The Challenger

January 28, 2018

The Challenger

Proverbs 6:20-22 (NIV)

²⁰ My son, keep your father’s commands and do not forsake your mother’s teachings. ²¹Bind them always on your heart and fasten them around your neck. ²²When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep they will watch over you; when you wake they will speak to you.

Are there things in your life that are turning points that have made an impression on you that you will never forget? Are there things in life that have gotten you to where you are that maybe you have forgotten and may have caused things to feel more routine than they should. Scripture tells us in Proverbs 6 not to forget those things we have learned as they will be our guide.

One event that has made an impression on me is due to the title. It is hard to believe that 32 years ago today (January 28, 1986) the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up in mid flight only 30 seconds after launch killing 7 astronauts and changing the way we did space exploration ever again. What killed 7 astronauts on the Challenger just a couple decades later (February 1, 2003) almost to the day ended up killing 7 more on the Space Shuttle Columbia upon reentry shutting down the space program indefinitely.

Both flights have made an impact on the history of our country forever, yet it would be so easy to forget that which has happened either because it was before some people’s time or simply had no direct impact on their lives. Seeing that the Challenger disaster happened the day after my 14^th birthday and how NASA wanted to teach school children about space exploration and get them excited, I don’t think I will never forget. You see it was NASA’s goal to send a teacher upon the Shuttle, so children would remember this specific day and desire to become an astronaut. Unfortunately, the effort did exactly opposite as someone the children could related with was sent to their death in such a vivid and tragic way.

            The reality is time allows for pivotal moments to be the milestones to allow people to succeed and become creative and inventive. Here are a few examples.

-          Beethoven, a deaf man used his disability to become an accomplished musician

-          Albert Einstein, a Jewish man born in Germany had to flee from his home to the United States who was the catalyst to stop World War II by developing the atom bomb.

-          Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called for and end to segregation and racial equality, but never got to see the progress of his dream come to fruition where segregation of schools, neighborhoods, transportation and places of gathering or restrooms have changed drastically for the better.

-          Billy Graham, a young man who many thought would amount to nothing and counted him out became the most pivotal and influential pastor of the 20^th century where millions have given their lives to God and thousands have going into ministry either as a direct result or an indirect result.

The list goes on and on. The reality is each one had a couple things in common that made them who they were; adversity and remembering who they were is bigger than what had happened to them. If those who had gone before us, either listed or not, allowed adversity to define who they were, they would not have made the impact they did, and the results would have been much different.

Proverbs talks exactly about this. We are reminded to not forget the teachings of our mother or the commands or direction handed down to us by our father. The reason for this is very simple; it allows us to understand who we are and our standards. If we can do so we will not be deceived in those times of adversity. This doesn’t mean we will not go through hard times, only that we will not loose our identity in the process and get off course.

So now 32 years later we can take the lessons of the Challenger and apply them to our personal lives. Here are a few I think one could glean from that fateful day.

-          Never take the things you have learned from the past for granted. When a commission was put together to investigate what happened they found that 2 things went hand in hand. The first was temperature differentiation and the other is the maintenance of the Shuttle. Temperature always has a cause and effect on things in our lives. When we fail to balance out the outside temperatures of our lives with the inside temperatures of how we are feeling or what is going on we can find ourselves getting to the point of exploding. Just like temperature, we must recognize those things that need to be fixed or adjusted in our lives and not to ignore those things that are even slightly off. In the Challenger the commission found that there was a rubber seal called an ‘O-Ring’ which was affected by temperature. On that fateful day it was determined that the rubber seals shrunk because the temperatures were near freezing and the heat distributed by the boosters where heating up too fast where the ‘O-Rings’ could not get back to the proper shape allowing fuel to leak and explode. Our lives can be very much the same where things move so fast and we don’t allow ‘O-Rings’ within either to be replaced or stretch leading us to leak and eventually explode.

