Lessons David Taught Me

David Duncan died (we said, he was healed of cancer!) Wednesday morning, January 13, 2010.  My life has forever changed.  I lost a friend.  My children lost a hero.   He was my wife’s step-dad.  Over the past 23 ½ years, I learned some valuable lessons from David.

I shared them at the funeral service (you can download the message here.)  But there are more.

Family is important.

As hard as it is to admit, friends come and go.  Through the seasons of life, friends come and go but there are usually some in our family that will always be there.  David was one of those.  He called just about every day to check in and see how the day went.  I miss those calls for my kids.

People are important. Everyone has value regardless of race, income or social status.

Faith trumps it all.

When I met David in 1986, he was a good salt of the earth kind of guy.  But I never gave him much of a chance spiritually.  I prayed for him over the years but didn’t really think things would ever change.  But October, 2004 David accepted Christ and I watched God literally transform a life.

He grew in his faith.  He read the Scriptures.  He shared his faith.  He became a prayer partner for me.  And much to my chagrin, he never lost his prolific vocabulary!  David was raw and real.  He never learned how to play the game or fit the mold of a religious person… I’m so thankful he was just David, because I learned more from his authenticity.

At his funeral, we called it a celebration of life service – eight people accepted Christ as Savior.  And hopefully for those eight, their life has just begun.

Meanwhile, my Life will never be the same. I miss my friend.  I miss the example he set for my children.  If I can be half the granddaddy he was, then I will consider my life a success.

The first Sunday after his funeral we did our usual family tradition of  lunch after church but this time, his seat was empty.  Tears poured down our cheeks as we realized, life is different now.  He’s no longer with us.

We move to a new chapter…with new life lessons.

We need each other.  Admittedly, I’m a hard person to love.  And yet, the cards, calls and well wishes have meant a lot to us during our season of grief and adjustment.  Being on the receiving end of love, encouragement and support is awkward and uneasy.  And yet, we’ve needed it.  To those who brought meals or helped at the reception following David’s funeral – you’ve been the church to us and we thank you.

To those who face their own challenges of cancer or some long term life altering disease – we have a small grasp of your pain and struggles and you have our support.

Where do we go from here?  Keep loving one another, keep laughing and living with no regrets.  Keep being the church in worship, witness and support, encouragement and care.  Even pastors are people in need of ministry.

You’ve ministered to me through this season and I just wanted to say thank you.  I’m thankful for the lessons I’ve learned from David and through this transition of life.  Now, I pick up the mantle of leadership and lead our family in hopes that I can be more like the man who was my father-in-law… but I just knew him more as my friend.

We’re Praying for You!

The Daily Grind

It’s easy to get caught up in the mundane, daily grind of work, ball practice, bills, housework, etc.  If we’re not careful, we work on everything else except the one relationship that matters above all others: our relationship with God.

When pressed on what the greatest commandment of all is, Jesus responded, “Love the Lord your God with all you heart!”  (See Matthew 22:37ff)

Since the greatest command is to love the Lord with all our hearts, I want to challenge you to set aside priority time with him each day.  I encourage you spend time in prayer and in his word.  As you spend quality time with the Lord, your realationship begins to grow!

If you need resources to assist in your spiritual growth, we’re here to help.  In 2009 I was a contributing author in the One Year Devotional Prayer Book available online here or at our local Lifeway store.  The One Year Devotional Prayer Book includes a morning and evening prayer to guide you as well as a devotional thought to help kick-start you time with the Lord.

Below is a video of Dr. Johnny Hunt talking about the book.

Proud to do the journey with you!

Faith of Farmville – Ribbons and Rewards

Don’t Give Up!

