“Sacred Geometry–God Has a Design for Your Life” by @Kaala

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“Sacred Geometry–God Has a Design for Your Life” by @Kaala

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There is a different type of artist now who’s works are not made to last but are just spectacular. You can only fully experience their masterpieces if you are there within hours of their completion and if you can step far enough back to take it all in. 

Their canvas is actually not a canvas–it’s sand, a lot of sand. These two guys work on the beach, one from San Francisco and one from the UK. Using rakes and other simple tools they create these beautiful geometric patterns and designs in between the ocean tides. [pics]

The big challenge in experiencing their designs is time and perspective. 

If you want to see their creations and you come a couple of twelve hours later, after the tide has come in, you’ve missed it. It’s gone. Forever.

Even if you make it on time you still may face the other really big problem: being too close to the work. When you’re down at the beach level your perspective is limited. You can only see what’s right around you and even that on a kind of finite dimension. 

The only way to fully experience the fullness of the design is from a perspective that is high enough above it to take it all in. 

It’s the same perspective God has when he looks at your life. [pics BACK]

God is and has always been a designer. In the beginning God designed and created the earth. It wasn’t a random act of throwing paint onto a blank canvas–a little blue here, a little orange there. God had a design for the earth and it was wonderful. 

Another example of God’s incredibly intricate design skills is the inner working of our physical bodies. 

The bible says that

“God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” (1 Corinthians 12:18)

And yet another example of God’s work is his precise, specific, and perfect design for your life. 

We sometimes have the similar problems of people who want to experience sand art: time and perspective.

Time, with God’s process is a little different. His workmanship doesn’t last for 12 hours until the next tide comes in. His work in you lasts forever. Sometimes, though, his time frame is different than we want.

Be patient. God isn’t finished with you yet. Be

“confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

Probably the biggest challenge for us in this is trusting God without being able to see the entirety of work and his plan. We can only see right what’s right in front of us, what’s right here, and that’s tough. 

We don’t, and mostly can’t see, the whole design in our life because we don’t have God’s perspective. 

Trust God. Believe that he has a plan and a design that is best for you. 

“We know [even though we can’t see]that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” (Romans 8:28)

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“Jesus is Right Beside You–Say Hello!” by @Kaala
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The other day I looked up to the sky and said “Thanks God.” Then I thought, “Why are you looking up there?” Then I turned to the seat next to me and said, “Thanks.”

It may sound kind of silly or immature to do that but I believe Jesus is not some place way over there as much as he’s right here with us, next to us, within us–closer than our own breath.

Jesus is next to you right now. Say hello.

Sometimes, though, it’s hard to talk to someone we can’t physically see.

There was a story of a minister who had gone to visit a dying man at his home. When he got there he found the man lying in bed with an empty chair next to him.

“I guess you were expecting me,” the minister said.

“Who are you?” asked the man.

“Your daughter asked me to come by and pray with you and I saw the chair…”

“Ah, the chair. Sit down and let me explain.”

He told the minister that all his life he would go to church and hear how he should pray to God but just felt like it went right over his head. One day, a friend told him that Jesus with him always and that prayer was just a simple conversation. His friend recommended putting a chair next to the bed and in faith to see Jesus sitting there.

He said he tried it, loved it and had been doing it for a couple of hours a day. But he never told his daughter because he didn’t want her to think, you know, that he had kind of fallen off that rocker.

The minister was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the man to keep on praying.

Two nights later the daughter called the minster to tell him her father had passed away. She said she had left the house in the afternoon, after her father had called her over and given her a kiss on the cheek. When she got back from the store she found that he had passed. But she found something strange about his death.

She said, “Apparently, just before daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head on the chair beside the bed.”

This story always gets me, it does. But it also highlights the kind of relationship and closeness God wants to have with us.

One bible writer says,

“O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely.”

He is close to us.

He knows us. He really knows who we are, just how we are and still loves us and isn’t going to leave us.