-          Don’t take things for granted. When NASA introduced the Shuttle program they sold it from the stand point of cost efficiency and doing more with less. What they did not expect was the idea would become too mundane and people both working on the ship and those paying attention would just be going through the motions and forget the original purpose for what they were created for. Likewise, we may find ourselves in a rut and what was on track for good we keep doing the same thing in a mundane way. As a result, we become dissatisfied, resent what we have been doing and the reason why we started out this way and eventually have a call for an end of what once was good, now being considered status quo. Today other outside companies are competing against government agencies to do those things that NASA once did great in a much better way.

So how do we avoid the leak of the ‘O-Ring’ or the lack of luster of what was once great? We need to go back to the fundamentals of where we are heading. We must remember those things that we were once taught. We must have others who are willing to challenge us to be better at what we had the dream to be. We must not box others out thinking we have all of the answers. We must be able to not allow tragedy to define who we are as life will always throw a curve ball and make us want to give up.

So what is your Challenger? Have you had an idea where once it had great potential and now has either become mundane or as leaked so much that is has exploded? You must get back to the basics and rediscover the greatness of those things that once was. The ironic thing is the third Space Shuttle created after the Columbia and Challenger (the two that later blew up) was called the Discovery. You see sometimes it requires the original dream to be created only to be followed up by a discovery of what that dream initially was.

In memory of the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Challenger: (January 28, 1986)

·         Commander Francis R Scobee

·         Michael J Smith

·         Ronald McNair

·         Ellison Onizukz

·         Judith Resnik

·         Gregory Jarvis

·         Christa McAuliffe

And in memory of the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia: (February 1, 2003)

·         Rick D Husband

·         William C McCool

·         Michael P Anderson

·         Kalpana Chawla

·         David M Brown

·         Laurel Clark

·         Iian Ramon

May we not forget your service and impact you had for future generations!

Where Do I Belong?

Where Do I Belong?

Isaiah 49:15-17“Can a mother forget the infant at her breast, walk away from the baby she bore?But even if mothers forget, I’d never forget you—never.Look, I’ve written your names on the backs of my hands. The walls you’re rebuilding are never out of my sight.Your builders are faster than your wreckers. The demolition crews are gone for good.Look up, look around, look well! See them all gathering, coming to you?As sure as I am the living God”—God’s Decree—

It is so easy to get lost and wonder where you belong, especially after a tragedy. Loosing your place of purpose can be the result of several different things from depression to loneliness to loss to feeling inadequate in a calling, job or position we have been called to. We all experience it at time to time, but there are some who tend to live there with a loss of hope.So where do I belong and why do I feel so out of place?

In order to answer this question you must reflect on a few things first. What am I made for and which direction do I need to take? You are made for a purpose... to glorify God in everything you do!
Now as for direction we assume that it has just one or two definitions, but imagine if it actually has two opposing definitions? Too often we think of the definition of ‘direction’ simply as a path forward or instruction of how to do something, but Webster has another interesting definition to ‘direction’; it is the address scribed on the outside of a package or building, the description of a destiny. It is too easy to be concentrated on the path that we forget the destiny God has inscribed on us from day one.

Isaiah talks about this in Isaiah 49. He mentions that God wrote you on the back of the hand. One may not think this is significant, but think about it this way. When I put my watch on I do so where my watch is face up on the back of my hand. In doing so, when I drive the back of my hand faces out and I can quickly see my watch to be reminded what time it is at a quick glance. Likewise God has you scribed on the back of His hand, like my watch, to remind Him at a glance of where you are.

The greatest problem we have as humans is the ability to be overcome by our circumstances that we forget the destination we have set out for. Looking back I am amazed with my parents. Here it is being from a large family we did many road trips whether it was to see my aunt and uncle in Boston or the beach in Florida. This is why I am impressed. Packing up to 9 people in a car to drive hundreds of miles away without tv or any other activities but maybe a coloring book or Etch a Sketch. We as kids would be excited about the destination but didn’t understand the journey.

To help us better our parents would buy an atlas so we could understand the journey better. Little did I understand how important the map was until I was the one in the driver’s seat. You see it is easy to cheer on the destination when you aren’t the one behind the steering wheel. I didn’t understand what my dad went through driving straight through front Akron, Ohio to Orlando, Florida with the packed car until I was the one day driving the car.

