Masonry

I love to discover new things about my God.  One of the things that I was turned on to several years ago was Ray Vanderlaan, Follow the Rabbi. Mind blowing things that can only be seen when you enter the world, the culture, the people.  In one of his teachings he discusses how Jesus probably was no carpenter, but a stone mason.  As I listened to him, I could see.  I can see this so much easier than I can see a carpenter working with wood.  Especially since when you see Israel you don't see forests, but deserts and lots and lots of rock.  How often did Jesus refer to wood when he spoke?  I can't recall many, if any.  Turn that around to rocks.  Now that one is all over the bible Old and New Testament.  Just passages that refer to cornerstones, there are at least 10.  And referring to Jesus as the cornerstone in the NT Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10-11, Luke 20:17, Acts 4:11, 1 Peter 2:7.  Now I could go on and on and I could gather more examples of stones; Mathew 16:18, when Jesus calls Peter the "Rock", 1 Corinthians 10:4 Jesus as the spiritual rock.... Seriously, do we need to proceed!  I'll let you look it up yourself ;)  Lets get to the issue....

Last night at L!VE  I had a friend of ours, Kaine Leonard owner of Rocky Mountain Masonry, come and speak to everyone about masonry and lessons he has learned along the way.  He started by telling everyone how in college he was an extreme gravity biker, adrenaline was his rush.  He would take his 40lbs bike up to the top of mountains, often using ski lifts to get there, then fly down the mountain at top speeds.  What a ride. He then graduated from Western with a geology degree and discovered that working in a cubical was not going to work for him.   Masonry was calling him, but his first lesson was Pride.  He had a college degree, an extreme biker and now was reduced to a grunt laborer.  With this new role he had to force himself to plow through taking each moment by moment task and completing it with integrity as the low man on the totem poll.  And this is how his masonry life began.  With pride being toppled from the beginning.  

A quick summery of other life lessons:  

*Take each step moment by moment.  You cannot rush through and complete your job.  It takes time to do it right.

*Put your blinders on.  You cannot look at the enormous job set before you.  You start with the rock in hand.  Focus on the small task and you will soon look around to discover that you have accomplished more than you realized.

*Rock doesn't care.  If you mess up or break a rock, don't loose your cool.  It won't help anything, the rock doesn't care that you did it wrong.

*Perfect product/perfect material.  You don't have to have lots of tools and a huge supply of rock, what you have is sufficient.

*Work on your knees.... enough said

*Work smarter, not harder.  If you go at the rocks before you with all of your strength the entire working day, you will burn out fast.  It is about being smart with what you have now.

*Patience- go with the flow.  This is not a race to see who can make it down the mountain first.  It is about a slow and steady adaptability.

*Sometimes when you do everything right, it still seems not to work.  You can't give up.  It is about a new day, same job.

*You can be so proud of a job you have done.  You think you did it without error, but when you return to that job after learning more, you discover that as you look at your past job, you didn't know as much as you thought you did.  You look at the job you did and discover things with a new eye.

*Work from the outside in.  You cannot start a task of smoothing a rock from where you want to end. You have to start from the outside, chipping away small pieces to finally achieve the rock you desired from the beginning.  You cannot see it and start there.  You see it, then work your way in.

So many life lessons in just a short amount of time.  As we travel through this life, doing the slow and steady work before us God is teaching us.  He is showing us who we really are and teaching us to work better.  The most important stone is the cornerstone.  This one is vital for any building. "The stone the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone."  We get so used to the rush of life.  We see the race and want to be the first to cross the finish line.  When we learn from our Lord, we see that it is not about fast, but efficient.  You cannot rush through.  You cannot focus on where you want to end, but you need to have miopia, nearsightedness.  Today, work slowly and diligently.  Do not get overwhelmed with the big construction sight, but pick up you rock and start chipping away piece by piece.  Allow Christ to be your cornerstone and you will have a secure and well built building.  Another little note that Kaine added, we laugh a lot on the job.  When you are entrenched in the work set before you, you laugh.  Enjoy this ride....  

