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Mental Health IS REAL Health

July 28, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I’m not sure if you’ve realized it or not but I think people are a tad more on edge these days. So maybe I’m stating the obvious here. But I’ve noticed in my own life that things that are minor irritations tend to irritate me more than they should, and things that shouldn’t be a problem at all are all of a sudden a problem. And I know it’s not just me. I see people nearly everyday who are struggling with the same thing.

The neighbor’s dog gets out the door without him catching it and it’s like the worst thing in the world. A child doesn’t listen like they should and mom gets all bent out of shape. You’re not feeling well and you think you’re dying. A friend tells you a hard truth and you just can’t handle it so you lash out in defensive anger.

There are a million things going on in our lives right now that are hard to handle. And what makes it worse is that we’re running in high gear nearly all the time now. Our work is now virtual which means we feel like we have to check our email after supper. We have access to our calendar and contacts at all hours of day and night including weekends and we think if we’re not on then we’re no enough.

And while we’re running at full speed, we’re also running on empty. We aren’t sleeping as good as we used to. We’re stressed about jobs, finances, health, children’s education, family matters and the list goes on. We just can’t seem to get ahead. And what’s worse is we don’t think we can get help. We live in a world that demonizes mental struggles as if they’re a sign of weakness or like we’ve done something wrong.

Look my family all wears glasses, well all of them but me. Does that mean they’re all weak people? If you can’t see clearly, you’re very likely to go to the eye doctor and get an exam and even get something to help you see better. If you can’t hear you’ll get a hearing assist device. If you can’t walk, a cane or walker or crutch is always an option.

So why is it that when we have a struggle with our emotional or mental health we just don’t think we can get help? I want you to hear very clearly that your mental health is your health. If you’re emotionally or mentally wiped out, exhausted, struggling there is absolutely no shame in getting the equivalent of a pair of glasses for your mental health.

You can be the strongest person in the world, with seemingly everything going for you and still be empty emotionally and struggling mentally. Friends we need to find people in whom we can confide. People who can help us carry our burdens of mind, body and spirit. Everyone needs at least one trusted person in whom they can confide. Someone they can share their struggles with and honestly be vulnerable.

It’s not a weakness to admit you’re having a hard time. It’s not a weakness to wear glass or take a treatment for diabetes. Take care of yourselves friends. Find someone you can trust and share life with them because your mental health is real health.

Please note: if you’re struggling with mental health related issues and need emergency care, call your emergency care provider immediately. There are also agencies devoted to assisting you manage and navigate the many mental health challenges that we’re all facing at one level or another these days.

Eternal Pendulum

July 19, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Living in Central Ohio something most parents will do at least once in their children’s younger years is go to COSI. COSI stands for Center of Science and Industry. It’s one of those cool hands on museums for children (children of all ages)! When you walk into the main entry of COSI, you’re met by a huge pendulum. Well at least you used to be, admittedly I haven’t been there for years but it used to be there.

The pendulum was a super cool focal point when you first enter the facility. The pendulum from my understanding swings continually and never stops. This is due in large part to the length of the cable, weight and symmetry of the bob at the end of the cable, and an electromagnet near the top of the cable. The pendulum will swing back and forth continuously day and night. The really cool part is that when the earth rotates around its axis, the pendulum stays swinging in the same plane. So while it looks like the pendulum is rotating, really the earth is rotating under the pendulum.

At any rate, the pendulum is smooth in its transition back and forth. The cycle is unbroken. Forward, backward, forward, backward. The rhythm is soothing and somehow comforting in its stability and predictability.

Now I want you to try to imagine your life kind of like that pendulum. Imagine for a minute the cycles that your life goes through. There are cycles in our lives that repeat themselves over and over again. These cycles can be called a lot of different things and they apply to just about every scenario in which we find ourselves. There are work – rest cycles, or peace – chaos cycles, health – illness, energy – exhaustion cycles. Each of these will run back and forth on the pendulum of life.

