Move Towards a Hot Mess

When faced with a hot mess that we have made or watched someone makes a big mess and wanted to walk away. We see a person who is a total hot mess and say “I don’t know where to start” so we just walk away. Maybe right now in your life or sometime in your life you had someone who was a hot mess that you wanted to walk away from. Someone who had made such a big mess of their life that you just wanted to walk the other way. You watched the decisions they were making, their actions, and you just wanted to walk or run away from their hot mess. That little voice inside of you was saying “Don’t ask questions. Don’t get involved.” Alarms inside of you are going off, and it was so messy that you just pretend you didn’t notice anything and you walk away. Jesus addressed this very topic. One day Jesus and some lawyers were having a discussing with about thirty or so others around. When asked Jesus relied to the lawyer what does the scripture say about that? The lawyer correctly quoted the Old Testament scripture of love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, “You are exactly correct. Now go do that!” And as Jesus was leaving the lawyer looking for a loop whole said, “Well who exactly is my neighbor?” Jesus did what Jesus does best, rebuttal with a story or parable to make his point. It is one of the most famous parables we all know the Good Samaritan and it was applicable to the lawyer’s questions as well as to us today. The message in this parable is clear. We don’t have to think hard to understand what Jesus meant or the point Jesus was trying to drive home. But the last sentence Jesus gets us. He says, “Now go and do likewise.” That is a directive that is so much easier said than done. We see a need, we see messy people, and we know we should go and do likewise but it’s so hard. It’s hard to figure out who, the where, the when and the how.  We want to help but there is a fine line between helping and enabling. We all know people in our neighborhood, our families, our friends that when the phone rings and we see who is calling before we answer we already know they are only calling because they need something. What is in us that keeps us from answering. What is in us that as soon as we see the name on our phone we dread the conversation? What keeps us from responding like the Samaritan?

I believe there are three things that keep us from helping. First is inconvenience. Stopping and helping or moving towards someone else mess is inconvenient. Don’t we see people’s hot mess at our busiest time? We live in a busy culture. Being busy is not bad per say but we can be too busy. We can get busy and hyper focused on life so we say to ourselves “I don’t have time for you.” The priest and Levite were busy people. It was not like they were off to do something bad. More than likely they were off to the temple or church for a religious meeting. They were not evil bad people; they didn’t have the capacity of time for this man in their schedule. Sometimes we get so busy that we are too busy to follow Jesus. Here is a question to ask yourself if your life is too busy: Are the people who need you an inconvenience? Do you view them as inconvenience or an opportunity? We are too bust when messy people are inconveniences instead of opportunities to serve God, opportunities to love somebody. The second reason we walk on by is because it’s uncomfortable. Crossing over the street and moving towards a mess or messy people is uncomfortable. We love and walk towards comfort. We strive for our comfort zone. Comfort zones are good but not a great place to live. It we only live in our comfort zone, we may feel safe but we will not be happy. We will never achieve the best version of ourselves inside our comfort zone. We achieve the best version of ourselves outside our comfort zone moving towards the mess. God is using that chaos, that uncomfortable circumstance to help us love and grow. If we insist only on comfort boredom will quickly set in. The third thing that keeps us for moving towards a mess is we are no longer in control. We love control. If you move towards someone else mess you give up control. When you moved towards someone else mess you will learn quickly you could not control their anger, you could not control their drug use, you could control their violent outburst, you could control their very bad decision making. You know it gets frustrating. God doesn’t want you to control your messy person. God doesn’t want you to fix them. God wants you to be there, love them, and walk beside them. So if you are thinking your job is to fix the mess, take some pressure off yourself. God wants you loving and being there. People, especially mess people, are not projects. If you are wired like me, you like to embrace a problem and work until you find a solution. We need to let go and say God you got this. It’s not to address peoples messes the way we think they need to be fixed but to show up, be there, and let God do His thing.

