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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Help In life, there will be times where we all need help from someone else. Are you the type of person that can ask for help when you need it and or accept help when it is given? We are all born with a desire to be independent. This desire runs deeper in some people than in others. My three year old son, Michael, has a strong desire to be independent. Most kids his age go through this stage but he is more noticeably independent that our other son, Trey. Michael wants to do everything himself. He wants to open all of his own candy (I dare not try to help him, I think he's afraid I might eat some), he wants to make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he prefers to get his own bowl of cereal and he even wants to pour his own cup of milk out of the gallon container. Mind you, he's only three years old. This can be a problem because it takes a lot more time to let him do things himself. And often times I have to clean up his mess after the cup of milk he was trying to pour spills all over the ground. He doesn't understand that he can't do some of these things on his own just yet. This drives me crazy! This reminds me of many young adults going through life trying to do things on their own and not asking for or wanting help from anyone. We need to realize there are some things we just can't do on our own. Maybe the task is too big to accomplish on your own. Maybe you are too inexperienced to deal with a certain situation. The bottom line is we all need help sometime. Are you willing to ask for and accept help when needed? Often times, pride stands in our way of receiving the help we need. Are you too prideful to allow others to provide the assistance that God knows you need? God is our heavenly father who sits on his thrown in heaven waiting patiently while we tell him we can handle every problem that is thrown our way. In reality we can't handle it all! He already knows the task is too big for us and He knows it's going to take longer for you to try to do it on your own. He also knows that He will most likely have to come in after us and clean things up. Yet, he waits patiently for us. Why, because He loves us. He loves you and He loves me. He loves us enough to wait patiently for us, His children, to try things on our own. He patiently stands by and is waiting to offer us His grace while we learn from our own mistakes. He knows you will mess up and yet He's ready to pick you up and love you even when you do. Can you accept that? Can you accept his helping hand and loving embrace? I hope you can because the bottom line is, during the course of life, we all need HELP! God help us! Word... Pasta' Alex posted by Pasta' Alex # 3:51 PM 0 Comments Links to this post   Thursday, November 16, 2006 Kickin' it with Jesus I love spending time with my two sons, Trey (almost 6) and Michael (3). I'm fortunate that they like to spend time with me too. They are all boy! We play cars, we swim in our pool, we play Uno and Old-Maid, we play basketball, football and of course we wrestle. What little boys don't like to wrestle with their dad?! They love to get on the bed, double team me and climb all over me. I think my nickname is "jungle gym". I have noticed that as I get older, I usually feel the effects of spending quality time with my boys. I feel joy and contentment in my heart knowing that I connected with them. There is the evidence of smiles in my face and theirs. Sometimes I have bumps and bruises from the boys jumping all over me, I am approaching 35 years old you know. And more often than not, there are tears and crying because someone hit someone else too hard or in a place that only boys hurt in, or someone fell off the bed and landed on their head. The bottom line is that there are obvious signs of me and my boys spending time together. In Acts 4, we see the results of some of the disciples having spent time with Jesus. Peter and John were getting grilled because they healed a crippled man on a Sunday. The gang lords of the "cees gang" (Sadducees and Pharisees) stepped up to them and got all up their face. Peter and John weren't having any of this and weren't about to get punk'd out. So they responded with a boldness from big brotha' Holy Ghost. It didn't take long for the "cees gang" to recognize; "oh, it goin' down like this. These cats ain't no sucka's, they are fortified fo' sho'. These two homies have been kickin' it with Jesus!" It was obvious that Peter and John had spent time with Jesus. They were bold, courageous and willing to stand up for what they believed. It wasn't the special training that they received or special education, it was the time they spent learning from the Master. Have you spent time with Jesus? Can people tell when they are around you that you speak like you have a relationship with Christ? Can they