The challenge for us as we swing through these cycles, aside from not getting sick from the back and forth, is to cherish each position along the swing of the pendulum. There are generally four things that happen along this pendulum. We go from rest to change to growth to great productivity. The more we fight this naturally swinging pendulum the shorter the gap between our work and our rest. The more we fight living out our calling as followers of Christ in our given stations in life, the more we’ll settle for mindless work that simply drains us.

The more we fight our times of rest, the less restful they become. The more we just do busy work because we feel we should be doing something, the less fulfilling it is and the more tired it makes us. The sweet spot in life is when we can rest while we’re working. We’ve narrowed the view of rest to the point that it becomes impossible to anything other than sit with our butt in the sand at the beach or curled up to a good book on a rainy day.

But when we truly find the pendulum balance in life, we quickly realize that rest can actually be found in doing the work we were called to do. We can work through our rest and rest in our work. There will be times when we need to pull away and rest and times when we need to sink ourselves into a task to accomplish it. But the majority of the time we can maintain a perfect swing through life finding rest in the purposeful work we’ve been created to do.

So cherish the swing. Be like a kid again and swing from rest to work making stops at change and growth along the way. Change is good. Growth is good but neither are easy. We need to be diligent in our working and intentional about our resting to get the most out of the change and growth portions of our swinging pendulum.

Enjoy swinging my friends. It’s the only way to live.

Measuring Time Differently

July 13, 2021 / / 0 Comments

If you’re a linear thinker then you like the idea of time being a very neat and tidy concept. We have seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years…you get the point. Linear thinking is how we live most of our lives going from task to meeting to appointment. But there are moments in our lives when something interrupts the flow of time. These can be frightening and yet exhilarating moments! It just depends how we respond to them.

One can see a timeline and consider it to be chronological in nature, going from set point to set point through a series of life circumstances. But the interruption in time doesn’t work this same way. There’s another word for this and it comes from the Greek word Kairos. It’s basically a cycle in time that will send our lives out on a potentially new trajectory.

Think of one of these Kairos moments as a loop in the middle of the timeline.

Interpreting Kairos

The drawing above is simple but it gets the point across. We go through life nearly on autopilot. Then a moment in our life takes us by surprise. Maybe it’s a death of a love one, new job, catastrophe, birth of a child, illness, win the lottery – who knows but it can be a good surprise or a bad surprise. The idea is that it takes your breath away and has the potential to alter your way of thinking.

When one of these moments happens we can basically have two responses. The first is to ignore it as if nothing happened at all. The second is to go through an evaluation process to learn what you can while the event is still fresh.

If you notice on the right side of the circle, you’ll see the word reflect. This is when we ask some questions. What happened? What emotions am I wrestling with? Who around me can I talk to about this?

This side of the circle is powerful and essential. This helps us process what’s going on. It’s about chance to admit that we could and probably should come out of this thing differently. The only problem is this is where most of us stop in the cycle. But there’s a whole other side that can really make this worthwhile.

The left half of the circle is about response. This is when we actually do something with what we learned through our evaluation and processing. If we just process and never act, we’ll get nowhere. In this side of the circle, as we make our way back to the timeline, we make a plan for how to implement change. We find the people in our lives who can come alongside us and hold us accountable to actually do what we commit to doing. And finally we determine check in moments to assure that we’re following through.

Now the really cool part of this circle is what happens when we reemerge back into our normal routine. Often the learning of the circle, from the pausing to the planning and implementing, will move us in a slightly new direction. It’s like riding a bike. When we learned to ride bikes as kids, we were able to go places faster than we could without a bike. In this case, when we learn the value of these interruptions in time, we’ll be able to get places we couldn’t have gone living in the monotony of a chronological existence.

So the long and short is be on the look out for interruptions to your day. Not all of these interruptions are bad. As a matter of fact, one of them might send you on a new path to a God ordained destination. Happy time hunting!

