Joel Stiff's Adventure

The Bible is big on contentment.

Having food and raiment, we are to be content.

Well, it seems we are all failing at this one.  I don’t know a soul that isn’t interested in picking up something new.

There is something in us that seeks to improve our condition.  Actually, when we think about it, God told Adam that his job was to improve his situation.  He was placed in a garden and told to tend it and keep it.  All things were put under his hand.  It only seems natural for man to want to move forward and better himself.

We know that God would never command one thing and then give us a desire that is contrary.  We also know that God would never command something and then not give us the ability to fulfill the command.  If He commands contentedness and improvement, we must be able to do both.

Why does God insist on our contentedness?  It is what’s best for us.  It is what’s best for our joy, happiness and personal fulfillment.  Discontentment comes from a lack of gratitude and ungrateful people are unhappy people.  They are also sinning in their lack of gratitude for what our good God is doing for them.  Sin brings conviction and no one wants to live under a cloud of conviction.

Why does He want us to improve our situation?  We need something to do.  Idle hands create problems.  Busy hands create solutions.  God is a creator and we are made in His image.  We are born to create and cultivate.  Satan is the destroyer.  We are to build.

Back to our original question, how can we reconcile contentment and ambition?

Be content first.

Many times, we have the mind that the next achievement or acquisition will make us content.  So we discontentedly work and work until we achieve what we sought, thinking that we will find contentment upon completion.  That might work except that the eye of man is never satisfied.  Once a goal is completed, a new one grows in its place.

Waiting to be content until you’re satisfied is an exercise in futility.  You have to start with contentment.  Believing that if nothing ever changed for you, you could still be grateful and have joy.

Once you are content, then you look to make improvements and the desire to improve is a good desire.

Let’s illustrate with baseball.  The first game you play, you are not going to be great.  You probably aren’t even going to be good.  You may drop the ball as a fielder and strike out every at bat, but you’re in the game.  You can appreciate the sunshine and blue sky.  The smell of the freshly cut field and the ability to run the bases doesn’t escape you.  You’re grateful to be playing, but also have a desire to improve.  You will work hard and be disciplined to gain skills and knowledge.  But you’re going to enjoy the journey along the way, not be discontented until you reach your destination.

Deciding to be content while working to improve is not admitting failure.  It’s choosing to be happy while working instead of waiting until payday to smile.

 

2016 has been full of the deaths of famous individuals.

What tears at me most are Christians who come out of the gate with their declarations of who it is enjoying the pleasures of glory and who is burning in a devil’s hell.

I find nowhere in scripture that it is mine to decide the salvation of another’s soul.  And for the record, “By their works ye shall know them” is in reference to false teachers, not lost and saved individuals.

It is clear in the book of James, that the only indicators we have are the works of man.  So what works am I to view?  Is it church attendance, Jesus bumper stickers and “God is Wiser”  t-shirts?  Maybe I should consider what Jesus said.  We could tell a disciple by his or her love for others.

He also said that many who call Him, Lord, would be rejected in that day.  So, there’s that.

Then there are those who sit in jail cells for wicked sins and crimes who for decades purported themselves to be a Christian.  Even self declaring to be a great one.  What about them?

Guess it’s harder to tell than we thought.

Guess we should stop guessing.

I do know this, that God knows more about a person than I know.  For He sees not as I see.  While I am busy looking at the outward man, He is interested in the heart.

The Bible is clear that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

So, Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Charles Manson were all created by a God who loves them and died for them.  He desperately desired that they would know Jesus and be saved.

He so desires men and women to be saved that He completed all of the work for salvation.  Jesus came, lived, preached, died and rose again.  He said, “It is finished.”  The only thing up to us is to believe.

The Ethiopian eunuch asked if he could be baptized by Philip.  Philip said if he believed he could.  The eunuch’s response?  “I believe.”  That’s it.

The thief on the cross asked Jesus to remember him.  Jesus said, “This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”  I wonder how many people said the thief went to hell as they pulled his body down.  After all, his life didn’t show his faith.

Jesus used the example of Moses in the wilderness.  The people were ill and in need of healing.  Moses lifted up a brass serpent on a staff.  All the people had to do was look at the serpent, just look, and they would be healed.  Jesus said, that He as the Son of Man would be lifted up and would draw men to Him.

God wants man to be saved and made it easy for man to do so.  Believe.