Galatians 6:7 “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

Read It:

Another day at the gym, pushing yourself to complete a workout.  Another day of homework, taking care to do what you were assigned, both completely and correctly.  Another day of taking care of the family, making sure to let each member know that you care,both by saying and living it. The routine investments of our life often seem small. But daily deposits build over time.  And that’s how gardens grow.  Every day, we make choices on what we invest in.  Will we spend our time and energy planting seeds of doubt, laziness, procrastination, anger or unforgiveness?  Or will we plant the seeds of love, forgiveness, faith, and obedience?

Just as we cannot plant literal seed, water it once, and walk away, we cannot do that in our own lives.  The importance of daily investment cannot be underestimated in the gardens of our lives.  It’s the accumulation of all the days in a row that begin to grow great crops.  Every time you choose to take God at His Word, every time you choose to obey – to walk by faith and not by sight, your seed grows a little.  But we often want the shortcut.  We want to order the miracle $19.95 product that we can throw over the garden.  We want to walk away, do what we want, and come back to find healthy, beautiful and lush crops everywhere.  We want the loving, obedient children, but we’re “too tired” to get up and correct them when they’re disobeying.  We want that close relationship with our spouse, but it takes too much energy to really listen to them and to invest in them. We want lean bodies, but we only want to workout and eat right for a week.  God’s Word tells us not to be fooled:  what we reap is what we’ve sown.  Strawberries don’t grow from tomato seeds.

The planting, plowing and pruning of gardening is hard work.  We have to get our hands dirty.  We have to get out there every day and assess the crops, adding water where it’s needed and pulling up weeds when they spring up.  And sometimes these stages are lonely and exhausting.  Sometimes we feel like we are the only ones working the field.  Sometimes we feel like our seeds will never grow.  We wonder if our daily decisions really make a difference at all.  Friends, God sees every act of the heart, every decision of the will, every step we make to plant in obedience and faith.  He wants us to press on, in love and trust that growth is coming. 

Pray It:

Father, I need Your hand and Your guidance in the fields of my life.  Help me to follow Your life-giving plans to make a harvest grow.  Grant me Your grace to trust You to pull out the weeds of sin and selfishness that I have allowed to grow.  And God, give me courage to make the daily deposits and investments of obedience, so that I may sow what I am longing to reap.

Download it:

Galatians 6:9 “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

Apply it:

1)   Take some time with the LORD this morning to evaluate Your life’s garden. Are You following His plans or your own?

2)  What are there weeds in your life that you need to allow God to pull up?

3)  Where might God be asking you to make some intentional investments this week?

4)  When you think about the fact that we reap only what we sow, how does that change the way you go about your day?  Your life?

Don’t Forget Your Closest Neighbors

Galatians 5:6 “..the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.”

Read It:

We talked a lot this week about being a good neighbor, but there’s something we must not forget.  Our closest neighbors are sometimes the hardest to love, sometimes the easiest to overlook.  I’m talking about our families.  If you and I aren’t first demonstrating Crazy Love to the “neighbors” in our own home, then we’ve got things backwards.  Are you loving the neighbors under your roof with the same kind of crazy love you seek to show outside those walls?  Or are you trying to skate by on leftovers, “somedays” and “no ways!”?

Just as we talked about the principles on Sunday of doing life on the farm, the same principles apply to your family.  1) You can’t do life all alone.  Like it or not, the people God placed in your family are your neighbors, part of whom God commanded us to love.  2)There will always be someone or something seeking to stifle your growth and development.  A family loving each other well is a beautiful picture of God’s forgiving, enduring and faithful love.  Hell will not sit idly by and allow that to happen.  Remember, as we talked about Sunday, your enemy is not each other.  It’s the powers of hell that would like to see your family destroyed.  So stand guard!  Choose to love beyond the hurt, standing in faith that God will give you the grace and power to do what He’s asked you to do!

In your families, remember that tattered, disjointed or imperfect as you may be, you are a team.  Work together to pull up the weeds of discord and hurt and shame in your families.  Look not only to your own interests within your family, but also to those of the other members.  Put a towel over your arm, and in humility, seek ways to serve the ones who live under your roof in Christ-like, crazy love.  I know it feels absurd to love someone who’s prickly, but that’s what we’re called to do!  It’s crazy love at its finest!.