In It To Win It

July 6, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Goodmorning, #Bossladies! #happysunday, let's go win! | Cutthroat Hippie Gang | #CTHG

Have you ever settled for something less than the best? If you’re at all honest here, you have to say yes. Without a doubt everyone at one point in their life or another has settled in some way. But when we settle something happens in our subconscious that is dangerous and deadly. We move from a win mindset to simply I hope I don’t lose too badly.

Ok, so I’m kind of a sports guy and I like to use sports analogies from time to time. Try this one. Could you imagine that beloved sports team you follow, changing their mindset from winning to simply not losing too badly? I think we’ve all seen it at least once. The team is down by several goals or touchdowns and something in them just seems like they’ve given up. Their play is flat to say the least. It’s like they no longer are trying to win. They’re just trying to not lose by more than they already are.

In hockey, a sport that I really started following a few years back, there’s a practice of doing something that seems odd but is very strategic. In the final few minutes of a game, if the team is losing by one or two goals, the coach will pull the goalie. When I first saw this I was dumbfounded. Why in the world would you pull the goalie when you’re already losing!? That just seemed stupid.

But then I noticed something that really made this seemingly bad idea actually a very strategic move. When the goalie makes it off the ice, they put on another player in an effort to score a goal and tie the game. So giving up a little defense gives them a better shot on offense. But it’s a risk to be sure. You run the risk of having someone score in your empty net.

In our lives there are times when it is probably in our best interest to pull our goalie. When we’re down on ourselves and life just isn’t going our way, instead of running from the problem or cowering in fear, we should put the extra offensive player on the ice and start going for the goal. When we’re down by a goal or two in life, the rules don’t change. We still need more points than our opponent to win the game, but all too often our mindset shifts from progress through life to cowering in the fetal position waiting for something to happen.

I don’t really know what this looks like in your life specifically, but I do know that if you’re a tuck your tail and run kind of person, you haven’t mastered the art of shifting to offense. If you’re the type that needs the whole scenario masterfully mapped out for you, you’re not pulling your goalie.

All too often in our day to day lives, we wait until the scenario has nearly played itself out before we take some sort of action. That is detrimental at the very least. By that time we have already lost the game. Perhaps the next adventure upon which you embark would better be tackled if you were in it to win it even when you’re losing. Shift your focus from defending your goal to scoring your next goal. It won’t be easy. It will be risky but it most certainly will be rewarding as you grow through stretching yourself.

Permission vs. Authority

July 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Introducing API Permission Policies

One of my pet peeves is when I’m asked to do something then told I need to get permission for every step in the process. It’s so infuriating. The gut check moment was when I realized I did the same thing with someone and it completely shifted how I approach task assignments and delegation of duties.

To get started we need to differentiate between permission and authority. In my mind there’s a huge difference. Permission is simply telling someone they’re allowed to do something. Or even giving someone the ability to go in a direction or accomplish a task. Authority is opening a door for someone and giving them parameters within which to operate to accomplish that task. Let’s look at an example, the one where I failed actually.

As a pastor we lead a vacation bible school every summer. I asked my coworker to make sure VBS happened and that it was hers to run. Then unintentionally, really it wasn’t anything personal or intentional it just happened, I jumped in from time to time to give my input (unsolicited input mind you). Eventually it was realized that I had given her permission for the task of doing VBS but all the steps to get there were still something I wanted to control.

As soon as I realized what I had done, we changed things up a bit. Instead of just saying make sure VBS happens, I set some boundaries. Here are a list of my expectations. Aside from these expectations, you have the authority to make decisions. You have a budget to work with, timeline in which to operate, goals for how many children we’d like to see, etc. I will check on the boundaries to make sure you’re staying in the lines. If you’re in bounds then you have the full authority.

You see when something is important to us or when we have a passion for something, we tend to cling tightly to it. We hold the over arching authority and try to give a little task here and there to make it seem like we’re giving it away. Actually we’re giving task permission instead of role authority.

