Kane and the West Side Missionary

I had the privilege of being invited to do a worship night at West Side Missionary Baptist Church last Sunday night. Amanda got to go with me, so obviously I had to plan a dedication song in my line-up. Everything, by Michael Buble, has become a cover song that I do - inspired by a request I sang at the wedding of a couple friends, Christian and Macey - and is now shared between Amanda and I because it expresses exactly how I feel about her. (Insert giant giggly smile here)
My song line-up was like this:

Eskimo
Lies
Amen (Chris August cover)
Unpredictable
Everything (Michael Buble cover)
Blind
Psalm 13
Indescribable (Chris Thomlin cover)
Take All of Me
Reign In Us (Starfield cover)

It was a pure joy to experience worship with all ages in the church! A friend of mine, Kristy, serves as their worship leader and arranged the whole concert. Her husband, Kane, shared his testimony with me after the night was finishing up.
When Kane was growing up, his attempt at church ended with the judgmental stares and comments by those that give church the bad image even the Pharisees and Sadducees offered when Jesus was on earth with His ministry. The issue was that in order to come into the temple courts, your image had to be acceptable in the eyes of judges. If you did not meet their standards, you faced ridicule. Jesus came to defy that approach to church; an example we see when he hung out with people like Matthew and Zacchaeus the tax collectors. Both gave several times more than they had stolen back to the people after giving their lives over to the Love that Christ offered! The entire church may not be to blame for carrying such judgmental standards, but the phrase "one or two apples can spoil the whole bunch" really does carry a heavy truth, and Kane fell out of church, as well as any curiosity to explore the Love of God.

Then Kristy entered Kane's picture.

Kristy was involved in the Missionary Baptist Church for a while and urged Kane to try it out with her. After a few invites, Kane had warmed up to the idea, and because of the love Kristy had shown, along with the welcome her church gave him as a new face in their church community, Kane's heart was softened to allow God to work. A little over a week ago, Kane accepted Christ and the adoption into His Family! The errors of a few can never get in the way of the work of our Heavenly Father!

and I got to worship with him! That's a true joy!

Angela and the Midas Touch

Yesterday, I went to get a LOT done in Mount Vernon, Illinois. I took an overflowing basket of laundry with me too! The first place I stop is Mom and Dad's house. If you're a traveler like me, and make it a priority to visit your parents when you stop in your home town, you understand why it's important.
It was a half an hour before I realized I had been sitting and talking with my Dad and sister and my dirty laundry was still sitting in my car! After loading up the washer I took the Focus over to the Midas car service shop to have its oil and filter changed with a coupon my pops gave me. They let me know it would be 20 minutes before they could get it in, and another 45 minutes to service. I decided it was best to walk to K-Mart, visit some of my former co-workers from my first job days back in 2002, and buy a bag of Fritos Honey BBQ Flavore Twists so I could take out some cash using my debit card to pay for a hair cut. My hair appointment was at 1:00 - an hour from the time I left my Focus at Midas - plenty of time for me to use the parents' computer to e-mail my resume to someone I know through United Way - because I still have the hope of one day representing a not-for-profit organization as a career - and empty my inbox! As soon as I cleared the last of my 997 messages, the phone rang. Midas had finished getting my Focus back on track in less than 40 minutes, plenty of time for me to pick up my car and drive myself to the hair cut appointment instead of having to depend on a ride!

I walk in to pick up my car and Angela hands me my key. Angela greets you when you walk in the door to Midas and is the one that puts your information in their computer. She asked me if i was from around the area and I told her I was here visiting family and getting my laundry cleaned, and that I had come in from the St Louis area. That got her asking what I do "all the way up there", which brought up the topic of working for Journeys, following God in music ministry, and how God has been my Provider.

The door opened.

Angela told me about her daughter pursuing her education and the difficulties she faced being a supportive mother helping her daughter afford the pursuit. She started to tear up as she told how her daughter called home one day pleading for what to do, because the cost of books was higher than expected and, after paying for the tuition, did not have enough money in her account to pay for them.
Even Angela's whole paycheck wouldn't be enough to help her daughter's expenses and they both began to have concern in what to do next. After praying and crying out to God for answers, Angela looks into her daughter's bank account to see how everything was adding up. The total she found in the account shocked her!

$700+

Almost the same time she saw it, Angela's daughter was calling her. She answers the phone to her daughter saying she was looking at the same screen and discovered that her paycheck had somehow posted three days before it was suppose to! God had provided by speeding up time and depositing that paycheck before it would normally go through!

Angela's testimony serves as a reminder to me that God tells us in His Word to put Him to the test. He is not offended when we wrestle with Him as Jacob did; that's what makes our relationship stronger. It's when we let ourselves get to the point of not believing God will come through that we put up the barricades in our own lives and block His Spirit from being able to move. When we recognize that we are blind to God's works and can only trust Him with complete Faith, even when our head is full of questions, He is allowed to defy even the greatest miracle.

Angela and her daughter could have never known that paycheck would deposit early, but they prayed and praised God for the will He had laid out. Because of that faith, His name was lifted high and glorified.

I was almost late to my hair appointment, but I wouldn't have missed that testimony for the world. In the end, I got my dirty laundry washed cleaned, my head cleared, and my focus restored.

