Archive | April 2014

Don’t Be A Sore Loser

Apr25

CalvinI just read a story tonight about a boy in Connecticut who killed a girl at his high school, purportedly because she wouldn’t go to the prom with him. Girl won’t go with you? Well, she doesn’t deserve to live! How appalling is that?

Guess he never learned that you don’t always win.

Have you ever played a game with a young child? Small children will manipulate the rules to any game so that it lands in their favor. But teaching a child how to lose is a very important task we as parents cannot neglect. We used to tell our kids, “Nobody wants to play with a sore loser. If you can’t lose well, you can’t play.”

The habit of youth sports teams now of presenting a trophy to every player is not doing the kids any favors. Your team came in last? Well, we don’t want you to feel badly about yourself, so here’s a trophy.

Hogwash. You lost. You tried your best, and you did a great job participating, but the winners get the prize.

Think about it for a minute: if everyone gets a trophy, what is the point of trying?

1 Corinthians 9:24 says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

It’s such a fine line. You aren’t loved for your efforts, or for winning, you’re just loved. But if you don’t try hard, you’re not going to even have a chance to win. How you play the game is so very important. You can get a reward for showing good sportsmanship. But if you don’t happen to win the game, you’re not going to get the prize at the end.

Can you imagine if you were interviewing people for a job, you decide between several, and the ones who don’t get it sue you because you failed to give them the job they wanted? Doesn’t it feel sometimes like that’s what the world is coming to?

Nobody likes to lose, that’s true. Everybody likes to be the winner. But the fact is, not everyone can win.

My son is applying for the Air Force Academy. Is he going to be disappointed if he doesn’t get in? Absolutely. But he’s not going to throw a fit and declare that it’s no fair! if he doesn’t.

Work hard, try your best, and leave the results to God.

 

Calvin picture from pinterest.com

Waging War

Apr18

warriorWe have a hot tub as a part of our swimming pool, and when we sit in it as a family, my kids enjoy playing a game where someone thinks of a word, and the others compete to see who can come up with a song that includes that word. It’s amusing what I can pull out of the archives of my mind. Especially when they try to come up with obscure words. Recently, one of them challenged us with the word “warrior.” I know a song with that word in it, but for the life of me I couldn’t conjure the words or the tune in my head. It had been a long time since I’d heard it. I remembered the name of the artist, though, So when we finally went inside, I went to my computer and googled “Twila Paris, warrior.” The song, of course, popped right up: “The Warrior is a Child.”

“They don’t know that I go running home when I fall down. They don’t know who picks me up when no one is around. I drop my sword and cry for just awhile. ‘Cause deep inside this armor, the warrior is a child.”

The battle gets wearying, doesn’t it? We’re fighting for our marriages; we’re fighting for the minds of our children; we’re fighting for Truth. I’m just tired. I don’t want to monitor my boys’ internet activity. I don’t want to work with my daughter on how she responds to authority. I don’t want to write my congressman about making sure our rights as Americans are protected. It’s too hard. I’m too tired. But what happens if I don’t do these things? The results would be catastrophic.

Galatians 6:9 says “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Warriors don’t give up. “I am a conqueror and co-heir with Christ, so firm on His promise I’ll stand” to quote another battle song.

Twila Paris said it so well back in the day, so stand strong as you listen to her song. Hang in there, Warrior!

photo courtesy of pinimg.com

While You Were Sleeping

Apr16

 Sleeping Morgan2I remember my kids’ baby days, when we were sleep deprived and wondering if this marvelous creature would ever sleep through the night. The first time they finally did, I remember waking up in a panic thinking “Are they all right?” I would listen carefully to the baby monitor beside my bed, trying to catch the sound of their breath. If nothing could be detected, I would creep silently to their room, ease open the door, sneak to the end of their crib and look carefully for the small movement of their chest.

Now, I fall asleep sometimes before my eldest gets home from work. Generally a light sleeper, I’m always surprised that I don’t hear him come in the house. When I wake up in the middle of the night and realize that he should have been home hours ago, that moment of panic again sets in. Sometimes, I get up, go to the garage door—which is closer than his bedroom door—just to make sure the car is there. Then I can go back to sleep.

There’s no reason the car should not be there, I tell myself. I just slept through his arrival.

There’s no reason that newborn baby shouldn’t be alive, she’s finally just big enough to not need a meal until full morning.

You know, God never panics. Psalm 121:3,4 says “He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” He is always watchful, He is ever wakeful, He never tires of holding us in the palm of His hand.

Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe

Apr11

question-markSome people love to make decisions. It comes easily for them. I have one son who, when he had money in his pocket, wanted to go right away to the toy store so he could spend it on whatever he fancied. I have another who would walk the aisles, mulling, thinking, considering, and then walk out without anything because he couldn’t decide which thing he wanted.

