Any student with an 85 or above average all four semesters has earned a day at SeaBreeze with Pastors Phil & Jessica so bring in those report cards and keep up the good work!

We are embarking on a new series and topic with a focus on

Core Building in the life of a man.   

Proverbs 12:10 (TMSG)
10 Good people are good to their animals; the bad people kick and abuse them.

Finally after several days of watching the envelope stay unopened I could take it no longer. I stopped the person that the envelope had come for and told them to open it. In frustration they did and threw it back on the counter. “What am I suppose to do with this? I can’t pay it.” I felt their frustration but knew from experience that this wasn’t going away. In my ears I could hear these wise words spoken to me as a young man and repeated them “Just because you don’t open the envelope doesn’t mean you don’t owe the debt. You’re never going to get past this until you face the problem and start working your way out of it.”

Since the Garden of Eden man has always chose the path of hiding. The cry of God’s voice ringing through the garden, “Adam where are you?” can arguably be called the start of mankind’s journey of not owning up to what he’s done. The path of least resistance always winds its way through denial. If I ignore it…it will eventually go away.

I have met a few people along the way that just get it. They never see a mountain that is so high that they immediately look for the path of denial and least resistance, hoping that when they look back over their shoulder it will all be a bad dream and everything is better. I wish I could count myself as one of these types of people but I admit I fall more into the procrastinators’ camp and I bear the scars to prove it.

One of the benefits of aging is gaining a bit of perspective and hopefully wisdom.  Age has taught me this valuable lesson-the nature of problems is that if ignored they don’t go away…they just get bigger and eventually will have to be faced.

Is this some new profound revelation that I’ve discovered?  Have I unearthed the secrets to the mystery of life?  No… this is just simple common sense that most of us have heard a thousand times.  Unfortunately it is also this simple truth that will challenge most of us through our adult years; causing molehills to turn into mountains and problems that could have been overcome with a little effort to become anchors that hold us down and deny us access to God’s best plans for our lives.

Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.
Christopher Parker

Every day we chose to not face a situation that needs our immediate attention compounds the interest on a bill that will eventually require repayment.  When we make the choice to disengage instead of engage, life doesn’t stop.  It continues to march forward dragging all of our unresolved problems from one place in life to the next.  Unresolved issues don’t go away, they just become stumbling blocks between you and your destiny.

Why do we procrastinate? I think the major reason is that we are afraid. Maybe it’s the fear of facing a mess of our own making and the regret that comes from knowing you can’t go back and do something over.  You can only go forward and own your problem and deal with it.  So we default to living in denial.  We think that what we don’t know, won’t hurt us, but sadly it always will.  Ignorance is bliss is not a life plan it’s just ignorance.

Years ago my wife offered me a piece of advice that has helped me to tackle many of my problems.  She told me that I had to change the way I viewed my mountains. I was always looking at the top of the mountain wondering how I would ever climb it.  Because it seemed impossible I would get discouraged and quit.  She told me to stop looking at the top and just look for the next step.  No mountain would ever be climbed in leaps but by walking step by step the summit would grow closer and eventually reachable.

Those words have done more to help me fight my way out of trouble than anything else I have ever tried.  I can’t count the times that I have faced insurmountable opposition and challenges that seemed to spell the end of my dreams.  It’s in those moments I have learned to circle the simple promises of God more than any other time. He will give me nothing more than I can handle…no weapon formed against me shall prosper…I can do all things through Christ that gives me strength. The strength found in those promises has given me the determination to open my eyes to what needs to be done and it has always been to find the first step and the next will be waiting.

Sometimes the first step is to just open the envelope.  Find out where you are. You can’t develop a plan without knowing where you stand.  God has promised to not leave us alone.  He has promised to help us if we call out to Him in our times of trouble.  Admitting you’re in trouble is seen as weakness by some but in God’s eyes it is the first step to a miracle.

Staying under your rock may seem like the ideal answer to your problems.  The rain can’t hit you if your head is covered.  The problem with having your head covered is you might miss the moment that the sun comes back out looking to bring life to your impossible moment.  Engage my friend.  Defeat the little foxes of procrastination that seek to destroy your destiny.  The start of every miracle is the first step you take to not only face but to climb your mountain

My wife and I were recently talking over a very personal matter that had been causing us much distress and many anxious moments. We have prayed about it, fasted, quoted scriptures over it, asked for counsel and yet have seen the situation become more stressful as conditions have deteriorated.

