are honest we all feel inadequate on some level. I personally don’t feel qualified all the time to be a pastor, a leader, a teacher, a father, and a husband. It sucks to feel that way.

And sometimes Christians really struggle with this because they heard somewhere that when you become a Christ follower, or become Christ Centered you won’t have that struggle anymore… or at least they’ve heard you “shouldn’t”… which is hog wash! Absolutely hog wash!

Though, I will say that you can get better at handling those internal struggles by asking yourself the following questions:

1) What activities make me feel good about myself? DO THEM REGULARLY!



2) What activities make me feel bad about myself? STOP DOING THEM!


I know, it’s so simple! But, again, if we are honest… this makes up a huge part of the fuel that feeds our struggle!

Think about it! Love you much!

The Victim

I was reflecting on a recent interaction I had with one of the neighborhood kids who always plays the victim. He is an only child, a good kid, with good parents, though he is always innocent of others accusations.

There have been numerous occasions I have actually seen him in the act of doing something inappropriate (without his knowledge) … he denies it, blames others, makes excuses, and will even put on some tears of being “picked on”.

This is a common kid situation (if you have kids you understand) but don’t we as adults play the victim from time to time… it just feels better to play innocent, blame others and make excuses. That way we do not have to take ownership of our crap… we can continue to ignore issues.

We get pulled over and get a ticket… the cop was mean we say - forgetting to add we were doing 50 over and nearly ran over an elderly women crossing the street to pick up her new dentures, the boss is just a jerk – but we forget to add we were way under on sales goals and notoriously run 30 minutes late, our spouse is not sexually responsive – yet all we do is sit and watch sports when we get home from a 12 hour workday.

I’ve always appreciated when people have a true or at least honest self concept… they are able to say, “I deserve to be jumped on by my boss… I have been slacking and not working very hard… I needed a good kick in the pants”. “People treat me bad because I am a jerk most the time…”, “I deserved the ticket, I was speeding and could have really caused a bad accident”, “My wife is nagging on me for good reason, and I’m an idiot”.

So, try being brutally honest with yourself…

“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” - Jesus

What Church Would Jesus Attend (W.C.W.J.A)

So, the question of the hour; what church would Jesus attend if He lived in the Kansas City area?

Would it be Olathe Life Fellowship? Honestly, to answer that in a way that would exclude any other church would reflect spiritual and biblical ignorance on the part of the person saying it!

Though, I can say with confidence that since Jesus (God) unlike us, is omni-present, meaning He can be everywhere at once, is attending many churches here in Kansas City!

To say that “my church is better than your church” is childish. But we can say that “my church is different then your church” and be correct.

I would say the real question is; is Jesus attending your church? A follow up question then would be; how do I know if He is or not?

1) Is the Bible taught?
2) Is Jesus talked about?
3) Are people encouraged to follow Christ? (now I will say that many of us come to the table with pre-conceived ideas of what this means… i.e. we must have an altar call each week… or we must invite people to repeat the sinners prayer… or we must do the sign of the cross on our chest, or whatever you or I have been taught…)
4) Are people encouraged to love people as Christ has commanded?
5) Are people loved and accepted, right where they are in life?

And really the ultimate question; is Jesus present in your life?

Matthew 18:20 "Where two or three have come together in my name, I am there among them."

Final thought: I do know this; Jesus would spend 99% of His time OUTSIDE the church ministering to people... which is just what He did when He was physically here on earth.

Inner-city

Matthew 25:40 Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me."

Yesterday me, Brandon and Michele met with Luther who is an inner-city pastor at Bridge of Hope Community Church in Kansas City, Kansas. His church is right in the “hood” (his words). He drove us around and I was moved by what I saw. Much poverty, corruption, and decay… and right here in our backyard.

I felt like I was in a third-world country at times… while we were on our tour I saw a couple people getting arrested, a possible drug deal, some prostitutes (teenagers) roaming, and he didn’t even take us to the real bad areas because he said, “it’s unsafe…”.

I think sometimes we have our heads in the sand (those living in rich suburbia) regarding the brokenness all around us…the average income where we visited is $16,000 a year, average education level was 7th grade…

We’re looking to partner with Bride of Hope Community Church to help them change their community!

Real life… right here in Kansas City!