My Biggest Mistake

The other day I put a post on FB that asked others, "What is my biggest mistake."  I had some responses that said things like pride, jealousy, laziness, naive, self pity, addiction, with a few colorful remarks that made me smile as well.  While I may have all of these things as part of my character these are not my biggest mistakes.  My biggest mistake has really never been some thing that I have done.  It is not a lie, cheating, divorce, sex or drugs.  No my biggest mistake still haunts me.  I still fear my biggest mistake.  I am not afraid of going out and doing drugs again.  I am not afraid of being tempted in a bar to get wasted and go home with some random guy.  I am not afraid of.... you fill in that one.  I am not afraid of many things.  I'm getting too old. I'm a wife and a mother and I hope that my walk with God has brought me past that.  I have grown with Him and I am no longer haunted by the same things that used to haunt me.  And besides all of those things really only involve me.  I am not afraid of most all things that only involve me and my personal struggles.  No the thing that I consider as my biggest mistake, that thing that still drives me because I never want to become that again... Enabler. 

If you look enable up in the dictionary or the thesaurus you will find words like empower, approve, and  facilitate.  All of these words seem very good, but sometimes your greatest strength may cause the most destruction.  I hope now that I can use my greatest strength to bring others up, but there was a time when my greatest strength was a tool to bring others down.  Let me give you the best and easiest example I have... my ex-husband...

In my previous marriage I was my husbands biggest enemy.  It all started with simple little things.  He didn't want to go to church.  Well I really didn't want to either, so we didn't.  He wanted to play music full time, so I came up with the idea of living in a camper at the KOA.  He quit his day job and we lived very cheaply.  I'm not going to bore you with more details that you already know.  I'm the one to blame for I did not hold to a higher standard in my life.  I brought that standard down and became his enabler, his dealer, his.... fill in that blank... I became his "sin".  

In Deuteronomy 4 Moses is giving his farewell speech to Israel.  He is calling them to remember.  He is  reminding them that they are to follow God so that others will want to follow them.  So they can help become part of the redeeming factor of the world.  They were designed to be a vehicle to reach other nations.  With our limited view, it may not look like this is what their ultimate job was, but remember "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son" ... 
“But watch out! Be careful never to forget what you yourself have seen. Do not let these memories escape from your mind as long as you live! And be sure to pass them on to your children and grandchildren.  Never forget the day when you stood before the Lord your God..."(4:9,10).

My biggest strength is also my biggest mistake.  I never again want to enable destruction in someone else's life.  I am not responsible for what they do Oswald explains this nicely, but I do not want it to be known that because of how I acted in their life they are now destroyed.  "If a child gives in to selfishness, he will find it to be the most enslaving tyranny on earth. There is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the bondage of the nature created by Yielding."  

The challenge for me now is to know how to love others as they are, but not to enable them to continue on as they want to be.  It is about coming up higher to how He originally created us to be.  For we are the apple, the little maiden, the little man of His eye.   I am not responsible for others behavior like an amateur providence... and amateur is all that I would be.  It was my own selfish desires that allowed me to enable that same fault in others.  In holding myself to a higher standard, I hope I can enable others in a good way this time.  This is my time. My time to allow my greatest mistake to become my greatest strength, just like He originally intended!

Goes Around, Comes Around

It can be amazing how our past sins can come and slap us in the face. Ahithophel was the counselor that Absalom used to help him while he was taking over his father's (David's) kingdom. 2 Samuel 16:15-23, "Absalom said to Ahithophel, 'Give us your advice. What should we do?' Ahithophel answered, 'Lie with your father's concubines whom he left to take care of the palace. Then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself a stench in your father's nostrils, and the hands of everyone with you will be strengthened.' So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and he lay with his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel."

Ahithophel was the grandfather of Bathsheba. He knew how to get to David. He used the same exact location to get to David, that David was in when he had first seen Bathsheba. David's sin with Bathsheba had now come in full circle. Now his son was going to sleep with his concubines where everyone could see. He was going to feel the sting of his own sin, in its original place of birth. This is the hardest consequences of sin, sometimes the consequences still come even after you have changed your ways. And, sometimes those consequences are felt threw your children.