Here’s the problem…when we hire someone to fill a role then don’t resource them with the appropriate budget and authority to operate within given boundaries all we’ve done is hire a glorified assistant under a new title. But when in a leadership role you can give authority away, not only does it free your plate for other intentional and meaningful work, it also runs a very strong likelihood that productivity will go up and new people will be reached.

The longer we withhold sharing authority, the weaker the organization grows. And the more tired and unsettled the staff becomes. Hold on too long and you lose your staff and your organization crumbles.

So give permission if you want to keep the status quo for the short term. If you want to see your organization grow and thrive, you need to give authority and let go.

I Don’t Want Normal!

April 21, 2021 / / 0 Comments

There are some buzz words from 2020 that are still lingering around almost a year later. I’m going to pick on two of these in a quick series over the next couple of days. We’ve heard words and phrases like: Unprecedented, pandemic, this is how you really love someone, and one of my least favorite New Normal.

What in the world is new normal all about anyway? And why would I want that?

The issue with new normal that drives me nuts is that we are a culture built on comforts. We want the comfort of consistency and predictability. The striving for a new normal really is our way of trying to go back to a time when things went as we wanted. We don’t want a new normal because that invovles change. What we want is the old normal on a new day. Let’s just be honest.

If you’re one of those people who’ve been using this phrase, then I likely offended you a little. And that’s ok it’s not personal. I like things to operate in a consistent pattern as well. I mean I have my own normal that I do everyday. I wake up, get dressed, head to the gym, home to shower, fire up the coffee, consume copious amounts of coffee, eat breakfast… You get the point. We all have a routine and that routine is what we think normal looks like. But routine and normal are not necessarily the same thing.

A routine is all about rhythm while normal is about controlling a situation and wanting your rhythm to be uninterrupted. I work in an industry, ok church isn’t really an industry but I didn’t know a better word. But I work in a field where normal or predictability and stability are really critical. We like our firm foundations and set structures. I mean many of us use systems that have been in place since the 1950s!

Now there’s nothing wrong with tradition but if you’re doing life the same way today that you did 70, 50, 30, heck even 10 years ago then you’re probably missing something really important! Part of my job is to serve as a pastor of a local church in central Ohio. The other part of my job on a very part time basis is to work for the larger organization that supports the local churches. So I get to see both sides of the spectrum. And what I’m seeing a lot of these days is a longing for days of old and calling it a new normal.

So many of our ways of doing things stopped being effective when the massive technology boom hit our culture more than a decade ago. Yet thousands of churches across the country were caught off guard when we had to swiftly pivot and launch some form of an online presence. We have focused so heavily on the in person gatherings that all we want is to get back to normal, but what if that isn’t the point?

Ok so don’t go all panties in a wad on me. Give me a minute. Why do we value in person large gatherings so much anyway? If we’re honest, then we’ll admit that what we measure as effective ministry is boards, budgets and butts. And we can’t do any of those well if we’re not in person in our buildings in large settings. We think that a good ministry is based on how many people are back in worship. Sure that’s a measure but is is the best measure of effectiveness?

The bible doesn’t talk about how many people are in a worship place. They talk about how many go out from that worship changed and live a different kind of life. The bible doesn’t tell us how many listened to Paul in the book of Acts but they do say that over 5000 were added to their numbers that day. Added to their numbers was NOT a phrase that meant church membership as a passive experience. It meant they were changed, transformed. They left that gathering as a totally different kind of person who saw Jesus and the power of the resurrection in all they did.

I firmly believe that for the church to be who we’re called to be we need to start focusing on changes lives and not how do we reopen our doors on Sunday or how good is our live stream. I really don’t think Jesus is going to stand at those pearly gates when we die and ask how well our online worship was or how many people came to church the Sunday after Easter.

So if the leaders want to serve the churches well and if the churches want to serve the people well, we need to all be focusing on what does life change look like. How can we help provide a clear path toward a more Christ centered life? How can we encourage and hold one another accountable to live a different kind of life as someone who gets the resurrection? We need to worry less about larger gatherings in our vastly underused sanctuaries and start focusing on connecting lives across generations and geographic locations.

