Open Exposure!

    I had a meeting downtown today, which took me into the thrilling Chicago traffic. At one intersection, both an automobile and a bicycle attempted to sneak through a red light at the end of a yellow. The bike was going straight and the car was turning left, and they collided. The car was barely moving and fortunately, the woman on the bike was not hurt….but she was mad! She jumped up off the ground and picked her bike up, ripped her helmet off, and with bike in tow, ran after the car screaming at the driver. Junior was sitting beside me in the car and we both saw the whole thing. I asked Junior, “What is she so mad about? She ran the red light, too! You’d think someone on a bike would know better then to ride out into oncoming traffic on a red light.” Junior responded, “Ya, but that’s how people are; they are always sure they are in the right, even when they are obviously not.”
    True. And in fact, I’m no exception. Studies show that when people are interviewed to share their observations of just about any experience or event, the person being interviewed will slant the story just a bit to put themselves in the best light. It’s human nature to want others to think better of us than what we know to be true, down deep inside. But that’s also a major barrier in our overcoming some of the most difficult problems we face. You can’t defeat a problem you do not acknowledge.
    That was the point of my last week’s message, “Exposure, what it means to walk in the light.” Once we are willing to open ourselves up to God, and a few other trusted people, revealing a genuine openness for truth with a mindset for change, we are able to act on the steps necessary for change in overcoming that problem. But without that desire for truth, or willingness to have our weaknesses exposed, no real or substantive change can ever take place.
    Some years ago, a friend said to me, “Scott, you are so negative, I need to stop hanging around with you. You are rubbing off on me and I get critical when we’re together.”
    Now, that made me mad! How dare he! Within the next few minutes, I had all the best responses in my mind for him, accusing him of being more negative than me and why I had been right in the critical things I had been saying about others. It wasn’t until later that evening when I got my Bible out to read that the truth of his stinging words struck home. Once I was willing to stop defending myself, I began to see my heart and my attitude the way God saw it. And it wasn’t pretty. That led me on a journey to change my outlook and disposition….one that I am still on today. I have my friend, Bob, to thank for that.
    Are you still in denial about your sinful anger, selfishness, immorality, resentment, addictions, worry or laziness? The first step to overcoming is by opening yourself up to God and what He wants to teach you, and to let Him use those closest to you to identify those areas that can be and should be changed.
    We are real people. We have real problems. The Bible offers solutions. It always starts with an openness to truth.

Pillars in Place

    My son is getting married and the Wisconsin bridal shower for my future daughter-in-law is going on right now. Since the rain was coming down hard when my wife was to start out on the two hour drive to the “shower” this morning, I volunteered to drive her. So here I am, sitting at a McDonald’s in the town where we raised our kids, a McDonald’s where Junior played many times in the kids crawling gym as a little boy, waiting for my wife to finish. Back when the kids were little and rushing through their happy meals to get into the sea of plastic balls, we knew this day was coming (older people kept telling us it was), we just didn’t know how soon it would be here. I’m really grateful for how it appears our kids are turning out. I sure hope and pray we gave them a strong foundation for life.
    An hour ago, since I was in town anyway, I drove to the church building of the congregation Linda and I established a little over twenty years ago. It feels good to drive by the building and know that all that work paid off….that there is still a strong and growing congregation here.