Today, take some time to move closer to Him. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

“Let God Elevate Your Marriage” by @Kaala
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If you humble yourself in your marriage God will lift your marriage up. It’s a simple if-then setup here. If we humble, God will elevate. We lower, God lifts.

Sometimes humbling yourself means taking on mistakes you never made and apologizing for situations you didn’t cause trusting that God will take care of it.

Think about your relationships and how many times you’ve stood your ground, certain in your rightness. And maybe you were right.

I’m going to say now that there have been some times, you know, once or twice, when I’ve been absolutely right in an disagreement, ahem, argument with my wife.

I’m not just saying I was right ‘cause she’s not standing next to me, there was documented fproof of my rightness. I stood my ground in absolute certainty, won the argument, and slept on the couch.

That’s a lose-lose, let me tell you.

Humility is not weakness, it’s absolute strength. It’s so much easier to fight for your rights, fight to get your way, to prove your point or to win the argument then to be humble. And for what? So you can get your way?

In so many marriages I hear things like, “I’m NOT the one who should be apologizing! They should!” Or, “They don’t tell ME what to do. I’m not their…”

There’s even a broken model of marriage that suggest that you get your way one day, then yield so your partner get’s there way. The next time is your turn, then theirs and so on.

A successful marriage is not about one person’s way. It’s about a mutual way; it’s our way and we have to fight for it. The fight is not with our partners or against them, but with ourself against the need for “my way.” Humility is the key to that mutual purpose.

The dictionary definition of humility is that we have a

“low view of our own importance.”

and with the bible this is relative to someone else’s importance. In our marriage we are to consider our spouse’s needs as more important and above our own.

If humility sounds difficult and maybe even a little unjust, it’s because it is! Welcome to Jesus’s world. The bible says

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness…he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!”

Jesus deliberately humbled himself, he chose to lower so that his Father could lift.

Many of the problems that we will face in our lives are due to our inability to do this one thing, to deliberately humble ourselves. There’s almost no place better than your marriage to see this in action.

Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and in due time He will lift you up.

“Finding True Greatness” by @Kaala
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This message is just Jesus. No frills, no spills…just Jesus. So much of our discussion and understanding of Jesus comes from his actions on our behalf, on what he did for us. And what he did was big there’s no doubt. Planet changing big, country changing, city changing, my life changing, YOUR life changing big.

Theologically, he made a relationship with God possible. His life provided us eternal life with God. His sacrifice opened up the door to the most holy, most inaccessible place in the universe: the presence of God.

When you think greatness, think Jesus. There is no one greater. No other name bigger than his name. Sometimes, though, we confuse true greatness with the world’s definition of great. We think we have to do this or be that or have this or don’t have that to fit a secular definition of greatness.

There was a short piece written a while back by an unknown author titled, “One Solitary Life” that lists all the things Jesus DIDN’T do that we would normally associate with a successful and complete life. The author says:

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn’t go to college. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of these things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only 33 when public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. When he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race, the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on earth as much as that One Solitary Life.

The life of Jesus isn’t validated by worldly standards. His credentials, and ours, come through a life lived in service to God.

The gift of God to us is eternal life through Jesus. Your life is no longer your own. You may or may not be called to affect the entire world like Jesus did. But you are called to impact your world, in the place, with the people that God has put in your life. At home, at work, in your city, let God use your solitary life.

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“Are You TOO Dignified for God??” by @Kaala

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Are we too dignified in our worship?

When I was a kid I went to a lot of high school dances. It wasn’t because I was a dancer per se. Uh, uh. I was a break dancer, a b-boy and I’m thinking about getting back into it.

In fact, my boys are going to making a little documentary tracking my comeback called, “Breaking Dad.”

All this to say that if I’m faced with certain conditions I will automatically start breakdancing. After all the hours and hours and hours of practicing moves and routines there a certain things that force me to move like a Pavlovian dog when he hears a bell ring.