I heard a man tell a story about his graduation from Bible college.  He was in line waiting to receive his diploma when two men near him began to discuss a plane crash that occurred that very day.  Some executives from Playboy Enterprises died in the crash.  These men were smiling as they surmised that these men had died and gone to hell.  The man telling the story said that he began to weep.  He could not believe that these men who had just spent years training to love and serve people with the gospel were glorying in someone dying and going to hell.

I bet it’s hard to win people to Christ when they find out you are happy that their family, friends and people they admire are burning in hell.

Is it any wonder that Jesus so harshly rebuked the religious people of His day?

Seems many Christians today still fail to understand just what their leader was trying to teach them.

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

His mercy endureth forever.

John the Baptist was weird.

No matter what time frame or setting you place him, he was weird.  The best visual I can come up with is Captain Caveman.  The Bible says that he wore clothes made of camel hair.  It never says this of anyone else, so it must have been weird.  He had a diet of locusts and wild honey.  Anyone who eats bugs is weird.  There are too many chickens and cows running around to be eating bugs.  He preached in the desert.  Most preachers I know go to cities to preach because there are people there.  Not John the Baptist, he goes to the desert.

The oddest thing started to happen.  Someone heard him.  They told someone else who told another.  Before you know it, he has this group of people showing up to hear him preach.

Since they obviously didn’t get how weird he was yet, he insisted that they let him dunk them under water.  And they did.  By the droves, people showed up and let John baptize them in the Jordan River.

John was the forerunner of Jesus.  He said himself that he came to prepare the way for the Lord.  And in so doing, he helped change the world.

What did he do that mattered?

He knew why he was here.  He was here to spread a message.

He didn’t let anyone or anything stop him.  Did he have naysayers?  Absolutely.  How did it affect him or his message?  It didn’t at all.  Eventually it would lead to his beheading.  He still said what he needed to say.

He didn’t conform to anyone’s image or model.  He was true to himself and the God who created him.

He didn’t live for himself.  He lived for God and for his cousin for whom he was preparing the way.  He lived to serve others.

Learning to filter out the noise of the world and the opinions of everyone in it is essential to making a difference.

All three of these are necessary for an engine to run.

Last Spring when the grass was high enough to cut, we rolled the old, red tractor out of the garage.  She had certainly seen better days.  The ignition didn’t work properly so anytime we needed to start it, we jumped it off the van.  One end of the cables to the van and the other grounded out on the mower deck with the red cable sparking on the starter solenoid. Life was exciting that summer.

The first start of the year wasn’t working as planned so the troubleshooting began.  It’s gotta be one of the three: air, fuel or spark.  Air cleaner is removed and cleaned.  Everything seems good.  Next, spark plug is pulled and visually inspected.  It’s not black, gooey and wet.  Nor is it dry and burnt.  Gap looks good.  Engine is turned over while holding spark plug boot to determine if it’s trying to spark.  Crack in boot goes unnoticed, shock runs through fingers and up arm.  Go inside to change pants.  Fuel cap checked to ensure breather hole isn’t clogged.  Gas tank is checked for fuel.  Gas line inspected for cracks.  Carburetor is opened and inspected.

Everything is good.  Apply red cable to solenoid and still no start.  As a last measure, spray some WD-40 into the air intake and sure enough she starts.  Hallelujah!

Once we got the engine started, it would start without any trouble whatsoever.  Very strange phenomena to be sure.

But it still stands that starting is the hardest part.  It’s that way in my life too.  Any time I want to begin something new, it seems like everything is against me in getting it going.  Not enough air, fuel or spark.  Sometimes it’s not even something new, just doing what I don’t want to do can be a chore to start.

Getting started is the hardest part of the job so if you can rip that band-aid off, the rest of the job is cake.

One of the guys at the bus stop was on the cutting edge of all the fads.

He was usually the very first guy to do the new thing.  He had a couple older sisters, so I think he was getting his info from them.  Beyond informing him, they encouraged him to adopt the next big thing.

The first I remember was the Member’s Only Jacket.  All the guys seemed to be getting them.  They came in just a few different colors, but everyone knew that black was the toughest look.  One by one, my friends convinced their parents to get them a jacket.  Some ended up with the burgundy while one poor guy got the teal one.  I finally was able to secure a nice black jacket, but it was a knockoff.  It was missing that little patch under the single front breast pocket that said “Member’s Only.”  I guess I wasn’t an official member.

