Hero

A New Kind of Hero

by Max Lucado

I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep as the Father knows me. ~ John 10:14–15

BEHOLD A HERO of the west: the cowboy.

A thousand head of cattle pass behind him. A thousand miles of trail lie before him. A thousand women would love to hold him. But none do. None will. He lives to drive cattle, and he drives cattle to live. He is honest in poker and quick with a gun. Hard riding. Slow talking. His best friend is his horse, and his strength is his grit.

He needs no one. He is a cowboy. The American hero.

Behold a hero in the Bible: the shepherd.

On the surface he appears similar to the cowboy. He, too, is rugged. He sleeps where the jackals howl and works where the wolves prowl. Never off duty. Always alert. Like the cowboy, he makes his roof the stars and the pasture his home.
But that is where the similarities end.

The shepherd loves his sheep. It’s not that the cowboy doesn’t appreciate the cow; it’s just that he doesn’t know the animal. He doesn’t even want to. Have you ever seen a picture of a cowboy caressing a cow? Have you ever seen a shepherd caring for a sheep? Why the difference?

Simple. The cowboy leads the cow to slaughter. The shepherd leads the sheep to be shorn. The cowboy wants the meat of the cow. The shepherd wants the wool of the sheep. And so they treat the animals differently.

The cowboy drives the cattle. The shepherd leads the sheep.

A herd has a dozen cowboys. A flock has one shepherd.

The cowboy wrestles, brands, herds, and ropes. The shepherd leads, guides, feeds, and anoints.

The cowboy knows the name of the trail hands. The shepherd knows the name of the sheep.

The cowboy whoops and hollers at the cows. The shepherd calls each sheep by name.

Aren’t we glad Christ didn’t call himself the Good Cowboy? But some do perceive God that way. A hard-faced, square-jawed ranch- hand from heaven who drives his church against its will to places it doesn’t want to go.

But that’s a wrong image. Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd. The Shepherd who knows his sheep by name and lays down his life for them. The Shepherd who protects, provides, and possesses his sheep. The Bible is replete with this picture of God.

Eighty percent of Jesus’ listeners made their living off of the land. Many were shepherds. They lived on the mesa with the sheep. No flock ever grazed without a shepherd, and no shepherd was ever off duty. When sheep wandered, the shepherd found them. When they fell, he carried them. When they were hurt, he healed them.

Sheep aren’t smart. They tend to wander into running creeks for water, then their wool grows heavy and they drown. They need a shepherd to lead them to “calm water” (Ps. 23:2). They have no natural defense—no claws, no horns, no fangs. They are helpless. Sheep need a shepherd with a “rod and … walking stick” (Ps. 23:4) to protect them. They have no sense of direction. They need someone to lead them “on paths that are right” (Ps. 23:3).

So do we. We, too, tend to be swept away by waters we should have avoided. We have no defense against the evil lion who prowls about seeking who he might devour. We, too, get lost. “We all have wandered away like sheep; each of us has gone his own way” (Isa. 53:6).

We don’t need a cowboy to herd us; we need a shepherd to care for us and to guide us.

He’s not a cowboy, and we aren’t cattle. He doesn’t brand us, and we’re not on the way to the market. He guides, feeds, and anoints. And Word has it that he won’t quit until we reach the homeland.

