Just a little talk with Jesus

Now let us have a little talk with Jesus,

Let us tell him all about our troubles,

He will hear our famished cries,

And he will answer by and by,

Now when you feel a little prayer wheel turnin,

Then you’ll know a little fire is burnin,

You will find a little talk with Jesus makes it right

I love this old song.

What worship song makes you want to stand to your feet and raise your hands in surrender to Jesus? What song makes you want to open your heart up?

Just a Little Talk With Jesus, is still one of my favorites, it still makes me want to raise my hands.

Now for all you Southern Gospel fans out there, and I think there may be two or three that read my blog that love Southern Gospel, this is probably one of my all time favorite Southern Gospel Quartets, The Gold City. I love the harmonies.

And I’m throwing this one in just because it’s my blog and I like the song.

The last video was the Cathedrals, I lost count of how many times I had seen the Cathedrals and the Gold City in concert when I was a teenager. Southern Gospel music still stirs my heart and brings back so many memories of when I first got saved.

What old hymns or gospel songs do that for you?

What did you want for your life?

I didn’t want kids when I was 18…..

I didn’t want them when I was 22….

When you are that young and extremely selfish you don’t want anything that will eat up your time, money, or anything else that you thought you had.

God has a funny way of changing that around, when my first child was born I was 22. I’m 33 now and have four kids, my youngest just had his first birthday.

All four of them are unique in their own way and all the same in others. I couldn’t imagine my life without them.

Business in the front….party in the back

The War Eagle Mullet

The High Tech Redneck Mullet

 

The Five Guys Mullet

The Austin 3:16 Mullet

 

 

 

The Nebraska Mullet

 Here they are ladies and gentleman. Mullet season is officially over, so closes the mullet contest.

What I need from everyone is your input. Which mullet is the best. Please cast your vote in the comments section and when the voting is over, well, everyone will know it.

Mullet season will re-open after the Daytona 500, so get your camera’s ready.

 

how do you do it?

Question for all three of my loyal readers.

How do you do it?

Do what?

It….

It can be alot of things.

Today my question is how do you take captive your thoughts?(2Cor 10:5)

I struggle with this every single day.

My thoughts of pride, lust, anxiety, evil, evil thoughts.

Does anyone else wrestle with themselves like this?

Somethings just absolutely invade my thoughts.

One of the things that I have found to be true is if I stay busy than it’s not as bad.

Another thing I have found to be true is that when Satan hates you he will use everything he can to get inside your head.

Some days it is so bad that I can’t sleep. My therapist told me once (yes I saw a therapist, my divorce wasn’t the easiest thing) that my mind went 90 to nothing all the time, and I had to learn to slow it down.

To answer your question no, I’m not crazy, I don’t talk to myself or have thoughts of going on a killing spree.

What I have is a mind that is constantly racing from one thought to the next and back again. Some of my thoughts though are not what I want to think about.

I don’t want to doubt things in my faith, I don’t want to doubt the validity of my relationships, I don’t want to doubt my self worth. I don’t want to look at what someone has and covet or lust for it.

But as fast as my mind races sometimes it is very hard to catch it before it goes to far.

I’m tired. Some days I just want to just quit and let it go, it can get bad enough that I get a pretty bad headache, add a tuff day at work onto that and any issues that may be going on at home and BAM, my noggins thumpin.

So, I would like to know what you do to take captive your thoughts.

where is your joy?

I’ve got joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart…..Blah.

Just fake it…..Blah.

I love my job, I love my job, I love my job……Blah.

Smile it makes everything better……Blah.

Don’t worry. Be happy……..where’s my freakin gun!!!!

This is how I have been feeling for a while. No joy. In anything.

Depressed, and I can’t put a finger on why, I could probably put several fingers on it.

Tired+worried+stress=depressed

Where is my joy?

In God? Honestly most days I feel like I am a child again being punished.

Being sent to my room by the Almighty.

Every time I feel like I am  coming out of this, like something is finally starting to give, that I am making headway.

I’m sent to my room….

Yesterday I am driving to Birmingham and I am talking to God, asking God the same questions I normally do.

What am I doing or not doing God?

Cause and effect…..

What?

You heard me, cause and effect….

I’m sorry Lord, I don’t follow what your saying…..

<<<<POP>>>>

Ouch!!! Why’d you do that?

When you were a kid why did you get sent to your room? Why did you get a whoopin ?(my momma and daddy didn’t spank, they gave you a whoopin)

Cause they were mean, and didn’t let me do what I wanted to…

Uh no. <<<<POP!!!>>>> Quit trying to be cute.

Cause I done something wrong.

You disobeyed, you were disobedient.

My parents never punished me because they thought it was fun, or they just wanted to be mean. They did it to correct me. They corrected me in love. I have felt like God has been punishing me for the past several years, it seemed like I was existing but never with the true joy that comes with salvation. To quote a line from a movie, I felt like ‘God was a big mean kid with a magnifying glass burning ants’, that was me, the ant. When the truth of the matter is I wasn’t being obedient to God. I wasn’t listening when he told me to listen, I wasn’t talking when he told me to speak. I’m not giving like he has told me to give and yes I am talking about tithing. I’m not mending the relationships that he has told me to mend. I have a laundry list of things I haven’t done to be obedient to Him. It is a wonder he has blessed me with the great things I do have in my life. He is merciful. Thank you for correcting me in love Lord.