After the jackets, guys started to grow out this little rat tail in the back of their hair.  This was early to mid eighties, so we were all a little shaggy, but not too bad.  But instead of growing all of the hair out,  boys were just growing out an inch wide strip in the center of the back of their hair.  There was no standard so sometimes it was two inches wide which made it look fat.  Sometimes it was a half inch which was a little thin.  It was a new look to me and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  My memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall mentioning it to my mom and having her let me know that I wouldn’t be participating.  It was an easy out.  I could avoid a look I didn’t like, but might be pressured into getting by blaming it on my mom.  That’s a win.  “Yeah, I’d really like a horrible haircut so I can be like you, but you know parents.”

The third in this trifecta of misguided fashion sense was the pierced ear.  Now back in my day (to be heard in the oldest grandpa voice imaginable), you had to be very selective about this ear piercing business.  For males, a pierced right ear was for “fags”.  No males were piercing both ears, at least not in Flint.  If you were going for cool, it was the left ear alone.  A tiny hoop was acceptable as was a small diamond stud.  My fashion forward friend met me at the corner and couldn’t resist showing his new adornment. A tiny gold hoop ring was fastened through the swollen, red, infected earlobe of his left ear.  He couldn’t have been more proud.  I suggested a tetanus shot.  The night before, his sister used the tried and true method of a lighter to disinfect a sewing needle, an ice cube to numb the lobe and a potato for the back side of the ear.  I’m glad I wasn’t there to see it.  I’m sure it went badly.

It didn’t take long for the majority of the guys at the bus stop to have this trifecta of junior high style: rat tails, pierced left ears and member’s only jackets for everyone.  I had the jacket, blamed my mom for the hair and boldly proclaimed my choice to pass on becoming an aspiring cosmetologist’s guinea pig.

It was about then that I started to realize that most people want you to be just like them.  They don’t want different.  Different scares people.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe it’s because it requires them to ask themselves why it is they are doing what they are doing.  Maybe they believe their way is right and your doing it differently makes them doubt themselves.  After all, life is easier just doing what you’re told and following the guy in front of you.  Plus, you don’t have to listen to everyone ridicule you for being so different.

Or you could be who God made you to be.

I remember this show being on tv when I was younger.

The longest it could hold my attention was through the opening credits.  After that, the plot became too adult for me and I went back to listening to the episode of The Dukes of Hazard that I had recorded on my tape recorder the last time it came on.

I do remember that opening sequence and particularly the sound that was made whenever his bionic faculties came into play.  I also had the Steve Austin action figure.  The premise was that after the doctors were through with him, his body was worth six million dollars.

My brother and I play an extremely fun but terribly morbid and disturbing game.  I dream up body modifications for him and we negotiate a price that he would accept to undergo such modifications.

For example, I request that we surgically remove his nose and turn it upside down, nostrils up.  This is all done with the understanding that: a) life resumes as normal, there is no becoming a hermit and b) there are no adverse affects from the surgeries, everything will still function properly.  Can you imagine sneezing with your nostrils facing up?  Better close your eyes.

We come up with prices for a single year’s change or for the course of a lifetime.  The nose modification may only cost me $50,000.00 if done for a twelve month period.  If I want it done for life, however, it may cost as much as $20 million.

Something became apparent to me after playing this game for some time.  He really values his body parts.  We truly do weight the difficulties of the change versus the payout.  We approach it as though it were a real possibility.  This makes him certain that he gets what he feels the sacrifice is worth.

If I want to take an arm for life, he wants tens of millions of dollars.  A hand is still in the millions.  A thumb cam cost a full million over his lifetime.

I have asked our church folks during a sermon how many of them would sacrifice an arm or a leg for $1 million.  Interestingly enough, no one ever goes for it.  This tells us that we value our bodies to be worth millions.

Now here’s my point.

Everyday I hear folks talk about how their lives would be so different if only they had the right tools, the right education, the right upbringing, etc.  But if you are a living breathing human, you have a priceless tool that God has blessed you with, a functioning body with its very own supercomputer installed.

Given this fact, what’s stopping you?

That is the way a pastor of mine put it years ago and I never forgot it.

It’s kind of a gross way to put it, but you can’t ignore the truth of it, nor will you ever forget it now.  You’re welcome.

We all struggle with procrastination.  Something needs to be done, but we just aren’t in the mood.  As though the mood for work ever surfaces.  So we fill the time with things that feel productive but really aren’t, refreshing email accounts, checking facebook and twitter and instagram and pinterest and you get the idea.

Postponing what needs to be by filling the time with the easiest, closest thing greatly wastes our time.  Sure, we will still get the work done.  In a frenzied panic, we will cram to get it in and meet the deadline.  But in the end, all of our time is used up.  Now there is none left to do the leisurely things we would choose.  See, downtime is earned.  If the work is done on schedule, the time off is free to use at our choosing.  If we squander time and rush to get the work in by deadline, there is no time left for choosing leisure.