If we as an Lutheran Church body, an Ohio District or a local congregation want to experience something truly abnormal then we need to be about the things the book of Acts describes. We need to value home gatherings, large and small group assemblies, spiritual growth through the spiritual disciplines. We need to grow deep in our faith and relationships not wide in surface level connections.

I do NOT want a new normal or an old normal on a new day because the Bible calls me to be abnormal. And I’d love to chat more with you about how we can live an abnormal kind of life together wherever you are.

Interruption or Disruption

March 2, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Ok so let me just throw this out there. I am 100% totally and completely over what covid has done to the lives of so many people. We’ve all been impacted by either the virus or the way it was handled. Some have tragically lost their lives due to complications of the illness. Others were slowed down for a time because they got it. Still others lost jobs, homes, loved ones, livelihoods, and the ability to just function in normal life.

I’ve heard so many times I want things to go back to normal. But do we really? I mean do we really want life to just magically snap back into place like a rubber band after being stretched. If we really just one day snap back to life as it was in 2019, what was the purpose of all of the struggle of 2020? If we just go back to the glory days of the past, then we essentially wasted what looks to be close to two years of our lives. No one wants to waste their life away!

So I want to encourage you to see this portion of life not simply as an interruption to your normal routine but as a disruption to the flow of how things were. An interruption is temporary and allows things to return to how they were previously. It’s like a blip on a radar then it’s gone. A disruption is a roadblock that forces us to take a different path. Sometimes a disruption can be negative but other times it can breathe new life into a situation.

Are there things about this whole new way of living that aren’t convenient or even good for that matter? Absolutely! Masks and distance are not how God created us. We were created to live in community. So much of communication is nonverbal and masks completely mess that up! I’ve had to repeat myself more times than I care to admit because someone can’t hear my clearly through a mask. Distance is not healthy either. Isolation easily leads to depression and can be deadly. The suicide rates are skyrocketing not just in our country but around the world.

I guess when we look at this way of living as an interruption we just want to get it over and go back to our comfort zone. But that’s just a tad selfish if you ask me. If our lives are more about what make us comfortable than what makes life better for others, then we have our priorities all screwed up.

But if we look at the past year or so as a disruption, we’re allowed to look back and learn form the past so that we can be more intentional moving forward. Intentional. That’s a power word. The focus of intentionality is that we live our lives with an intended purpose. Going back to the way things were means our purpose was already fulfilled, but that’s just not true. Living for the past gets us nowhere and it’s exhausting.

Do you find yourself more anxious, upset, tired or irritable than normal? Chances are you’re longing for the past. You’re trying to run down the up escalator. It’s exhausting to try to fight every day for something over which you have no control. Don’t give up. But change perspective. Be intentional about your day. Look at the person you are called to be. Chances are the disruptions of the past 12 months have very little impact on the person God created you to be. It’s time to pivot and make the necessary adjustments to serve those around you best.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins says that the greatest enemy of great is good. We settle for good all the time. Good isn’t bad. It’s good afterall. But is there something better than good waiting right around the corner? Is the good thing of yesterday that we want back, keeping us from the great thing we can experience tomorrow?

I’ve done a lot of thinking about this lately. As a pastor I look at what this disruption has brought about. I’ve met so many new people through this time that I never would have met had we not been in this mess. I’ve connected with new faces at church. I’ve had conversations with people at the gym that I’ve never talked to before. We’ve expanded our reach albeit virtually to many more than we ever would have. The way we were doing things before was good. I do miss seeing some of the people around church that we haven’t seen in months. And one day I hope they’re back again!

But I also see the countless opportunities that God has given me by making me slow down and spend more intentional time with family. Reorganize my calendar to better reflect my priorities. Value the expressions on people’s faces that I often took for granted. There are so many great things that I have learned through this pandemic by just changing perspective.

So while I want some things to change, I don’t want them to go back to normal because normal isn’t the life we’re supposed to life!

