Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

This week has been exciting, aggravating, stressful, hopeful, fulfilling and exhausting! We are doing an Extreme Makeover over the church gym. The church never had a place just for the youth so Soupie and I decided to change that. We got JMO and Diva (Angela) involved in making a top-notch youth center-not a youth room. We want a place for students to bring their friends and not be embarrassed. The youth center looks awesome. We are calling it the “ATTIK” It has not been easy doing it but our students have been up there all week painting, pulling cords, cleaning and goofing off. That is part of the fun. Not everthing has gone as planned. We hoped to have it totally finished tomorrow but that wasn’t in the cards. You have to go with the flow. It will be 75% finished tomorrow. I’m proud, excited and exhausted! Hopefully this will make a difference in leading young people to Jesus.

I am heartbroken for the family of Terri Schiavo. What has our world come to when we say it is OK to starve a person to death. I know that people put in living wills that they want no heroic measures to endure their life. But food and water are not heroic. I would not personally want to be kept alive by a heart machine. But food and water, give me a break. Terri’s husband ( I use the term loosely) is selfish. Marriage vows say for better or worse and sickness and health. He goes fooling around with another woman and has 2 children with her. The man is more worried about his loins then his wife. If he wants to get rid of Terri then he should divorce her and let her parents and siblings take care of her. I’m scared for disabled people everywhere. If courts can decide who lives and dies, what is to say they won’t kill us. I pray for the Schindler’s and Terri. I pray for her husband too! He needs a relationship with God. When Terri dies, God will still forgive him but my prayer is God will get a hold of him before anything tragic does. Jesus said I have come to give Life!

John 10:10

I am a reformed Pharisee. At least I hope that I am. I used to be judgmental. Well I probably still am to some extent. But I have been blown away by the Grace of God! It has been all in my face recently. I’m reading David Nassar’s Devotional called A Call to Grace and Max Lucado’s book Come Thirsty and I am so grateful that God shows me grace. It is easy to look at other people’s sins and think rank them. But Paul says in Romans 3:23 that we have all sinned. In God’s eyes every sin is the same- it separates us from Him.

What drives me crazy is people who can’t look @ other people the way Jesus did. Jesus didn’t see sick people, He saw healthy people that needed healing. He didn’t see prostitutes, He saw future Godly women. He doesn’t see a flawed young minister, He sees a leader who needs some pruning. I’m grateful for God’s Grace. Without it I would be in trouble. My prayer is that I will show Grace to others.

This has been a stressful week. My mom went into the hospital with chest pains on Tuesday. She was OK but it was a scare. Then early Wed. morning Cassandra went to the emergency room and a few hours later they did a heart cath on her. The reason is that her dad had a heart attack @ 42 so they wanted to make sure she didn’t have blockage. It is at times like this that you are really thankful for a God that listens to prayers. We are too young to be going thru this but, it happens. I’m just glad that everyone is OK.

This week I had several run in’s with differnt businesses. I couldn’t believe how they were treating their customers. One was a utility company that wasn’t very merciful with me forgetting to pay the bill. i didn’t have the money anyway due to a cut in pay by my church. (another long story) Then I went to a electronics store to buy 32 in TV’s for our new youth room and they wouldn’t honor the price they gave us in written form just 3 weeks ago. I won’t mention the company but their colors are red and gray and their initials are CC. I got mad in both circumstances and wondered how do you know if your anger is justified or when does it become sin. In neither case did I cuss or yell. I did get forceful. But when do you turn the other cheek as Jesus said and when do you hold others accountable for their failures?