When I was the one responsible for the destination I learned there were a lot of distractions and pitfalls. On a family vacation it may be the kids yelling in the back seat or fatigue sitting on your shoulders to where the last 100 miles you didn’t even remember. The place where God has called us is much like that family vacation though. When we are younger we are excited about where God is calling us and where we feel we need to be and just can’t understand why others don’t feel the same. We have our map book in hand then realize we are in the driver’s seat. We know where we are to be going but have been distracted by the yelling in the background where the mission seems to fade into the horizon. Maybe it is driving down the same road where it seems nothing has changed and we lost track of the past 100 miles simply because we are tired or used to just keep on where we have been.

There is a simple truth though we must keep in mind. Just like any major highway we must on occasion look for that rest stop, stretch our legs and relieve ourselves from those things that are weighing us down and making us uncomfortable. Once we do that we need to break open that map book and see where we are and where we are going.

Remember, where you belong is less about the journey and more about the destination. If we allow our focus to be centered on the pitfalls and detours along the way we may find ourselves turning around and giving up on the destination God has made for us.

I encourage you, if you wonder where you belong, to pull out your map book and remember some of those promises you once had and look at the path you have taken so far and how much more you have to get where you belong. Remember God wrote you on the back of His hand so when He is carrying you He can see you at a glance and know where you are is in His perfect timing!

Bathing in Dirty Water

January 20, 2018

Bathing in Dirty Water

John 5:1-6 (Message)

^1-6 Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem. Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people- blind, crippled and paralyzed- were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?”

Water is imperative to the survival of an individual.

As I was thinking about the context of this journal many things came to mind where the initial premise has changed although the heart of it remains the same.

In life we look for things to be awesome. We have goals dreams and vision for the direction we plan to go, yet not always does it turn out to be as we thought the journey should be.

Last week I shared a blog called “Where Do I Belong?” It talked about how we have a tendency of having goals and visions, but as time would have it we tend to lose our way and find ourselves in a vortex where we lose the light at the end of the tunnel.

This week I am building on this.

When I was younger my family grew up in a house that had well water and a lot of iron deposits. We were the ones that would drink out of the garden hose on a hot summer day because it was convenient and very cold and refreshing water. We would in fact overlook the iron flavor because it was refreshing on those hot days. Today people would think drinking from a garden hose would be unsanitary, but is it?

A few years ago, when I met my girlfriend and her kids they told me that bottled water tasted different, and I thought they were full of it. They would for the most part only drink Zephyrhills water. Admittedly I just thought they were just being water snobs until they put several waters to the test for me. To my surprise they were right. Zephyrhills water tasted much better than an Aquafina or any other water on the market.

Now my point is not to promote water rather to say what we put in and even bath in makes a difference. Too often we find ourselves in our daily walk preverbally drinking from the garden hose because it is convenient or sufficing with bottled water that is subpar to other that are better.

In other terms imagine bathing in water that was dirty to get clean. Before running water, and my mother has attested to this, families would gather enough water to fill a tub and each family member would use the same water to bath in because it was a lot of work to cart fresh water for each person’s use. As a result, most families would bath maybe once a week and the one who was the last got the short end of the stick. Keep in mind that many families at the time were relatively large so by the time the last one would bath the water was pretty dirty and cold, but this was reality and that was acceptable.

Very often we do the same thing in life. Sure, it may not be the dirty water, but it may be the things we read, say do, people we associate with, the compromise of our morals or beliefs and so on. As a result, we fill up that tub once and expect the water to be clean each time we use it. We take a drink from what is convenient simply because that is what we do. In the process we look for God to bless us, heal us, clean us and nourish us. We look for Him to fulfill our dreams and in the process, are okay with the status quo. When someone shows us or tells us there is something better and what we have partaken in for so long could be bad for us and there is a better solution we look at them with this indigent look as if they are crazy or a water snob and continue with that which we are used to.

When you look at the verse in John 5 you see an encounter with a man who obviously everyone knew and knew his plight and situation. Scripture reads that he was there in the gate or alcove coming back to the pool where he knew there was healing for thirty-eight years. Even Jesus knew him, but did the man know the one he was talking to? Was he aware that there was a different way and something better?

