Month: February 2021

NEW EXPECTATIONS 2-14-21
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NEW EXPECTATIONS 2-14-21

NEW Expectations

It is Sunday Morning. A pretty traditional Church day for me. It is on the internet thanks to the pandemic. Before the Internet it was called Church and Family day. There isn’t Church at the building day. The pre-pandemic church day started with a coffee and rolls get together. One then went to the sanctuary for the Message and when done we all went to our favorite Sunday lunch or brunch day.

I got up today and felt lost. The world is changing. What are my expectations when the word PRAYER comes up? What do I plan on doing with that prayer box when I take it off the shelf and remind myself that my faith has a home of sorts. Unorthodox Christianity? My conversation with GOD is centered around something called prayer. When Jesus talked to the disciples it was conversation. When someone wanted healing for a friend or family member, or a neighbor one sought out Jesus to be the healer. A miracle now and then. But this is me, this is now. My prayer box has expectations that come with it. The social club doesn’t need me. What is the purpose of Unorthodox Christianity?

Every day I pray. It may be a breakfast prayer or a dinner prayer. I may have received a special prayer to pray for a member of a church family, a co-worker, it may be a TV prayer as the messenger for any or all of the thousands that have had to confront the Pandemic. I may have a family member challenged by cancer or covid, or health issues whose name surprises me. It may come as an obituary to tell me I am getting older.

It may be for someone whose name I do not know or recognize. We all get the message somehow. For someone. For some purpose. What is it all about?

The world has many tribes. Groups of people who believe alike, in something. There are groups who profess non-belief. Who do they pray to, from whom do they request a loving heart and caring thought?

There are Bibles, there are Sutra’s, there are classes on religion and thousands of churches with billions of believers, believing in something. There are judges to judge right and there are judges to judge wrongs. Who do you pray for, and who do you pray to. You ask for forgiveness and for absolution. I think I admit my wrongs, and I ask for peace.

I may speak in tongues. I ask in long messages or short messages. I have many names for GOD and which Name must I use for which prayer? There are billions of prayers every moment. I ask myself, what do I expect from the prayer? What do I expect GOD to say? What do I expect GOD to do in response. What if I disagree? Will my prayer take precedence over someone elses? Is my prayer honest enough? Is it correct enough? What do I expect from it?

Is my prayer Politically correct enough? Will others who hear my prayer agree with me or not? What if their prayer challenges mine, or disagrees with what I was taught the prayer should be about. Is my prayer like a snowball rolling down a hillside getting bigger as it goes? Does my prayer find me shaking my head back and forth wondering if GOD agrees with me, or not? Are my prayers realistic or are they unrealistic. Do they truly have meaning, or wishes or desires. Are they lost in a cavern of thousands of years ago that sounds like “this person or “That” person wrote it down. Have the conversations become fragments of great thoughts, or confusion?

Just what am I trying to accomplish during my prayer time?

On and on and on. I may take hours and say nothing meaningful, I could be wasting GOD’s time. Is GOD on my side? What do I want to take away from my prayer? Do I want peace, do I want to WIN? What is it I am praying for? Do I want the temperature to be warm for a few days or `below zero’. Is such a prayer frivolous?

Now that I have written a bunch of stuff down, what do I do with it?

I have expectations, don’t I. Do I have any power to have it My Way? Do I even know what my way is? How would GOD hear my prayer? How would GOD accept it or answer it. What are my prayer Expectations?

I want to listen first and pray second. GOD has ways of talking to me when I have questions. Does GOD disagree? Maybe. Does GOD want you to say something specific to come from you? Do you agree?

The conversation you have with GOD is the beginning of your teaching and the door that GOD will open. It is between you and GOD. The challenge is to seek out your answers. Not someone else’s. You have already set your own challenge. That challenge becomes your expectation. Listen to your questions, listen for GOD’s answers.

Life is very much like an old saying, walk a mile in another mans shoes. Your expectations should include your learning. You have to ask to learn. The conversation you begin will last a lifetime. And we call it LIVING. And it starts with expectations.

The internet has created all kinds of questions and presents all kinds of answers. When you punch up Unorthodox Christianity on the Internet what do you expect to find? What sort of a question do you have to answer? The questions and the answers lie within you. They lie within conversations that you may have long forgotten, pictures you may have drawn, music you may have sung. If you are lost will you become found? You and GOD can discover the found. Your Expectations become your challenges. Your challenges become your answers. Your answers become your journey.

