It has been really cold here as it has in many places. The other day Deb was getting one of my heavier coats. She stuck her hand in the pocket and found this surprise.
Yes, it is a very rare find. It was the last playoff game that we attended by the Browns in 1994. Yes, playoffs and Browns rarely go in the same sentence. We would be happy just to win a game. But then I digress. It caused us to remember the game and the details of it. One little factoid - the Browns head coach that year was one Bill Belichik and the defensive coordinator was one Nick Saban (now longtime head coach at Alabama).
On the last day of the year, we love to look back. But then tomorrow, we start to look forward. We make our plans and New Year's resolutions. I have been fond of using something I called Be Goals which I have written about before. It is the concept of setting personal goals of internal change and transformation. But as I look into next year, I also want to be content in just living day to day. I want to approach each day with a fresh set of eyes and expectantly looking forward to just what God is doing that day. I also want to be thankful. How much God has indeed blessed me and how much I take for granted. I am talking about blessings of family, relationships, and most of all faith. God has indeed been good to me all year and I know, no matter what he is a God fully worthy of my trust.
I love those Sports Sciences videos that break down the athletic marvels like this block by Lebron James into incredible science nuggets.
For example, in this video it talks about the reaction time of the block being .20 of a second, about the same amount of time to pop a champagne cork (not sure why they picked that one).
Do you ever marvel at the wonder of Christmas? If I were going to script it out, I would not script out the way God did. God, the infinite creator of the heavens and earth enters our finite time and space, He enters the birth canal of the same woman He created. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords comes into a completely impoverished family and born in abject poverty in a non-descript town (Bethlehem). He is raised in a town that is not known for much of anything (Nazareth). He takes on a trade that is reserved for the common man (carpenter). He is obedient to fallible parents. He is an itinerant, homeless preacher for three years. He suffers tribulation and trial just like we do. He suffers a ghastly execution reserved for the worst of criminals. He endures hell for three days. That is just a sampling. The highest of the high becomes the lowest of the low.
I can't get my head around this. And that is a good thing. If I got it, it would lose its amazement. But what I love is, I can't say I am deserving. I marvel, I wonder at the perfect sacrifice of Christ. And that is worth celebrating.
I am old enough to remember when Jimmy Carter infamously said to Playboy magazine in 1976, "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." It was ranked on Time Magazine's Top 10 Unfortunate Political One Liners. Carter has been ridiculed many times for that comment. Some just think it was goofy (of course men lust) and others thought just too information. But I appreciate Carter's honesty and being honest with ourselves and before our creator is the first step towards transformation from lust.
Last week I talked about the problem with sexual dysfunction in our society. It is not at all a shock to me that accusations against prominent men are coming out of the woodwork. There is a problem in the male community that rarely is spoken of. How we view women is a byproduct of many things. If there is a root problem, there has to be a root solution.
Do you see that you actually have a problem with how you view women? If you don't think you do (which is a very small percentage of men), then read no further.
Are you committed to a relationship with your spouse? Again, the answer has to be yes. You have to believe that marriage is a covenant.
Do you view that lust is damaging to that relationship? And I am talking about just viewing other women in that manner. BTW, this is damaging also to friendships you can have with women.
Commit to taking it to the Lord and asking him to change your heart. This has to be done daily. You see, there is an adversary that would long to see you mess up your life. Ask God to protect the sanctity of your marriage. Paul says "No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man, and God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide a way of escape so that you may be able to endure it." (2 Cor. 5:17).
Aggressively guard against that which comes into your eye-gate. Deb and I love movies and we know that part of our movie watching process is to avoid any movies with erotic stuff and fast forward through parts as they pop up. There is a reason Paul says to flee immorality. Put that into the vernacular of our modern Internet society and it means we must be fiercely resistant.
Step 5 is precarious without Step 4. Humans are notoriously weak. I know some well-meaning Christian men who have accountability groups. This is in and of itself a good thing, but absolutely not enough by itself. A man cannot be transformed by other men and he can't will himself out of this problem. I find that if I am on the right track, I am naturally looking at women differently than if I am on the wrong track. I also know it does not take much to get on the wrong track.
In the past, allegations of sexual misconduct might occur maybe a few times a year. Now, it is seemingly several times a week. Matt Lauer, Al Franken, Trent Frank, John Conyers, Roy Moore and the list goes on and on. What is going on?
To some level, much of what has occurred happened in a much earlier time and women are increasingly emboldened to speak out when in the past they might have been afraid to. I wonder how much of this has occurred that we don't know. But I happen to think the insidious nature of how we look at sexual relationships goes way beyond specific situations to a society that is absolutely saturated with the wrong images of sex.
As much as 20% or more of Internet searches involve pornography. It is so readily available and so easy to get. Free and paid T.V. also glamorize sex as casual and fun. Virtually none of this occurs in the context of traditional marriage. The goal in pornography is self-satisfaction. The other party is simply the means to this end. It glamorizes how women can exist to pleasure men. Men in particular are really good at storing these mental images in their computer brain and the images intensely cloud how they look at the opposite sex. The can no longer look at them as people but as pleasure makers.