ObamaCare... Passed

Why Obama deserves his health care bill….
I haven’t commented on the health care bill because I wanted to go online and read it. I went online and read the republicans bill and I also red the democrat’s bill. In truth they both are crap and not health care bills but rather insurance company giveaways.
The thing is both sides are lying to us. Democrats and Republicans, we fundamentally don’t have a health care problem in America. We have the best hospitals, best doctors, best prescriptions, best nurses, and best workers in our health care field. The problem is not access, but cost. People can get access if they could afford it. Here is the thing 20 % of what is in Obama’s Bill will fix the entire problem. If he just:
1. Allowed states to compete across state lines with minimum and regulations/ guidelines
2. Allowed people with preexisting conditions to buy insurance
3. Some way the government can examine Tort Reform by each individual state through participation with the federal government and the attorney general
4. Allow college students to stay on their parents insurance until 27
5. Pay for Medicare, by cutting certain programs out that only help lobbyist and not senior citizens.
Which these things are in his bill already and this is just 20% of the bill Barak Obama would fix Health Insurance problems in America and he would go down as the greatest president who ever lived. If he just did these FIVE things and these things are not liberal or conservative, they are common sense, and then all of this other stuff would go away and liberals and conservatives would HAIL Obama.
Here is the problem with what we have seen, Politicians walking around with “Big Balls” and what I mean by that is you have half of your nation saying that they don’t want something and you go ahead and do it anyway. As an African American is bothers me when people compare the health care fight to the civil rights movement. Barack Obama is not fit to tie the shoes of Dr. King or Malcolm X. so to compare him and this fight to the greatest leaders of our time is outrageous. Racial issues are moral issues not social issues and the two don’t belong in the same boat.
Now when it comes to the tea party movement let me say this I am not a far right guy or far left guy so I don’t understand why these people are so filled with hate. I respect their right to gather, rally and to vote the way they want. But to spit on someone, call John Lewis a nigger, and to threaten democrat representatives is outrageous. It is outrageous when it happens to liberals or conservatives. I don’t have to agree with you and I don’t have to like you to have a conversation with you and to work with you. This is the beauty of America; we all have the right to have our opinions. And as someone who is in the middle who follows all types of people from Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton and other middle of the road type of people I think that negative fighting is not good for our country. Make your argument to the end, but never hit, we all learned this in 2nd grade.
The fact is we know that our country is on the end tail of being bankrupted and if you don’t like the policies of the president or any other person you have the right to write him express your views and to vote your conscience. This process had gotten nasty and that is because everyone is lying. Bill Clinton said the facts the other day “this bill wont fix everything and it might make some things worse for some people but we have to give it time to sink or swim”. The health care debate is over for the moment and Barack Obama and the liberals won; now the test will be to see if we have what we have been promised. And in my view no matter who was in charge, unless it was Ron Paul, Condi Rice or Colin Powell, then any bill would have been crap because we have lost the integrity of moral judgment in our political process.

Sitting

I am finding myself lost for words because I am finding myself falling in Love with Jesus Christ again. Listen I am not perfect by any means in my relationship with Jesus Christ each and every day is a fight and fight that I am getting the crap kicked out of me in but each day I am getting back in the ring and I know that as time goes on the blows will hurt less and the sting will not be so painful…
The crazy thing is that I am falling more in love with Jesus Christ and Satan is tempting me more and more… its so easy to sit and do what Satan wants… but the joy of knowing that I am being obedient to Christ gives me strength… I am more crabby, moody, people are giving me intentional trouble, school is a lot of work and the little things in my life seem to be making me crazy at every moment of the day, but I am going… everyday I am going… every minute I am going… Thank you Jesus….
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope…”
This is the scripture I am holding onto everyday/moment of my life… I need to BURN this in my soul and remember that my obedience to Christ will give me favor with God and that I will get to know Him better. My prayer is that the Lord would sustain me and give me new desires that are not of this world and that I would keep falling in Love with Jesus Christ… I pray that I would continue to pray and seek God and pray for my friends and family everyday and several times throughout the day… I just want to sit in prayer… that’s my goal to sit in prayer…. God please create in my a place to sit in you… Amen…

Will You Come To The Christ?

I want us to stop and think about how blessed we are to have our salvation in Jesus Christ and to be completely forgiven of all our sins. This is not a claim that we make based on our works to try and earn salvation or what “we can do for God” but this is something that has been counted to us only by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God saw this pleasing and satisfying to himself that God the Father would set up the execution of His only Son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice for the sins of those who would trust in his redemptive nature: this is amazing and all together humbling when we who have cursed God in our lifestyles and abandoned his truth realize that His sovereign hand has reached out to rescue us from hell.
The seductive allure of the counterfeit has confounded men throughout the ages when discussing sin and redemption in the church. The church has tried to appease itself by “working hard” for God, rather than been completely satisfied in the Grace and Mercy that it our only hope.

From the beginning of the early church this heresy has been an underlined shadow in our theological and practical ministries that is choking the life out of local pastors, parishioners and people who are pursuing truth. Paul writes the book of Colossians because this heresy is running rampant among the believers in Colosse and the attack that is being presented is undermining the identity and sufficiency of Jesus Christ alone for the believer. Paul sets the record straight by making the main idea about this letter to be: “knowing the truth about the power of the gospel (death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) and the person of Christ (the deity and divine) is the believers (those who have trusted in Jesus Christ) best protection against the deception that we need “more” than Jesus to satisfy our needs (spiritual, physical, mind, body, and soul).

Colossians 1:13-14 “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

God’s grace and peace in a person’s life comes from knowing the power of the gospel. Money won’t do it, relationships with people won’t do it, degrees won’t do it and church won’t do it. The only thing that gives the soul any satisfaction is to know and experience God and all things in Him and Him alone. The reasons our churches are dying is because we have made works a claim of the gospel rather than Christ alone. Our justification before God was made whole the moment that Jesus Christ opened our eyes to see His truth and our sanctification was made whole the moment Jesus Christ called us to Himself in salvation and grace. We can never be loved by God anymore or any less at any point of our journey because we are not the determining factor in the relationship, Jesus Christ is.