    As I pulled out of the parking lot, I looked back and for some reason, the pillars holding up the carport caught my eye. I remember putting them in. I did it almost by myself. The white pillars that are visible are just aluminum wraps around steel posts. I remember wrapping them. And I remember holding the steel posts in place with a plumb level on the side while the welder attached them to the beam above and the steel plate below that emerged from the concrete footing. I also remember pouring the concrete footing. The footing actually extends nine feet below fill dirt to 4 foot square slabs I had poured on the undisturbed ground two weeks before. To extend the foundation the additional nine feet to reach ground level where the steel posts could be attached, I used twelve inch circular forms I found at Menard’s. One of our members brought out a small concrete mixer to the site and I even mixed the concrete before filling the forms that would hold up the steel posts that held up the carport. So from the slab at the bottom to the carport itself, I did just about everything. When it was all finished, I even shingled the roof on top. It was pretty cool to look back and see all four pillars still standing firm, no sag, and the roof held up strong and level.
    But it all went down to the four foundation slabs beneath those pillars. Thinking about my kids, I wondered, what were the important foundation slabs we hopefully undergirded the lives of our children. And four immediately came to mind.
    1) Unconditional love. I know all parents say they love their children. Who would ever say anything other? But the proof in the pudding is in the eating. Real love is demonstrated by affection, words of affirmation, sacrificial care, and from a child’s perspective, time.
    2) Consistent discipline. I don’t believe this is taught nearly enough to young parents today. We have the failed results of some schools of thought in modern psychology to thank for that. But children cannot learn from those they do not accept as their authority. We believed that teaching our children that we were the parents and they were the kids very early would determine whether or not they would learn anything else from us.
    3) Consistent lifestyle. Kids learn more about the way we live than the things we tell them. It was important to Linda and I that we be the same people all the time, at home, at church, alone, or with our friends. Kids see through phoniness quicker than anyone.
    4) Constant teaching. We believed it was important to tell our kids on a daily basis why we lived the way we lived, why we valued the things and principles we valued, and how they could live in such a way that God would be honored.
    These four principles are absolutely necessary for parents to effectively pass their values on to their children….what we call effective parenting. I hope they stand as firm in our kids lives as the four pillars in front of my former church.

The Destination DOES Matter!

    A thief in Orem, Utah, discovered an important principle: Know where you are going before you commit the crime.
    When John White flagged down a policeman to ask for directions, the officer noted that the man matched the description of someone accused of stealing two phones from a nearby convenience store, and the address White wanted turned out to be the same one the officer was checking.
    The address had been left on a slip of paper the thief left at a gas station, according to a March 26, 2010, AP story. The man was arrested when the officer found he had both phones, along with a small amount of marijuana.
    I’m assuming you are not planning on committing any crimes in the near future, but it is pretty important to know where you are going with whatever your plans are.
    Sometimes you may even think you know where you are going but because you were relying on the wrong source of information, you ended up in the wrong place. That happened to me twice in the last couple of months. Did you know that Google maps is not ALWAYS accurate? Two months ago, Google sent me to the wrong city! I later checked to see what address I had typed in and I entered all the information correctly. Yet I was sent to a completely different street in a town some fifteen miles away from where I was trying to go. In another incident, I was sent to the wrong address on the wrong street.
    Where are you going and do you know how you are going to get there? Are you sure? Can you trust the directions you are following?
    I’ve spoken to too many apparently successful men who have confided in me that while they had reached the top of their corporate ladder, once they got there they began to believe they had it leaning against the wrong building.
    Just moving along and making progress in life may keep you occupied and perhaps even mesmerized for a while. But ending up where you want to go depends on whether or not you started with the right goal and then trusted in reliable directions to get there.
    The right goal? Is there such a thing? When you consider that God made every one of us for a purpose, anything that we pour our lives into outside of that purpose will eventually leave us feeling lost, a long way from where we want to be.
    God made you for Him. And while we have all been separated from enjoying His presence through the problem of sin, He has clearly mapped out for us the way back. Living for anything outside of that, will only broaden the gap between us and while it may provide a bit of fun and diversion for a while, it will eventually lead us to emptiness and despair. And there are a lot of false promises of fulfillment through self-help techniques, they can be a bit like google maps when their information is a bit off. But I can promise you this, God’s Word will not let you down!
    Do you know where you are going? Do you know how to get there? Jesus said this, “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Who Are You Listening To?