Be nice to one another:

Tommy 

BEST Mess

The one thing we all have in common is we have all made a mess.  Some of us have messed up so bad that we feel that it can never be whole again. Maybe in our finances, marriage, relationships, career, school we have made a mess. We might look good on the outside and still functional, but on the inside we are a hot mess. We say to ourselves “I don’t know where to begin. I’m not sure I can do this.” We have all ignored our own conscious, our own advice and the advice of others. At some time in our life, we have ignored our friends and families members when they warned us. We blew through every stop sign of caution there was and we are left with one big hot mess. There are messes we inherit or just happen upon us but there are also hot mess that is 100% our own fault. Hot messes are what can bring us together with others is the same mess that brings God near.  We have all heard the scripture John 3:16 about God so loving the world that he sent his son Jesus. But many of us stop there. Verse 17 is the most important part. It says that God did not come to condemn the world but to save it. Jesus did not come to get into our face and say look what you have done. He didn’t come to say look at the hot mess you made of your marriage, your finances, your relationships, your children, your parents, your family, your career, your friendships, your reputation. God came into our mess to rescue us from our mess. Therefore, if we are behind or responsible for our own mess, then God came to rescue us from ourselves. The gospels are full of stories of this playing out in the most intimate of ways. Remember the day Jesus was in the temple. They brought to him a woman who was committing adultery. Her life was a hot mess. Her adultery had been publicly brought out. Everyone in town if they didn’t know before, they knew now. Jesus stands up to this woman who had made a total mess of her life and said, “Look at me. I don’t condemn you. I am not going to sentence you to what you deserve.” There was also a time a tax collector was hiding in a tree. What the story usually leaves out was this little tax collector would have had body guards with him. His first mistake was working as a tax collector, over charging people; he had become rich off the hard work of others. Jesus walks along, looks up at this mess of a man and says, “Come down to me. I am coming to your house.” In private, Jesus tells this messy man to leave this life of sin and follow me. But Jesus told him you just can’t walk away. You must first go make things right. Payback what you took with interest times two. The guy paid back the interest and even added more than the law allowed.

Here is what Jesus offers these messy people that he offers to us as well. It doesn’t matter how big your mess is and no matter how big of a hole you dug yourself in. Jesus offers himself. Jesus offers himself as a solution. The clearest picture we have of God is Jesus Christ. If we want to know what God thinks, read what Jesus said. If we want to know how God responds, then look who Jesus responded. Jesus said the father and I are one. Want to know what God is like; watch me. Every person Jesus invited to follow him was messy. Jesus said “I am the way and the light. I will show you the way forward and the way out of your mess.”  Any one of us, who has made a mess in our life, if totally honest, will admit they are in a dark place and need a light. They will admit they are in a mess and need a way out. Jesus did not pull away from messy people he invited them closer. He invited them to follow. In reality you cannot pray your way out of a mess that you behaved your way into.  There is no silver bullet, magic words, or perfect prayer. It is not that God is silent. God provides the light and if we follow that light we would avoid the mess. Our mess was avoidable but we stepped into it not by following Jesus but by following something else that was not God. God invites you to follow his son Jesus out of your mess. God will meet you in your mess. God is not offended by your mess. God will not condemn you for your mess. God views your mess as an opportunity to invite him into your life as He will draw you closer.

Be nice to one another:

Tommy 

“Don’t Invite Jesus to Dinner”

It begins in grade school, carries over with increased importance in junior high school, and then it became vital in high school. Even as an adult it is still of social significance. Who you eat with tell a lot about your character, reputation, and your status in the community. Preachers like to focus on the fact that Jesus dined frequently with sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors. Those individual who would be classifies as the outcast of society. The marginalized and forgotten to be included in a meal of honor with Jesus was not an insignificant occurrence. It teaches us inclusion as well as gives us a peek inside the heart of Jesus as well.  What some ministers glance over is the fact that Jesus also dined with the Pharisees. Jesus is invited not because he is considered an equal but because he is a curiosity who has been in the news. The esteemed guests are watching closely to see how Jesus fits in. Then Jesus decides to offend the guests. This scene becomes a lesson in how to lose friends and alienate people. Jesus has noticed how the Pharisees look for ways to move up the social ladder—or up the table, on this occasion. He has seen how they try to sit at the places of honor.

