Lately there’s been a beautiful stretch of weather where I live, but it’s not always this nice in August. The current low-humidity 70s and 80s are very nice, but once upon a time I worked in the field of residential construction, and I’ve had to deal with some nasty weather conditions.
I don’t even remember this dude’s real name, but everybody called him “Lumpy.” (The origin of the name, I think, had to do with some poorly mixed spackle or grout.) One hot August day Lumpy and I were working in Jersey somewhere, and it was time to call it a day. We jumped in the company truck and got on Interstate 80 to drive back to Pennsylvania. Everything went fine for awhile, but we ended up running into a wall of red brake lights on the highway.
I stopped the truck and we just sat for a bit, waiting for the jam to start breaking loose. Only it didn’t. We just sat there, waiting. The truck idled so long the fuel gauge began dipping. Brake lights turned off as people put their cars in park and killed their engines. Eventually people got out of their vehicles and walked around.
Not knowing how long we’d be there, we shut off our engine, too. The cold air from the A/C stopped blowing, and rather than bake in a hot vehicle, we opened the windows and got hit with hot, humid air. As we sat there sweating, we saw people get out of their cars and go sit in the shade of the trees, either talking on their flip phones or Blackberries, lighting (or bumming) cigarettes, or wandering into the treeline to find an impromptu restroom. People rolled down their windows and began talking with complete strangers. Lumpy wasn’t the most talkative guy, so we just sat there, listening to the radio and waiting for something to happen. What else could we do? We were powerless to get ourselves out of the situation.
I don’t know how people sensed movement, but at some point they started getting back in their cars. The brake lights turned on again as they cranked engines and put cars into gear. I can’t think of many times I was more relieved to see a traffic jam start to move again. I was psyched to hit 30 mph. I have no idea what snarled traffic so badly, but we made it back without further incident.
Sometimes you find yourself in a period of waiting, where all you can do is watch beyond-your-control circumstances play out. They are agonizing at times, often emotionally draining. This example is much more lighthearted than what a lot of other people have to deal with, but it illustrates the concept that sometimes God just wants you to wait. Maybe it’s to teach you to rest in Him, maybe it’s to force you to deal with something you’ve been avoiding. It could be a time where something’s being prepared for later. I know it’s hard. Sometimes it’s really hard. This is one time I can’t provide much insight, as God’s purpose in making you wait could be tied to any number of reasons. Spend time in the Word and in prayer, listen with everything you’ve got to what the Lord may be saying to you, and look for ways to make the most of this unusual season. I don’t know when it will be over, but seasons don’t last forever.
Have you ever met someone that stayed positive and upbeat almost all the time?
Before I get into my story, I have to explain something to the non-military types reading this. When you’re in the military, there’s a lot of misery and generally terrible conditions you have to be prepared to endure. (After all, you don’t normally fight wars in the nice parts of the world.) As part of the coping mechanism, military branches and units try to buck up their troops with camaraderie and esprit de corps. There’s mixed success with this tactic, but it truly does help to know that when you’re trudging through the mud or up a mountain, your fellow troops are right there alongside you, and you’re not miserable alone.
Also, everything in the military is an acronym. Sometimes there are acronyms inside acronyms. It gets a little crazy. Don’t quote me on the history of this next part, but I think it was the Army that came up with the acronym “HUA.” It stands for “heard, understood, acknowledged.” It’s the military version of saying “got it.” It started getting applied in all kinds of situations. “Soldier, I need you to get rounds on that target NOW, do you understand me?!” “HUA!” Or maybe “we’re gonna grab some Chinese, then meet at the theater at 9, hua?” Over time it morphed into having different meanings; it became kind of a greeting, a rallying cry, or just something to say when you don’t have anything else to say. (I know a dude, long since retired from the Army, who couldn’t go more than two sentences without saying it somehow. “Hooah! Beautiful morning!” “Hooah, enjoy your day!”)
Different branches of the military are funny; a lot of times they want to do the same sort of thing but they don’t want to copy anyone, so they modify things a little. “Hoorah!” “Huh!” “Hooah!” “Oorah!” Where I spent time in the Air Force, it was “Hooyah.”
Anyway, all that’s prelude. When I tried out to be a survival specialist, we had to deal with a lot of uncomfortable, miserable, and/or physically arduous tasks. While we were waiting around for class to start, we spent the weeks doing different things like go on ruck marches in the mountains or in state parks with heavy packs, go on mini field trainings for three or four nights (think camping, but not quite as comfortable), and do a ton of physical training.
There was this one guy, Carl, who was relentlessly optimistic. Whenever he walked into the room or area where a bunch of us were, he’d greet us with a “hooyah, team!” He was so upbeat he came across as kinda goofy sometimes (this guy’s not really like this, is he?). If we’re on a ruck march, he’s bouncing back and forth to different groups of us, lifting our spirits. If we’re getting smoked during PT, he’s the one asking for more and encouraging the rest of us along the way. On one mini field training, when we’d already been out in the woods for a few days without any shower and we smelled like smoke, were tired and irritable from poor sleep and non-stop mosquito bites, and were generally over-tasked with things to do, Carl’s the guy looking for opportunities to goof off in a way that brings a smile to somebody’s face. This picture was one such moment. The other guy was hamming it up a little for the picture, but Carl saw him looking closely at the ground for a piece of gear or something and Carl seized the opportunity for a morale-boosting photo op.
One of Carl’s trademark moves was when we were all assembled at the start of the day. As the American flag was raised each morning to the sound of a bugle call, our formation snapped to attention and saluted for the duration of the music. As soon as the NCO in charge of us gave the call to “order arms” and go to parade rest (stop saluting and return to a more relaxed state), Carl would pipe up with a lone voice and shout “Hooyah, America!” Our instructors liked the sound of it so much that before long, we were all doing it in unison, every duty day.
Today’s our nation’s 248th birthday. That’s a long time for a nation to use a single constitution. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs as a country. Today it seems like the nation is trying to tear itself apart while adversaries band together. I came across the following statement and felt like it resonated with our current times. It applies to both men and women, but I wanted to present the original quote:
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
We’ve been through some tough times as a nation, and it feels like we’re in one of them now. We can get through this one, but it will require strong people standing up for truth and justice. Hang in there, speak truth to power, and help out a neighbor or someone you see who needs a hand.
I went into college not knowing what I wanted to major in. That kind of thing is fine, as long as you figure it out a semester or two into the degree. I didn’t figure out what direction I wanted to go until I started running out of general education classes and had to decide what to start concentrating on. I’ve written before about how the choices (or lack thereof) I made early in college affected how the rest of my college career turned out.
I think I was halfway through my sophomore year when I figured out I was going to pursue a degree in biology. If you’re majoring in any kind of science, you’ll need to complete a lot of science classes (imagine that!). Science classes normally come with a lab session that occurs in the afternoon, so a typical science class meets for three hours during the mornings of a week, and one afternoon a week there will be a three-hour lab session. If you stack up two or three science classes in a semester, you start running out of room in your schedule. You can see how it’s nice to spread out the required classes over eight semesters rather than five.
Since I found myself running a little behind schedule, I looked around for opportunities to catch up. It turns out my school offered something called a May term. After the regular spring semester ended and most students went home, a handful of classes were available. One-credit courses like tennis lasted a week. Two-credit classes went two weeks, and so on. One of the options was a four-credit science course I’d need for graduation. I ended up enrolling in it and stuck around after the spring semester wrapped and all my friends went home for the summer.
That class had to be one of the most stressful classes I took for my whole degree. The course material that was normally spread out over a semester got compressed into four weeks. Class all morning, take a lunch break, then meet in the lab for three or four hours every weekday afternoon. After that, grab some dinner, go back to your room and work on a paper or read the next chapter for the following day. I would read the material, but my mind just didn’t have the time to absorb it like it did during a normal semester. The lab sessions relied heavily on genetics experiments we did with fruit flies, which had a 14-day life cycle, and we needed to get at least two generations to have results for our final paper, so there wasn’t much room for error. While students in other classes spent their afternoons playing ultimate Frisbee or sunning themselves on the quad, I spent my time worrying about bug larvae.
The weeks went by, and as the shorter classes finished up, fewer and fewer students remained on campus. I was so stressed. I was the oldest person in the class; everyone else was an honors student who had spent the second half of their freshman year doing a semester abroad, and this class was mostly available to help them keep up with their pre-med degree plan. I wasn’t quite on the same level as them academically.
I eventually made it through the class, but it was a rough go for awhile. Here’s the important thing: I did this to myself. I didn’t do it on purpose, but it was my lack of planning ahead that led to this predicament. I had to live with the consequences of my own actions.
As Christians, we have the hope of the life to come, but first we have to make it through this one. People of all races, nationalities, and backgrounds are Christians, and Heaven will be full of incredible diversity as we’re united in Christ. All of us, however, will have had to live with the consequences of either our actions or someone else’s actions. That could mean broken relationships, poor credit history, self-inflicted medical issues, or a variety of other challenges.
As a Christian equipped with spiritual gifts, how are you empowered to either help yourself or help others through the unique challenges in life?
In the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. military extensively used the UH-1 Iroquois helicopter. Better known as the “Huey,” it gained widespread fame in Vietnam for its ability to carry troops in and out of battle and conduct medevac missions in hot combat zones.
Huey (foreground) and Blackhawk (background)
The venerated chopper has served its nation reliably since the 1950s, but it doesn’t have the best safety record when it has to make a hard landing. It doesn’t have many safety features to help occupants survive a crash. In the 1970s, a new helicopter came on the scene: the UH-60 Black Hawk.
Versions of the Black Hawk are still widely in use in today’s military. It’s larger, smoother, tougher, and more versatile than the Huey. It also has some safety features built in to help protect the crew from hard landings.
In 1993, U.S. Special Forces served in the African nation of Somalia to intervene in a situation where local warlords were taking advantage of a severe famine. On one particularly bloody October day, local fighters were able to shoot down a U.S. Black Hawk chopper during a military operation in the capital city of Mogadishu.
The pilot, Mike Durant, was the only survivor of the crash. The impact knocked him unconscious, but when he came to, he was surprised to find that he could no longer see over the “dashboard” of the helicopter. As it turns out, the front seats in the Black Hawk were designed to withstand a certain amount of force, after which they’d progressively collapse to the floor. This safety feature was intended to spare the seats’ occupants from absorbing all that force with their own bodies. By building the structure of the seat this way, the large amount of force that would have been transferred directly into Durant’s spine got dissipated enough to allow him to survive. The crash still broke his back, but he eventually recovered (despite being captured and held hostage) and returned to duty. The events of this operation are depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”
The front seats in a Blackhawk are designed to absorb a portion of the force in a crash landing
Nowhere in scripture are Christians promised a life free of hardship. On the contrary, we will be hated and made fun of, and our lives can quite possibly be made more difficult by announcing our religious convictions to the world. The heat will get cranked up and all will get to see what our faith is really made of.
In those times, sometimes we’ll be made to bend, but not break. Other times we’ll be broken, but not killed. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that God never gives us more than we think we can bear; yes, that happens to people. The tough times I’ve been through pale in comparison to what some others have endured, but it seems like God’s purpose of the pain, the “why,” is never apparent during the pain. It also seems, however, that He designs situations in such a way that parts of you, or perhaps parts of your character, are protected while others crumple and break around you. When it’s over, the parts that He didn’t want are broken and have fallen away and the parts that are left are the parts that He still wants to be there. It may very well be that He arranged that set of circumstances specifically to refine your character or your outlook on life.
If you’re going through something really hard right now, hang in there. It won’t always be like this.
The other day my daughter pointed out to me that 2024 is starting out an awful lot like 2020 did. The 49ers are playing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. This month has an extra day at the end because it’s a leap year. It’s looking more and more likely that it’s going to be a Biden/Trump presidential election. And at least at this point in the year, the Olympics are scheduled to take place this summer as long as a worldwide pandemic doesn’t change things.
Well obviously, I don’t have the inside track on how any of those things are going to turn out (though I’m hoping the 49ers can pull off a win over the Chiefs). Despite not liking to put many political posts on this blog, I feel it’s important to sometimes address things before they happen, hopefully helping you to prepare mentally for what’s ahead.
President Biden is polling abysmally right now. I mean, it’s bad. He listens to extremist advisors and espouses policies that are difficult to justify if the goal is to make America and its economy better (raise energy prices, force electric vehicle adoption in a market that isn’t interested, ban gas appliances, forfeit energy independence, etc.). Between many of his supporters wanting him to do more to punish Israel, along with Independents (and a big chunk of Democrats) saying “you know, I think you’ve gone too far with the border situation,” he’s got a shrinking pool of people he can rely on. At this rate, his only real chance is to make the other Presidential candidates look even less appealing than he does.
Nikki Haley is still in the race, but she’s going to have to pull off some convincing wins here very soon if she wants to realistically remain in the conversation. If she somehow pulls off a massive upset and gains the GOP nomination, Biden’s going to have his hands full trying to convince the country that he can do a better job than she can. I don’t really see her being much more than a nuisance to former President Trump on his path to the nomination, though.
I’m not sure of the latest numbers, but at one point there were over 90 criminal counts pending against Trump. That’s not a small thing. If he’s guilty, he should face the consequences. I do question the timing of the four cases, though. It strikes me as odd that no charges were brought until after it was evident he’d be running again. It seems suspicious that everything seemed to hit at once, almost as though it was a coordinated effort to keep someone in the courtroom rather than the campaign trail and force them to use money on legal defense instead of being used elsewhere. Between that “legal coordination” and attempts to keep him off ballots, I don’t feel it’s Trump that poses the biggest threat of election interference or threat to democracy.
Now I can’t honestly say I know what all those charges are, but based on the sheer number of them I’ve got to imagine he’ll be convicted on at least one of them. Those are all felony counts. Here I’m showing my ignorance on the legal system, but I would think that not all felonies are created equal. There are different levels of “badness” in the felony category. If he’s convicted of the most minor felony count, it can still truthfully be said that he’s been found guilty of a felony (even if he appeals and wins). If that happens, that’s the only thing you’re going to hear out of the White House, out of Biden surrogates, and from protesters between now and the election. They’ll hope a felony conviction of any sort will be enough to cause a sizable portion of voters to withhold their support from him.
This may just shape up to be a contest to see who can avoid looking the worst. Trump’s facing 90+ felonies, but Biden just got caught either lying to the American people or showing that he doesn’t quite have a solid grasp of the situation. Regarding the border bill that fell apart earlier this week, Biden has repeatedly claimed that its passage is necessary to empower him before he can solve the border crisis. The last president somehow managed to do quite a bit to secure the border, and the Democratic Senate that’s been in power since then hasn’t taken away any of the President’s powers. My guess is that Biden will tighten up the border just enough to say “look, we’ve reduced the number of people crossing into the U.S.” to try to take away Trump’s biggest weapon, and you’ll hear “felony, felony, felony” or “fascist white supremacist” about Trump.
Also like we saw in 2020, there are probably a lot of people that are going to say “I don’t like either candidate.” In an interesting turn of events, this year there’s a third-party candidate that’s benefitting quite a bit from a general dislike of the two-party system. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is picking up some steam. He comes from a more traditional Democratic platform, from before extremists took over the party. At this point he’s the most centrist candidate in the race, and he’s gaining support from people on both sides (though more of that support probably comes from Democrats). As we draw closer to the election in November he’s probably going to get more attention because a lot of what he says makes sense to people who are looking for less drama out of the White House.
What I’m about to say assumes that Kennedy gets a LOT more support between now and November, so keep that in mind as you read it. Presidential candidates win elections by gaining more than half of the nation’s 538 electoral college votes. You need 270 to win. If RFK Jr. peels off a state or two, he could conceivably prevent any candidate from reaching 270 electoral votes. In that case, the outcome of the election gets tossed over to the House of Representatives.
To reiterate, we’re talking about kind of a long-shot scenario here. If the House gets to pick the next president, it’s going to be under tremendous pressure to “do the right thing.” The “right thing,” however, is open to interpretation. Is it the candidate that got the greatest number of electoral votes? Is it the candidate that got the most popular votes? Will it come down to a party-line vote, and if so, how will that work if a few of the representatives are in the hospital or are otherwise unavailable in one of the narrowest House margins in history?
It’s still a very difficult time in our nation’s history. There’s no candidate that everyone will support. We’re stuck once again with picking the least bad option. No matter what party is in power, please pray for our president and officials in Congress. God allowed them to be there, so please pray for His hand on them, steering them toward what He wants to accomplish.
Lord, thank you for the blessings we enjoy by living in this country. I ask that You watch over our nation’s leaders, give them wisdom, and help them make God-honoring decisions. I ask in Your name, amen.
The world is generally out of control right now. We’ve got wars in Ukraine and Israel, mass looting in cities, economic uncertainty in lots of countries, the breakdown of law and order, dissolution of America’s southern border, and general unrest all over the place. It’s natural to wonder if we’re in the period the Bible refers to as the Tribulation.
Well, the short answer is that unless a ton of people have already up and vanished without a trace, the answer is “no.” If you’re not one to do a lot of Bible reading, or even to connect certain parts of the Bible, it’s easy to jumble together a lot of the events related to the natural end of time (the part where God decides He’s had enough and shows up in a big way).
There are two major cataclysmic events at the end that will stop people in their tracks. The first is the Rapture. This is where Christ comes back from Heaven to pull His people (the Church) out of the world. This is a removal of the faithful, sparing them from the turmoil that’s about to take place. If some major fraction of humanity has up and vanished and that fraction doesn’t include you…no matter what sort of explanation is provided (I’m guessing aliens and UFOs), take a closer look at who’s disappeared. There’s sure to be a lot of confusion initially, but when the dust starts to settle and a clearer picture emerges, you’ll see that they’re all Christians. I’d guess that this linkage will try to be hidden, so you may have to go looking for evidence to connect the dots on your own. Yes, there will be church-going people, even clergy members, that did not disappear, and they’ll be hit with a hard truth: they did not have a saving relationship with Christ as Lord of their lives. People of other religions, along with other people of fine morals, good people, will also remain. The Christians’ disappearance will hasten the downward spiral of humanity. The churchgoers are the ones slowing humanity’s decay right now (October 2023), but once they’re gone, it’s a whole new chapter in the progression of unspeakable evil. It’s as though God says “I’ve been telling you for millennia how to live, and you rejected me this whole time. You know what? Fine. Have it your way. See how that goes for you.” The good news here is that there’s still time to embrace Christ.
The second event is Christ’s Second Coming. Moments after the Rapture all the Christians will have disappeared, but by the time of the Second Coming, seven years after the Rapture, more people will have become Christians. They’ll still have to endure some very difficult circumstances, but they’ll have the hope of Christ. For everyone else still on the planet, they’ll face a reckoning. At this point everybody starts to realize the jig is up, that there’s no getting out of this one, and that they should have paid more attention to what they heard earlier about Christ forgiving sins. Now it’s too late to change their minds.
There’s no question that these two events are easy to get blended together, but here’s a list put together by the late Dr. Norman Geisler to help separate them out. They give the reader a better picture of some of history’s final events. I have to warn you that some of these are a little tricky and don’t say much at first glance, but a study bible helps see beyond the face value, the deeper meaning, of the verse in question.
If the rapture hasn’t happened yet, study these verses and the ones near them so you can better understand what’s happening as events unfold. If the rapture already took place and you’re still around to read this, it’s even more important to get your hands on a bible (preferably a study bible that has additional notes and context on what the verses mean). If you believe the entire bible, you believe that Satan and his fallen angels exist. Well, they can read it too, and they know what’s coming. In my mind, I believe that’s why UFO activity has been ramping up in the past few years. These fallen angels are setting the stage to have a plausible explanation for the mass disappearance of a significant percentage of humanity. “They were abducted! They had to have been abducted, there’s simply no other explanation!” It’ll be quite the coincidence that a lot of those abducted people loved Jesus. Once that common thread gets out, don’t be surprised if you also hear things like “see what happens to people that follow Jesus? Let’s round up all the bibles and other commentaries about it and destroy them before this happens again!”
Anyway, we’re not in the Tribulation yet, but it increasingly seems like it’s not too far away. Think of this as an opportunity to focus your studies of God’s word on what’s coming.
Lord, if this blog is still around after the Rapture has occurred, I pray for those reading this. They’re dealing with mass fear, confusion, and many types of hardship that are turning or will turn their lives upside down. I pray that this post will help point them to You and the truth, that they would embrace You as Lord. As they approach the end of history, may You be glorified, God. I pray these things in Your name, Amen.
You’ve likely noticed that inflation has taken a big bite out of your income over the past couple of years. Unless your income is keeping pace, you’re probably getting a little squeezed. Hopefully this post can offer some practical tips.
There are two ways to gain disposable income: cutting expenses and increasing income. You can only cut expenses so much. If you’re getting squeezed and there’s nothing left to cut, the only other option is to bring in more income. While getting a higher-paying job or a raise at your current one would be great, sometimes that’s not possible. In those cases, adding a revenue stream or two may be the way to go. Do you have a hobby or talent, or simply extra time, that you can use to bring in some extra cash (babysitting, freelance yard work, having your kids pet-sit and contribute to the household out-to-eat or go-to-the-movies plan)?
I feel obligated to say that avoiding a credit card balance is one of the best things you can do to keep your debt under control, but I also acknowledge that it’s tougher and tougher for people to sock money away for a rainy day when it’s been raining so much for so long, and they’ve come to rely on credit cards instead of savings for a backup/emergency fund. By all means, pay off your monthly balance in full, but when you can’t do that, here are some other hacks for saving some money.
Kids grow fast. Like, real fast. Shoes and clothes don’t fit them for nearly the same length of time as they fit adults. When I’m doing yard work I wear jeans I wore 20 years ago. It’s not because I’m super fit, it’s because I don’t want to buy a new wardrobe. With such high turnover rates for kids’ clothes, thrift shops can save you a ton of money. Some things are better bought new, sure, but if they’re only going to be wearing a given pair of pants less than a year, they don’t need to be designer or top notch. Larger thrift shops have more options, so if you live out in the country, you may have better results heading to thrift shops in more populated areas. Just because other people pay for rapidly growing kids to have nice stuff doesn’t mean you have to pay the same prices; many shops will randomly have name-brand items. If the kids whine about not buying brand new, let them pitch in or pay the difference between what they want and what you can get it for at the thrift store. It’s easy to whine when you’re using other people’s money, but the tune often changes when you’re the one footing the bills.
Food is a big expense. The economy and supply chain have made for some anomalies where in some cases, it’s cheaper to buy a meal prepared at a restaurant than it is to buy the ingredients and prepare them yourself. This is not the norm and it probably won’t stick around for long. At any rate, if you’re pinching pennies, you should probably avoid dining in at a restaurant and opt for takeout instead. Dining in means you’re paying for drinks and paying more for a tip than if you call a restaurant to place an order, travel there, pick up the food, and then travel wherever you’re going to eat it (remind me again why people tip when they do all the work?).
If you regularly stop for hot drinks that have some kind of flavoring, foam, or shots of something in them, you forfeit the right to complain about not having enough money. Coffee, cream, and sugar. Want a treat? Try flavored creamer.
A lot of times we start subscribing to things and after awhile we stop thinking about whether they’re worth the price. For example, unless you’re some kind of super-user, you probably don’t need a phone plan with unlimited data. If all you need is talk and text with a moderate amount of data, you can probably ditch the major carriers and go with small companies that have the same coverage but plans that better fit your needs. For entertainment, do you really need all those streaming services? Do you still pay for cable TV? If all you really want are major networks, consider buying a digital antenna and getting TV for free. Admittedly, you get what you pay for, but if you’re in an area with decent signal strength and you buy a respectable antenna, you can pick up a lot of channels. Check out https://www.fcc.gov/media/engineering/dtvmaps to see what networks you can pick up in your area. And an individual channel often has multiple sub-channels within it, so if a particular channel comes in well, there are probably a few different shows playing on the channels that are affiliated with it. I personally get channels with more westerns, Spanish telenovelas, episodes of Walker Texas Ranger, Columbo, and old game shows than I know what to do with, but I’m also a fan of older, less stressful shows. If a digital antenna’s not really your thing, but you have good internet speed, pick up a Roku device. Different shows rotate through the available channels, you can usually get some live news, and the commercial breaks come with countdown timers. Still not seeing something you like? Check out your local library for shows and movies on DVD. We don’t normally even start watching a new show unless it’s finished its run on TV. There’s a lot of cheap or free entertainment out there, so take a look at your subscriptions and make sure you’re only paying for stuff that’s worth it for you.
Walmart is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it’s cheap and has lots of options. On the other hand, it’s very hard to walk out of the store with only the things you intended to pick up when you walked in. What you saved by going to the store got more than chewed up by picking up all the add-ons you tossed in the cart while walking around the store. Here are a couple of ideas to help manage costs. Don’t use credit/debit cards to pay for purchases; only use cash. When we use credit or debit cards, it makes it harder to appreciate the value of the money you’re parting company with. When you use cash, it makes you much more aware that money is leaving your possession, and it makes you think harder about whether a particular purchase is worth the price. Alternatively, place a Walmart order online. Shipping is free once your purchases total a certain amount, and as long as you’re not adding things to the cart just for the sake of hitting that mark, you can be more choosy about what items you’re willing to purchase to reach that shipping minimum. If you aren’t willing to wait for the shipment to arrive through the mail, use the “store pickup” option. Employees will gather the items you pay for and put them in a locker for you to retrieve. You might have to go into the building, but you don’t have to go beyond the registers. If you don’t go beyond the registers, your chances of escaping without making impulse buys go way up. Now you just have to dodge the Scouts selling cookies or popcorn outside the door.
Finally, let’s address the issue of tithing. Tithing, or giving 10% of your income to the church body you attend, is expected even when money is tight. God knows when it’s simply impossible for you to give that much, but He also knows when you’re milking the situation a little bit. Do your best to build tithing into your budget. You’re welcome to donate money to other charities, of course, but that’s supposed to be after you’ve given your 10% to the church you attend. Ten percent sounds like a lot, and it sure can be, especially if you don’t currently give anything. I’d offer that you live your life of following Christ in expectation that He’ll do bigger things through you than He’s doing right now. If that’s the case, this current stage of your life is a prelude to things that are yet to come. Be faithful with the smaller things, and He’ll entrust bigger things to you in the future. Tough stuff, I know. If you’re way under that 10% goal, start out by consistently doing better than you are right now, and keep working toward that goal.
There are lots of other tips, but I’ve already taken up a lot of space. Who else has suggestions? Please leave a recommendation in a comment.
If you live a righteous life, you’re going to encounter opposition.
It’s a tricky thing, this balance Christians need to maintain. On the one hand, we need to have other Christians we can depend on, go to with our problems, and lean on for support. On the other hand, we can’t immerse ourselves so much in this support system that we never have contact with the people we’re meant to witness to. Our job, after all, is to go forth and make disciples of all nations. It’s tough to do that if we only spend time with other believers.
I’ve got a story to share that’s going to make me sound like I’m touting how perfect I was at a certain time in my life. That’s not my intent, so please hang in there for the point I’m trying to make. I worked construction for a couple of summers in college and then for about a year and a half after graduating. You meet a lot of interesting (translated: rough) characters in that line of work. The crude speech alone was enough to raise some eyebrows.
I stuck out quite a bit in this field. I didn’t swear, I didn’t drink, and I didn’t chase women. That’s pretty unusual for a young man in that line of work. I didn’t act in a morally superior or “holier than thou” way. It wasn’t necessary. People took notice over time. Different guys would leave or join the crew, but it seemed like everyone except me indulged in at least one of those three behaviors. One of the guys even told me “I’ve met dudes that avoid one of those things. I’ve even met a couple of guys that avoid two of those things. But you’re the only guy I’ve met that doesn’t do any of those things.”
A lot of times a few of the guys would try to prod me to let slip a dirty word or two. Occasionally a few of them would conspire to make me have a rough day, just to try to get me to lose my temper. Now why would they do that? They saw somebody more disciplined than them and they tried to get him to stumble so he’d “descend to their level.” I’m not going to sit here and tell you that people who drink or cuss or make mistakes can’t get into Heaven. I will tell you though, that blamelessness bothers sinners. I’m not perfect, but guys on that crew figured I was, and it was an image they wanted to mar for their own satisfaction. If they could make a “perfect” person stumble, it made them feel better about the way they lived their own lives.
That’s one side of the coin. There’s a very important flip side to it. When you stiffen your spine in response to consistent opposition day after day, week after week, month after month, there’s a certain amount of respect that others develop toward you. I wasn’t preachy about my faith to the other guys. In fact, I don’t know that I ever even threw “I’m a Christian” out there. One guy, who had given me a lot of grief, but who was also a very philosophical type of fellow, one day told me he had a lot of respect for my convictions. He seemed to take at least a little bit of joy in finding hypocrisy in people that called themselves religious. After months of working together and trying to get under my skin, he told me “you are who you say you are.” (I never had to say who I was.)
Not only was it a very high compliment coming from him, it was an acknowledgement to me that it had been worth the heat. Soon after that we spent some time talking about the Bible and some of the things it contained. We eventually went our separate ways, but a few years later my wife and I looked him up and visited him and his family. They had us over for dinner, breaking out some big steaks, sharing their table and their home with us. I can’t say I led the guy to Christ, and I haven’t had any contact with him in probably 15 years, but I hope to be one member of the team that takes part in his years-long journey to the Lord.
God will ask you to do things that are hard. He asks you to do it because He knows you’re uniquely suited to get it done. If He asks you to be above reproach in a difficult environment, it might just be because He knows blamelessness bothers sinners, and He’s using you to get somebody’s attention. Hang in there. God uses teams of believers to accomplish His will in any given person’s life, but you may be the one He’s chosen to get the ball rolling.
Ever been in a situation you thought you were prepared to handle, only to find out that conditions kept changing beyond what you anticipated? In February of 2002 I had the privilege of attending some of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah with my college roommate.
If you’ve followed my posts for awhile, you’ve heard about this before. As college students, we had to make this trip happen on a budget. No hotel rooms, no airfare. We drove from New York state to Utah and either slept in the car at rest stops or winter camped in a tent in a national forest.
One of the things that’s most difficult to anticipate or describe about this kind of trip is the cumulative effect of constantly being in cold temperatures for a week. We only attended one indoor event (and it had an ice arena, so it wasn’t the warmest). Aside from driving from place to place we didn’t really spend a lot of time either indoors or being warm. A few fast food restaurants, a Walmart once or twice, and various gas stations and rest stops were the only real times we had a roof overhead. Between poor nutrition and having to spend more calories on staying warm, I lost almost 15 pounds on that trip. My nose was cold for an entire week.
Spending so much time in the cold was a major reason why we were so happy that it got sunny and warm on the day we went to watch bobsledding. I think it got up into the 50s, and the sun felt amazing. It was almost too warm to bobsled. They had to put sun shades over parts of the track to keep the ice from melting.
The previous day we had worn some of our warmest gear when we went to watch Giant Slalom. Walking up a mountain in hot clothing on a mild winter day led to some sweaty times. We weren’t going to make that mistake again, and we opted for lighter clothing that day. Instead of our thermal underwear, big jackets, and wool hats, we went with long-sleeve tee shirts, windbreakers, and baseball hats. I remember there was some dude there with no shirt, something painted on his chest, and he was swinging some nation’s flag around. I felt nice and warm, but not that warm.
Well bobsledding was cool to watch, but the novelty sort of wore off after awhile. The event was two days long, and we had tickets for day one. It was neat to see the sleds whip past on a vertical wall going 70 mph, and of course we kept an eye out for the Jamaican bobsled team (unfortunately they only had competitors in the two-man bobsled races that year). There were more wrecks than they show on TV, too. Overall, though, the stuff we saw wasn’t super exciting. It wasn’t like we were seeing any medal-deciding runs. I think a lot of other people felt the same way because the crowds started thinning out as the day went on.
We really noticed a change when the sun went down. We started getting a bit more chilled, and we had to move around more or stamp our feet to stay warm. Hands went in pockets and stayed there. Arms stayed glued to our sides. One guy standing near us, on his way out, said “here, I think you need these more than I do,” and handed my roommate some 6-hour handwarmers he had been using.
The bible is the kind of book that has stuff for both beginners and expert users. Some readers on the newer side of the spectrum will decide that they’ve read it enough to know what they need to know. Although I’ll concede that they can easily read enough to know the most important things, I’d argue that they’re simply not in a position to accurately predict what passages of scripture they’ll need to be familiar with. The only way to be better prepared for what God throws at you in this life is to keep reading that bible and keep engaging with Him in prayer. Finished reading one of the books of the bible? There are plenty more. Finally got all the way through the Bible? Congratulations, that’s awesome! Do you feel like you understand it all, or are there parts you need to have another look at? (If you understand it all, there are some things in there I don’t totally understand; maybe you can explain them to me.)
Another way to look at the illustration is that while you may feel prepared and equipped for the phase of life you’re currently in, there’s always change coming. Keep that bible handy and keep reading it. What about if you think it’s a stretch to say you’re prepared and equipped for the phase of life you’re in? All the more reason to study and prepare.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; -2 Timothy 3:16
Back in college there were a few of us among our larger group of friends that would hit the weight room on a regular basis. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around 6:30 pm, Tyrone, Gabe, and I would meet up and head over to the gym.
It was a good routine for us; most of the time all three of us kept the appointment, but of course there would be times when one of us had to catch up on school work, make up some time on a project, or pull some extra hours at work, so the trio would be down a man. That’s when having a group of three paid off, there would still be two guys that could meet up and get a workout done.
Consistency was the key to results. Getting into a routine was important, and after a few weeks of regular workouts, the body came to embrace the physical stress. It was also a good mental discipline for all of us. There were definitely times when I didn’t feel like going, but knowing there were two other guys that were going to come looking for me to go with them helped get me ready to head out the door.
Now, missing a workout every now and then wasn’t a big deal. You can skip a workout and still jump back in without much of an issue. Christmas break, on the other hand, was something you had to figure out how to deal with. Bench press and bicep curls were some of the mainstay exercises we did in the gym, but neither of those exercises were something you really performed naturally in normal life. If you had a couple of weeks off from school (and the weight room), you probably missed a bunch of workouts unless you did something really creative to stay in shape, and those muscles didn’t take long to begin to atrophy.
Every January when we arrived back on campus, we kind of dreaded the first time we got back into the weight room. We still had muscle mass, certainly, but it had noticeably lost some of its density and tightness. We wanted to get back into our routine, but we were also a bit reluctant to get started up again because after you go for a few weeks without doing unnatural movements like bench press, and then you start doing it again, it becomes very painful.
What we came to realize was that it wasn’t the first workout back that we needed to fear, it was the second.
On the first workout back, we’d try to hype each other up a little bit, probably spout off something about working out harder in the new year, and grit our teeth as we pushed through. Sure, we took a couple of steps backward for that first workout, but the goal was to just get through it.
On the second workout back, we wouldn’t be gritting our teeth, we’d be wincing in pain. The acute stabbing pain in our pectoral muscles was terrible as we asked our bodies to work through the soreness that came from our first workout back. The only way to get to the other side of the pain and back into the reality of exercising without that kind of hurt was to just keep going. “If you can make it through the second workout, you’re home free,” we used to say.
As Christians, we’re entrusted with spiritual gifts. If Christ is your savior, you’re equipped with what you need to perform the work God’s asking you to do. We go through different phases and chapters in our lives and we’re capable of giving more effort in some phases than in others, but at some point during our lives God calls us to do something on behalf of His kingdom.
Perhaps it’s been a few chapters since you were willing to step outside your comfort zone to follow God’s will for your life, and you’ve been trying to get back to fulfilling your calling. Things tend to align against you and work to dissuade you from getting back into that sort of routine.
I can’t sit here and honestly tell you that you only have to get through two sessions of whatever it is that God’s called you to do before it gets less painful, but I would encourage you not to give up, and urge you to stick with it. To His followers, Jesus promised persecution, difficulties, and generally some hard times. He said that we’d need to have perseverance and grit to stick it out. I may not know you personally, but I can tell you that you’ll have challenges in this new year. Stick it out. Hang in there.
I’ll leave you with two Bible verses on perseverance. One is addressed to you as an individual who needs encouragement to follow Christ, while the other is addressed to you as an individual who’s exhorted to fulfill your calling. In both cases, note the need for persistence and perseverance.
Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. –James 1:12
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. –Galatians 6:9
May 2023 be a year of persistence and growth for you, and I wish you the best in getting past your discomfort and into the routine God wants you to pursue.