The solution to procrastination is to be disciplined enough to live by schedule.  If I do what I’m supposed to do when I’m supposed to do it, I get to do what I want to do once it’s done.

Or I can spend all my leisure time being distracted by the internet.

No thanks.

We took our Georgia teens to Washington D.C. as a special trip.

Before we went, I studied a Frommer’s  travel guide.  We meticulously planned out the trip to cover as many of the major sights as possible.

One of the things we certainly wanted to see was the U.S. Capitol building.  As we approached the entrance, we found that the line was about 500 people deep.  Our itinerary didn’t allow for such a wait, not that we would have wanted to wait for so long.

Then I remembered.  The Frommer’s guide had mentioned an underground trolley that ran from a nearby Senate building to the Capitol.  We found the building and made it through security.  Once inside, we found the elevator banks, entered and pressed the button for the basement.  Once the doors opened, we found ourselves in a large open area with a Capitol policeman at the head of queue of about thirty people.

These people were all official D.C. types with security badges and briefcases and in walks this group of teenagers that didn’t belong at all.  A couple of people even tried to tell us that we couldn’t use it, but I had learned otherwise and the policeman had our back.

So we ride this trolley for just a couple of minutes and the ride ends.  We start following the crowd because we had no idea where we were or where we were to go.  It was a basement with old block walls and pipes running overhead.  We found the elevators and took them up to the main floor.  When the doors opened, we were staring straight ahead into the rotunda of the Capitol.  I walked over to the doors where the daylight was shining through.  Looking out, I saw the same line of 500 we had seen earlier.  Doing our homework turned a two hour wait into a ten minute adventure.

I’ve been back since, but the trolley is no longer available to the public since the 9/11 disaster.

Maybe someday I’ll tell about stealing the Declaration of Independence and finding a map on the back that led to a great treasure.

June 11, 1994 was the day Shannon and I looked in each other’s eyes and committed our lives to one another.

At the end of the ceremony, after I had kissed my new bride, we were pronounced husband and wife and began the recessional.  Once we were out the back door of the auditorium, we were all alone as a married couple.

And that’s when it hit me.

I didn’t feel any different.  As a 22 year old young man, I truly believed that getting married would feel different than being single.  Almost as soon as I realized that I was the same exact guy as 30 minutes before, I realized that marriage had nothing to do with feeling and everything to do with commitment.

You see, feeling is something we have very little control over whereas commitment is completely up to us.  As a newly married man, feelings did not determine the success or failure of my marriage.  My commitment totally did.

The same is true for nearly everything else in life.  If we rely on feelings alone to get us where we want to be, we will fail to find ourselves there.

But if we commit ourselves, we can accomplish nearly anything we set our minds to.

I am not claiming to be thoughtful, but I was taught how to be in an unforgettable way.

While in Georgia, we hosted a regional bus ministry conference.  We brought in a guest speaker from a larger ministry to speak to us over a few days.  Churches from the area came and we were collectively challenged and taught in regards to all things bus related.

While with us, a family from our speaker’s home church was involved in an auto accident and the husband ended up in an Atlanta hospital’s ICU.  He asked me if I would mind taking him to the hospital so that he could see the family.  Of course, I was more than happy to do so.

Over the few days, I drove him to the hospital more than a half dozen times.  I took him as early as five a.m. and as late as eleven p.m.  I drove him in the afternoon and fought Atlanta traffic.  Never did I view this as an imposition.  In fact, I enjoyed being able to spend some personal time with our guest.

Once the conference had ended and our speaker had returned home, life resumed to normal.  The next week, a package arrived for me.  I was like a kid on Christmas morning since this was well before we all started receiving things from Amazon on a daily basis.

Upon opening the package I found a biography of one of my mentors.  I wasn’t sure why I had received it since I hadn’t placed an order for a copy.  I opened the cover and there was an inscription, “Dear Joel, thank you so much for helping my friend be there for one of our members.” and it was signed by my mentor.  There was also an envelope.  Inside was a hand written thank you note on personal stationary from our guest speaker.  He was thanking me for “your great personal sacrifice.”  Goodness, all I had done was drive him to the hospital a few times.  Finally, there was a $100 Shell gas card enclosed with the note.

I was beside myself with both the generosity and thoughtfulness of this gift.  I don’t believe I have ever been so thoroughly expressive of gratitude.  But this example is the standard I try to live up to.