Christ

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How Distance Gets In the Way Of Your Relationships 

We have all become distant from someone or something at times in our lives. Sometimes it’s due to personal issues that have arisen; sometimes proximity or miles are at the core of the issue.

 

I remember when we moved from Edmonton to Kingston. Our kids were just 6 and 4, and didn’t completely understand the whole distance thing. We were at the end of our third day of travel, and had arrived at the motel we were staying at for the night. I don’t think we’d even unpacked our bags.

Our 4 year old son was sitting on the bed beside his sister. It was one of those moments that no one was saying anything; we were just kind of getting ourselves adjusted to the room for the night.

Out of nowhere Michael said, “I want to go home.” It was a sad comment coming from a little boy who didn’t know where he was or where he was going. What made the comment worse was his big sister’s response.

Immediately after Michael said “I want to go home”, Karlie replied, “Michael, we don’t have a home.”

… A killer comment to a couple of parents who were taking their kids away from what they knew as home and were feeling a little in limbo ourselves!

At that moment we all felt distant from everything we were close to, familiar and comfortable with.

There are other times when disagreements, arguments or even interpretations of events cause two people to feel distant from each other. You could be in the same home at the time, and that distance might only last a few minutes or an hour, but there is a sense of distance between the two individuals.

The other day, I experienced yet another kind of distance. Lily and I were staying in a hotel room. The room was great, very comfortable; we liked the room from the moment we entered it. We felt at home in it.

One of the features of the room was that it had a king-sized bed … and for two nights, Lily and I felt distant from each other.

We didn’t have an argument, and we didn’t sleep in separate beds – we just lost each other in the king-sized bed!

In a bed that big, you can go a whole night and never even bump up against each other. It’s like you are sleeping by yourself because as far as you can stretch or move, there’s no contact with your spouse.

You actually have to work at not becoming distant from each other in a king-sized bed. Both mornings I found myself on one side of the bed while Lil was way over on the other side.

I don’t know what it was, but we just drifted apart in the night … both nights. We didn’t want to drift apart, but it happened in spite of our desire and intent.

Here’s the thing: You can become distant from God when sin in your life keeps you running from Him. You can feel distant when you hold something against God because He didn’t answer your prayer request. But you can also just drift away from Him, become distant from Him, by not working at staying in close proximity. Make sure that you are actively seeking God, talking to Him, spending time with Him and His word. Make time to worship Him everyday. Don’t become distant.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you become distant from in the past year? Leave your comment below.

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The Difficulty of Maintaining Discipline

Have you ever noticed that there is a chain reaction when it comes to discipline? When you are disciplined in doing one thing, you find it easy to be disciplined with other things as well.

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However, the opposite is also true: a lack of discipline in one area leads to a rash of indiscipline in one’s life.

I experienced this on vacation this year. I know, vacation is the time when you’re supposed to throw discipline out the window and just enjoy life as it comes.

What I’ve discovered is life isn’t much unless you make it something, and that takes some discipline.

Before my vacation, I was in a routine of exercising thirty minutes or more a day. I could do that because I have a gym set up in my basement. If I couldn’t go biking, I could row or ride my stationary bike for half an hour.

While on vacation, I didn’t have the gym option. But I had time – lots of it – to fit in a bike ride or a brisk walk, or swimming each day.

But with so much time available, the tendency is to not be so disciplined in organizing it. After all, I was on vacation! You tend to not make decisions, to just relax and get to things later.

What happens is, all of a sudden, later is gone or something comes up that keeps you from making a decision to, for instance, go for a bike ride.

Once that happens, it can set you up in a pattern. Pretty soon you’re not making wise decisions on when you go to bed at night, so you sleep in and don’t get a good start to the next day. You become less motivated to make a decision to exercise or take that day trip, and you do what you’re supposed to do on vacation – relax, take it easy.

But doing that makes you a little lethargic. You sit down to read or watch TV and easily fall asleep. You spend some of the best part of the day sleeping and when you wake up, you feel like you’ve lost something, and you don’t feel rested.

So you stay up late, have a few snacks and this becomes the pattern of your vacation.