Though this is how David's sin played out, I don't think that it had to come to this. While David himself had been confronted and this is how his eyes were opened, he had failed to do the same for his children. He missed the opportunity he had to be his children's counselor. Absalom's rebellion started when his brother's sin was not punished by David. This is when Absalom's heart grew hard against his father. Amnon had raped his sister Tamar, and even though David was very angry about it he never brought punishment to Amnon. 2 Samuel 13:22, "When King David heard all this, he was furious. Absalom never said a word to Amnon, either good or bad; he hated Amnon because he had disgraced his sister Tamar." This hatred turned into revenge and he killed Amnon two years later. It was after this when Absalom decided to take his father's kingdom. If David had punished Amnon when he should have, this may never have happened.

It was David's original guilt about his own sin that I think stopped him from punishing his children when they sinned. How often as parents do we tend to say, "well, I did it." Then we do not hold our children to the accountability standard that they need. What we must realize is that all too often our sins affect them by our not dealing with their sins, all because of our own personal guilt. Or, we see their sins and do not hold them accountable for their sins, all because we did it too. "We survived and so will they." At what cost do we sacrifice our children, all because we did it too. We are to be here as their counselors. Just like David had Nathan as his counselor, and Nathan did not turn a blind eye, we are to be our children's counselors. We are to hold them to the standards that God has given us, not the standards that we lived by. We are to love them unconditionally, but we are to love them in truth and love. There is a difference. If we do not love them in truth, then we cannot really love them. Sometimes the truth hurts. But, love always wrapped in truth is never blind. We cannot turn a blind eye, especially on our children, just because we are afraid of them saying, "You did it too. Who are you to judge me!" As we become older, we cannot hide behind the guilt and fear of our youth. We must learn to stand with our youth as an example and hold our children accountable to God's righteousness, not our mistakes. If you are not your child's counselor, who is?

Wisdom Living

Luke 7:35, "But wisdom is shown to be right by the lives of those who follow it."
How many times in my life have I thought, "I know what I am doing. I don't need church, God, or anyone telling me what to do. I can make my own decisions." I look back on this attitude; this statement, that I made quite often, and think, "How foolish you were (are). The choices you made and the life you lived, prove how immature you really were (are)."

I have recently been give this question: "Don't you need to make mistakes in order to not be a fool." My short answer is "No." A truly wise person is someone who can learn from others. A truly wise person is one who can stop long enough to consider the consequence of their choices and make the long lasting correct choice. A fool is someone who thinks that the only way they can learn is through making mistakes first. But through everything, loving yourself is the key to being truly wise.

Proverbs 19:8, "To acquire wisdom is to love oneself; people who cherish understanding will prosper." Why would anyone want to suffer? Why would anyone continually choose to do things that bring hurt upon them self? The true answer is that they have convinced themselves that they deserve what they get. They have believed all the negative things they have heard from others and from themselves. This in turn makes them think that they cannot really learn without making the mistakes themselves. We think that we are all on our own and we can only learn from our mistakes. I have spent my entire life being this fool. With all of my strength I am continually trying to stop being this person. I am tired of getting hurt, just because I have to learn things the hard way. The hardest part is that I know when I am choosing to be this fool. Even when I am all alone, I can hear the Holy Spirit telling me that I need to do this or not do that. But like a fool I bull through, to reap the consequences later.

When I am showing myself true love, I seek the advise from others and from God. When I am seeking wisdom, I know that I am open to hear, so I listen to good advise, even if I want to do something contrary to what they say. In loving myself, I should choose to seek help outside myself, so that I can make better choices. I need to learn to seek the good advise from those who will look ahead to what could happen, and help me make the wise choice. For some reason I feel like I have to have the right answers myself in order to be wise. What I am continually learning is that to be truly wise is to seek out the wisdom others have. To truly learn to love myself, is to consistently seek wisdom, so that I can stop hurting myself. Proverbs 15:22, "Plans go wrong for lack of advice; many advisers bring success." The true path to living a wise life is to surround yourself with others whose lives prove they are living wisely. If someone is continually living with negative consequences, they are proving that they are not wise. We just have to learn to seek advise from the right people.