I participate in a number of close knit men's groups and the vast majority of them have struggled with exposure to Internet porn. One pastor I spoke with said 90-95% of the young men (as early as middle school) are purveyors of Internet porn. No wonder we have dysfunction with women, and especially our wives. Sex in the form of marriage is all about other-satisfaction and complete transparency. I wrote about this in my previous blog on intimacy in response to the death of Hugh Hefner.
There are damaging consequences to this behavior. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says that we are to flee immorality. The word used here is the word porneia which is where the word pornography comes from. He goes on to say that every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body (1 Cor. 6:18-20, emphasis mine). In other words, no other sinful behavior has the capacity to wreck a man physically. I believe that is what David was dealing with in Psalm 32 when he said, "when I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long". The woods are full of people who have messed themselves up. And the list of those that could mess themselves up is the vast majority of us.
Fortunately there is a solution and I will explore this in another week.
It has been a long time in-between blog posts. First it was writer's block and then a series of trips for both business and personal down south. Much of the time I was in Florida but now back into the long winter season here in NE Ohio.
I am one of those people who suffer from a malady called Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD for short. Mayo Clinic defines it as a type of depression that's related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. Symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody. Strange as it is, I have lived in three of the four snow belts (NW Indiana, NE Ohio, and Western Michigan) which make for long winters. When I was in Florida, I almost felt like I had unlimited energy. When we got home, I felt like someone has sucked the strength completely out of me. I cope through the winters with a lot of Vitamin D.
I have a love-hate relationship with the seasons. Part of me just loves the four seasons. I really think the bad weather in Cleveland from December through April just makes me appreciate the really nice weather from May through October. It also really helps to see the beauty of all the seasons. Today, I decided to take my bike out in 40 some degree weather. Now some of my fellow bicycle enthusiasts will go when it is much colder, but I usually cut it off at 50. But I have found that just getting out even when others aren't helps me to be aware of the beauty around me. That appreciation helps my outlook. God has beauty even in the midst of winter doldrums.
We are in a series of messages in church called "All Things New" talking about what the new heaven and the new earth will be like. I read Randy Alcorn's book Heaven and it really challenged me to look at just the glimpse of heaven that this earth is like. Take things like athletics. Do I think athletics and competition will be heaven. I do! Think of things that give us the greatest joy and multiple by hundred, yet without sin. Competition is referred to in the Scriptures as something positive. Paul, for example talks about running and boxing in such a way as to be successful.
I have seen this video several times over the past number of weeks. This man is color blind and has never seen colors. His family gets him a pair of glasses that allows him to see colors for the first time. This is the kind of amazement that we should see in all we do on this earth and even more as we think of eternity.
He was known to only a few and even to them, not well. He was apart from his family, but not completely estranged. His brother was shocked as shown in the video. He was not associated with any extremist organizations. He was by all accounts well off financially. He had a girlfriend but even she was shocked. Yet, Stephen Paddock meticulously planned and carried out a mission of mass execution of strangers.
My wife during the course of coordinating meets a person for the first time and literally only a few minutes later says calls her a liar, says she is getting bad vibes from her, and questions her faith. My wife, who does not have a mean bone in her body, was devastated. There is not a person on this earth who knows my wonderful wife better than I do and I cannot imagine more undeserved comments.
We see in these situations two opposite situations. The first is not suspecting the monster within and the second is making instant conclusions about people we hardly know. As humans, we love to sit in judgment, but most times we get it wrong either way. The human heart is amazingly complex and underneath it all no one can understand it. To quote my favorite poet Shrek "ogres are like onions" meaning they are complicated. Jesus (a little better source) said that he could never require man's testimony "because He knew what was in the heart of man" (John 2:25).
In the course of every day dealings, I constantly have to remind myself of this truth. Most times I have no idea what is going on in the hearts of minds of people. When I want to pre-judge people I hardly know, I have to stop and try to see them as God sees them. I have to take the high road which is what Deb took with her false accuser. She instantly apologized for offending the woman even though she knew she had done nothing wrong.
What about overt wickedness like in Las Vegas? It should remind us of the depravity in each of us. But it should also spur us to the good that is in us. The stories of heroism, of the many who donated blood, of those who supported the grief of others, and so on.
Hugh Hefner had been married three times and dated numerous women over the course of his 91 years of life. He also claimed to have slept with over 1,000 women. By all definitions, by the definition of worldly pleasure, Hugh had it all. Many guys would have loved to traded places with him. Yet this epitome of success was strangely alone at his death. Hefner had no real transcendental relationships.
King Solomon seems like a close match to Hefner. 1 Kings 11 tells us he "loved foreign women" and he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines (mistresses, girlfriends). If you add up the seven hundred and the three hundred, it strangely matches the 1,000 of Hefner. Solomon was the original Hugh Hefner. But we get a sneak peek of where that left him in the book of Ecclesiastes. It left him empty and void. Solomon calls his chasing after pleasure part of his "vanity and chasing after the wind".
I have been married 32 years. I have had my best friend by my side through thick and thin. I have someone whom I completely trust. I heard a great definition of intimacy as "someone whom you can be completely transparent with". God has wired the marital relationship to be so much more than physical. Intimacy is praying together. Intimacy is crying together. Intimacy is sharing thoughts together. Intimacy is just watching a movie together. And on and on it goes. I doubt that Hefner, the original playboy, really knew intimacy.