That decision-making process only gets more difficult as time goes on, and the biggest is right around the corner: college.

My mind spins when I think about all the decisions coming up quickly for my eldest. And all the tasks: SAT, ACT, Air Force Academy application, senate nominations, college applications, ROTC scholarships, etc., etc., etc. It’s overwhelming. What if he doesn’t have a high enough GPA? How do I motivate him to study? How many times should he take the SAT? What if we do something wrong in the Academy application? Will that ruin his chances? And how in the world are we going to pay for college if he doesn’t get into the Academy or get a major scholarship?

“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 than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matt. 6:25-34).

Ahhhh. Isn’t that just like our Heavenly Father to comfort us with the equivalent of “I’ve got this.” The decisions still have to be made, and the tasks still have to be completed, but the weight is not on us. Do your part; trust God with the results. I don’t have to fear that my son won’t get into the Air Force Academy. If that’s the ultimate plan for him, he’ll get there—not by sitting and waiting for God to move, mind you, but by working diligently and trusting God.

It’s such a delicate balance: work and faith. You want to trust God for a job, but you can’t sit in your recliner waiting for bosses to come knocking. You want to know where God wants you to go to college, but an acceptance letter isn’t just going to magically appear in your mailbox.

I think what God wants is for us to walk closely with Him every day, to talk to Him about everything, and trust that He’s got our future under control. Do I know where the finances are going to come from to send my kids to the colleges of their choice? No. Not completely. But we started college funds for them, we encourage them to do their best in school, and we’ll apply for financial aid and every scholarship for which they qualify.

And we’ll leave the results to God.

“Noah” Drips With Gnosticism (a guest post)

Apr6

 

My husband went with his team from work to see “Noah” last week. They wanted to form their own opinions of this movie and not rely on others. His team works with The JESUS Film Project, making the different language translations of Jesus, a biblically Jesus filmaccurate accounting of the life of Christ (read all about it here) The following is what he thought.

The “epic” new movie “Noah” drips with Gnosticism—not to be confused with Agnosticism, although there’s some of that in there, too. Both the protagonist and the antagonist yell at The Creator, “Why won’t you speak to me?” Don’t confuse their Creator with the One spoken of in the Bible either. In fact, other than the names of a few characters, a big boat, and lots of paired animals—this movie has nothing to do with your Grandma’s Sunday School lesson on the biblical Noah.

I admit, after seeing previews for this six months ago, I was hopeful that it would be refreshing to see a movie with great special effects on the flood story. That was until I heard the writer/director was an atheist. Then I was disappointedly thinking, “Great. Whose bright idea was that, distribute a film based WAY loosely, barely, on a biblical story made by an atheist?

Some have called this film boring, others incoherent: “The CG was lame, the acting was terrible, the script was worse.” And these aren’t Christians whining about it—they’re from reviewers on IMDB.

But I digress—back to Gnosticism. Down throughout man’s history, those who feel let down by the True God who really is, re-make him into someone He is not. The being this movie refers to as The Creator is none other than the demiurge of Gnosticism—the craftsman who fashioned matter into the world they knew. This demiurge, it was taught, is a capricious, distant, limited downright mean god-like being. (For a more thorough look at Gnosticism in “Noah”, see this article here.)

gnostic snakeThis is what saddened me most about this movie: It doesn’t give the true picture of who God really is. Like any other human, I’ve had my share of unmet expectations of God. And yet, I still know Him to be loving, wise, patient and powerful, infinitely so. It would have been so cool to have an epic movie tell of how God opened His heart in grace to us all, and wanted us to open our hearts to Him in faith. That’s how it really was in the Garden of Eden: God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. They enjoyed relationship with their heavenly Father. Yes, He is holy, and cannot overlook sin. That’s what the flood was really about. But the real Noah was a pre-type of Christ, who saw to it that sin’s penalty was paid and renewal is possible.

In addition to the bewildering characters nobody could like, all worshiping an evil deity, more Gnostic themes are prevalent throughout this disappointing movie: everything material is bad—only the spiritual is good; rainbows fashioned after the circular, monistic “One”; a snakeskin talisman used in blessing rituals.

Bottom-line Gnosticism: They choose to “know” a god who is different than and less than the benevolent, compassionate, unconditionally loving, True God. Why? Maybe so they can feel better for raging at him.

The movie was a big waste: of the money spent making and promoting it, of the money anyone would pay to sit through it, of my time enduring it. My friend, who fell asleep during it, said it was like a pot-LSD-induced screenplay. Paramount Pictures is even back pedaling by adding an “explanatory message” (read: disclaimer) to their marketing materials telling us “the biblical story of Noah can be found in Genesis.” (See that story from the L.A. Times.)Thanks, Paramount. That’s where anyone should go for biblical truth—the Bible!

Did you see the movie, “Noah”? Tell me what you thought.