Remember that Good Samaritans, and good families, are not made overnight nor in a single act of kindness.  We must daily seek ways to bless and to encourage.  We can consistently choose to help the members of our family walk through the hurt and hard places of life, even when it costs us something.  Friends, I know these things are tough.  It’s hard when pain, routine, and life have muddied the waters, when scars run deep.  But God is bigger.  We can apply His love in faith and watch what He does.  C.S. Lewis wrote it this way, “Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” Jesus did it this way:  “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…”(Phil 2:5-7)

Pray It:

God, sometimes the hardest neighbors to love well are the ones in my home.  Sometimes I fool myself into believing I can skate by with half-hearted affection or simply surviving the day.  But You call us to love deeply, to love crazy to love selflessly.  I cannot love that way within or outside the walls of my home without Your supernatural strength.  Show me this day how to love my family and my neighbors well, the way You have loved me.

Download it:

1 John 3:16-18 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers…Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

Apply it:

1)   How does it change your perspective to see your family members as your neighbors, in light of Christ’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself”?

2)   Is there a family member God is placing on your heart as you read this that you need to show crazy love to?  Stop and pray for that family member right now.  Ask God to show you specific ways this day that you can demonstrate love to this person.  Commit to obey – regardless of that person’s response- knowing that it is a sacrifice unto the LORD.

3)   Ask God for boldness to love your family well.  And thank God for all of the ways He has expressed His love to you.

Plowing the Stage

Your Neighbors are Watching You!

Galatians 5:6 “..the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.”

Read It:

Faith is not a passive, still thing.  It is a thing of action.  Faith is an abiding hope, that actively waits, listens and responds.  And the method by which faith expresses itself?  Love.  So then, neither love nor faith can simply be passive.  We cannot say we possess either one and have no action to back them up, for action is a natural fruit of both.  Faith and love require in their very nature, their very definition, action.

As we think about loving our neighbors, as we long for faith to make a difference in their lives, me must see that our own actions play a role in that.  Our neighbors are watching us! Every time we make a decision of the will that leads to an action of the heart and body, we are expressing faith in love.  Love costs time and attention.  It costs money and emotion.  It costs a laying down of myself in honor and esteem for someone else.   I cannot merely talk about my love for fellow man.  I cannot merely agree that it’s important to be loving to my neighbor.  I must in fact show love.

So what kind of neighbor are you?  Are you fooling yourself into believing that loving in theory is enough?  Love initiates.  It responds.  It seeks to understand.  It sacrifices.  How are you doing these things with those within your communities – your home, your neighborhood, your office, your school, your clubs and activities?  Be bold this week to move beyond lip-service and theory to action!  Flex your faith muscles by going out on a limb to do something.  When you see a need, meet it.  Mow a lawn, make a meal, care for a child, listen completely.  Put down the computer, turn off the TV, put down the book and look others in the eye.  Read the pages of their lives and see that God has put you in these places to care for real people with real hurts and real needs.

Pray It:

God my life can feel so crowded with my own to-do lists and problems and drama that I’m often “too busy” or “too drained” to think about helping others.  Help me to make the sacrifice because of Your love.  Help me to trust that Your grace and provision is enough to cover my needs as I seek to help others in their time of need.  Thank You, God, that You saw my needs and reached out.  Thank You that You still do so today.

Download it:

1 John 3:16-18 “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

Apply it:

1)    How would your life look different today if you stopped to meet a need?  How would someone else’s life change as a result?

2)    What can you do this week to make an intentional investment in someone’s life?  Can you think of someone in your life right now who has a need you can meet?

3)    Pray and ask God to show you opportunities this week to express your faith in love.  And thank God for all of the ways He has expressed His love to you.

Crazy Train Recap

Let’s use the opportunities God has given us to reach our neighbors!

Much love!

The Faith of Farmville