We have been in those awkward situations when we are a guest in someone’s home, standing before the dinner table, not sure where to sit. Most would not take a place at the end of the table, the seat of honor, unless, of course, the host invites us to do so. This kind of common sense would seem to be what Jesus is suggesting, but it is more than that. Jesus criticizes the guests for striving for status. “When someone invites you to dinner, you take the place of honor. Then when somebody more important than you shows up, you’re red-faced as you make your way to the last table and the only place left. You might as well go and sit at the last place in the first place. Then the host might say, ‘Come, sit with me.’ If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. Be content to be yourself.”

We still live in a classed society. Ethnic groups, immigrants, the poor, the homeless, the addicted, and the mentally ill face uphill battles. Lower class, middle class, upper class—we know the class in which we reside. When Jesus finishes insulting the guests, he begins to insult the host for who was included and who did not make the list: “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends, family, and those you’re trying to impress, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite people who don’t have similar interests, who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks, the least of our sisters and brothers, the poorest of the poor. They won’t be able to return the favor, but God will know.” The disciples want to pull Jesus to the side and say, “You might want to back off a little. First you went after the seating protocol, and as if that wasn’t rude enough, now you’ve gone after the guest list. Our host is an influential person. He could do good things for us. All you have to do is act friendly and keep your elbows off the table. We won’t have any more dinner invitations if you can’t get through the appetizers without infuriating the person who invited us.”

Why does Jesus have to stir up trouble? Why does he criticize people who invite him into their homes? Why can’t Jesus leave a pleasant enough dinner party well enough alone? It is because Jesus understands what is at stake. We have to learn that at God’s table there is no need to jockey for position, because all are equally welcome. There are no throwaways when it comes to human beings. Christians are to honor the least among us—the poor and marginalized. While the Pharisees were striving to move toward the head of a rectangular table, Jesus’ table is a round one where no person is better than another. The character of our guest list—who is on it and who is not—has everything to do with whether or not we are being Christ’s church. The followers of Christ have to learn that any table where Jesus is present is a table where everyone is welcome, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, a foreshadowing of the kingdom where God cares for all and all we can do is give thanks.

Hope to see you in service & worship too

Tommy 

Burnout: Finding Strength

We all have or will experience burnout at some time in some area of our life. Burnout occurs in our careers, our relationships, and even in our faith. Life causes us to become tired, weary, frustrated, and hopeless. Sometimes we need a good night or a good week of rest. We shouldn’t make life altering decisions when we are tired and worn out. We need to get away and rest physically, mentally, and spiritually. We also need to take care of our physical bodies, our mind and our spirit. But others times we need more. One of the deceptions of burnout is we think we can handle it all on our own. For some of us the hardest thing to ever do is to ask someone else for help. Burnout convinces us that if we just work harder, buckle down, and press on we will be just fine. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If we are in the middle of a season of burnout, more work or more pressure only aspirates the problem. The truth is regardless of how strong we think we are, none of us are self-sufficient. We all need spiritual resources to live our lives. However for many of us, when burnout occurs we shy away from where we know the presences of God might reside. We try to distance ourselves for the spiritual resources we need to find the strength to move forward through this tough season of burnout. We need strength.  The strength we don’t have but we need comes from overcoming our vulnerability, overcoming our weakness, and overcoming our fear.  I have witnessed a lot of lives ruined, bad decisions made, and destruction when people reacted out of fear, desperation, and frailty. The natural thing to do is to run and hide from the one true God that can provide for us the strength we need. We can immerse ourselves into a faith community and find strength in the fellowship, comfort and sanctuary that only a faith community can provide. We must be willing to be open to listening and learning of all the diverse ways God works in our midst. It is in community we find unity in numbers and shared experiences. It is in faith community we witness God work in both miraculous heroic ways and in that still small voice of love and comfort. If you are going through a season of burnout in your relationships, your career, or in your faith journey, you will find strength in a faith community that is listening and open to God’s presences. May you find the peace, hope and strength you need to move forward through your season of burnout.