Instead of the dream of your vacation being filled with biking, golf, beach time, and day trips around the region, you end up with days in a row where you don’t feel like you did anything. They feel wasted.

Even on vacation you still want to accomplish something, even if it’s just having some fun.

Well I’m not going to let this vacation get away from me. I’ve seen what the undisciplined life leads to and I’m changing it now.

I’m going biking before lunch today and then spending some time at the beach. I also think a walk down by the water at sunset is in order … that might only cost me a small raspberry gelato.

Here’s the thing: When you are on vacation or on a business or family trip somewhere, it’s easy to get out of your regular routine. Being out of your routine will lead to being undisciplined with God, not spending time with Him, or following His lead in your life. So when you are out of your regular routine, discipline yourself to a new routine, and keep yourself close to God.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: When do you find it hard to stay disciplined? Leave your comment below.

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The Secret To Getting Past Procrastination

I’ve discovered an easy way to tackle projects. I wish I knew this secret a long time ago; it would have helped me to get moving on school assignments and generally anything I wanted or needed to do.

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This year, in early spring, I decided there were a few things I wanted to do around our cottage over the summer months. There were five projects in all.

Five projects seemed like a lot when we got up on vacation and I hesitated getting started on any of them. But finally I decided to start with the one project I wanted to do most.

Deciding which project to start on seemed to be the key to get me going from doing nothing to doing something. … And that’s the kickstart you need to get a project completed.

When you are facing something big, like five projects, it can seem like there’s too much to do, or you don’t know where to start. You can talk yourself right out of doing them.

It doesn’t have to be many projects either. It could be one large project or just a complicated one. When you think of all that it takes to get from start to finish, it can be overwhelming.

… And that thinking or feeling can stop you in your tracks from making progress.

The secret is to not think of the whole, but to think of only the first thing. Another way to look at it is to ask, “What’s the one thing I need to do first?”

That one thing can be as simple as deciding which of the five projects you want to complete the most. For me, that one thing was not that hard and it didn’t even take much time.

It only took me about ten minutes to decide which project I wanted to do first. Then what followed was just as important: I decided what I needed to do next.

That seems to be the key to keep yourself from stepping back and looking at the whole project start to finish, and in the process getting overwhelmed again. You just decide what the next thing you have to do is.

What I’ve found is that there are usually several small, easy steps I can do at the beginning, before I need to spend a lot of time on the project.

And those beginning easy steps serve to get me going. By the time I’ve completed them, I want to keep going and I’m mentally ready to invest more time and energy on the project.

In other words, I’ve slowly got myself to fully commit to and embrace the project to completion.

I completed the first project, moved on to the second and, in the process of completing that, realized I didn’t need to do two of the projects. … That leaves me with one left.

And today I will do something very small to kick-start the work on that. All it entails is to take off some duct tape, open an access door and survey my hot water tank. That shouldn’t take more than five minutes.

Here’s the thing: When you feel you need to discover more about Christ, draw closer to Him, or sense your relationship with God needs to move to the next level, just decide on one thing you need to do to kick-start that process. Maybe that one thing is deciding on a time, a book, a method. Start there and don’t forget to determine what the next step will be as well.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What project have you been procrastinating with that needs a kick-start? Leave your comment below.

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How To Prepare For Being Startled

Some people get startled more easily than others. It doesn’t take much for me to jump when someone happens to show up in my office without me hearing them come in or seeing them out of the corner of my eye.

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I don’t know why it is; I’m not a nervous person. But if someone appears out of nowhere and even says “hi”, whoa, that gets my heart pumping fast.

I remember years ago when I was a youth pastor, we would play a game called “Sardines”. It was a version of hide and seek, where we would turn out all the lights in the church, making it pitch black dark.

One person was “it” and his job was to hide. Everyone else tried to find him and then hide with him in the dark until there was just one person looking for the whole group.

During the game, I took it as my job to scare the life out of the junior high girls. I would go in a room and wait for a pack of girls to enter. They could see nothing but, of course, they couldn’t stop talking.

