A Life Well Lived

All my thirty-something friends are now forty-something friends.  It’s a time when men do crazy things like grow a pony tail, buy a motorcycle, or get that risqué tattoo they’ve always wanted.  As I’ve considered my own mid-lifeness over the last few years, I realize that we’re looking at our lives and wondering if we’ve really lived them.  There’s a difference between being alive, and really living.  The first is passive -breathing air, eating food, yelling at the television on Saturdays.  The second is active, and that means discovering our purpose in life and living it to the fullest.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

God created each of us for something great.  He gave us passions, desires, and talents to aid us in achieving His great purpose.  It’s not the same for everyone.  In fact it’s very individual.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

God has a Master plan, and we are offered a place in that.  Even if we reject God, we cannot thwart his plan.  All we can do is rob ourselves of the joy of being the person we were created to be.

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

Everyone has a different role in the unfolding saga of our world.  Not everyone is a preacher or teacher.  Not everyone travels to foregin lands to share the Gospel.  Not everyone is a leader, Elder, or Deacon -nor should they be. 

God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.

Everyone matters.  Everyone has a part to play.  No one person gets all the credit.

My mother spent many years teaching a children’s Sunday School class.  A lot of people would smile and say “Oh, that’s nice.”  When you look at her class, in an ordinary country Church, you see that it has produced extraordinary fruit -preachers, teachers, missionaries, children who have grown up and spread the Gospel in many places.  Her part made a difference.

I recently was able to witness the harvest, as an Iraqi friend gave his life to Jesus.  There’s no greater thrill than welcoming a new brother or sister into the family.  Yet, I don’t get credit for that.  Others planted.  Others watered.  Others tended.  God brought the harvest.  Another of my friends is interested in Jesus, but nowhere near ready to make any decisions about him.  I’m just tilling the ground.  Others will plant, water, tend, and eventually God will bring fruit in his life.  I pray this for him.

One thing about the forties is that people are often in a rut by now.  We get children, bills, mortgages, entangled relationships -many things that make us feel trapped.  A new morotcycle won’t fix that.  The solution for that is deciding not to live another day wasted.  It’s a commitment to find God’s purpose in our lives, and live for that.

You contain the seed of greatness, placed in you by your creator in the womb.  Where we are right now, in our families and communities, we can find God’s purpose in our lives.  Don’t waste another day wandering aimlessly.  Be the Dad who raises godly children.  Be the woman who comforts the hurting.  Be the faithful encourager of broken spirits.  Be the person who prays faithfully, gives generously, and serves diligently.

It takes more than a decision to commit.  Those fail every year after January first.  It takes life change.  It takes surrendering to God, the maker of our lives and purposes.  It means following Jesus wherever he leads, finding the Holy Spirit at work and joining that.

That is the substance of a life well lived.

A "Flypaper" Ministry

I had a fantastic experience last night at "Best of the Blessed," an annual fundraiser for the Christian Women's Job Corps of Guntersville.  I've attended it every year since it began, and this year my dear brother Mark Brickey was kind enough to invite me to join him at a table sponsored by Sand Mountain Toyota.  The event was hosted by the Church at Lake Guntersville, which has been blessed to do this each year.

If you've never been to this event, make sure you get a ticket next year.  If you're a married man, it makes a fantastic date for your wife -unless your wife is like mine and insists on working.  Of course, having such a wife is a great blessing itself.

 The food was good, as it always has been.  This year they raised the bar by serving on real China, though the settings have always been classy.  The musical talent was diverse and entertaining.  A group from Sweet Home Baptist did a fine job opening, followed by the Church of Christ Chorale -a very talented group.  The First Baptist Pickers did a set of songs that reminded me of my younger days in an old Country Church.

The man whole really set the bar, though, was Zac Hicks.  The boy has talent.  He played acoustical guitar, but used a looping box that allowed him to accompany himself in an ever growing arrangement that ended in a crescendo of sound.  He was literally a one man band, and a very good one.  He even managed to make "Old MacDonald" sound good in an impromptu composition.