Looking Back Doesn’t Move You Forward

March 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments

When I was child I had a telescope. I put it in my window and looked up at the stars. I positioned the tripod on my tall dresser and pointed the one end out the window and up at the sky. I positioned my eye close to the smaller end and looked up at the stars. I was amazed at how close things were! When used properly a telescope is a truly amazing tool!

But one day for grins and giggles I turned it around and looked at the stars backwards. I rotated the telescope 360 degrees and looked again. The stars were unrecognizable. They were smaller than without a telescope. When used properly the telescope can really help us gain a healthy perspective on space but when turned around it’s pretty much pointless.

The same is true for how we view events in life. It’s easy to use the events in our lives as turn around points and reflect on how things used to be. But that’s no more healthy than using a telescope backwards. Here’s an example…

The year 2020 probably caught you off guard a bit. Going into the year we were all doing the corny Perfect Vision in 2020 or seeing clearly in 2020, but then February and March hit. To say that March came in like a lion would be an understatement! All of our plans for Easter and summer were pretty much trash by the end of March.

Many people in my circle took time to throw pity parties of how things used to be, myself included. We looked at Easter plans and VBS plans and all the thought and effort that went into preplanning much of our calendar year. So it was healthy to reflect for a second. Pausing to regain focus is never a bad thing. For us that lasted for about 3-4 weeks. We temporarily canceled all of our plans for the foreseeable future. No egg hunt, no vacation bible school, no in person worship, no gatherings, no family get togethers, no vacations and the list went on and on.

After we pumped the breaks on all of our plans and took a few weeks to catch our breath, we came to the conclusion that we might be doing this whole thing all wrong. We were looking at the way things were currently and complaining about the inconvenience of it all. We were dreaming about the good old days of four weeks ago. We were using the telescope to look backward.

We weren’t looking forward to life as we now know it. We couldn’t get past the inconvenience of the new hurdles. We longed for better days, but for so many better days looked a lot like the good ole days of the past. But that’s just not productive.

Now don’t get me wrong. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with remembering and celebrating the events of the past. There’s nothing wrong with learning from mistakes and changing our approach to life. But we can’t keep looking over our shoulder at how life used to be. You don’t drive that way. You don’t walk that way. You don’t look through a telescope that way. You can’t do life that way either.

So we quickly and without much notice, took a hard and abrupt turn. We planted our foot firm on what we knew was non-negotiable in our area of life. We know family was important and community was critical. We knew that there had to be a way to use this moment in life to establish a new set of rhythms. While we didn’t know exactly what the future held, and for that matter still don’t have a clue, we knew we had to stop looking backward and start looking forward.

As you go through life changing and traumatic moments, take time to pause for healing. But don’t stay paused for too long. Use the trauma, the set back, the interruption as a means to help you reevaluate what’s in front of you. Don’t look through the lens of the best days are behind us or getting back to how we used to do it. Use the disruption to truly change course and set a new path to get you to an even better promised future.

Only Do What Only You Can Do

February 17, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Those of us with control issues really have a hard time with this one but let’s be honest sometimes we waste time doing what someone else is equally, if not more qualified to do. I heard this line a while ago at a conference and it has just stuck with me. I think it was from Andy Stanley, but can’t be totally certain. All I know is it’s not my original thought, because I’m not quite this witty or intelligent.

Only do what only you can do.

The phrase at face value seems a little bit obvious. But when we really think about it, how much time do we spend doing what other people are way more suited to do? What’s worse is when we do the things that others are capable of doing, we often short change those people to whom we’re called to serve. Enough of the abstract here’s a quick example.

I’m a husband and a dad. And to be totally honest, I’m not all that great at either some days. And if I were to honestly evaluate the moments when I’m less effective at either of these roles, I’d find that I am doing things that are not my primary role. That means sometimes I let my job come before my primary role as a dad or husband. Sometimes I let my passions come in the way of the things that are most important. Only I can be the husband to my wife and the dad to my kids. Only I can do these things right now and if I don’t then they are neglected.