Peace, Love and Happiness

Tommy 

Just Another’s Response to Orlando

As an ordained minister, father, husband, and a guy who lives in America, I feel a painful needed to write a brilliant response to the tragedy that occurred Saturday night in Orlando. I wish I had great words of wisdom that I could pen that would give everyone great comfort, hope, and a renewed since of peace. But I have no words. What we witnessed was unspeakable incomprehensible evil.

 I ask that we as a society for a moment turn down the volume of rhetoric that is increased by the media, politicians, and religious leaders. We must realize everyone has an agenda and it is not necessarily to comfort those who are hurting and whose lives have been devastated. We can all cast blame when we cannot conceptualize such an act of terrorism. If we are courageous enough to silence our own agenda we will find many families that are devastated, hurting, confused, and in a state of shock. We will find a community of liked individuals that were singled out as a target in a state of fear. If we have the bravery to turn down the rhetoric, we will hear a nation that is fearful of the stranger and a trust that has been destroyed. I concede that there are many questions that need to be answered and action taken. But now is not that time.

So let us only look at the facts without any agendas. A disturbed individual filled with hate systematically planned, orchestrated and maliciously murdered and injured a group of innocent people.  That is pure evil. Evil is evil no matter the weapon used or its availability, no matter the religious affiliation, no matter the lifestyle of the victims, no matter the nationality of those murdered, and no matter our government’s effectiveness to protect us. Evil has no empathy for the victims but we as a society should. We should turn down the volume of rhetoric and listen to those hurting, confused, devastated, and in shock in losing a loved one to a senseless act. We should comfort the families that will have to bury their loved one due this repulsive act. Any act of terrorism has two vital components. First is to cause death and destruction with the greatest of impact and causalities. The other is to incite fear, mistrust and divide. The first has happened and we have no control over. The second as a community we have total control over. So let us pray for those who are burying the innocent. Let us support, encourage, and uplift a community that was singled out as a target. Let us stop the rhetoric, finger pointing, and grandstanding because people’s lives have been forever destroyed.  There will be a season to reevaluate, dissect, and analyze if this could have been prevented but now is not that time. We must realize that hate was the catalyst that ignited this massacre. So let’s try to love more, pray more, empathize more, trust more, and listen more. Let us be open not to rhetoric but to the spirit of God and the spirit of humanity. There will be a time we can get back on personal crusades, agendas and debate the issues but now is not the time. Let us as a nation mourn for those that evil took away from us. Let us listen less to the social media and pray more for comfort. We might never know the why but for now remember those who are hurting, confused, scared, and devastated. They are the only thing that matters.  

What can we do? As a community, let us cry with those who are mourning and with those who are hurting.  Let us have the have courage and unity exclaiming to all who will listen exactly what this act is: evil. Evil: unadulterated, pure, and simple.

You can be the light in our dark world.

Tommy 

What Makes You Happy? Pleasure & Happiness

For the past several weeks we have been spending a lot of time talking about what makes us happy. Many have wondered why so long about one topic. For me it’s personal. The one single thing that totally breaks my heart as a pastor, a family member, or a friend is to witness someone I care about undermining their own happiness. I watch from the sideline as they make decisions that will eventually undermine their own happiness. Maybe you have experienced this as well. You see it coming, it’s not a sixth sense or physic powers, but you witness people constantly doing things that undermine their own happiness. It is tragic to watch. We dare not say anything. The truth is there are enough unavoidable things in this life that causes us pain. It is truly heartbreaking when something that is 100% avoidable but somehow people don’t avoid it. There is one thing in this life that is consistent and that Jesus even speaks about. Jesus says in this life everyone will have trouble. So with all the unavoidable trouble why would anyone create more trouble? So it breaks my heart to witness people make decisions or do things that I know will cause them pain and trouble which all is totally avoidable. These people are not immediately but eventually undermining their own happiness.