I want to be at point in my worship of God that when certain conditions are present, that is, God’s presence is present, I jump, I lift my hands, I dance, I get undignified but don’t even notice myself because my attention is so on God.

Think about when this normally happens outside of worship. Umm…how about Superbowl Sunday? Did anyone jump up and down when their favorite team scored a touchdown? Anyone raise their hands in victory.? Obviously, I’m speaking to you Seattle fans out there because there weren’t many opportunities for you Denver.

Too soon? Sorry. But you get what I mean, right?

Now dancing for some Christians is not something anyone should do and this video message will probably get stopped right now.

Still here? Good. Because if King David in the bible, the one God described as “a man after his own heart” was a dancer, than please let’s dance.

It’s not about if you have any dancing skills, like you have to be good enough for the show “So You Think You Can Dance” or you have to be Allan Lau my dancing friend or anything like that.

It’s not about the dancing moves; it’s about the worshipping heart.

David danced in worship, with all his might

“while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.” (2 Samuel 6:15)

His wife was watching from the window. The bible says that

“when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.” (2 Samuel 6:16)

David’s response to her clarifies HIS heart of worship. He said that he danced “before the Lord” in celebration and that he would in his worship

“…become even more undignified than this, and…be humiliated in his own eyes.”(2 Samuel 6:22)

Can you imagine if you were there and saw the King dancing like that? Can you imagine if David came to your church and started doing that? Can you imagine if your pastor or minister started dancing around like that?

Hey, we should all be so filled with awe, excitement and enthusiasm that we forget our own selves and worship God’s almighty self without reservation, without thought of self-protection or preservation.

God is worthy of all, every part, 100% of our heart and our worship. Let’s get undignified.

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“The Beauty of Finishiative” by @Kaala

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It’s not how you arrive, it’s how you finish.

And while demonstrating initiative is a good thing, I think I’ll take finishiative over that any day.

Have you ever started a project, felt the thrill and excitement of that start, then fallen off the finishing wagon? I have. A lot. It reminds me of what my grandfather, Francis Meyer, used to tell me.

He raised me after my parents got divorced and he would always tell me “It’s not how you arrive, Kaala it’s how you finish.” No matter what we were doing he would always find a way to interject that statement everywhere.

When we were playing checkers and I was winning he would look across the board at me and say, “It’s not how you arrive it’s how you finish,” then triple jump me for the win.

We’d be eating dinner and he would look at me and say, “Slow down, Kaala. This isn’t a race. It’s not how you arrive it’s how…” I know, I know, Grandpa. It’s how you finish.

I never forgot this (obviously) and that’s good. Because this could be on of the major differentiators between successful and unsuccessful people. Everyone can start. Not everyone can finish.

The bible says

“Better is the end of a thing than it’s beginning…” (Ecc. 7:8)

Paul the Apostle models finishing for us when he says,

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Speaking of running the race a friend of mine just told me about his first marathon. Now, 26.6 miles is a long time but you know what? When the gun goes off at the beginning of the race everybody starts well. Everybody is feeling good. Everyone has that rush of the start, the high of the beginning. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s just not the only thing. ‘Cause it’s not how you arrive…

My friend Ed had trained and put in the time. He was prepared. But at the end and in view of the finish line, something happened. All of a sudden he began to cramp up. He kept his legs moving but the cramping got worse.

His feet then his hands then even his face got numb and he panicked. With 285 yards to go, finish line in sight, he stopped. He fell to the ground and stayed there.

But, it’s not how you arrive it’s how you finish. The year following Ed ran and finished his first marathon. He ran and finished the next five after that!

Sometimes we fall short of achieving our goals and miss the finish. We fall short at work, at home and even with God. The thing is that it’s not really about how many times you fall as long as you keep getting up and moving to the finish.

There’s no trick to finishiative, only desire and heart.