God delivered us from the dominion of darkness and he is brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. God has literally transferred us by moving us from one place to another. He has taken us from Satan’s dark realm and placed us into the bright and hope filled light of Jesus Christ and Savior and Lord.

God’s work of redeeming a lost people (you and me), for which believers should be joyful and content about is pictured further through redemption and forgiveness. Jesus Christ has bought us back and set us free from sin, death, hell and the grave. To forgive someone means to ‘send away and to cancel”. Through Jesus Christ death and resurrection God has canceled the debt of sin because God the Father knew that we could never repay it, so now we are laid before the grace of God and have been adopted into the family of God because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In other wards: smoking, cussing, drinking, divorce, pre-martial sex, liberalism, hypocrisy, homosexuality, adultery, being a bad parent or bad spouse, murder, rape, stealing, lying, legalism are all sins that Jesus Christ died for that can be forgiven by God and DON’T DISQUALIFY A PERSON TO RECEIVE THE LOVE AND MERCY OF JESUS CHRIST.

Listen I am not saying that these things bring honor to God, we all have our personal sins and struggles, but what I am saying is that you can struggle with these sins and ALL sins and still have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ because your salvation and redemption is NOT BASED ON YOU, but rather based on what Jesus Christ did by dying on the cross for our sins. It’s not about works or “how good” you are. It’s only about accepting the free gift of Love and a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Will You Come To The Christ?

See ya Later Granny Gran

Its been a long first month to the year but God has been faithful. I lost my great grandmother on the 19th she was an amazing Christian lady, @ 92 she went to heaven. After she passed I was going through her Bible and looking at all the verses she had underlined and one that really stood out to me was in 1 Thessalonians when it talks about prayer. Praying was the center of her being because she knew that in prayer she connected to God and to be connected to God is the center of the soul in fellowship with Jesus Christ; that’s were she wanted to be. To my granny gran who l love even more and miss every second of the day, you will be missed and I love you and I am so happy that you are dancing with Jesus in fields of grace, you deserve it.

Massachusetts got a new senator, a republican to fill the seat of the now deceased liberal lion. It had nothing to do with a bad candidate; this had everything to do with the health care bill. People want health reform they just don’t want government take over reform. This was not about the president or even the candidate that won; this was only about health care. The republicans could have put a shoe as the candidate and they still would have won because people like their health care they just hate the cost.

The President made his first state of the union, no surprises from my perspective. Washington will continue to be Washington until the people throw all of the bums out and start over that’s my opinion. All should go; I support term limits.

I am looking forward to a new semester, a new change in ministry and all that goes with that. My New Years resolution is to love more people like my granny gran did.

Seasons Change

I’m turning 25 years old this year- wow is all I can say. I still remember being a kid in my first Muny play “We Pals” I think was the name of it. I remember sitting between my grandparents when my grandmother Margret went to heaven, wondering as a child where was heaven because I wanted to go there to0. I remember being 11 years old and God calling me to salvation and what that was like, not knowing what was going on, just feeling the pull of the Spirit to pursue God and go to the altar and ask Jesus into my heart. At 15 he called me into the ministry at a David Nassar conference in Tennessee and that was my 1st life changing moment. I remember my 1st kiss, my 1st cigarette, my first love, my first drink, the first time my heart was broken and all the 1st that go into someone’s live. I remember the 1st roommate- Derek Jones. I remember the moment when I first felt hopeless: it was then when I felt like God was an abstract being. My first presidential vote and so many other 1st that have shaped me into the person I am today; 1st church that I worked on staff, 1st college ext.
For me I like controlled atmospheres, I like to know where things are and to have a say in what is going on. It is not because my motives are wrong but rather I want to be structured in the way that things go; because…. Truthfully I am scared of the unknown; not scared of death because I know where I am going. But scared in a lot of ways of tomorrow because she holds her own future.
Today I realized that I can no longer be in control. I have helped to set certain things up, and now I must let them go. I think that I have had my rightful place and have been given a fair chance in the lives of people and in situations to say my point of view. Now comes the time where I step back. This is good. This is to the glory of the father, because now is the time for me to leave and to live. In my flesh I want things to stay the same forever, never changing, but in the way I have tried to lay them out. But even thinking of that I laid them out so they could go, now I must let them go. Am I going to cry- yes. Am I going to hurt- yes. But all of this will be pain of joy. This is what I have prayed for and this is what I have tried to help come to pass; now this is what must take place. I have been here before. But maybe because the roots are a little different is why it feels the way it does. I will glory in God for seeing His plan go forth. And I will now wait until the new mission comes along.
In this new season of my life I am going to step back and focus on school and ministry. I am going to try to develop better spiritual disciplines and allow the word of the Lord to soak into my everyday actions. I am going to breath a little easier, take care of myself a little more, and trust that God will hear my cry. I am not going to react. I am not going to be upset. I am going to live, because it’s about time. I have gathered myself and my emotions, asked for forgiveness from God and people who I have hurt and now I am going to focus on the next 25 years.

