Bucs Cuts

Chris Simms is finally gone! Don’t get me wrong, the guy has potential, just not in Tampa. He really gave it a great shot in here but now it is time for a new era.

I am sad to see Nece go. He gave a lot for this team. He didn’t stay on the market long with Detroit now signing half of the Bucs who have left since last season, not to mention that half of their coaches came through the Bucs as well.

It is good to see that RB Clifton Smith and WR Brian Clark made the practice squad. These guys are going to be valuable if the injury bug bites in 2008.

All we need now is for Garcia and Galloway to have a stellar season to make us the first team to host and play in a Super Bowl.

Welcome back Mr. Hankey (not the christmas poo)

I’ve been gone for a year….sorry about that. But now that we are friends again let me make a confession. My last attempt at blogging I focused on the “important issues” that any good pastor would. I got bored. The things I wrote were good, at least I thought so, but not befitting my personality. So to you I make a commitment; I will blog on what I am passionate about. What interests me will now bore you, the general public, and I will be happy!

T.J.

Pretty

So camp was a while ago but there was somthing there that just seems to haunt me. Our kids gave testimonies on the last night. One of the girls from our group gave her testimony. She grew up away from God and found herself in high school trying to find who she is without him.

She wanted to feel accepted and desirable. She looked for acceptance in a variety areas and found it in guys. She said, “I did things with boys because it made me feel pretty…” These words haunt me in a way that isn’t bad but provoking. They make me ask questions. They make me look at people differently. They allow me to feel the pains that our young women feel. And many of the times these young women don’t know anything else. This is how they see love. This is how they feel acceptance and worth. They dont know that there is a better way, that there is a God that loves them the way they are.

One of the questions I ask is about guys. I am a father now (so far the first 5 months have gone great) of a little girl. She is absolutly the most beauitiful girl i have ever seen. I look at her and think “how could a father allow his little girl to feel so abandoned that she would run to the arms a teenage boy to ‘make her feel pretty.’” I know that it won’t always be easy but I know that it is my resposibility as her father. This question stands for all men in regard to all the women in our lives. Are we making them feel beautiful? what are we doing to make sure we raise men of integrity?

It isn’t our kids fault that the world is corrupt, but we do have the responsibiblity to change this world with the love of God.

Reality

Last night we did a service with our youth that was all about bringing heaven to earth. Like in the Lords prayer “on earth as it is in heaven.” We really want to be a place where God is dwelling. Like in heaven.

We had 3 of our youth give testimonies.
One about harmful relationships; mom, dad, members of the opposite sex. That kind of stuff.
One about Addictions; drugs, alcohol.
One about emotional pain; guilt, worthlessness, failure and the results of those like…cutting and how you can view yourself in a negative way.

As I listened to these testimonies I began to see that each one was a form of escape. What one girl did with guys made her feel better about herself. What a guy was addicted to helped him forget the pain of his life. Another girl cut herself to release her pain, but each one found that it only plunged them deeper into their guilt, pain and feelings of worthlessness.

All of these were an attempt at escaping pain, escaping reality. They desired to escape the reality that their life had become by covering it with something that only proved to make it worse.

We desire to see these youth embrace reality and not run from it. Embrace the reality that their life can be changed by the power of God. Teach them that we don’t need to escape reality, we need to embrace it. That heaven can be on earth. That we can trade hell on earth for heaven on earth. That God can take our pains and we can trade them for His healing, joy, peace and freedom.

Vacation

Well today is Wednesday and i am on vacation. No real exciting news. I’ve just been knee boarding, eating, fishing, tubing, eating and of course napping. (eating is twice b/c it is an awesome part of vacation). The good life right.

I think this is the good life only b/c i dont do it all the time. I put in the hours, live for a purpose, invest in my family and work for the goals that God has given me. Vacation is only the Good life when the rest of the time is used for meaning. I reall think God blesses the time you take off when you are faithful with the “little things”.

I reallly try to stay faithful to God and to my family. I’m not always the greatest, but you can bet you pants i am going to try my hardest.

God is pretty good at what he does. If we follow his plans it is all going to work out.

About a Bubble

When i was a kids pastor we had serveral rules that all the kids memorized so that we could keep the chaos to a minimum. One of them was: Don’t be a space invader. I really liked this rule b/c: 1. no aliens alowed in class and 2. no matter what, one kid couldn’t affect another kid’s personal space. We had them stretch their arms around and make a bubble for them to stay in and that is where they had to stay until the end of class.