Life is meant for living, take your faith off of the shelf.

LIFE CHILL
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LIFE CHILL

GOOD SATURDAY ALL   

Another inch and some snow this morning. My body is getting tired just thinking about -20+ wind chill let alone walking the dogs in it again. Cynthia asked me how I am doing. For those of us old enough to know I look outside and feel the life chill from The Twilight Zone. I am certain it will get warmer. I think. Much more like global cooling than warming. It seems like my wardrobe is not up to the task. Other than that, the essentials work. The vacuum cleaner, the shovel, the outside broom, the warm shoes. I feel like an unsmiley gnome. May I be blessed by warm cinnamon rolls. Enjoy the day where you are. The TV works. I need to look up a show about the French Riviera. 

Have a wonderful day being grateful for the working furnace.  Stay safe with Cares and Prayers

ME, Mack and Jake

THE MOST IMPORTANT
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THE MOST IMPORTANT

THE MOST IMPORTANT

Who is the most important?

Years ago I was attending a seminar on how to be a successful person. The were a number of speakers that told their personal stories of success. They were successful sales people, entrepreneurs, manufacturers of items, sports people and such. There were successful, “How to be a Successful Speaker” people. It lasted a full day and at the end we listeners were presented with a lobby full of cd’s to purchase, books to purchase, T shirts to purchase, mugs and all kinds of paraphernalia to purchase to learn about how to be successful. They told their stories about how they built their businesses up from the ground up. They told their stories about how hard their success ventures were accomplished and how much they did and how high up the ladder they climbed to be a wealthy, successful and truly important person that they had become. I was somewhat impressed, so to speak. In the midst of the speakers was one speaker who was a military pilot who was shot down on the wrong side of the enemy and worked his way back to safety. He very much impressed me by one thing he, and only he, of all the speakers said. “GOD encouraged me every step of the way”.

All the others attributed their success to some form of me. I did this. I accomplished this. I worked so hard, I was the secret of my success.

I have thought about that many times over the years. And every time I think of it I am reminded of an incident that happened to me years before that seminar.

I was doing my job as a vendor salesman for a large product company in a Western Minnesota store. I was having one of those “Another day” days. I was doing my job setting up one of our displays and resetting our shelf space when a customer, an older gentleman, came up to me and asked what I was doing. I mentioned, “Me, oh I’m just a salesperson doing my job. No one important, just a salesman.”

He shook his head and responded in all sincerity: “Just a salesperson? You are THE MOST IMPORTANT person in your company. Without you doing what your doing the company would not need anyone to do anything and your company would go out of business. The delivery people, the secretaries, managers, the bosses and the owners would not have jobs. No sir, you are not just a salesperson, you are THE MOST IMPORTANT person in your company”. I was completely caught off guard. For the lack of what to say at his response I said “Thank you. I appreciate it”. I smiled and turned back to my job. In the time it will take you to read this section I felt I should thank him some more and looked back where he was standing. No where. I walked to the check stands. No where. I walked through the store and looked out into the parking lot. No where. He literally had just disappeared off the face of my earth. In that simple moment he changed me and my approach to life was changed forever.

I realized in that moment just how important we all were as individuals. The secretaries who did order processing. The people who worked the assembly lines and took a break once in awhile. The packaging people and the designers. The people in the distribution centers and the people who cleaned the offices. The people who designed our advertising and designed the displays that I would put up. All of them deserved that one unknown individual to give them a hard worker award and say to them “You are THE MOST IMPORTANT person in your company”. I would have to call it my GOD defining moment. I do not believe in a loving GOD because I have faith that GOD may be a real thing. I know GOD because I KNOW GOD.

Do not shortcut yourself and your importance to your company, your family, your friends, your neighbors even your enemies. Even if it appears that you are not THE MOST IMPORTANT person you change peoples lives everyday. People you know, and those you do not. That is a show of love, concern, and pride in what you believe.

Try it. Test it. I had opportunity making cold calls when at another company in another town a few years later and designed and had printed a HARD WORKER AWARD which I would fill in the name of the secretaries I would call on and give them to each of them when I left that first time encounter. So many smiles I can not tell you, and so simple. Try it. None of us are successful by ourselves. We are successful because of all of those who have touched us in the crossing of our paths. They have made someones day, every day.

Jesus said this to his disciples; “By doing this, for them, you have done it for me, and they will know that you are disciples of mine”. Doubt me? Look it up under Jesus on the internet.

YOU ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT