Luke’s Notebook

For some unknown reason, FamTeam was down for most of the afternoon and evening. So that wasn’t good, but it has returned, and it doesn’t look like anything was lost! Thank You, God!

You know what? I should be thankful every single day that FamTeam is working. I know how grateful I am right now. Why can’t I be that way the 99% of the time when there isn’t a problem?

The bigger thing, of course, is this attitude really should transfer over into every single area of life. There is just so much to be thankful for, so much right in front of our eyes. I remember back in the summer when we were without electricity — and air-conditioning — for 24 hours, and how thankful I was for the simple luxury of heating and cooling. Or how different times when we’ve had problems with our drinking water, how thankful I was to just have water to drink.

I need to really let this lesson sink in. The adage “You don’t know what you have ’til it’s gone” can be very true, but it really shouldn’t be that way. It’s up to me, though, to not get complacent, to not take things for granted. I’m not guaranteed family, friends, a house, drinking water, electricity, Internet access, a comfortable bed, a cell phone, a great working environment, my health, my future, food, clothing.

Note to self: Be thankful now. There is no reason not to be! Gosh, how spoiled I can get! It’s really amazing how human nature works. I’m just so glad God is patient and merciful towards me and my tendencies. That’s another big thing to be thankful for, huh?

And… you know, I didn’t even think about this going into the start of this post, but I suppose this kicks off Thanksgiving Week, huh? Not bad timing. Let’s not save all of our thankfulness for the fourth Thursday of November every year; let’s practice it daily and make it a habit so that it’s second nature to us.

It is so extremely difficult to get bitter or discouraged if you force yourself to dwell on these things. The problem is I can so often forget all of the blessings and shift my attention to the current unsolved issue.

I’d invite you to count your blessings, literally. Whether you just want to do it in your head, in a journal somewhere, in a comment — whatever — just stop a moment and think of everything that you should be thankful for. If you’re reading this, I have three for you: A computer, Internet access, enough time to look at some guy’s blog.

See what you can come up with!

1 Peter 3

8Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. 9Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

10For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. 11He must turn from evil and do good;he must seek peace and pursue it. 12For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”[a>

13Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear[b>; do not be frightened.”[c> 15But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

Even though there is so much “gold” in that chapter, I’m going to just stress a couple of things. In the second paragraph, I love the line “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” It’s really encouraging, because I know if I do my part of trying to be completely surrendered to Him, He will listen.

In the last paragraph, perhaps my favorite line is “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” As Christians, we ought to be ready to share with people just why we have this hope, this joy, this peace. It’s nothing we can boast about — we’re as broken as the next person — but we can use that to point them to Jesus. “Hey, I’m nothing special, so anything you see is just evidence of what God can do with a life.”

I know a lot of times I would be timid when trying to reach out to people, mainly because I know how imperfect I am, how I’m certainly not one to talk. But if I think of it more along the lines of saying, “Hey, I’m just a sinner, but God has forgiven me,” then it’s okay. I can just stress, “Don’t rely on me, because I’m going to sin and I’m going to let you down. But lean on the One I’m leaning on, because He is unchanging.”

I just think it’s comforting to know that we don’t have to feel perfect before we start reaching out to people. We all know that Christians are very imperfect, and if anybody waited until they reached perfection then we would have absolutely nobody sharing their faith. So it’s really nice to realize that our only responsibility is to refer them to God because He won’t let them down, He won’t disappoint.

Just a real quick note! I love Firefox! I just had FF crash, and I was in the middle of a long blog entry. I assumed it was lost, but when Firefox restored my session, there was my blog post! This is reason enough for you all to upgrade to Firefox 2.0! Thanks, Mozilla!

Anyway, here goes…

I learned an important lesson today. After a workout at the YMCA this morning (another pretty thorough one; that makes three!), I drove to the Wal-Mart in Waterloo in order to make a few returns and pick up a few things.

I went in to return seven rolls of this rubber liner. After waiting in the returns line for a while, it was my turn, and I gave the cashier my receipt and presented the seven unopened rolls. She scanned the receipt and the rolls, punched some keys on her computer, and then the cash register opened. She refunded me $48 or $49. I thanked her and walked away to begin shopping.

As I was doing the math in my head, I realized that these rolls cost roughly six bucks apiece, yet she refunded me nearly $50. 6 x 7 = 42. I counted the cash again and then I realize that she accidentally refunded me the cash for eight rolls instead of the seven that I gave her.

So now I wasn’t exactly sure what to do, because I was eager to take care of the shopping and get back home. I didn’t want to have to go back and stand in line again — I mean, after all, it wasn’t my mistake. It wasn’t really the extra $6 that I was worried about; I just wasn’t looking forward to spending more time in line and then awkwardly explaining the situation.

Well, after considering it briefly, I decided that the thing to do would be to go back there and rectify it. Even though it wasn’t my fault, I figured the right thing to do was to go back there. So I went back, stood in line, and when it was my turn I talked to the cashier again and explained that she must have accidentally refunded me for an extra roll. She looked at the receipt, did the math, and then realized her mistake. I then paid her the difference, $6.10, and thanked her.

Another cashier who was near this lady remarked how she was surprised that I even returned it, how a lot of people would have just kept quiet and held on to the money. I just did it because I knew it was the right thing to do, and I was actually a little bit embarrassed to have to go back and say, “Uhh, I think you accidentally gave me too much.”

So anyway, I was happy to have taken care of that. I didn’t think much about it as I was shopping, but then as I was checking out I had something interesting happen. The scale at that register wasn’t working right, and the cashier wasn’t able to weigh a few bunches of bananas that I was buying. He was fiddling with the scale, couldn’t get it working, and he finally said that I could have the bananas for free.

I thought that was really ironic, especially considering how just an hour ago I had returned some money to Wal-Mart, and now they’re not charging me for bananas. How weird! Of course, through this all, we’re only talking about a few dollars one way or the others, but I felt that this incident was God teaching me something.

Integrity does not go out of style. Doing the right thing, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it may be, is still the right thing to do. James 4:17: Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

And through this, I also feel like God is kind of daring me, saying, “Try complete integrity and just see if I don’t bless you.” It really does work that way, and today was a really bizarre example of that! God can provide in so many different ways, and it is really, really detrimental to ourselves, for many reasons, to be dishonest, shade the truth, or just not live with complete integrity!

So the moral of the story is you can never go wrong by keeping your integrity. It may be a little embarrassing, a little inconvenient, or even seemingly unimportant, but God is always watching us, and He knows if we cut corners — even if nobody else finds out. And also, when He sees us earnestly striving to be honest in every little detail, it really seems like He can’t help but bless us! The banana bonanza is a perfect example of that… and also reminding me that God has a sense of humor.

http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/16031242.htm

Please keep praying for everybody involved, especially the officer and his family.

For starters, today is two months from the tentative air date of our TLC documentary. January 15th is coming up! This is getting exciting. The holidays make the final five or six weeks of the year a blur, and right as we recover from New Year’s we’ll have that premier to look forward to! Pretty exciting stuff.

This morning, I recorded another YMCA visit, this time joining Dad and a bunch of the guys for a trip to the Columbia Y. Three days, two solid workouts — good stuff.

Recently, something has come to my attention in regards to God’s mercy. I’ve witnessed and experienced firsthand different situations where, despite my sincerest efforts, I might have accidentally dropped the ball in a situation — be it relating to work, family, friends — whatever. I’ll look back on these situations and realized that, knowing what I know now, maybe I could have tweaked my approach to have avoided the mistake. But what I’m being amazed by is how so often, when somebody is doing their best to obey God in every little detail, they will land on their feet.

God must realize that, despite our most earnest efforts, we’re still flawed and prone to mistake. So knowing that, I think He oftentimes will give us a little margin of error or a slight grace period. Practically speaking, it might mean that you kind of “get away” with accidentally being a little bit late to an appointment, or if you feel like you have butchered a conversation with someone, God will help them receive it in the way that you meant to say it, even though you may have stumbled over words.

So really, it’s just so cool how God really does take care of you when you’re following Him. It seems like mistakes, inevitable as they are, tend to be minimized and there is generally very little damage.

Has anybody ever experienced something like this? Maybe you screwed something up at work, or you felt like you kind of blew an opportunity you had with a friend — or anything along those lines — where it seems like, for some reason, you didn’t get what was coming to you, but instead you landed on your feet?

I know this isn’t always the case, but I just have seen quite often how when you are sincerely trying to do everything unto God, it’s like He’ll help you out and let your mistakes and miscues be received with an air of grace, and maybe he’ll just touch the recipient or the “victim” of your actions and have them exercise a little more mercy, a little more patience.

I love knowing this, because I realize how many times I might have the best intentions, but yet I end feeling like I ruined my chance because I didn’t handle something perfectly. But it just seems like if I’m really trying to honor and obey God in every little thing, even the hiccups or the bumps in the road end up turning into something beautiful.

Romans 8:28

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

In one sentence, that expresses the point I tried to make in six paragraphs.

Has anyone ever read the accounts of Pastor Roland Buck from Boise, Idaho, who was visited by angels back in the late ’70s? There is a book, “Angels On Assignment,” that recounts his amazing stories and his encounters with God. It’s incredible and is also very strengthening to have so many truths come alive and really understand where God’s heart is. Also, it’s so encouraging to realize just how real heaven is and how much we, as Christians, have to look forward to when we’re finished on earth.

If anyone has read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts! If you haven’t, you can read the book in its entirety at http://www.angelsonassignment.org/. You can even download a PDF of the entire book by clicking here.

Paul, Mark, and I went to the YMCA in Belleville this evening, and we had a really thorough workout. It was the first real workout for me since June or July, I’d say, but I have really been wanting to dive into some sort of fall/winter workout regimen so that I can enter the spring of 2007 in better shape than I left summer of 2006.

I’ll admit, I was really intimidated by the idea of starting back up again, because for some reason after such a long hiatus I guess I just reasoned that there must have been some reason that I stopped exercising, and I would just kind of dread having to lift those weights again and do the cardiovascular work.

Things went really well tonight; we focused on a lot of chest, shoulder, and calf exercises, and we also did some brief work on the elliptical machines at the Y. All in all, I think I managed to get a real good workout, and it’s really satisfying to have Visit Number One in the books. I bet I’m going to be sore tomorrow, though, because I’ve always noticed that bench-pressing and similar chest exercises really tend to get to me, especially after not doing them for a while. But that’s a good thing! It would mean the weight-lifting is effective.

You know, I’ve kind of wondered to myself if I really need to do this, to dive into working out. The truth is that I’m not really overweight or anything, and I doubt that foregoing the off-season exercising would do much damage. I guess I have a few reasons:

#1: Fall and winter months can be especially hard to stay active in as it tends to be cold outdoors, which really limits a lot of physical activity. That coupled with the fact that you have a streak of holidays and get-togethers, it can make it really difficult to not put on a few pounds. So by working out over these months, I can actually be gaining ground instead of falling behind. How satisfying it would be to enter 2007 in better shape than I was in during 2006!

#2: Discipline is really healthy. It’s good to force yourself to do something like this, to go through the discomfort and the hassle of working out. For me, anyway, it can kind of overflow into other areas of life. If I keep myself on a short leash and am able to stick with this program for a while, I really think that I’ll benefit in ways other than simply the physical side of it. I just think it’s healthy for us to not always get our way.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9: Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

It’s good to get into a habit of not giving in to our desires. Even if I don’t drastically need to lose weight right now, I think if I discipline myself in this area it will have a positive impact on other areas of my life, where I could really use more discipline. It would be good to have my body be a slave to me instead of vice versa.