Proverbs 15:15, "Only simpletons believe everything they’re told! The prudent carefully consider their steps." When others tell you anything, carefully consider the words that you hear. We know whether or not, if the advise we receive is life or death. Be wise in your acceptance of what people tell you. Look ahead. When you have made a mistake do not dwell on it. Learn from it and do not continually seek that path of knowledge. Surround yourself with wise friends. This does not mean that you think you are better than your old friends, but that you wish to love yourself and others enough to make better choices. Seek wisdom. Your life will reap a sweeter reward.

Grudges

I love it when something jumps at me from the pages that I read. The small, short book (well, can you call one chapter a book) of Philemon got me this morning. Paul is sending someone, a slave, a robber, a cheat, back to his owner. A man who had been wounded and had every right to hold a grudge against the one who had wronged him. Paul is writing to him trying to soften the blow for Onesimus as he returns to Philemon. Paul begins by stating how generous, and good Philemon is. Then he tells him to accept Onesimus back without holding a grudge and to forgive him for what he has done in the past. He is calling him to come to a higher standard of forgiveness and love, while he faces the one who betrayed him. But here is the part that I love, "So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge it to me. I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it. And I won’t mention that you owe me your very soul!"

Did you see that? Does it jump off at you like it jumps off at me? Read it again. "I will repay it. And I won’t mention that you owe me your very soul!" Paul pulled the, "you owe me card." When I think of the hurt, harm, and devastation that I have brought to others in my life, how could I hold a grudge against anyone who harms me now. I am the slave that betrayed my Master. I was the one who spit in the face of my redeemer, right after I gave Him a kiss! So tell me, how could I carry a grudge against anyone who wrongs me? I have done much worse to my Lord than anyone could ever possibly do to me. So why would I ever think that I have a right to hold on to hurt, when someone wrongs me in some minor way. Even if it is "big", why would I think I deserve revenge, when someone else is willing to take their wrong and repay me their debt.

Oswald Chambers, "My goal is God Himself . . .At any cost, dear Lord, by any road. 'At any cost . . . by any road' means submitting to God’s way of bringing us to the goal. There is no possibility of questioning God when He speaks, if He speaks to His own nature in me. Prompt obedience is the only result. When Jesus says, 'Come,' I simply come; when He says, 'Let go,' I let go; when He says, 'Trust God in this matter,' I trust. This work of obedience is the evidence that the nature of God is in me... God will never be real to me until I come face to face with Him in Jesus Christ. Then I will know and can boldly proclaim, 'In all the world, my God, there is none but Thee, there is none but Thee.' The promises of God are of no value to us until, through obedience, we come to understand the nature of God. We may read some things in the Bible every day for a year and they may mean nothing to us. Then, because we have been obedient to God in some small detail, we suddenly see what God means and His nature is instantly opened up to us. 'All the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen...' (2 Corinthians 1:20). Our 'Yes' must be born of obedience; when by obedience we ratify a promise of God by saying, 'Amen,' or, 'So be it.' That promise becomes ours."

What grudge are you holding on to? Who has wronged you to the point, so bad, that you think you have the right to not forgive them? Do you see yourself as who you really are? A slave whose debt was paid by someone else, for your freedom. Do we really ever have the right to hold others debt against them when Christ is saying, "I will repay it. And I won’t mention that you owe me your very soul!" How a burden can be lifted when I look at myself for who I really am. I am a women, who owed a debt that I could not repay. I am a slave whose transgressions were paid by Christ, so that I could be counted as a sister to others who thought they could condemn me. I am set free from any grudges that I may think I have the right to hold, for He has paid others debts that they owe me. Let freedom reign. Forgive others, as you have been forgiven. He has set you free!

http://www.rbc.org/devotionals/my-utmost-for-his-highest/11/17/devotion.aspx?year=2009