    The heat is on! Well, it was anyway.
    We were a little warm in church last week. The auditorium was fine, but the lobby? Something was definitely wrong. It was bad enough that we had no air on a 90° day, a day we had planned extra fellowship in the new lobby after our 4:00 PM annual celebration. The lobby was so hot we had to move the food into the auditorium where it was cool. But you wouldn’t believe Monday morning. It was 96° in there when I arrived and the heat was ON! Yes….THE FURNACE WAS RUNNING! Since both lobby thermostats were set to A/C, and since the furnace was running when the air clearly should have been, we kind of thought there might be a problem (smart people that we are). Even after completely shutting down the system from both thermostats, the heat kept running. The lobby became as hot as 98 degrees by the time we were able to cut the power to all units.
    The HVAC people finally came on Tuesday to solve the problem. Come to find out, the technician had programmed the thermostats wrong when he installed them last fall. They worked fine for winter heat, but the programming for summer cool sent the wrong message to the units and while the thermostat was telling us that it was asking for A/C, the message was being sent to the heating units running the furnaces. I’m still confused as to why the heat kept running even after we turned the system off.
    Just about everything mechanical or electrical today is run by computers: cars, cameras, HVAC units. If the computer is incorrectly programmed, whatever unit it is sending signals to will operate incorrectly. Data in, data out.
    Both Solomon and Paul talked about that. They lived too long ago to be familiar with computer programming, but they understood human nature. If we take in faulty programming, our thinking gets messed up, which then is reflected in our choices/behavior.
    Where does that input come from? Well, we get it from the people and influences we surround ourselves with: friends, teachers, co-workers, television and other entertainment sources, even churches. Its pretty important that we pay attention to who and what we are listening to because invariable, without a pretty good filter (God’s Word), the influences we surround ourselves with impact in a major way the decisions we make and the lifestyles we choose. Solomon said this, “He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm” (Proverbs 13:20). The Apostle Paul put it this way, “Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
    Who are you hanging out with? Who are you listening to?

Find a Place

     We are a camping family. I’m sure for all of you who were born and raised in the city, that is your stereotype for those of us from Wisconsin. I will have to admit that I grew up enjoying the outdoors: hunting, fishing, camping, hiking and biking. Most of my happiest childhood memories were in the woods, hiking the bluffs along the Mississippi, on the Mississippi fishing, or sleeping in a tent in a campground. But believe it or not, most people in Wisconsin are no more familiar with the outdoors than those who grew up in Des Plaines!
    But for me, I’ve always loved it. Today, the outdoors is my escape. After living in Illinois for the last three years (almost), I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I found a $1,000 pop-up camper on craigslist and the Zieglers are camping again! When we inaugurated the camper a month ago, we were entertained by wild turkeys in the state park for a good portion of the time we were there.
    One of my favorite aspects of camping, is the time I get alone with God. There is something about being in the middle of His creation, without the distraction of traffic, TV, or even the voices of other people, that helps me focus. I can relate to Jesus when in the height of his busyness, he would often leave the crowd, needs and all, and go into the wilderness to spend time with His Father. It appears that His favorite place near Jerusalem was the Garden of Gethsemane––sort of like a state park, I think. ☺
    Do you have a place? A couple of weeks ago, I spoke on the need for all of us to have a daily quiet time with God. I hope you are doing well with your own personal time each day with God. But there is also something special about being able to go to a place away from all the hustle and bustle, periodically, where you can spend an extended time just communing with your Creator. For me, that happens best in a state park or a wildlife refuge. Do you have a place like that? Luke 5:16 says, “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”
    What a great habit for you to start this week!