One morning recently I received a 911 text from my wife saying that she was feeling very overwhelmed and defeated as she dealt again with the turbulence of this situation. Several minutes later another text arrived and this one probably more than any caused me to stop and take a deep breath. It simply asked this question. “Phil,where is God?”

Phil…Where is God? Not exactly any easy question to answer. No amount of time reading the Bible or even hours of prayer quite prepares you for the moment in your life when you find yourself asking the heart wrenching question of God…where are You? Yet it is in this crisis of faith moment, more than any other, which will determine the outcome of the storm you’re in.

Many times I find that people struggle with being honest when confronted with coming to the end of their emotional and spiritual rope. Christianity has filled its members with a cliché to cover every situation. It then preaches faith in such ways that condemnation is the only recourse for those fighting to hang on to even a microscopic remnant of hope. It is unfortunate that this has become our norm as I believe that we miss one of God’s great truths. That He is never closer than the moment when we cry out…where are you God?

Recently I have heard God called the Grand Weaver. This may be one of the best descriptions of God I have ever heard. Our lives are this complex tapestry with so many fibers and colors interwoven together all coming together to form the Divine plan yet often that plan is as confusing as a strand of DNA to the untrained eye. The great mystery is how God uses the events of our lives to shape us. Not just the good but also the bad.

Paul would write that all things work together for the good of those who love Him. F ew scriptures require more faith to walk out than this one. How can a loving God allow us to experience such turmoil and call it part of the plan? If you’re looking for this writer to provide an answer I can’t. I can say with the experience of having lived almost half a century that the majority of my greatest times of growth have usually come from hard places in life not the easy ones.

I’ve learned more about praying in faith after the death of loved ones than from those who were healed. I’ve learned more about standing strong in my convictions from the attacks of those who disagree with me than those who agree. I’ve learned more about loyalty from those who have betrayed me than those who have been loyal friends. I’ve learned more about prosperity from my times of poverty than in times of abundance. It always seem’s that when I reach the end of me is when I usually find Him.

Paul again would challenge us that in our weakness He is made strong. You will never find weakness without crisis. Crisis is the key ingredient to faith. Hebrews says that we can’t please God without faith and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. That is why God will always take us to the place we ask the question…Where are You? Simply for this reason; that those who keep holding on will find Him in such a way, that there can be no doubt who will get the glory for your miracle.

The key is opening our eyes to see past the despair or turmoil of the moment. The Bible tells us to look up. I’m not sure if that is simply a physical position but it does imply that when our eyes are downcast we may miss what is right in front of us. If not the miracle we need then the strength to stay strong and in the fight another day.

About an hour after my wife sent me her cry of distress I received another text and this one said simply “I found Him!” She told me later that she had gone to awaken our youngest for school. She was down, discouraged, and feeling very broken when she entered to wake him. He climbed down from his bed and came into the room where she was and began to talk to her. For the next few minutes God used my 11-year-old son in ways he may never know. He began to tell his mother in the language of a young boy how thankful he was for her. For all of her sacrifices. For her great love for him. For how she cared for him and how he was committing to try and make her proud of him that day. 

11-year-old boys don’t talk like that unless they’ve been sent on a mission from God to answer someone’s cry…where are you God? My wife told me later that as she reflected on the beauty of that moment God spoke these words into our heart. I am just as much here in the bad things you are facing as I am in the strength you just received from your son’s love. It was the answer she was looking for. She had found God and He was right where He always was…right beside her.

It wasn’t as though there was suddenly nothing to write about. There are a thousand topics all waiting for discussion. Important problems to be tackled and deep spiritual truths to uncover, but none of them could break the shadow that has held me quiet…my mom died.

I know intellectually that I am not the only person to have experienced the loss of a loved one, yet even though my mind knows better, I can’t tell you how lonely it feels in my heart. Some days I feel like the only person on earth who has ever felt this sorrow.  Grief is a road that even though you have people who love you in your life, in the end, you have to process it alone…my mom died.

The hardest part of losing my mom is that I don’t feel as safe in life as I used to.  Over the last few months I’ve hit some rough patches and I just wanted to go and talk to her only to be reminded that’s not going to happen again.  My mom couldn’t fix my life as I got older and my problems more complex, but she always made me feel like things would work out. My mother had that special gift to believe in me even when I had so many doubts about myself…my mom is gone.