She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Nothing, however, compared to the main event.  Two of the ladies gave their testimonies about how CWJC had "lifted their heads."  Every year we get to hear about the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in this ministry.  Women turn their backs on lives of poverty, drug abuse, crime, abuse, and a whole host of evils.  They choose to follow Jesus Christ and be changed by him.  The two ladies this year both told of how God had brought them out of sin and broken homes, and restored their families.

I had a chance to meet one of the ladies who graduated several years ago when I first served on the Board of Directors.  She and her husband, both strong believers in Jesus, were led by the Lord to sponsor a table for $1,000.  She is now serving as a leader and mentor to other women through CWJC.  Truly God has lifted her up and made her a woman of strength and character.

Someone asked me what keeps drawing people to CWJC, and I answered that the ministry is like flypaper.  Once you touch it you're stuck, there's no getting away.  The work of the Holy Spirit, when it is obvious like this, is not something you can walk away from.  I'm already thinking ahead to a group of women coming to Beirut to set up the first CWJC in Lebanon.  Wouldn't that be great?

My hat is off to Site Coordinator Shelia Banks, who is stealing all the crowns in Glory, and to the many volunteers and leaders who serve in CWJC.  Brenda Hicks has been as blessing there, as she is with everything she touches.  Thank you all for your obedience.

Where Does Your Heart Belong?

C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"
"...If we consider...the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures...like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."


I came to the realization not long ago that I have been settling for second best in my life for far too long. The past few years have been good ones, to be sure. I've Pastored a couple of Churches and a recovery ministry. It's been a great privilege to serve on the boards of CMJC and CWJC. Farming has allowed me to home school my children. It would be easy to be satisfied with that. Yet, as C. S. Lewis so eloquently realized, the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels far exceed my comfortable life. I have been too easily pleased.

God has a greater plan for my life, and for my family. We've spent so long living in a world of our own making, maintained by our own capability, that we've lost sight of the abundant life promised by God.

The potter has crafted each of us for a great purpose. It would be very sad if I died without ever achieving the one great thing for which God created me. I don't want to waste another day doing anything else.

John 4:35
I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.

The teaching is clear. Now is the time. We often spend so much time planning and preparing that we miss the work of the Holy Spirit. We end up going under our own power because we show up too late. We show up after the harvest is finished and the grain has fallen from the stalks. No great plan or purpose of ours can make up for the lack of missing God's work. Now is the time.

Revelation 21:1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away

All the things I've built -my house, my barns, will crumble. My tractor will rust and fall apart. Even the very land on which they rest will someday be gone. The Pharaohs and Caesars built impressive monuments, but they too will pass. We build legacies in the hope that we will be remembered, but we build them in the wrong world. The old earth will be destroyed, and a new earth created. Nothing is eternal in this physical world.

The only thing that will ever matter is what we do for the kingdom of God. That is the only eternal thing -the lives of other people that we touch.

Matthew 6:19
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

David Livingstone was a famous missionary and explorer who dedicated his life to finding innovative ways to share the Gospel in Africa. He spent his life exploring that Continent and sharing the message of Christ in villages in the remote regions unreached by other missionaries. He had a genuine love for Africa and her people, and a passion to see them won for Christ. It was a difficult life -his wife turned to alcoholism and later died of malaria. He made many mistakes and poor choices, not the least of which was failure to be a father to his own children.

Many considered his journeys a failure, because he himself won only one known convert during all his years of preaching and exploration. Yet, his love and passion for Africa, and for the Gospel inspired generations and nations to missionary work on that continent.

Wracked by malaria and dysentery, his body spent from his grueling expeditions, Livingstone died in 1873 in a small African village at Ilala. The natives agreed to return his body to England for burial, but they kept his heart, and buried it under a small tree outside the village.

“You can have his body,” said the note they sent with the corpse, “but his heart belongs in Africa.”

Where does your heart belong?