Junior

    That moment changed everything for me. I saw the world through a different lens. The words, “love” and “respon-sibility” took on completely different meanings. It was one thing to go from “single” to “husband.” That was actually pretty easy (for me––not for Linda!). But going from “man” to “father” changed me forever.
    Junior wasn’t always “Junior.” He actually has a different middle name than me and we originally planned on calling him “Daniel,” for his middle name. But everyone called him Scottie, so that’s what stuck. As a little guy, he would shoot across the floor before he learned to crawl, so we started calling him “Scoot.” Then came, “Scoot the toot.” I won’t mention where the “toot” came from ☺.
    He has always been a lot of fun. Junior loves to laugh and tease, and in our family, that’s a primary love language. I’ll never forget when he was a teenager and he started losing his hair. He was really worried about it. Linda told him one day that mayonnaise is good for hair and that it cures baldness, if you use it early and often enough. I knew she was making it up and left the room to keep from laughing. A few days later, the mayonnaise was scraped clean from the jar!
    In junior high and high school, he was a pleasure to be around. We never had to endure the rebellious teenage years that so many parents struggle through. He was a good athlete, decent student, looked out for the kids who got picked on (actually got into a few fights defending them), and outside of a few TP pranks on church and school people, never got into trouble. Between all that and his 6’1” frame, I’ve often wondered if we accidentally brought the wrong kid home from the hospital!
    But what I have appreciated most about my oldest son, is his heart. He truly seeks to live for Christ and loves to serve. Here at The Bridge, there are not many people who are more active in ministry.
    Today, he graduated from college. Wow! Some of you have been through this before so it may be no big deal to you. But it is to Linda and I. We couldn’t be more proud. I have often told my kids, “It doesn’t matter what vocation you choose in life, so long as you are passionate about serving God and other people.” Even through his college years, while maintaining a job, full time school, and now a fiancee, serving in ministry has been a priority.
    Thanks for being the son you are, Junior. And thanks for your example. Mom and I love you and are very proud of you!

Oil Slick

    It started with a lack of oversight. We don’t know the whole story yet, but it won’t be long before we learn that maintenance had slipped and accountability was lacking. Someone didn’t do something they should have done. When disaster struck, those responsible minimized the damage. Oversight agencies were assured that the owners would take care of it themselves. All the while, black oozed from the damaged area deep beneath the surface at the rate of 210,000 gallons a day (initially said to be a fraction of that). You don’t have to be an environmental activist to be alarmed at the damage this is causing to wildlife, or even the economies of the Gulf states, which are dependent on fishing, tourism and commerce along the Gulf coast. Now understood to be nearly unmanageable, the government is supposedly stepping in to make sure something is done. But as I am writing this, it is still questionable that any of the “fix-it” theories will stop the hemorrhage, or that the clean-up plans will not do more harm than good. This is truly a disaster that will eventually affect the entire country––environmentally and economically. And it all started with lax maintenance and irresponsible oversight.
    But don’t be too quick to judge!
    How’s the maintenance in your life going? Are you open to oversight? Or are some of the early signs of a massive disaster in the making?
    I see some very sad parallels between what is unfolding off the shores of Louisiana and the imploded lives of those who wreaked havoc in their world by letting sin get the upper hand. It starts when a person is distracted from needed daily spiritual maintenance and nobody is around to notice without active accountability in their lives. When the sin does become noticeable, the offending party minimizes the real danger and friends tend to back off, as though the same person who created the disaster is likely to fix it on his own. It doesn’t happen.
    People are shocked when the family, work, or church explosion occurs, but the cracks had been forming as deterioration had been occurring deep below the surface for a long time. Sadly, it's not just the individuals who are responsible who pay the price. Everyone around them is affected. As a pastor, I have had to help clean up the rubble in the lives of kids who are usually the most devastated by the aftermath of a spiritual explosion created by poor maintenance and deficient accountability.
    How’s your daily maintenance? Are you consistently in the Word and spending time in prayer with a daily quiet time with God?
    Do you have good accountability in your life with close friends or family members who are there to help you stay the course? Are you open to their help or do you recoil at any hint of correction?
    The oil slick in the Gulf is growing every day. Fishing is shut down, ports are closed, sea life is dying. And it all could have been avoided. Sometimes the thing that keeps me most on track is a reminder of what could be if I’m not. There’s too much at stake in my life. And there is in yours as well. If you don’t have a regular maintenance program in place, establish a daily quiet time today. And surround yourself with a few godly people who will help hold you to it!