I like Bob Marley…you thought it was going to be Bobby McFarrin did you?

New Year

Excited about what God is doing @Crosspoint. I am absolutely geeked about the coming year. I will blog about a few observations I have made later. To everyone that follows or even stops by occasionally, hang on, I have some stuff I need to get out there.

what gets you in the spirit?

I love Christmas lights.
If it didn’t look so redneck I would leave mine up all year long.
When I was a kid that’s what got me in the Christmas spirit.
We had those big colored bulbs, you know, the ones about the size of your thumb. Man I loved those lights. I know you can still buy them but my bride thinks they are tacky to some level.
This is the first year since 2004 that I have put Christmas lights on my house. This is the first year since 2004 that I have had a house.
It was this time 4 years ago that my ex-wife and I split up. The Christmas’s that followed that one were rough. I remember that I didn’t get to see my kids open their gifts on Christmas morning 2004, I remember how cold my apartment floor was, and I remember that I was so ashamed of where I was living and how I was living that I didn’t want my kids to see it. It was months before I had furniture, and I wasn’t going to allow my children to sleep in the floor.

I want to tell you guys a story about the years in between but not just yet, it’s not really relevant to this post. Lets fast forward to 2006.

Christmas of  ‘06 things were starting to look up, I was in a better place financially, I was growing spiritually, and I was dating a great girl. But Christmas 2007 was the year….that great girl I was dating in ‘06 is now my beautiful bride of six months and is pregnant with our little boy, I got a promotion at work and I am serving every Sunday at church. This year, we have a beautiful healthy baby that is 6 months old, the relationship I have with my bride grows more and more, and we have a house of our own that I can put my Christmas lights on.

God has truly blessed me in the last four years, Christmas lights are not my only reminder of that. My wife is a reminder to me every morning that I wake up next to her that God has blessed me, the Christmas tree in our living room reminds me,  hearing our baby laugh reminds me, knowing that I get to see my kids face light up on Christmas morning while they are opening their gifts reminds me, knowing that I have a job today reminds me.

Not having to sleep on a cold floor reminds me of ALL the things God has blessed me with.

This time of year brings back a flood of feelings and memories, some bad but mostly good.

So what gets you in the Christmas spirit?

love/hate

I love Jesus.
I hate Satan.
I love my family.
I hate money.
I love my church.
I hate sin.
I love Christmas.
I hate we have commercialized it.
I love our country.
I hate what is has become.
I love that my son carries his bible in his back pack.
I hate that it took me this long to be a good example for him.
I love my wife.
I hate when she is mad at me.
I love Alabama football.
I hate when they lose.
I love serving God at Crosspoint.
I hate my job.
I love hunting and fishing.
I hate that I don’t have time for either one.
I love Jesus.

What’s your love/hate?

a good cry…

Me man, me no cry.

Only sissy cry.

Why don’t you go get you a cheese burger and french cry.

After group tonight we were discussing how some of the folks in our Life Group has been moved to tears before by a novel or magazine article, some form of writing.

So I posed the question to my group, has anything you have read in the Bible ever moved you to tears?

I can remember the first time I was moved to tears reading the scripture.

The crucifixion of Jesus.

I had read the crucifixion story in the bible a bunch in my life, but for some reason it hit me hard one evening.

Jesus died for you.

Not only did he die, he suffered for you.

He suffered for you and you are rotten.

I tried to picture in my mind the scene, I asked God to help me see and truly understand.

The sorrow and grief that I felt watching them nail my Jesus to a cross broke my heart.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

That was almost like, ‘daddy why did you leave me? why are you letting them do this to me?’

I cried like a baby.

I continued to read, and I cried more. Only this time it was tears of joy and gladness.

MY SAVIOR IS ALIVE!!!!

It was as if I was reading it for the first time, only this time I know what it means.

I quit reading the Bible like a text book that day.

I started reading my Bible because I wanted to, not because I had to.

So what have you read in the Bible that has moved you to tears?

creepy toys

Kind of an odd subject, but appropriate.

There is a scene in the movie the Polar Express (it’s on ABC Family right now) that reminded me of toys that just creeped me out. Here is my list of creepy toys that aren’t intended to be creepy, but they are.

1. Marionette

Look at this freakish thing….I hate these things, with it’s evil grin. It looks like it has blood running down the sides of its mouth.

2. Jack in the box

Do I really need to say anything? Look at the clown on the box…wake up in a cold sweat. Oh I hate clowns. I believe the anti-christ will be a freakin clown. As far as the “Jack” all it needs is a knife in one of its flat hands.

3. Faceless dolls

The tag on the doll says: I’ve come to keep you company….Forever, I’ll never leave you….EVER!!!  Sitting in the corner staring at you, no face. NO FACE!!!!

Argh, now I’ll be awake all night curled up in the fetal position with my head under the covers, cause we all know that the faceless doll is going to take the marionette strings and strangle you with them…Have you seen the Puppet Master??? I HATE THAT MOVIE.

What toy did you think was creepy when you were a kid?