At a quiet moment, I would yell at the top of my lungs and, though I couldn’t see them, I knew by their reaction they had hit their heads on the ceiling they had been scared so badly … but that was a long time ago.

A few weeks ago, Lily and I were sleeping, pretty much sound asleep, when there was a loud crash. It woke both of us up. I definitely was started, but Lil … I thought she was going to have a coronary!

She couldn’t calm down after that; she was concerned that someone might be in the house. I tried to convince her that everything was alright, but nothing would get her to settle until I checked the house.

So I went to get up and that’s when I saw what had startled us and ruined our sleep. It was a wood valance that was over our closet doors. Apparently, the manufacturers thought that 3M made a double-sided tape that was strong enough to hold up a 6 foot light piece of wood … forever.

For whatever reason, the tape lost its grip in the middle of the night – at 1:57 am to be precise.

Though I wasn’t startled nearly as badly as Lily, being woken up at that time in that way got my mind going and I had a very difficult time getting back to sleep.

I think for Lily, her heart rate shot up so high so fast that it exhausted her and she fell back asleep rather quickly.

The effects of being startled don’t last a long time, but it probably take a few years off your life every time it happens. So my advice is be aware – always.

Here’s the thing: There is going to be a time when either we die or Christ returns that will definitely be startling. It will shake us all to the core, but the only way you will be able to get calm after that, the only way you will get peace is to know Jesus Christ as your saviour. Otherwise, that startle will be just the beginning of an eternity of fear. I suggest you prepare now if you haven’t already. Find out about Christ, who He is, what He did and how He can change your life.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What startles you? Leave your comment below.

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Perfect Timing Is Over-Rated

Timing is everything! A split second off and you miss the shot, you hit the car, you don’t catch your plane . . . well, maybe not.

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My wife and I recently needed to fly from Toronto to Thunder Bay.

Lily had figured out all the details, the flights, the car park, and of course, the time it would take us to get to Toronto, drop the car off and get to our gate with plenty of time to spare.

It all sounded good on paper, but then again, paper doesn’t say anything – it’s all what you read into it. What we didn’t read into the plan was the traffic we might encounter in getting to our destination.

Right from the get-go, the traffic was a little heavier that I had thought it would be. Our 2 1/2 hour drive to Toronto took us a little longer, but we had some extra time built in so I wasn’t fretting.

… until we got about 20 kms from the airport.

The 401 was bumper to bumper, stop and go. There was panic in the car from the navigator’s seat. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the words, “We’re not going to make it!”

There were hurdles all the way. Every time we thought we were catching a break, there would be a roadblock. I thought we were on the TV Show “Amazing Race”.

There was no way we would make the check-in time so Lil checked us in electronically using her phone.

When we finally got off the 401, we thought we maybe had a chance. Then I missed a turn. We drove right past the parking lot for our terminal, but unfortunately we needed to get to the off-site park-and-ride place we’d booked.

When we found the park-and-ride, we thought we might have a chance if they were fast, but there was a car ahead of us who was taking forever to register. Panic filled the air space along with suggestions that we should have paid the extra money and parked at the terminal.

When we finally registered, we were told to pull ahead and wait for the shuttle, then follow it to where we should park before going to the airport. Unfortunately, the shuttle guy didn’t know the script because when he showed us where to park he told us to wait for the back-up shuttle to take us.

More waiting! The waiting was killing my navigator, but it wasn’t long before our shuttle appeared. We told the driver of our predicament and he was pretty calm about it all … though he wasn’t the one scrambling to make a flight that left in twenty minutes!

We ran to security, and there were greeted by a long line ahead of us. Lil said something to the security guard and she took us to the front of the screening line, along with a scolding for not getting to the airport earlier.

Once through security, Lil ran ahead while I carried the bags.

We still had quite a distance to get to our gate and a wrong turn down a hallway didn’t speed up the run. We finally got there, tired and out of breath … and they were still boarding the plane!

We made it.

Here’s the thing: I started praying as soon as we hit traffic on the 401, and even though there were glimpses of hope, each glimpse was met with another impossible hurdle. Yet somehow, some way, against all odds God got us on that flight. Never doubt the power of God in any situation.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: When did God come through for you when all hope was lost? Leave your comment below.