The reason we undermine our own happiness is confusion about two ideals: pleasure and happiness. And the relationship between these two words: pleasure and happiness. The biggest part is because of the dynamics between pleasure and happiness. God created us with the capacity for pleasure and happiness. God wants us to experience pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a word that has gotten a bad overtone especially in religious circles. God is not against pleasure. It’s not an either or. The problem is our priority. When we place pleasure a higher priority over happiness, we have a problem.  When we choose pleasure over happiness you get neither. Truth is one leads to the other but the other ultimately undermines the one. Happiness can lead to pleasure but if you only pursue pleasure and forget the principles that lead to happiness and the end of the day you have neither. If you are an adult,  you will know already that pleasure will eventually lose its pleasure and instead becomes a prison. Over time pleasure loses to pleasure. A pastime becomes a pathway to a habit, to an addiction. These are not things that are necessarily illegal, immoral, or dangerous. Pleasure eventually loses to pleasure. The Apostle Paul when writing to the church in Rome about this says when you continually say yes to pleasure over and over again you eventually become a slave to it. It begins to own you. We may say “I’m not a slave I have control over this.” But if we keep saying yes over and over again to our pleasure we are no longer choosing. We have given up control. We become a slave when it becomes something we have to do not something we want to do. Paul’s says you can be a slave to sin, what every separates us, or obedient to the Good shepherd. Happy people already know this. Jesus says sow happiness, sow and sow some more and you will eventually reap happiness. But it’s not immediately but it reaps better. Our trouble is when we are unhappy we want to do something that will immediately make us happy. We go straight to the pleasure to feel good. We feel like we need to do something now to quickly change our status from unhappy to happy but Jesus says is takes time and we got to sow happiness not pleasure.

 Is there any pleasure that is undermining your happiness? Again it doesn’t have to be anything illegal or immoral. You might not want to admit it, even to our self, because you may feel you may have to do anything about it. You don’t have to do anything but you might want to start by being honest with yourself. Is there a pleasure that you have given into that undermines your happiness or undermines the happiness of those you love? Have you ever had a child ask you: "why do you always buy shoes, be on your phone, buy a new car, drink and act that way?" Is pleasure undermining your happiness? If you say yes to your pleasure you are rejecting Jesus’ offer for an extraordinary life. I’m not implying anything was intentional. Without meaning to, have you placed a pleasure over your pursuit of happiness? Only you know the answer. You never ever have to share it with anyone else. But if you continue the path you are on, you will one day look back and wished you would have tried something different. If that’s you, you’re not a bad person, just a sheep that needs a good shepherd and a life that doesn’t drain you but gives you more life. That exchange is one you will never ever regret.

Peace, Love and Happiness

Tommy 

What Makes You Happy?

This week we begin a new exciting sermon series on what makes you happy. What makes you happy can either be a question or a statement.  Some of us already know and have a clear picture of exactly what makes us happy.  We are content, joyful, and at peace with our daily lives. However for most of us we are not too clear on exactly what makes us happy.  We might not be totally miserable but there just seems to be something missing from our lives.  Over the next six weeks we are going to try to inform you of exactly what will make you happy. Please do not take offense to this outlandish statement as what right does someone else has to advise you what will make up your happiness. But for some of us, many of us, we don’t really know what makes us happy. It’s sort of a hit or miss kind of thing. But here is the litmus test: if you keep trying different things to make yourself happy and you’re not happy. If you haven’t reached your goal of happiness then it is possible you are missing the mark. Everywhere we look, TV, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, companies are spending trillions of dollars to tell us or sell us something that they guarantee will make us happy. We have all fallen for it. If we are honest we have all said or thought  if only I had, I drove, I wore, I looked like, I achieved, then and only then will I be happy. Most of the time when we get there we find out what we thought was going to make us happy failed to fulfill us. Even when we have acquired the thing we put of hope of happiness in, we still might not be happy. We might feel accomplished and proud of our achievement but not happy.  Many of us have forgotten either temporary or chronically, what makes us happy. True happiness cannot be marketed or sold. So in the consumer driven world in which we live, you will not hear advertiser tell you this simple fact. You will not hear them talk about what truly, honestly, unequivocally will make us happy. We have all heard the truth that happiness cannot be bought. So if happiness can’t be bought how do we obtain it? Join us for this exciting six week adventure as we look at what makes us happy. Happiness just might be closer and easier to acquire than you think.

Peace, Love and Happiness:

Tommy