All I Need

One of the reasons I highly encourage journaling is that you may find that years from now you can be your own best encourager! When you read words you wrote yourself long ago, you are more open to them because, well, you wrote them. The words of others can be hard to accept at times, but when your own words are exactly what you need, it’s kinda hard to argue. Such was the case with the discovery of this poem, written eighteen years ago. (am I that old?) At a time in my life when so much is new, and when letting go and saying good bye to many people and things that I loved and took for granted as a part of my daily and weekly life are gone – it was nice to read the words of a much younger version of me saying through this poem, “be content, all you need is God. But He’s given you so much more.” Enjoy! ALL I NEED Make yourself, Lord, all I need, In all I say and do, May my dependance be on nothing else, Let me only lean on you.   I want to need nothing else, Than…

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Constantly Becoming

Another poem from youthful days. This one I actually put to music, (key of G my hand written notes say) but, NO, I’m not going to record it and upload an MP3, good friends have advised me against a singing career. Chicago, taken 1989, no digital editing, I used a filter for the coloring. CONSTANTLY BECOMING I’m not who I used to be, I’m not who I will be, ‘Cause more like my Savior, I’m everyday becoming. I’m constantly changing, Constantly rearranging, And I won’t reach perfection, Until His second coming. But until I see Him in the sky On His love I will rely, I must let Him live through me, So with His glory I can shine. Oh, I tried to live life on my own, But I’ve learned my life is just a loan, God entrusted it to me, My life’s no longer mine. I’ve given it back to Him, The good, the bad and all the sin, So He can mold it and shape it, He’s the potter, I’m the clay. Sometimes I find it hard to trust, But I know that it is a must, If I’m to be all I’m meant to be, On…

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The Love of God is Overwhelming

Today I was amazed that my devotional reading was perfectly exactly what I needed today. Then, as I shared it with my wife, she noticed that I was actually off by a day… I’m not sure when I missed a day and as I expressed my disappointment that I “goofed” somehow and got off in my Oswald Chambers Journal, my wife pointed out, that if today’s message was exactly what I needed, then God actually had me get off somehow so that I would “accidently” read today’s today, instead of when I supposed to. All that to say, even in our mundane mistakes, God is at work. Today was a difficult day in my private journey as a pilgrim of Christ. I’ll leave it at that as far as details go, but enough to say, of all the difficult days I may experience in life, today will always be one of the most difficult I ever had to face. And yet God’s peace was evident and his mercy flowed freely and his grace was abundant. My passage today (accidently) was “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:37) I’d like to share…

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Super Bowl Cake is a Winner, Even if the Bears Aren’t!

I know that all of ChicagoLand is depressed and that Jeff Bradley is going to give me a hard since my Bears let me down after all of our instant messaging “trash talk”… I don’t think I dare turn on iChat for a few days… we were really going at it the last few days, and now he gets to gloat and say “I told you so” instead of me. But if the Bears didn’t shine, my wife did! So rather than try to give any football commentary (and make a fool of myself) instead this blog’s purpose is simply to show off the AWESOME and AMAZING SUPER BOWL CAKE that my wife made for our Bears Party. And please, do leave her some comments… I know she’ll be checking! But is this an awesome cake or what?!?!?!? It should have been illegal to cut into it! Feast your eyes on this: (since only we got to actually feast on IT) PS: My sister will also instant message me a complaint if I don’t mention that SHE made the gummy team logos in the end zones. Pretty cool, eh?

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Slow Down. There is beauty that is often missed.

I was in Orlando last week for the Children’s Pastor’s Conference and will be posting more about that on Kidology.org, but I wanted to post some pictures from the Coranado Springs Resort where I stayed. But I have to tell you something about myself… I don’t take the usual pictures! I like to see what others walk right past. All of the pictures below (and it was hard to narrow down the ones I wanted to post) were taken right off the path at the resort. Behind a bush, down by the water, over a bridge, beside a building, etc. At my new slower pace of life I am taking more time to slow down and open my eyes to the beauty around me, and it was actually fun to be stopping and taking close up pictures of nature in a very ‘man-made’ place with people scurring past me in a hurry to get to the amusement park or other activities. Several times people stopped and asked, “What are you taking a pictures of?” surprised to see me kneeling or hunched over where there didn’t really appear to be anything worth the effort… but I think these pictures prove that…

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A Walk in the Garden of GOD

NOTE: All images in this post are clickable for wallpaper size. “Thou art the God of the early mornings, the God of the late at nights, the God of the mountain peaks… but my God, my soul has further horizons… higher than any mountain peak… Thou who art God of all these, be my God.” (Psalm 139) While I was in Colorado I got to take a day to do the one thing that “re-creates” me most deeply, spend time alone, with God, in nature, with only a camera and an iPod loaded with worship music….. ahhhhhhhh The place was “Garden of the Gods” but I prefer to call it the “Garden of God.” It’s a place I often visited as a young boy living in Colorado, so it was so nice to visit again decades later! There is just something powerfully refreshing to walk around a place that is so ageless, it somehow puts your life in perspective… God is not in a hurry. He takes his precious time to do His work, and it is always a master peice. The view from the highway heading in. I love to climb, but was not equipped to rope climb on…

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