Keep moving towards the finish line that God has called you to. Keep your eyes on the prize. Run if you can. Walk if you can’t. Crawl if you have to but keep moving to the finish.

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I’m a big fan of marriage. I love it. Love being married. Love what it’s about and love what it means. And I love weddings. As a pastor I’ve done a lot of them over the past 20 plus years and I’ve seen and heard all kinds of vows and promises.

There are the Traditional vows–you know the ones–“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife…to have, to hold, til death you part?” Once I got to do Shakespearean-type traditional vows, too: “Doth thou taketh this maneth to be-ith your-eth husband-eth?

I’ve also heard and really like what some are calling "personal” vows–where you personalize them with words and ideas that are unique to you.

If you’re getting married and working on your vows, or if you are already married and are looking for some inspiration there’s one verse that should be on your wall, your coffee cup and most especially your heart.

It’s 1 Corinthians 13. And before you say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone does that one” it’s not the verse that says:

“"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–5)

I don’t have a problem with reading that at all and have done it many times. It’s the verse above it that’s been getting my attention recently.

It’s 1 Corinthians 13:1–3 and it says

“f I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1–3 NIV)

This should be the goal of every marriage above everything else. Let me explain.

I used to think that this verse meant if I don’t love you I was missing something, that I was just a clanging high-hat or china crash symbol. I do still believe that.

But it’s in the last couple of years that I’ve also understood it to mean that if I don’t have the love of my wife, if we are not growing more and more in love with each other, I am nothing.

If you have faith that can move mountains, or give all your money to the poor, or are a super rich CEO with a fancy corner office and powerful career but your spouse doesn’t love you so what!?! It doesn’t matter. You are nothing.

At the end there will only be three things that remain: faith, hope and love. And the bible in 1 Corinthians 13 ends by telling us that the greatest of these is love.

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“Time Management for When the Wind Blows” by @Kaala
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One of the very biblical virtues I’m wanting to take root in my life is diligence, which is careful and persistent work and effort.

One of my favorite stories to illustrate this diligence is of the farmhand who could “sleep when the wind blows.”

The story starts out with a farmer looking to hire help for his farm. In one of his interviews he asked a man for his qualifications.

The farmhand said, “I can sleep when the wind blows.” The owner was puzzled by the response but decided to give the man a chance. Over the following weeks whenever the farmer asked the hand about his tasks he always received the same response, “I can sleep when the wind blows.”

A little while later a huge storm swept over the countryside and woke the farmer and his wife in the middle of the night. They ran to wake their helper but found him fast asleep. So the farmer rushed out alone to take care of his farm.

What he found were the shutters secured, the tools already placed in the shed, the barn doors locked tight and everything tied down. Even the animals seemed calm.

That’s when the farmer understood his assistant’s qualifications and what it meant. When the storm does hit, and it will, the farmhand will be sleeping soundly because he’s been diligent with his time and energy.

The bible says “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” (Proverbs 13:4)

There are so many proverbs that make me nervous and bite my nails but the ones on the “sluggard” especially do.

Like

“A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.” (Proverbs 20:4)

Or how about

“The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.” (Proverbs 15:19)

I had to look up the word to make sure that what I was thinking was what the word was meaning. The dictionary says a sluggard is

“A lazy, sluggish person.”

Ouch. I don’t think of myself as lazy but there are times that I may stay a little bit longer in the bed or on the couch than I should. And there are things around the house that should’ve been taken care of a LONG time ago.

(Sorry, honey.)

And there are some entire days that I struggle to figure out what I did that was productive!

Let me get practical here. Today, make a list of what has to be done. Then look over that list of to-dos and, beginning with the most important one, work on that one thing until you’re finished or you can’t go any further with it.

Then move to the next most important one, do it until it’s done or you can’t go further. Move to the next and so on.

If you can do this consistently, day in and day out, you can claim diligence AND, sleep when the wind blows.

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