#3: Why not? I am so blessed to have the opportunity to get myself in better shape physically — and I even have so many workout partners to choose from — so why not get into it? Even if I’m not in passable shape as it is, why not get into better shape? If I can get stronger, leaner, or faster — and I have the luxury of being able to do it fairly easily, with such great YMCA facilities to visit — then why not? I don’t think I’ll run the risk of obsessing over it, but I just figure why not work to better myself since I have this wonderful opportunity.

I think about the people who don’t have access to a gym or a set of weights, yet they make do with what they have, lifting what they can, running around where they can. If somebody in those circumstances can do it, I have no excuse for not being at my best. Not only do I have access to a handful of beautiful facilities, but I have plenty of people inviting and urging me to come along.

So… as you can tell, I’m kind of excited. I realize that this is just one workout, and I have definitely had my fair share of blown or forgotten workout plans. But I am just really hoping I can get on a schedule of working out at least a few times a week. No one individual workout is going to make that big of a difference, but if I can just get in a habit of it week after week, then after a couple of months I will probably have made quite a bit of progress!

I really hope this isn’t also the last time I mention working out at the Y. Friendly readers, if I stop mentioning working out, please feel free to hound me. I really don’t want to lose the inspiration, but from experience I know it’s very possible to do!

I read this last night before I went to bed. It really struck me, so I’m going over it again and kind of breaking it down.

James 4:5

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

It’s so black-and-white. We can’t live life on the fence. To me, I’m just realizing that when you want to follow God, you have got to be willing to give up anything that would distract you or that would keep you from Him. We just cannot have it both ways as Christians; we have got to shake off anything that is not obedient to Him.

James 4:7-9

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

We need to be humble and willing to be molded. I think a big mistake that Christians can make is assuming that, “Well, surely God is going to have me always do this.” We need to constantly allow God to mold us and to shape us; we should always be willing to accept new marching orders, even if that means something drastically different than what God had us doing a week ago. We need to be humble enough to accept that and never figure that we have finally gotten our life figured out to the point where we don’t need (or want) God’s direction.

I also love how it’s clear how we can get close to God if we feel far away. If we draw close to Him, He will draw close to us. It’s a really helpful reminder for me in times where I’m tempted to think, “God, where are You?” I know He hasn’t moved, so I need to press in harder and draw closer.

James 4:13-17

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

Finally… it’s so true, but we have no idea what life will bring us. We don’t even know how long we’re going to live, so how in the world can be predict what we’re going to be doing? I just think we have to make it a habit to humbly go to God every day and ask, “What is it You want me to do today?” If we are truly willing to drop everything for the sake of being obedient to Him, then it’s a really comforting feeling. All you need to do is exactly what God tells you to. Nothing more, nothing less.

Plus, since we have no idea how much time we have left on earth, doesn’t it make sense to use every day to the fullest? With the precious hours and days you have left, use them to draw closer to God, to your family, and to pursue whatever it is that God has placed on your heart.

I love the last line of that paragraph, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter. Instead of legally defining sin, this is worded so simply that every human being can understand it. If you are knowingly doing something (or not doing something) that is against God’s will, that’s sinning. We don’t need “thou shalt nots” because God has it printed on our hearts to the point where we know when we are obeying.

I’m making a slight change to the comment system in hopes to avoid spam comments, as I have been getting dozens a day lately. Anyway, now when you leave a comment, it just asks you to enter your name in twice. Simple enough, but I think it might just do the trick.

So keep that in mind if you’re leaving a comment — it will ask for it twice or else the comment won’t go through. Family Roomers shouldn’t have a problem, though, as it automatically inserts their username into the fields.

I hope this wards off spam!

Thanks for all of the prayers, guys. From what I last read, the officer is still in critical condition. Please continue praying for him and everyone involved in the events over the past couple of days. Thanks.