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Why You Should Sit Still For Needles

In my last post, I wrote about not being too keen on going to see the doctor. One of the reasons is they like to stick you with needles.

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Actually, the doctor doesn’t often give the needles; he gets a nurse to do it. That way the patient doesn’t have any animosity towards his doctor; it’s directed towards the nurse!

So not only does the nurse have to do all the dirty work, she also has to be the bad guy. I’m sure that’s why doctors go to school so long, so they have the upper hand on the nurses. It’s a good gig.

Anyway, I said in my last post that I’m not a real fan of needles. I’m not sure when this started, but If I can avoid them I do. It’s not that they hurt – sure, there’s the prick and maybe a little discomfort, especially if they are injecting a boat load of typhoid in you for going over seas, but it’s not bad.

My problem with needles has to do with the whole process: someone sticking something sharp in you while you are sitting still letting it happen. That’s not natural. … You squirm, you move, you fight back to protect yourself – THAT’S the proper response to any kind of personal invasion.

It also bugs me to see that pointy end go into a vein that’s been all pumped up (man, I’d make a terrible drug addict).

You put all those things together and that might be the reason I don’t like needles.

I don’t even like to get them when they can keep me from another kind of pain. For instance, I don’t get freezing when I go to the dentist. I’d rather face the drill on my own than get a needle.

Besides, I like walking out of the dentist’s office not being numb or feeling like my lips are three inches thick.

I don’t want to be that guy who’s unaware that he’s drooling out the left side of his mouth when being introduced to someone for the first time. I have enough problems with spilling food on my clothing, I don’t need a growing wet spot down the front of my shirt as well.

I once had a fifteen minute discussion with a nurse in a hospital emergency room in Regina, weighing the pros and cons of getting a tetanus shot. When I finally said yes and started to roll up my sleeve, she said, “Oh no, it’s going in your rear.”

Well it took me another five minutes to agree to that. I had visions of tensing up so much she would have to put her foot on my rear to yank the needle out!

… It wasn’t nearly as bad as I imagined it would be.

My latest adventure of having my blood tested last week brought back all my memories. The nurse wasn’t the best at giving needles, but she was quick and that’s maybe just as good.

Here’s the thing: Temptation is like getting a needle, where you purposely put yourself in a place of having a painful experience. If we don’t have an exit plan, or try to avoid being tempted in the first place, it’s like sitting down, keeping still and letting someone stick a needle in you. When temptation has its way with us, it leads to sin and, though maybe the pain of that sin is not felt immediately, there will be pain. I’d urge you to avoid that pain. Don’t sit and take it; have a plan when temptation comes.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What kind of a plan do you have for temptation? Leave a comment below.

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Why You Shouldn’t Wait To Commit

It’s no secret that I’m not a frequent flyer at the doctor’s office. I will see my doctor if there is something wrong with me, or on occasion when my wife pleads with me long enough to get checked out.

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Last summer was one of those occasions. In a weak moment, I said I would see my doctor or at least get my blood checked.

I got the form about a year ago, but it was so close to my vacation that I decided to wait until after to go to the lab to let them extract some blood from me.

I’m really not a fan of needles so it’s not something I do just on a whim. I avoid needles at all cost (I’ll write about that in my next blog). I’ve even been known to understate the last time I had a tetanus shot, so they didn’t have to stick me when I was getting stitches.

After my vacation, I delayed going for another couple of weeks, but by the first week of September I got the job done.

Then there came the waiting game. Would I hear from my doctor or would everything check out just fine? I kind of kept my fingers crossed for two weeks, and I didn’t hear anything.

I thought I was in the clear but I still held my breath for another week, just in case.

Then, at the end of the third week, my doctor told me my cholesterol was high. He gave me a couple of options: increase my cholesterol meds or lose weight.

I wanted to try to lose weight because, along with not being a fan of needles, I’m not a fan of medication either.

I was pumped and energized to get going. All fall the weight started coming down … then Christmas came and I lost my focus.

