2 Minutes To Tell Time

Very recently, my mom started redecorating her house with special emphasis on the living room.  She has replaced the furniture, totally redone the fireplace mantle, purchased a colorful rug to liven up the overall feel of the space, and finally purchased a decorative wall clock to replace the 1' diameter clock that has been hanging for at least a decade.

Now, the clock.  While it is appealing to look at as decoration...the overall use of the clock is questionable.  The face of the clock is black wrought iron decoration with real openings that allow you to see the wall behind the clock.  The hands of the clock are also black, and finally the numbers on the clock are black roman numerals.  Mom asked me the other day what time it was and my response was, "I don't know, I'm still reading the clock!" My dad has similar issues so I am certain it is more than just poor time telling skills.

After you look at the clock for a minute or two (probably exaggerated a little) you can decipher what it says.  Unfortunately, I haven't seemed to LEARN the clock, so each time I look at the clock I have to study it anew to determine the time.

People are a lot like this clock.  We see people, and most of the times they are striving to look acceptable if not their best, but we often fail to take a deeper look into who a person is to determine what they are about, or how they are doing, or perhaps what is going on in their life.  Far to often we look at a person and unconsciously or consciously super impose stereotypes and then neatly slide them into their respective slots in our minds.  We recognize them for their appearance, but fail to take the time to understand who they are.  Even more so, if by chance we do spend the time to get to know a person, I believe it is a sad mistake to assume that what you have seen in the past is who that person will continue to be.  We should be ready and willing to get to know people with each encounter.  Each conversation should be a "new read."  That is how you get to know someone.  You don't make assumptions about who they are, you take the time to allow them to continue to tell you.

How Can the Flawed Deliver the Perfect

Let me start this post off by stating that my inherent (pride backed) nature is to impress. I realize that can be seen as an asset in most situations, but trust me, it also can generate great problems in life.

I say this now because I am going to strive to write each and every post with what is on my mind and not necessarily to impress an audience (perceived or realized). I'm not a total stranger to grammatical constructs and syntactical fluidity, (I know, a bit much probably) but I want to write these posts with the idea of accurately documenting my perspective as opposed to impressing the reader with word usage and sentence structure. That being said...

I was thinking today about my growing willingness to criticize those that deliver the Word of God. I will admit that the very thought of doing this unsettles me and I have begun to pray that God would diminish the desire to criticize, and specifically that what criticism remains would be constructive and reasonable.

The thing that struck me as I began to pray about what I hear was that man (when I say man, I mean humans in both sexes) is not perfect. It is totally unreasonable to think that any one person should be able to say everything perfectly or even accurately at any given time. Some place so much importance on the man of God as he/she delivers the Word of God from behind the "sacred desk" that they hold all that they say as Biblical truth. The problem with this, at least in my mind, is that the standard (unreasonable as it is) that I have generated requires total accuracy on ALL points in order to validate the whole of the sermon or message. The thought process has been, if you represent God and He is leading you with what to say then you shouldn't say things that are not true or at the very least are not accurate. For example (this is totally made up, so don't try to figure who said it), if you are preaching and you say something like "the Holy Spirit works in you like the electricity in your house. He moves in only one direction, that is the holy direction! That's why the plugs now days have a big side and little side, so the current will always flow in the right direction." Now that may sound good, especially with "preacher voice" backing it at the peak of a message, but as some would know, the current in your house is AC (alternating current) which is to say it doesn't matter which direction it flows. Now that isn't a monumental untruth, but it is not accurate. Should this invalidate the whole message. I willingly write, "of course not", but I personally know that things like this cause me to struggle sometimes with God motivated portions of the message. Truth is, most people wouldn't know or care about the difference and the analogy works to portray a point. What's the big deal? I don't know! That's why I'm writing this blog post. Why do I get hung up on things like this. I don't know everything. I say the wrong thing from time to time. Why would I expect the person delivering the message to be any different? Well, maybe because at the time they are delivering the message they are representing God and my expectation is for them to speak as "the oracles of God" and to be "God's perfect mouthpiece". With these expectations, flaws diminish my confidence in both the message and the messenger.

A realization that I came today is the fact that man is flawed. We are not perfect. We haven't "arrived" (those that are seeking the Lord). We are going to make mistakes. We are going to perhaps be inaccurate in what we say. I believe the importance of what we say, especially over the pulpit, should be measured by the spiritual connect that should happen as hearers listen to the preached Word of God. The power of God through His Word, spoken, read or otherwise is a given. His Word is perfect and without flaw. The Word deliverer is not perfect, but with the help of the Holy Spirit he/she should be able to preach a sermon that has been motivated by God and will identify with the spirit that resides in those that hear the message.

The next logical thought then becomes, what if you aren't moved by the message?

My advice: Be careful not to judge the man/woman of God based on what you know or may think you know about who they are as a person. God is more powerful and far smarter than any of us, and I am a firm believer that if you purpose to hear from God, He will speak to you through the preached word, or a song, or a testimony, or something: EVERY TIME you go up to worship. It may be that He leads you to another ministry, and that's fine as long as it is Him that is motivating the move. The obligation of the believer is to set their mind to hear from the Lord and then leave the rest to Him.

Initial Failure

Well, I put this blog up more than a year ago and then promptly forgot about it. Pretty typical for me actually. I am going to restart this effort and see if I can't keep it up for more than just one post. A ton of stuff has happened that I could have been blogging about, but totally forgot about this. FAILURE

Sometimes in life you fail. For those that are anything like me, failure is a frustrating disappointment. I start out to do whatever I do with the intention of "exceeding expectations." That's just how I do. Whenever that outcome is not reached I evaluate, and re-evaluate to see what I could have changed, what I did wrong, and how can I do it better the next time.

If you let it, failure can either help you or cripple you. My advice to whoever reads this is to let failure help you. Do all that you do with all of your might, if you fail...try again. (Good things only of course). Don't let failure or anyone else that would try to hold your failure(s) over you cripple your future. You may not be able to do a lot of things, but the one thing that you can always do is "better."

Time to try again!!