Political predictions for 2010 that will make news:
• Republicans will gain at least three Senate seats (Connecticut, Nevada, and Arkansas) and Hold on to Missouri since Kit Bond (But this is only if health care reform passes and conservatives actually come out to the polls in Missouri) is stepping down.
• Obama will get health care reform and a climate bill passed and he will get rid of don’t ask don’t tell in the military.

Bring Our Troops Home!!!!

We have seen a lot of non action take place in our government in the last thirty years, a lot of talk about helping the people but not enough action of keeping us free from government bureaucracy, free from higher taxes and free from the right to control and make our own decisions. Listen I am against socialism because I am against other people, especially government telling me what to do on issues that involve my personal life. I don’t think that the government should be able to tell me where I can buy my health insurance. Its not a “public option” that I need, what I need is the government to not make it illegal for me to buy health insurance in Maine if I want. I don’t need better medicines, what I need is for the government to stop regulating prescriptions with all kind of outrageous taxes that jump the prices and cause people to pay more for the service of handling the prescriptions and getting them to the consumers rather than the consumers and I should be allowed if I want to be able to perchance cheaper prescriptions from Canada and Mexico, but again I would not have to do that if the federal government would stop enforcing its rules and regulations on my personal life.

I understand why certain people believe in socialism, they want government to take care of them, but here is my suggestion move to Cuba or North Korea. Those countries allow their governments to run their lives. They regulate what they eat through government ran grocery stores. They pick their doctors for them, through government ran hospitals and health insurers, they take the rule of law out of the hands of the parents and they make parents send their kids to government controlled and government ran schools that have a specific doctrine. Look at places like Iran, their government makes the teachers teach a certain curriculum and the students have to learn it and are forced to go to those schools, there are no other schools for them to go to. No private schools. In public government ran schools and in those countries parents aren’t allowed to home school their kids.

People say well it will never get this way in America…… Ok well what do you think has been happening over the last 30 years. Less parent involvement in schools and more public schools and there is a public school curriculum that school districts have to teach and the federal government has standards and testing standing and measurements to determine the success of a child and the learning development of a child. This is based on an entire school or school district, and it is not based on the observation and communication of each individual child and the child’s parent like it should be.

Think about grocery stores- we have the FDA, a group a federal government appointed people decided where our food comes from, rules about our food, tells private farmers what they can grow, who they can sell their food to. The farmers are being out beat, our produced and out marketed by foreign government food suppliers, and their taxes are getting higher and products are NOT being bought because the federal government gets to make the rules and regulations rather than the American people who buy and spend their money in these grocery stores. Farmers are producing less and paying more. Grocery stores are supplying more foreign food, less American foods, paying more taxes and producing a lower quality of product and then the consumer must pay for the loss of the grocery store. Were no longer simply paying for what were buying were paying: foreign, local, city, state and federal taxes and money to the truck companies who bring the food. This is how I would put it: in reality 10 Bananas probably cost $3, but because of all the middle men and taxes to be paid its probably going to cost you $5 or $6 for 10 bananas. Outrageous.

President Obama is loosing his grip on the America that we know of and love. Everyone’s mad at him for all the right reasons. Conservatives, real conservatives like myself and Ron Paul, know that America has no business trying to police the world. Build a strong national security and bring all of our troops from all over the world home.

The number of countries that the United States has a presence in is staggering. According the U.S. Department of State’s list of "Independent States in the World," there are 192 countries in the world, all of which, except Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, have diplomatic relations with the United States. All of these countries except one (Vatican City) are members of the United Nations. According to the Department of Defense publication, "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," the United States has troops in 135 countries. Here is the list:

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Antigua
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo
Costa Rica
Cote D’lvoire
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guatemala
Guinea
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Liberia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Mali
Malta
Mexico
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia and Montenegro
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovenia
Spain
South Africa
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Suriname
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

This means that the United States has troops in 70 percent of the world’s countries. The average American could probably not locate half of these 135 countries on a map.

People need Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!!!! Until this president lowers taxes and allows the private sector to start hiring again, no one is going to support him.

Listen we need to get this country back on track and that is by having less government and more people telling this president- thanks but no thanks!!!

Keep your Public Option, Bring Our Men and Women Home From All Over The World and Lower Taxes So The Private Sector Can Breath Again!!!!

Just My Opinion- I Could Be Wrong But I Doubt It!!!!