So what are you doing that you’re not really the most gifted at doing? When we free ourselves from the things we can do to do the things we’re really supposed to do, we allow for greater success in those areas.

Another principle that dovetails nicely here comes from the book Good to Great. The line goes something like good is the enemy of great. We have to be careful not to hear that these things we’re doing are bad because they’re not bad at all. Actually on the contrary, many, if not most, of these extra things are good and very much worthwhile. But when we only do the good things, we prevent ourselves from doing the great things.

So the long and short is this. Do what you can do. The good and the great things that God established for you to do. Empower others to do the rest. Give away things that will help others feel that sense of accomplishment. When we delegate not only the task but also the authority for an area of our work, we multiply our effectiveness.

Easiest Way To Get To Me

February 16, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I have been doing a bit more reading lately and it’s been really good stuff, and one of the ways that I process information is by writing down what I read and applying it to real life. Recently I came across the idea that we are most easily tempted to do wrong in one of three ways: approval, appetite and ambition. It’s absolutely uncanny that these three categories actually encompass so much of what drives us in life. Interestingly enough the three areas that we struggle with the most in life are the three ways Satan tried to get Jesus to fall as well.

Appetite

Food is an essential part of life to be sure. We all need food to survive. But often our fear of not having the right stuff or enough stuff can drive us to do weird things! And appetite isn’t just about food. It’s about our need and desire for more. Appetite is about gathering for ourselves in a way that makes the created stuff more important than the creator. Need an example? You don’t have to go far.

I mean seriously if you’re being honest you have to admit the toilet paper shortage of 2020 was a bit ridiculous to put it very mildly. People in the world were scared that when the pandemic, an upper respiratory virus, hit in early 2020 they needed to control as much as they could. Store shelves were ransacked. Banks were filled with people drawing out money at alarming rates. Guns and ammo were impossible to find. And toilet paper was gone! The appetite of the American people became so consumed with a self-serving attitude that we gathered when we should have shared.

Turn these stones into bread was the temptation Satan gave to Jesus. You’re hungry do something about it. Fill that appetite with what pleases you and makes you feel better. Instead of falling for the idol of appetite, Jesus relied on the provision of his Father. We would be well served if we focused on what we have instead of what we want. Then our appetite god is less likely to get away from us.

Approval

It’s great to be recognized isn’t it? I mean you put in a lot of work on a project. You do a good job. You succeed in what your boss wanted from you. A little ‘atta boy’ or pat on the back wouldn’t hurt anything would it? I don’t mean getting your name in lights and having the world shout your name from the mountains but a thank you isn’t too bad a thing is it?

The god of approval can be a dangerous and slippery slope. While there isn’t a real problem with a thank you now and again the issue of approval turns sour when we seek the approval of everyone around us thereby seizing our actions out of fear that we won’t gain that approval. Taken to another level we’re supposed to seek the approval of God rather than men.

When Satan was tempting Jesus, he tried to get him to get teh approval of the crowds. Go and throw yourself off this peak and let them all see how great and powerful you are. Jesus didn’t take the bait. He didn’t fall for it. Instead he rested in the approval he received from his Father. This approval is the one we need to seek as well. The approval of those around us will vary based on their emotional status and how they feel in the moment. But God is consistent and his approval of us isn’t tied to what we do but what Jesus already did for us.

Ambition

The final area of temptation to which we often fall is ambition which when taken too far is pride. This area of ambition being a problem is when we try to climb the ladder of success at the expense of all those around us. Or when our ambition is all about making a name for ourselves. This is when things get bad.

Jesus faced this same thing too. When he was with Satan in the wilderness, the carrot of self aggrandizement was waved before Jesus. Satan tried to offer to Jesus all the power he could imagine. If you please me then you get all this. Jesus wanted nothing of it. He knew that his ambition wasn’t in himself but in the promise and provision of his Father.

So there you have it. All of them are good in moderation but good taken too far is evil. Curb your appetite. Seek approval from God alone. And remember that your ambition should be for service not gratification.

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