In the new year, my weight bumped up a little bit, so I couldn’t get my blood checked to see if my cholesterol had gone down. I wasn’t near my goal.

By February my doctor gave me the form to get my second blood test. I kept holding off because I couldn’t discipline myself to reach my goal.

Finally, this summer I made some headway on my weight loss again, and though I didn’t reach my goal, I’m hoping that my weight will be low enough to give me a good cholesterol score.

The other day, a year after I received my first lab requisition form, I took my second form (which I’ve had for six months), and got my blood tested.

I’ll let you know how things turn out.

Here’s the thing: When God calls us to make a commitment to something or take on a ministry role of some kind, sometimes our response is that we just need to work on an area of two before we say yes. The problem is there will always be something that causes us to think, “I’m not ready yet”. … If God is calling you to something now, just do it. He knows what you need to work on and He will work on you as you are obedient to His calling.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has kept you from moving forward with God? Leave your comment below.

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Why It’s So Important To Receive Credit For What We Do

I’ve been counting my steps each day for about three years now. They say we should take at least 10,000 steps a day, so since my heart attack, I’ve been trying to get them in.

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For some people that’s easy; their work or life has them on their feet most of the day. But for a guy like me who sits for great portions of the day, it’s not that easy. I have to work at it.

Now, if I could play golf every day – wouldn’t that be nice – that would do it for me … but that’s not going to happen, so I need to get out of my chair and move to get my steps in.

There are a number of stats that I collect about my health and exercise. I record my weight each day, and how much exercise I do.

I do it for my health. I don’t really care if anyone knows about it, but there is one thing for sure – I want credit for it!

When I walk 10,000 steps in a day, I want the credit. If I exercise for 30 minutes or more in a day, it better get recorded.

I want the satisfaction of knowing that what I’ve done shows up somewhere. I’m not talking about a leaderboard like at a PGA tournament or anything, it just has to show up on the app on my phone that keeps track of all this info.

Well, recently I switched to a new step counter. I lost the old one – in fact I have either lost a step counter or put one through the wash about every 9 months for the last three years. The last one was a tad expensive.

My new step counter, however, is a little more stingy with my steps. Maybe the old one was not quite as accurate as this one, but the point is, I’m not getting credit for the steps I’m taking … or that I think I’m taking.

I mentioned this to Lily, my wife, and she just brushed it off. She said it doesn’t matter whether it records all the steps like the last one or not, “you know what you’ve done”.

That’s true, but what I want is credit! I want to be able to look at my app, whether anyone else ever sees it or not, and be proud of my accomplishment. If it’s not recorded, I have no record. I have nothing to prove to myself that I did it.

My new app gives me awards when I achieve a goal – a little symbol that shows up on the screen of my phone … but I want to see the numbers!

I want to see the graphs, steps going up, weight coming down, exercise staying consistent. I want the credit when I’ve achieved a goal – even if it’s just me who will ever lay eyes on it.

Here’s the thing:  We all want to receive credit for what we do, whether it’s at work, with our family, or even something personal. We want it to be noticed and recognized by someone even if that someone is ourselves. We get that from being made in the image of God. So how does God feel when we fail to recognize what He does, fail to recognize His creative hand in nature, fail to acknowledge Him, not recognize His answer to our prayer, or not appreciate His help in circumstances? Be sure you give God the credit due Him.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you done that you would like credit for but have not received it? Leave your comment below.

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How Unfinished Projects Become Invisible

We can get used to living with something that is unfinished. The other day when I was the passenger in a car, the driver pointed out a house to me. He said the owners had been working on that house for over a decade.

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It was a big house but the yard was a mess, all overgrown, with at least two construction vehicles parked haphazardly around the property.

It looked to me like people were living in the house, but the outside of it needed bricks or stucco or something to finish it off.

My first thought was to wonder how they lived for ten years in a house that wasn’t finished. But then I remembered that I’m living with an unfinished project myself.

Recently we changed the railing on our deck. But when it came time to do the stair rail, we kind of put the brakes on. I was a little unsure of how to proceed with one part of it, so we just held off until we could get some advice.