This last sunday Pastor Scott (our senior pastor) shared a quote. I really liked it and agree with it completely. It defines how we should be in awe of God’s greatness and respect his personal space. His personal space is like a really really big bubble and if we try to say that we understand it or have a complete understanding …well we are wrong.
The quote is as follows:

“It is just as blasphemous to define God as it is to deny God.”

As I am writing this I am thinking, did I spell blasphemous right? But then I forget that and hone in on the areas of my life that I tend to define God. When I pray am I trying to say the right thing to force God’s hand in my favor? Do I define him in my interpretation of His word? am I limiting God’s personal space or His ability to work in my life when I try to define Him?

Dont get me wrong. God is a personal God and loves to have us near, but he doesnt want us to put him in a box or a bubble of our own understanding. Just b/c we dont understand doesnt mean He can’t do it that way.

Just a thought.

Forgiveness

So to be honest with you i am not the best at keeping my blog up to date. I really enjoy order and schedule, but for some reason this is not a discipline that i have perfected. I know it at times drives me nuts and others too (kind of like how i don’t capitalize my i’s when in the middle of a sentence may drive you nuts). I think blogging is a good thing, i believe it can help me and the people around me but for some reason i tend to miss the mark when it comes to regularity.

In our walk with God we all seem to have the same kind of problems. We know what we shouldnt do, but we do it. We know what we should do, but we dont do it. The bible says that the spirit within us is constantly at war with our flesh and that we will never be free from its conflict as long as we are here on earth. When flesh wins we call this sin. The book of James says that “if we know the good we ought to do and do it not, that is sin” (t.j.’s paraphrased version). It really is daunting at times to see that we will never be free of conflict in our spiritual walk and seeing that our procrastination of doing the right thing is sin.

But through all of this we have hope. We know that we sin. We know that we mess up. No one has to tell us that. No one in the world needs to be told that they arent perfect. What we need to hear is that there is forgiveness and redemption for our sins.

The next time you feel inadaquate or just plain sinful, remember that it there is forgiveness because of Christ’s work on the Cross.

Thanks….

I love the people around me. Wether it is people who actually read my random thoughts on this page or the ones that just hang around the church with me. I am truly blessed to be where I am. I am especially blessed to have a great wife and daughter.

Yesterday we went to Lake Placid, Kevin’s home turf, and went tubing, Knee boarding and Wake boarding all day. Let me tell you…it was fun. Even Schlike said it was up there with flying. For those of you who know Schlike that is saying a lot.

I guess this whole blog is a way of saying thank you to the people around me. I am really no one special, and I dont have any really awesome talents that make me cool. But for some reason you put up with me and actually seem to enjoy some of the absolute rediculousness known as ME.

So thank you.

So its Been a While

Yeah i know i havent written in a really long time. Since like March 1st or 2nd. You see my dad passed away on the 3rd and finding time, energy and emotion to write doesnt exactly come easy. Really somedays it seems like nothing comes easy. But I know that with God things get better.

Recently things have been better. I dont exactly have the wads of cash that we all pray for or tons of leisure time to spend on my boat (that i don have). but God has given leah and i something far better than that…Peace. What good is life’s accompaniments without peace? Through our faithfulness to God he has shown faithfulness to us.

Thanks for your time.

Sabath

Ferris Beulers day off.

Probably one of the greatest movies ever made. His life is every high school students dream. Pretty girl, popular and above all amazingly confident in all that he does. There is a line from the movie where Ferris (what kind of a name is ferris?) says “Life comes at you pretty fast. If you dont stop and look around once in a while you might miss it.” I like ferris. By no means do i neglect my duties as a husband, father and pastor, but i do like to take a sabath day.

Rob Bell in his book Velvet Elivis says that a sabath is a day “Where i produce nothing”. Sounds kind of weird when you put it that way. So much of our lives revolve around the fact that we need to be “productive”, but on the sabath we need to be unproductive so that we can be productive with our other 6 days. Listen, if God rested on the 7th day….what makes you think we can handle working 7 days a week?

Leah and i try very hard to make our day off a restful one where we have fun together. Rei told me (and how factual this is i dont know) that zoo keepers have figured out that if they keep their animals constantly on display they will go crazy. So they worked with the animals and found out that the longest without a break they could go was 6 days…Hmmm. Thats interesting. God create 6 days and rested. The animals (that God created) can only go 6 days. We need a day of rest so that our other 6 can go real far.