Pooping in the Floor...

Ok, so my wife walks into the bathroom tonight and finds a pile of poop in the floor.  We have two cats, Dublin and Jock.  Dublin was outside leaving Jock as the odd cat out.  Immediately the whole family set out on the mission of finding the culprit to put him outside.  We looked in all the usual places where Jock likes to play or sleep and didn't find him.  We finally found him hiding under the bed.  As I was putting him outside I realized that Jock did the exact same thing we do when we "poop in the floor."  We hide. 

Genesis 3 tells us where we get this from.  After Adam and Eve disobeyed God and realized that they had done wrong, Genesis 3:8-9 says, Then the man ad his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"

So how about you?  Are you hiding under the bed because you're afraid to face the mess that you've made of your life?  The great news is that God is even better at cleaning up messes than we are at making them.  

The three hardest words to say...

Ï need help." Why is it so hard to admit that we have a problem with pornography? I've talked to a lot of ex-addicts, whether their addiction was prescription drugs, illegal drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, food, tv, etc, etc. They all tell me the same thing, that it would have been a lot harder to ask for help if they had been addicted to pornography.
I just got back from a trip to Ireland where I had the privilege of sharing my story. After one of the service I had a woman come up to me and tell me that my getting up to talk about my addiction to pornography was heroic. I thought, "Heroic? No, not me. I'm an ex-pornographer. That's not heroic." I've thought a lot about that conversation and, without sounding like I'm trying to pat myself on the back, she may have been closer to being right than I first assumed. It does take courage to admit that you've got a problem with pornography. Everytime I have somebody who comes to me and says they are having a problem, I can't tell you how proud that makes me for them because I understand what a HUGE step that was for them.
So, how about it, Superman? Ready to come out of your comfortable Clark Kent disguise of pornography? Ready to be a hero? Let me know.

D

I'm so sorry it's been so long...

Ok, I know it's been a while since I posted and I am so sorry. My wife and I are both very involved at our church and July has been a crazy busy month. First, our church does a HUGE 4th of July celebration every year that includes a theater show and fireworks display. We are both in the theater show which required us to be at practice practically every night for two weeks before the 4th. Then we just got back from a missions trip to Ireland. Our church choir did eight services/performances in nine days which also required several nights of practice before we left.
Now that we're back from Ireland, I promise to post more regularly. That's all for now. Stay tuned for more very soon.

D

John 3.16

I had the opportunity to speak at my church last night and it was both totally amazing and terrifying at the same time.  I love my church very much and feel any opportunity to speak there is such an honor, but also they know everything about me since I've gone there for so long, which is what makes it terrifying.  

I talked about John 3.16.  As I was studying, God just showed me once again how amazing his love is.  It's so hard for us to comprehend that someone as awesome as God would love us to the point that he would give something as important as his only Son, but that's exactly what he did.  I'm posting my points to my talk on here with a few revisions, hoping that someone will get it.  

John 3.16     For God so loved the world, that He gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

1.     God SO loved us...

What does that word "so" mean?  It means that God didn't just love us.  He loves us so much that it moved Him to action.  He loves us enough to not let us sit in our sin but instead intervened on our behalf.  Genesis 19 tells the story of God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.  In verse 16, the two angels tell Lot and his family to flee the city because it's about to be destroyed.  In a move that dumbfounds me to this day, the Bible says that Lot hesitated leaving.  Instead of the angels immediately leaving and letting him and his family be destroyed, the angels grabbed them by the hand and led them out.  Why?  Because it says, "...the Lord was merciful to them."  That's God SO loving us.

2.     That He GAVE...

A God that would give to us is a concept that is exclusive to Christianity.  Other religions serve gods who are unknowable, meaning forget having a relationship with them, and require all kinds of rules and regulations for you to even make it to heaven, and then you're still not guaranteed to make it.  Only Jehovah would show us the kind of love that required Him sacrificing something as important as His Son!  

3.     That Whosoever... 

Leave it to God to use a word that can only encompass every single person in the history of mankind.  I don't care who you are, what your title is, how much money you make, what you look like or what you've done, there is nobody that is excluded from the whosoever concept.  

Remember, God loves us and believes in us enough that He paid the ultimate price for all of us whosoevers!

Do You Bounce?

There is something about the warmer months of the year that causes usually competent females of all shapes and sizes to believe that they can wear anything and look good in it.  You know you've all seen them.  They seem to be everywhere...the grocery store, Six Flags, the mall, church (really?), just about anywhere that you can find people with clothes on, you will find at least one of these women.  In fact, I saw a commercial the other day for a show that teaches women who are uncomfortable about their size (big or small) or shape to feel good about themselves naked.  I understand the concept of trying to help people feel comfortable in their own skin, but it's bad enough that we have attractive women walking around half-naked.  Do we really want the ugly ones doing the same?  I hope that didn't come off the wrong way.  

My wife and I did a bake sale at Sam's Club in Tulsa yesterday to raise money for our missions trip to Ireland.  The day seemed to be unusually humid and, you guessed it, there were tons of half-exposed females.  I have trained myself to always "bounce" my eyes.  If I'm out in public, no matter where it is, if I'm looking around I always keep my eyes bouncing before letting them settle on something, that way my mind has time to process the images I'm seeing to know if it's safe or not to let my gaze take root.  This has helped keep me out of trouble on many occasions.  So I'll go back to my original question, do you bounce?

The Dreamgiver...

I read a book a couple of years ago called The Dreamgiver. It's about a guy named Ordinary (me) who lived in the land of Familiar (Pornography). He was given a dream by The Dreamgiver (God). Ordinary faced the grueling task of deciding whether he wanted to stay in the land of Familiar or follow the dream the Dreamgiver had for him. At one point in the story Ordinary gave his dream back to the Dreamgiver because he decided he would rather have the Dreamgiver than the dream.
What is your dream? Is it looking at pornography everyday? Or has God given you a bigger dream that porn is holding you back from achieving? My wife and I went to Ireland last year with our church. We fell in love with the people, the country and the missionaries there. Anybody that knows us knows that our heart is for missions. On that trip the Dreamgiver began to birth something inside of us that is so much bigger than we are that it's almost intimidating. We are going back to Ireland again this year and would appreciate your prayers. Thank you and God bless!

Enough Said...

I just posted a new video to the site. It's from www.youtube.com and it's called cardboard testimonies. Watch it. There's nothing more that needs to be said. God bless!