Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Renovations

I enjoy reading and watching legal-/detective- dramas/movies… though I must confess the formulaic tripe that gets churned out and aired these days is enough to make a body guelph.

We’ve all seen the scene where Bob and his wife Sara-Mae are arguing about their most recent project.  She’s wearing a tattered, once-colourful scarf wrapped around her dirty blond hair and telling him that on second thought maybe they shouldn’t take out that wall after all. He has curly brown hair a small paunch and is holding the handle of the sledge hammer he has just put through the wall they had agreed to remove.
     “You couldn’t have said that sooner?” He asks
     “ I dunno, I just thought that… I dunno…” (right hand lifts to brush a loose strand of hair from her face)
He yanks the hammer out of the wall and turns to face her. His face is covered with dust but you can still clearly tell by his expression he’s about to blow his top. He already has the big breath needed to support the diatribe he’s about to unleash but her expression stops him cold.

He slowly turns to see what we have already noticed over his shoulder... the limp decomposing arm of some poor dead soul has fallen through the hole in the wall.

(zoom in on the screaming wife... cue some edgy, hip music as the show begins...) 
We’ve all been there right… 

OK maybe you didn’t have an arm fall out of the wall but you know what I mean. You start work on a simple renovation but when the wall comes down there is black mold behind it and the $5000 renovation becomes $20 000. You decide to take the tile out of the bathroom (or kitchen) but when you have it down you discover that the tile was covering a massive hole in the wall.

Is there a point to all of this (That's why you read blogs right?) What's the lesson?
Well let me suggest some possibilities…
1. All of us need renovating.  That's why we do the "resolution thing" every year.  It's what keeps the diet industry in business and makes Dr. Oz-type shows so successful.

2.We all have secrets… holes...  hidden behind the "tile".  It's why we answer "fine" even when we aren't.

3. We all look good with our holes covered.  Some of us have better "tile" or "paper" or "paint" than others…

4. Some live their lives trying to do the renovations on their own, while others look to "professionals"

5. Some pros are shysters...

6. Before you decide to “renovate” make sure you're ready to pay the price...

...just sayin...

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Sowing and Reaping



One of my significant financial regrets occurred a number of years ago when as a subscriber to the prairie agricultural newspaper the Western Producer I came across a classified advertisement for 120 acres.  The asking price was $39, 500 ( I’m under no illusions that this was a perfect patch of paradise so don’t get sidetracked by issues of whether the land was half under water or a former toxic dump). 

In my conversation with the fella who was selling he informed me that the land was currently being rented out to a nearby farmer who had already put in a crop.  For the sake of my example let’s say we work out all the legal stuff and I purchase the land complete with its growing crop of canola. 

Let’s say that, with the canola in full bloom, I discover I have severe allergies to canola and decide that I would prefer a field of barley instead.

What’s going to happen?  Will my crop change from canola to barley? 

What if I pray for it to change?
What if I claim it by faith and tell everyone it has changed?
What if I post signs saying “THIS IS BARLEY”?

I’ve seen this sort of thing happen too many times to believers, ministries and churches.  Well-meaning believers who have been convinced that renaming a crop, or claiming a change of crop will make it magically happen.  And I used the word “magically” intentionally. 

The Biblical principle is this:  You reap what you sow.

Now, I can auction off all my canola machinery and buy a whole new set of all the machinery and equipment I need to harvest barley, but that still won’t change what is in the field!

Too often churches and ministries discover this the hard way.  Their current leader or pastor leaves (jumped, pushed, dropped, sails) and when the new “machinery” arrives they expect him/her to change a crop of canola into barley.

It doesn’t work that way.

It is a soundly biblical and eternally consistent truth that you reap what you sow.  I like how utterly emphatic the Apostle Paul is in writing this truth to the first century believers in Galatia.

Galatians 6:7 (PNWiV)
7 Do not be duped:
God is not mocked,
Whatever you sow, that’s precisely what you will also reap.


I have no way of knowing what season you personally (or your family) may be entering.  But I sense in my own spirit that the I, my family and the ministry in which I am serving are entering a time of sowing.

If that’s true… if that’s also you… it requires… it demands that we be intensely vigilant.  It requires us to tune ourselves intentionally to the whisper of the Holy Spirit because what we do in this season is going to have ramifications not just for the present but from now until it is harvested.

What you “put in the ground now”…
·       relationally…
·       in time…
·       in energy…
·       in ministry…
·       in attitude…
·       in programming…
·       in finances…
…all of these and more – is going to “die” and then “multiply” (John 12:24)


Plant wisely


…just sayin’