We were so busy for the next couple of weekends that we never got to the store to find out how to finish the task.

Finally, this past week we made it to the hardware store and inquired about what we needed to know.

But now it’s not a priority any more. You see, the railing looks pretty much finished. When we look out our patio doors, all we see is the new railing; we don’t see the part that’s unfinished.

It’s just the steps that don’t have the railing and, though it would finish off the project and look complete, it doesn’t look bad.

When we were working on the project we wanted to get it all finished. I didn’t like leaving the job half done. But the more time that passed, I became less and less concerned that it wasn’t complete.

I’m sure the people living in the unfinished house I saw have the same feelings. They may twinge a little bit when they pull into their yard, but once they get into their house, they don’t see the outside and it’s probably liveable on the inside.

We can get so used to living in that unfinished state that we don’t see what it really looks like any more. We look at the finished part and are satisfied.

Even some visual reminders don’t motivate me. For instance, every time I step into my garage I see a pile of old railing pieces that need to be taken to the dump and some 4×4 posts that need to be cut and are waiting to be placed at the bottom of the stairs.

That doesn’t phase me any more; I’m used to that now.

However, other people take one look and notice what is unfinished and that becomes their focus. … I guess I better put a man on it, and finish it off.

Here’s the thing: While our outer life looks fine to everyone, our inner life can be left unfinished. If we care more about how things look to everyone else, we may not take the time to work on the interior. And we can get very comfortable living in an unfinished state, to the point that we don’t even notice what needs to be worked on any more. Take an inventory of the spiritual work you need most, and put a man on it. Don’t neglect that unfinished work.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you left unfinished and just gotten used to? Leave your comment below.

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How To Clean Up A Messy Life

I’ve been noticing that things have been getting a little messy in my life. I haven’t been careful at keeping the little things tidy.

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What I’ve observed is, my night table is . . . well, you can’t see much of it because of all the little things that are covering it. You know, you empty your pockets at night, and where do you put all that stuff? Right! You put it on your night table.

Then there are things like cards. I recently had a birthday – what do you do with birthday cards after you’ve read them? … night table.

It seems that once you’ve let a few things stay on your night table, it’s free game for anything else that you or anyone else sees fit to place there.

I look at the mess on that night table and think I should do something about it, but I’m not sure where to put all those things. So they just stay there.

Then there is the desk top of my computer. It is littered with files and folders. They say that your computer doesn’t run as fast when the home screen is filled with the things you haven’t filed somewhere.

It usually starts with me thinking that I will soon need that file so I better keep it on the desktop for easy access. Since that’s convenient, it’s not long until I do that with another file. Soon I’m not taking the time to file anything; it’s easier to just leave it on the desktop.

It looks horrible. I’ve chosen a few pictures that I like to look at for my desktop, but now I can hardly see them for all the icons and file names that litter the screen.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. It happens regularly at work. Filing is an issue with me. I just don’t keep up with it and the result is that my desk at work gets some not-so-nice-looking piles of paper on it.

I find that I live this way for a while; it can even be a long while. But at some point – and I’ve reached that point right now – I need to do something about it. I need to do some cleaning up.

I started last night with my laptop. I trashed some files, filed others. I didn’t finish the job but I made great headway towards having a file-free screen.

My night table is next – the cards have to go, and all those other little things that should be put in their places … not just out of sight, but in the right spot.

Here’s the thing: One of the problems with clutter is that we don’t know where to put things. We don’t have a spot for them. Because of that, we tend to leave things lying around, hoping they will find a spot for themselves. But that never happens. Our life can also get messy with stuff we haven’t dealt with that’s just lying around – things like unforgiveness, jealousy, bitterness, lust, anger (this could be a long list). We don’t trip on those things every day, but they sure make our lives cluttered and difficult to relate to God, even find Him sometimes. Maybe it’s time to clean up the mess. Where should you put all that stuff? Take it to God, lay it all before Him and ask Him to deal with it. You’ll be amazed at how He can clean up your life!

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What part of your home or life gets the most messy? Leave your comment below.