Bill the Retired Navy and Airforce Strategist

If I ever needed someone to cross my path it was yesterday, and God definitely knew it. I have been out of the blogging loop for a few months now simply because I had gotten so caught up with the blessing of being promoted to a co-manager of a retail store that I had no time for anything else. Relationships with friends, family, and my girlfriend all were not getting much quality time as an investment. (Yes, I said girlfriend! For those of you following my blog only and are now lost, I found the love of my life on Halloween night last year and couldn't be happier! That story to come later. ;D) Since taking the position, I resigned from my position as a Youth Pastor and got to experience, firsthand, what people meant by rebutting against my continual badgering about getting a job that doesn't keep you out of church; from September till the new year, I had only been to around three worship services. That's tricky for a guy that had always been so adamant about never working on Sundays! On top of it all, I slowly caused my health to deteriorate to the point of not being able to breathe. My body had been placed in an environment of constant stress and lack of rest. Music ministry became nonexistent as well, and my smile was barely definable underneath the constant feeling of fighting for my life.

I had to let go.

Letting go of the co-manager position meant returning to part time with around 15 to 20 hours a week at just a little over Missouri's minimum wage. In Illinois, that's practically considered unemployed, but the choice was as obvious as Jonah's as he sat in the belly of that giant fish. God wants me to be spiritually fed and to carry on His call in my life for music ministry. This is the season I am in.

When I have a need for a place to sleep at night, food on the table, transportation to get back and forth, and a way to stay connected, not knowing where a solid income will come from is a scary place to be. Being one that has been there many times, I really drudged experiencing it again.

A scarier place to be is where God isn't.

When I made the decision to step down, things really changed. My health almost immediately cleared up, communication with friends has reopened, God has placed a lot of opportunities in my life for pursuing talents as a musician, more quality time with Amanda, my beautiful and talented girlfriend, has strengthened our relationship, and who knows where the future will take us! ;)

Those blessings give me confidence in God, and gives me hope for my future, but it doesn't clear up the questions. I cannot continue to live under the roof of host families all of my life, I have to be able to afford transportation, home-cooked meals have not really been an option for me and needs to be, staying connected through social medias is a must for a music career, and nothing in our lost world is free.

Here's where the story of Bill begins.

I am sitting in McDonalds of Fairview Heights, Illinois, studying a road map of Illinois because I have this brilliant idea of how to be crafty with it and find a way to make wall decorations out of it to sell as merchandise on my website (a work in progress) because we are all going somewhere and what a better way to express how we all are connected as the Body of Christ along this path to somewhere than to hang clips of roadmaps on your wall?!? Basically, I am desperate to come up with a more supportive income as a starving, homeless musician that works 15 hours a week selling shoes.

This elderly man walks up in a coat made for a man twice as tall as he is, and a hat that may have been picked up as a free giveaway at a home or business expo. With a softness in his voice, he calmly asks if he can take a few minutes to burn away some of my time, of which if you've read any of my blog at all you know I automatically knew God had sent this man into my life for this moment and I could not refuse to listen.

Bill told me his story.

History.

...whichever you decide to call it.

Bill served for 17 years in the Navy firing giant artillery from the decks of ships during World War 2. One cold night his ship was hit and the captain made the decision for everyone to jump. If his captain had made the call any later, there would not have been enough time for Bill to swim far enough away from the ship to not get sucked under by the massive tons of metal sinking to the ocean floor, and he would not have made it out to be able to tell me his story in McDonalds yesterday.
After serving a while in the Navy, the reserves split and formed the opportunity to be a part of an air force, so he inquired about being transferred in to serve in a new capacity. As it turned out, they found him a perfect candidate to come up with tactics for getting troops in and out safely, to make sure as few lives as possible were lost. Bill did not have much of an education because his father was a farmer that had told him, "You don't need any other education than what you get at home. If you have any questions you can ask me. I have all the answers you'll need with my third grade education." Back then all you needed to know was how to tend the family farm.
Because Bill grew a desire to learn, he ended up using his experience and knowledge from extended training to save thousands of lives with a tactic that rescued troops from the line of fire in Vietnam. He received metals for his heart, of which he questioned because he never knew he had saved so many lives till they told him about how his plan worked.
Bill has two daughters. One has been called to the mission field several times and recently felt the need to take supplies to villages in Africa. He and his other daughter agreed to support her cause by donating what they could in non-perishable foods and other goods. Bill was able to to round up about $100 in groceries, and his daughter managed to talk companies and retailers into donating a total of around $21000 in goods to send over. She agreed to pay for the donations to be shipped over seas and away Bill's daughter went to hand deliver them, because she wanted to make sure they would all get to the right people. Both of Bill's daughters have blessed him with grandchildren, all of which are being brought up with the same kind of heart for thinking of others before themselves.
Bill told me about being baptized in a Baptist church, but that his faith in Christianity was tarnished by a TV evangelist that he had come to respect one day proclaiming that you were nothing unless you belonged to a Baptist church. After turning off the TV, he began to turn to research other religions and came to the conclusion that not one of them were perfect, but all had good morals woven in and believed in positive things. God opened the door right there for me to share with him the God I serve is higher than any religion, and this Creator of all wants a personal relationship with Him instead of just being a Ruler of our lives. He listened with respect, and with tears in his ears told me he was glad we crossed paths.

Then Bill said something to me that has changed the way I am looking at life. He said through everything he has been through - coming back from service and feeling like "home" wasn't really home anymore after being gone so long at sea, and 20 years ago loosing his wife to cancer - he has learned that there are many ways to do things, and when we feel like we've found the best way to do something, someone else will come along soon and find a way to do it even better. But his message was clear: always look for new ways to learn, and be one to make a change. This is the statement he made that sticks with me:

"Try, try, try again. When that doesn't work, flip it over and look at it from the other side. Then try, try, and try again."

I will not give up. When God nudges, it's time to move.