My purpose today is not to write a sad song. I do believe that I’ve gained a perspective that I have to grab on to.  It has been said that it’s better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.  Those words seem easy to agree with but they are so much deeper.  Love comes at a steep price.

So many of us try very hard to insulate our hearts from pain. We keep relationships superficial. We never allow anyone to know our heart or to get too close to the truth of who we are.  Even though we pledge our hearts in marriage and have children the losses in life can keep us locked in emotional bondage, always expecting the worst and keeping everything at arm’s length in hope that nothing bad will happen to our heart.

I’ve been with my wife for over 20 years now. If God wills it the day is going to come where one of us will experience the agony of saying goodbye. The thought never really entered my mind until mom died and I’ve watched my dad have to confront his new reality.  A part of me wants to scream please God don’t ever let me feel loss!  It’s too much.   I can’t handle it.  But unfortunately its part of life’s journey.

The wonder that I’ve discovered in the past few weeks is this. You never will feel the depth of loss for someone who you haven’t lived life fully with.  If my wife went to be with the Lord before me I would be devastated, but it would not be because we didn’t live a big life. It would be because I have never had a friend like her or someone I wanted to share my adventure with.  It would be because I dared to open my heart to the great possibilities of our relationship and lived them every day.

We feel the pain of loss because we have been blessed of God to have had the privilege of experiencing love. Love fills our heart and lives like nothing can.  It’s the great mystery that connects mankind to Divinity.  It is life’s greatest gift.  You will never feel loss for things you don’t know.

The hole in my heart doesn’t go away.  I’m not one of those people who wishes for one more hour with my mom.  I couldn’t bear having to say goodbye again.  I don’t like to go to her grave and talk to her.  It just reminds me of what I can’t do ever again.

In spite of my very raw emotions the one thing I am blessed to say is that I loved someone so deeply that it hurts every day they aren’t with me.  We experienced so much life together that something will never be quite the same in my life again.  To me that is the start of healing.  To actually know what it means to have loved and lost.

Sometime during my high school years I made a decision. After hearing so many of my classmates casually throw the phrase “I love you” around, I decided I was going to try and do something different. I couldn’t understand how someone could profess undying love to someone,  yet by time lunch rolled around there was already trouble in paradise, and by school’s end the love affair was over. It seemed to me that telling someone you loved them had to mean something more. There had to be more to love than mutual attraction.

With my theory in hand I made a decision. I would never say the words I love you to someone until I really meant them. I love you was not going to be a relational catch phrase to me. It was going to have depth or I didn’t want anything to do with it.

I image that some of you might think me naive to have made such a stand. Maybe it was. I was young and didn’t have a lot of experience with girls, but I knew something deep in my heart; I wanted to find out what love was and I wanted to know what it meant to really love someone.

The journey to finding the answers to my questions would require writing a book, but let me leave it at this… a few days from now I will celebrate a very important day in my life. March 13^th will mark the day that I stood in front of friends and family and pledged my life to the girl who would become my wife.

Those twenty years have been the most important years of my life. They are the years I grew up and became a man. I found out what it took to keep a job even if I didn’t like it. I found out that parenting is not a science but a constant changing experience that I would never want to do alone. I found out that life can really throw you some curveballs. Most of all I found out how glad I was to have found a partner to live out my adventure with me. The only girl I have ever spoken the words “I love you” to I married.

Speaking the words has only been half the story. The other half has been finding someone who would receive those words and return them. These past twenty years I have been blessed to have this incredible woman stand beside me. She has watched me grow older, she has watched me make mistakes, she has watched me laugh and cry and in all of it she has showed me over and over why I was right to hold my “I love you” for the right person.

Love is not a cheap emotion. No matter how much the world around us drags love down to some cheap feeling. When you find the real thing you understand how precious it is. How can a man put into words what it means to have someone love them after they really get to know them and they don’t have to love them, yet still do?

 Love is a bond that is found in your soul. It is the force that God created the universe from. It is the air that you breathe when life gets complicated. It is the feeling you get when you kiss your wife goodnight knowing she will be beside you until the morning brings a new day. Love is about belonging. It’s about having your person. The one who gets you. The one who still laughs at your jokes. The one who looks in your face and doesn’t see the gray or wrinkles but sees something that so often you can’t even see in yourself.

I saved my “I love you” for one. She’s it! I found her. It’s been twenty years and I will always be so grateful that I waited to find the real thing.

Don’t settle. Don’t cheapen. Don’t give up.  Real love can be found.  I love you big baby…