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Generational Flaw Number Three - Nearsightedness

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:38:31 -0400

Myopia, more commonly known as nearsightedness, is found in 47 million Americans over the age of 20. I would argue that the number could be multiplied by 5 if we looked at those who live with nearsightedness but without the refractive error of the eye. We live in a world today where very few have long term goals and those that do are not disciplined enough do what it takes to achieve them. Let me throw out some made up statistics to prove my point (what? everyone else does?). There 250 million adults in America. That one is not made up. Let’s 10% of them have long term goals. I feel that is pretty generous. Think of ten people you work or go to school with. How many of them have long term goals? Exactly. So if we say that 10% have a long term goal, how many would you guess actually have the discipline and skills to achieve their goal? Maybe 1% of people? According to these made up statistics, 99% of people are not going much of anywhere with their life.

I’m not writing today to say I’m rocking 20/20 vision. I’m writing to bring awareness to the fact that every business, media source, and even your employer is shaping you to be nearsighted!
Every business wants you to jump at a once in a lifetime opportunity, a sale on the hottest product today. Every media source wants you to believe that the simplest and most trivial of actions by leaders and public figures are important when in fact there is genocide, hunger crisis, and epidemic disease taking place across the world that won’t make it on tonight’s news. Even your boss is promoting nearsightedness by demanding that

Generational Flaw Number Two - Entitlement

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 09:56:30 -0400

Immunity. Your body basically learns over time how to defend itself against infection and bacteria. What if we were infected and didn’t know it? Taran’s great aunt just recently passed away of cancer. The family just found out 8 weeks ago that she had this horrid disease. She had the disease much longer but she just found out.
Is it possible that we are infected and didn’t even know it? I think it is.

Being around church and the Christian community we can get to this place where we think we are immune to truth affecting us. We say, “Yes, that is true but it couldn’t possibly be for me.“ We’re amen-ing stuff that we aren’t doing in our own life. We’re just kind of immune to the fact that we’re infected ourselves. So I want to go ahead and jump into an area of infection that every single one of us seem to be effected by in this generation.

Entitlement
Our consumer generation has created a new level of the entitlement mentality.
Our sense of entitlement blocks our understanding of how incredible God’s grace really is.

We get caught up in the idea that we are owed certain things- a raise, a promotion, a job or position, and certain opportunities. We believe that people should make these happen for us. We believe that God should be working for us all the time and it’s the truth, He is.
But the greater truth in the situation is that WE should be working for the Kingdom and WE should be caught up in the fact that the greatest thing WE are Entitled to is a relationship with the Almighty Creator of the universe and WE GET to serve Him. If you really want to experience God’s grace in the fullest we must overcome this disease and be healed of this infection of entitlement.

Warning signs of Entitlement

• You stop wanting to follow and obey the men and women above you.
• You can’t stand to be told you are wrong.
• You think that rules don’t apply to you.
• You have a lack of respect for others people’s schedules, time, and property.
• You frequently use the phrases “why did they?” And “I can do that better.”
• You stop honoring people older than you.
• You assume that other people should take care of things that you are responsible for.

The root of the idea of entitlement is the big ugly word Pride. It is only a matter of pride. Pride is not a beast that stays down after it is conquered. You have to slay the beast every day.

What kind of value do you place on the people around you?
Do you just use people for what you can get out of them?

We get caught up in our own sufficiency. The things we can do. The things we can take care of. Each moment that passes in which we take on our insecurities, our fears, and our own battles we forfeit the grace of God that for that moment. God’s grace cannot be earned!
Remember, our sense of entitlement blocks our understanding of how incredible God’s grace really is. What an awful thing to forfeit because of our selfish pride!

Generational Flaw Number One - Cowards

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 09:37:39 -0400

I remember when the internet just started. Yes, I guess that means I’m starting to get old to some of you out there. I remember the awful sound you had to listen to on stone age dial-up internet. It is like nails on a chalkboard (another thing that is seriously outdated). I remember America Online (AOL). I remember the first time instant messaging was in style. I remember sitting at the computer at night and being able to talk to my female friends from school through this medium where in real life I could not. I was too afraid. Too nervous. Fearful of the thought of rejection and pain that could come from them finding out I was not as cool as I could play through instant messaging with the time to carefully construct my sentences. Time to manipulate people to believe I was something I was not. These types of interaction are a short road to a manipulative lifestyle of fraud and fear.

