Tag: Philippians

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AntiSocial

It is always an interesting debate for me on days like today as to whether I should work from home or not.  I actually have a day with limited scheduled meetings, and I feel pretty good I could bang out some good work today from my home office.  But there is one thing that is missing – people.

Yes, and that a pretty important part of life – especially for those who follow the Christ.

For the last year or so Andrew and I change the background of our home computer each month from to a background from the selection of month themed backgrounds at Smashing Magazine.  This month we could not find something we really liked, so I removed the August background and replaced it with this one:

Yes, it’s a great reminder to live with intention and get out and actually meet with people.  I’ll tell you, I need this reminder on a daily basis, because personally I am content to sit in my cube and interact with my monitors.  But the Christ as encouraged us to impact people, and we do that with interactions.

To wrap this up on this Friday, I thought this verse from Philippians would be perfect.  It seemed even more so since it happens that both boys were assigned this verse as their memory verse this week!!!

 1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

 5In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:  Philippians 2:1-5 New International Version (NIV)

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Limits

My post is quite late this morning due to some morning commitments.  Even now I am balancing posting something meanfuling with a hand full of thorn producing, life killing tasks.

So due to that and because it’s Friday, which means that everyone is thinking about Football or the coming weekend,  here is just a simple thought for today.

I found this quote which I thought was worthy of some consideration

“Our duty as men is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist.” – Teilhard de Chardin 

It’s an interesting thought, and one that I think is even easier for those that have entrusted themselves to the Christ.  Take a look at here

13I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Philippians 4:13  New International Version (NIV)
 
and here

 31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31 New International Version (NIV)

It seems that we as humans tend to want to place limits on ourselves – based on our experiences or our confidence in ourselves.  But wow, when you consider where you strength comes from, it seems that maybe those limits are self imposed, and we would do good to consider the words of Mr. Teilhard.

What do you think?  Let’s be loosed from our limits!

 

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He’s Back…

Yesterday, I was in a conference call in the morning that got a little tense.  It was really no big deal in the scheme of things, and for the most part was just a misunderstanding of who was going to do what part of this project that we are all working together on.  I felt good about the meeting, and I knew that this topic would come up.  During the first minutes of the meeting I proclaimed to a coworker via instant message  that I was going “to take a new tact”.

Then it got tense, and there we some mild disagreements and debates and I felt him coming back.  Who do you ask?  Me!  The selfish, short tempered, brash me.  And I could sense that others where seeing, or I guess in this case hearing him as well.  ARGH!  Now, I had a platform to stand on that was well positioned.  More than likely I may have even been in the “right”.  But really, it’s not about me, and the tone that was coming across the phone was changing the tone of the meeting in the negative in a hurry. ARGH!

Later in the day I watch a video clip about how we live lives behind veneers.  The talk presented two views the human view and the God view.  Interestingly enough the human view was about well, the human itself, and the God view was about all the other humans on this earth.  It all ended with a fantastic summation and a challenge – are we exposing the human like veneer or the God like veneer?  Is it about me, or is it about everyone else.

It seems to me that life actually works out better when we take the God like approach and focus on others.  Somehow in some way, that way always seems to have some way of making it better in the end for us!  Yet, we still want to put ourselves in the lead.  It’s quite a paradox!

Well, I hope I was able to push myself back into the background as the meeting went on.  What I do know is that the rest of the day, I felt like a black cloud of frustration was hanging over my head, since I know I let him back!  The great thing is that I have a new day to start over and let God shine in my interactions.

How about you?  Are you choosing the human like thing or the God like thing?

 

 1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

 5In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Philippians 2:1-5 New International Version (NIV)
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Hey Campers

Back in my youth, during the summers, my older brothers and I spent a lot of time at sports camps.  So much that there was a gentleman in town who would call us ‘camper’ every time he saw us.  He was the basketball camp director, so we actually referred to him as camper as well.  That led us to start referred to everything we did in the summer as some sort of camp.  If we had to paint a room – it was ‘paint camp’.  If we had to work on someone’s yard it was ‘mowing camp’.  Eventually if we felt someone needed to learn something in detail, we would say ‘looks like you need to go to ‘dishwasher unloading camp’ or ‘math camp’ or ‘how to be quiet camp’.  It seems that is what camps are – a time to get away and focus on one specialized idea or concept.

Well, tomorrow I am heading off to camp, and I get to speak to a bunch of elementary and junior high children about ‘Living Out Loud’.  During my preparations for this bit, I stumbled over these words in Philippians.

4Always be glad because of the Lord! I will say it again: Be glad. 5Always be gentle with others. The Lord will soon be here. 6Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. 7Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel.

Can you think of a better way to Live out Loud than to emulate these words from Paul?  Maybe its time we head off to ‘gladness camp’ and ‘gentleness camp’ or ‘peace camp’?

More ideas about this ‘camp’ concept next week… if I can keep my focus – maybe I need to go to ‘focus camp’.

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Destructive Distractions

Last week when I was traveling back to Atlanta from Orlando one the vans, the one with most of the children had a tire with low pressure. We added air in Orlando before we started up the road, but as we made our way into the middle of Georgia, we noticed that tire was losing air again. I was traveling in  the middle van of the van sandwich and called up to the lead vehicle informing them that the tire was a little bit low. We were only 20 miles from our scheduled stop and so we attempted to make it to exit in the peanutty town of Perry.  But before we could get there, the tire decided it must not like peanuts and scattered itself all across the interstate.

After pulling to the side, and assessing the situation, we loaded the children safely in the other vans and the two guys from that van stayed to change the tire.  Did, I mention the tire was on the driver’s side, and so changing in on a 3 lane interstate with semi trucks traveling by at 7 gabillioin miles a hour is no fun.

As we sat eating Chick-Fil-a we received two calls from the guys in the Van.  The first one to say they were complete and coming to meet us, the second one, moments later saying that they were not going anywhere and the van had a serious issue, and that the spare was now flat as well!!!

What in the world?  Well, after a tow to the local dealership, we discovered that the tire had been placed on backwards.  Can you even do that?  Yes  and because of that a whole lot of damge was done to the area around the wheel well, you know – brakes lines, brake assemblies etc..   Before you start laughing, did, I mention the tire was on the driver’s side, and so changing in on a 3 lane interstate with semi trucks traveling by at 7 gabillioin miles a hour is no fun. 🙂

The guys felt terrible, they were tired, they were distracted, they were focused on other things.  Both of these guys knew how to change a tire, but when you are not paying attention – bad things can happen.

 You ever have a day like that? 

Oh yes, we all do, and that is why we see warnings like these in Philippians.

  8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9, New International Version)

We know that when we dwell on the proper things, good things – like peace happen, but when we are distracted by the screaming trucks of life, we just can get things all messed up. 

Even today, I started this blog, and then lost my focus and almost completely forgot to complete it.  So today, stay focused and pay attention to where you mind is dwelling.