see by the way you act, by the things you do and the things you don't do, by the way you interact with others, by the way you talk and play and joke? Can they tell that you have spent time "kickin' it" with Jesus? If you aren't sure, what are you going to do about it? I suggest you start now. Go ahead and throw up a prayer and ask God to forgive you and help you act like you know Him. Then pick up your Bible and start reading it. A simple plan to start with is to read a chapter out of the book of Proverbs every day - there are 31 chapters and 31 days in most months. In one year you will read through this book 12 times and you will learn practical ways to live for him and show people that you have spent time "kickin' it" with Jesus. Aiight... Pasta' Alex posted by Pasta' Alex # 9:18 PM 0 Comments Links to this post Friday, November 10, 2006 Grape Kool-Aide If you ever stop by my house for a visit you might find me sitting on my couch with my feet up enjoying great big cup of grape Kool-Aid. Notice I didn't say, "glass of Kool-Aid", I said "cup" - my big black 32 ounce plastic cup, it's the best for drinking Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid is best out of a ghetto plastic cup and not a nice elegant glass, you know what I'm sayin'!? I love grape Kool-Aid. I used to drink it all the time, as a kid growing up, as a college student and even when I first got married. Early in my marriage my wife was amazed that I would drink about a gallon every two days all by myself. (For some reason, she doesn't appreciate grape Kool-Aid quite like I do.) Then all of a sudden, in the summer of 1996, that all came to an end. I took my first trip to the dentist office in about 5 years and what he told me came as a big surprise. I had 12 cavities, some of them so big it was going to require extensive work. Over the summer of 1996, I took 11 trips to the dentist, had 4 crowns put in and 3 root canals. All of those who have spent a little time in the dentist chair knows the extent of my pain, for those of you with good teeth, take it from me, it was major pain and suffering. My dentist and I tried to figure out why my teeth had so many cavities. He asked me a series of questions about my brushing and flossing habits to find that I brushed and flossed pretty regularly. I'm not much of a candy eater and make sure that I brush before bed each night. From the outside, my teeth looked fine. I mean, I wasn't experiencing any pain from my teeth and I couldn't see any cavities, so I had no idea as to how bad my teeth were, let alone how they got this bad. After much examination, the problem was revealed - my addiction to grape Kool-Aid finally caught up to me. I love grape Kool-Aid. There's nothing better than having a big cup of grape Kool-Aid that is cold and sweet. I mean so cold that it chills the teeth and so sweet that you can see the sugar at the bottom and scoop it up with a spoon. Word... But, this was a problem. I drank too much of it and I definitely put too much sugar in it. At night, before I went to bed, after I brushed my teeth I would have one more cup to give me sweet dreams. I drank it all the time and even at the wrong time. My dentist told me I had to cut back, way back. There is nothing wrong with a cup of grape Kool-Aid every now and then, but not like I was. As in life, have you ever noticed there are things that you love, things that are sweet and good, and if truth be told, you are addicted to them? Some things are not wrong or bad, but when we have too much of them, they become a problem. There are things that we do that tend to overtake us and cause part of us to rot away, often times this happens without us even noticing. These things cause bad cavities in our lives that can go undetected. They aren't necessarily bad things in and of themselves, but when we don't control them, they become a problem. This could be too much TV, the wrong type of music, inappropriate websites on the internet, a bad relationship, joking that gets out of hand, etc. What's your grape Kool-Aid? Notice, I started this by saying that if you stop by you still might see me enjoying a cup of grape Kool-Aid. I still love it! I don't drink it all the time like I used to, but I enjoy a cup every now and then. That's ok! Contrary to what many people think, God doesn't want to stop us from doing things we enjoy. He just doesn't want these things to come before Him and what He has for us to do. TV, music, the internet, relationships, He's cool with all these things. As long as we seek Him first and put Him first, we can enjoy these things in the right way. Word... Pasta' Alex posted by Pasta' Alex # 10:50 PM 0 Comments Links to this post Sunday, November 05, 2006 Feelings, Actions and Thoughts by Dan Lee-Archer Today's topic is : Feelings, actions and thoughts. Have you ever heard the saying "Think before you act". I grew up on this saying. In fact my