Happy Father's Day

This was the final 'share' day for chapter three in the book, “Bond of Brothers.” It's awesome when we can share our hearts and thoughts with one another through something other than sports, weather, or work.

It's amazing to me how a theme will develop during our times of sharing, and how different men will have different passages highlighted, but the Holy Spirit will guide everyone to say what He wants to say.

Today, we embraced the theme of stewardship, and active involvement. The problem with our media centered lifestyle, is our tendency to allow others to entertain us. We've become a society of watchers, content to let others do the work, play the games, and venture out into the unknown. This is evident in the church more than ever. We are perfectly content to allow a handful of people sing and play for us, one or two people teach us,and one person lay hands on us if we're sick. We become like the Israelites who refused to go up to the mountain of God for fear of dying in His presence. We doubt our faith, question God's willingness to save, heal, and deliver. Our failures and inadequacy override our faith and we find ourselves unable to release the power of the Kingdom into our family let alone the world around us. The enemy successfully uses our own fear against us, while we make heroes of sports stars, actors, and other men of faith. The exploits of patriarchs and others who've gone before us, make us feel small and puny as we live our daily lives in routine anonymity. If we do see the miraculous, we are quick to downplay it. Yet, in the end, it boils down to the passage that twelve year old Nathan read to us. I'm going to share it with you, because of it's significance to the theme of stewardship. Let me quote the passage from the book for you. “God seems to be attracted to children and to men who become like children. We know he assigns guardian angels to each child, and Jesus scolded his friends who told kids to leave him alone. Grown-ups are not permitted, the Bible says, to enter the Kingdom of heaven unless they become like children. So what's the deal with being told to grow up all my life.”

The significance is in the game and story of our lives. Stewardship includes playfulness and the joy of being entrusted with the weightier things of God. The stories of our fellowship will be told by the men and women who are children now. Will they remember how we lived, loved, and played? Will the story be told with the same open candor of the gospels? Will they know the game and story of our lives Will they laugh at the simple faith we lived? On an even more personal note, will they remember this short old man as someone who played Halo with them till the wee small hours of the morning? Or, will they remember me as the intense old man who drove them to become available to the Holy Spirit? Will our young men and women be willing to admit that they still have more to learn, more to grow, and more of life to enjoy in Christ Jesus? Will they desire to leave their own children in a better position to know God than they themselves received it from us.

In my last days on this earth, I want to live in wide eyed wonder of the God who gave His Son for me, while imparting the depth and mystery of God's word. For a man who was an old man when he was a young boy, I want to be the little child that God loves. I desire to know my savior as a little child, but love as one who wants to live for others.

This Thursday our fellowship will be sending off another group of men and women to Nicaragua for a week of ministry and fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Managua. This is the game and story of our fellowship. I wish I could go with them. I love our family in Nicaragua. We go to play with those whom God has chosen, and we go to share the story of what God is doing in us all. Our common denominator is our Lord and Savior Jesus. 

I forgot to tell everyone to read chapter four.  We'll begin looking into it next week.