Too often we allow status quo to dictate our direction and realize the one we are talking to is an answer to our prayer. We expect God to do the same thing for us as He did for someone else almost like getting that perfectly cut cookie or biscuit cut with a cookie cutter or biscuit cutter and assuming that is the only flavor and shape there is only to find out there are drop biscuits that taste just as good or Kolaczkis filled with the decadent jam and sprinkled with powder sugar. So often we expect God to do something new with the same old thing. Jesus talked about this as well (Mark 2) where someone would not take new wine and put it in an old wineskin as it would burst and what was new would spill out and be lost.

Before we can understand how God will rectify our circumstances and set things straight to receive His healing and blessing we must understand a few things. First, we must change our habits. Some of the things we are allowing into our lives is no different than bathing in dirty water our being okay with drinking bad tasting water. Maybe that water is the music we listen to or the movies we watch. When we first heard it we winced at the vulgar language or the underlying sexual content portrayed and what once made us uncomfortable now seems common.

Secondly, we need to recognize God doesn’t do the same thing for everyone. Until we

understand what our calling is we cannot understand what God is about to do in our

circumstances. One person’s financial blessing may be your simply because you are not

used to it or have the knowledge to understand how to manage it. Likewise, what God does

in someone’s life is unique to their character and personality. If God did in your life that

which was exciting to someone else, say like a mission’s trip where many people got saved

because someone had the ability to speak or build a building and you find that God

provided the resources for them to go as well as take care of their needs you may feel very

out of place and fearful of not having your needs met not having he same result. God

certainly, knows our needs and our direction. He would not put us in a compromising

position or give us the wrong resources to fulfil the goals He has in story for us.

Thirdly are you okay with the ‘status quo?’ Too often we tend to do the same thing over and again simply because it is comfortable, and we are used to it, but as a result are we becoming too shortsighted that we miss the blessing standing right in front of us? It is so easy to be used to the same old things, but as a result to we hold on to those things that are not good for us for the things that could be better simply because the unknown takes faith and it could be too scary to step out? When I lost my last job, I found I compromised what I wanted to security and consistency, but I didn’t realize until I lost my job I was killing my soul due to my compromise. I did not know the blessing that was standing before me. I did not realize what God had in store because I thought He could bless in the same old thing with the attitude of status quo rather than stepping out in faith.

Much to the chagrin John tells us there is a man who for thirty years expected God to heal him but did everything the same way thinking that God would bless him the same way that he had seen others before him healed. If you continue to read on you find further dialog between Jesus and the man.

“The sick man said, ‘Sir, when the water is stirred, I don’t have anybody to help me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody is already in.”

What Jesus may have witnessed is someone who was saying, ‘Look I missed out on my blessing because of someone else.’ Or He could have seen someone who had expressed, ‘Because of my state maybe God doesn’t want me healed.’ Either way Jesus put both factors to rest testing the man to see what he was made of and if he truly wanted something different and new or if he was willing to live in his crippled state.

“Jesus said, ‘Get up, take up your bedroll and start walking.’ The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.”

You see God gave him a second chance. He saw the state he was in the years that he lived in

status quo and even the excuses. He saw the man’s desire to see God intervene and his

expectations for somebody else to help be that one in his time of struggle and need. He

recognized the dirty water he had in his spirit that for thirty-eight years was okay with

sitting in an archway without resolve and in pure abandonment not knowing if God was

going to change the circumstances. And he saw a man who didn’t even recognize his healer

was standing in front of him and with one statement showed him grace and a second

chance and his all in all.

Are you the cripple man waiting for God to intervene in your situation? Are you that one who is drinking whatever water you can because it is convenient or bathing in the same dirty water because it is what you have always done and yet expect God to fulfill those dreams that showed you once before? God is showing you that there is something different. He is showing you that there is something more refreshing. He is showing you that there is a different way to change your crippling circumstances, but it requires you to change your habits, fix your perspective and step out in faith. Are you ready?