mother said that to me so often I thought it was some sort of greeting. "Hi mum, I am home." "Think before you act!" "You too, how was your day?" Well the other day I had an opportunity to use my ingrained wisdom but unfortunately didn't use it. The day was Saturday and I was due to leave at 9.30am to get to a performance. I was performing two, half-hour sets and I was getting paid quite a substantial sum. I was worried that I wouldn't get up in time, but I did. In fact I woke up at 5.40am with a gut wrenching pain in ...... well my gut. Fortunately, I had series 5 of the tv show "Friends" to keep me company while I waited for my girlfriend to pick me up. When she arrived at my house I instantly felt better because she is so beautiful. Ok that was a lie, she is beautiful, but I still felt awful. So I start to go through the tricks I perform; I packed my juggling knives, I packed my fire wallet, I packed my bowling ball and then I saw my tennis racket. Ahh the famous "Dan Lee-Archer tennis racket trick" where I dislocate my body parts to fit through a racket with no strings. Before I packed that I thought to myself "I haven't tried that trick for awhile, I should test it out". So I did my part, I thought before I acted. However, if I thought real hard about it I would have realized that I have been using the same racket since I was 17 and that I had put on a bit of weight since then. Well I got it over my shoulders by dislocating it but the problem occurred when I found out I can't dislocate my bottom. Yes my bottom has grown so much that Sir Mix-a-lot wrote a song about it. I like big butts... well , you know the rest. So here I am, with a tennis racket stuck around my waist, sick as a dog, running late for my performance and the whole time wishing that I would of listened to my mother. "Dan, think before you act." So is this a blog about thinking before you act? Well if you thought that obliviously you have never read my blogs before because you would know I don't go down normal lines of thought. Everybody knows about thinking before acting but there is another component that people either tend to skip or put it in the wrong place. It is in the realm of feeling. So where does feeling go? Of course it is at the start of the process. Here's how it usually works: You feel like doing something, then you think about it and judge it to be good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, fun or boring, and then you act on it. Example: I walk past the apple store and I see the new i-pod red and guess what, I feel like I want it. So then I start thinking about it and judge it. Would I get real good use out of it? Do I have the money? How much memory would I need? How would I download music, I don't even have a computer? Would I look good with the white, black or red one? Then you decide to buy or not to buy. The other way is you feel like doing something, you do it then you think about it and reflect on it. So I want an i-pod, I buy the i-pod then I reflect on the fact that I have no money for rent. Most people live their life this way, they do what they feel instead of thinking things through completely. I am here to tell you of a different way, a higher level of living that only the wise find. Change the order. What you need to do is take "feeling" from the number one spot and put it at number 3. Take away the gold and give it the bronze. Most people live their lives doing one of the two ways I described earlier. That means the direction of their choices are guided by how they feel. Yes they might make wise choices but they are putting themselves in situations where both options aren't the best they could have in life. Well my friend, I am here to tell you there is a better way. Fire your feelings and give the leadership to your thinking. Your new order should be: think, act, feel. Think about what you can achieve when your thoughts are in control. There will be no more; "I don't feel like going to church, reading my bible, going to work, waking up early, praying, eating healthy, giving, going to small group or sunday school, helping people, etc." Your feelings don't dictate what you do! Your thoughts do because you can choose your thoughts. Do you get it? Now you will be able to live life at a place where you can think about any direction you want to take your life and go for it. Your feelings are important but they can be changed. Look at the athelete that gets up at 6am to run and he loves it. He is a freak! Those feelings aren't normal but they are developed. He thought, he acted and his feelings eventually submitted. So be guided by God, then let your thoughts decide the direction and trust me, your feelings will follow. Bless you, Pastor Dan Lee-Archer Junior High Small Group Pastor @ Hillsong Church in Australia posted by Pasta' Alex # 3:58 PM 0 Comments Links to this post |
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