I briefly let you into my middle school years and my entrance into a social being so that we together can better understand where our generation is today. If you want to understand someone from today you can usually go back to where they began and it will explain the current situation. The reason I write today is to address a current situation. And by situation I mean a major flaw in this generation ‘s character. I DO understand that this particular flaw does not apply to everyone in this generation but it does include a large majority.

I’ve found that today’s generation (young and old) will text instead of call because of the fear of confrontation, not for the convenience. This generation will tell lie after lie to avoid confronting their failures and flaws. Looking your failures and flaws right in the eye is the first step to overcoming them. Cowardice has existed since the beginning of time. Not all ancient Trojan warriors were full of courage like the movies are made up of. I’m sure there were some that were just scared and wanted to stay home and build chairs and hunt. Even Adam, the first known human, was a coward and was ashamed of his sin against God. Many times the feeling of shame is what drives the coward. Other times it’s insecurity and fear. Regardless of what drives the coward the simple response and answer for him is what we find from the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz...
Pray for Ca..Ca..Courage!

Courage isn’t something that is possessed but a decision that is made by an individual to overcome fear. At times this decision is made in a split second and other times over the course of several years. You don’t “have” courage just like you don’t “have” love. You make decisions and take actions that share love and that show courage. We have too many words in the English language such as these two that are action words but have somehow become inanimate feeling word. And in this they have lost their full meaning. We often see courage as a dominant action/emotion. “I have to have more courage than someone else. I have to overcome what they are doing to me.” But a large majority of our courage must be mustered up to overcome ourselves. Our fears, our failures, our insecurities.

What about you? Are there some situations you’ve been avoiding? Some people that you are ignoring because you are afraid of confrontation? Is shame driving your cowardly behavior?

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Purity

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:04:19 -0400

“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.”
1 Peter 1.22

Do you ever have those moments where you understand something you already knew?
Sure, you knew when you left home you would have to pay all the bills but you didn’t understand how much you actually cost your parents until then. I believe there is one of these moments in this short passage of scripture. Three simple complexly interconnected principles. Let me take just a moment to break these down and maybe we can have one of those moments together.

Early in this passage we read Peter instructing us “to prepare our minds for action, be self controlled (v13)” and to “be holy”, because God is holy (v16). His early instructions merely pave the way for the process of these three principles: obey the truth = purity = sincere love.
We can easily go to our day yesterday at work or sometime recently where it was obvious to us that we did not have sincere love for a brother or sister, even if it was only in our head/heart. Frustration has led to anger and anger is leading us to believe that revenge is the only way to rectify the situation.

Recognizing our emotions is so vital to our well being as humans and as Christians. Is your emotion valid? Sure, most are. That doesn’t mean it should just be expressed anyway you feel is right at the time. You see all of our processes are different from one another. Some of us suppress until a system breakdown. Some of us are an open book that’s constantly hitting everyone over the head with that emotional book. We always believe that our process beginning is because someone did something to set it off. Yes, many times that is true. We are victim to someone else’s issues. But other times we are victim to our own issues and everyone gets the wrath of our lack of purity and brotherly love.

Regardless of our process of dealing with negative emotions, we have let them signal us that something is wrong with the first process we spoke of that Peter is teaching us about.

obey the truth = purity = sincere love

Do you want to not feel guilty anymore?
Do you want to stop hurting people and share sincere love?
Stop disobeying the truth.
Do you want to feel pure?
Do you want to feel confident in who you are created to be?
Start obeying the truth. Simple thought. Hard application.

Obeying the truth will create purity in us like we’ve never experienced and allow God to become more present in us and through us in our brotherly love.

Remember this process begins with obeying the truth.
Not your truth. God’s truth.
Read His word and know His truth.

Inspiration vs. imitation

Mon, 8 Aug 2011 11:15:30 -0400

A few months back I did a radio interview on song writing and where inspiration comes from for artists and I wanted to share a few thoughts I shared during that interview.

Every artist is different. Every craft has its own nuances and intricacies. As a song writer, I began as an imitator. I imitated John Mayer, Bono, and a bunch of other guys I looked up to. I always hated my imitation of everyone else though. Slowly but surely I found my own voice and then I hated it too. I purposed in myself through college to find my voice, one that I could really be confident in.

You learn to be inspired. Yes, you can learn to be inspired. I learned the skill of inspiration and I’m still learning it. If you were to ask your favorite artist who they imitated growing up, chances are, you will probably be into them as well. At some point they moved from an imitator to simply being inspired by another artist.