FaithHack

1. Have someone to fetch beverages from the fridge.
   The reality is that no one under the age of five can carry a can of carbonated  refreshment without shaking it. Getting from the living room to the kitchen and back almost certainly involves running twice around “the loop”, hopscotch across the kitchen tiles, lifting the can over the head (and dropping it) like a muscle man, and finally, leaping, in a single bound, over the arm of the couch to triumphantly deliver the beverage.
2. Have someone to watch/play/attend sports events with.
   Unless your favorite sport starts and ends in under 3 minutes, your lil’ sport will be moving on to the next event before anything worth watching happens. About the only candidate sport, time-wise, is mixed martial arts, but another important point about kids comes into play at that point – “monkey see, monkey do”. A head-butt during a UFC match may provide some entertaining blood-letting – A head butt from a three foot tall, four year old will bring Dad to his knees and end the “match” right then. It may also limit Dad’s ability to produce more lil’ sports.
3. To show up your friends who always boast about their lil’ geniuses.
   There are some cosmic rules in play here – the minute you start to brag about your little Einstein, they will either:
   a. Begin to pick their nose then eat it when you tell them to stop,
   b. Triumphantly appear out of you bedroom wearing only a pair of red sock, a towel cape, and Mom’s lacy red pushup bra as a helmet, or,
   c. The little dears will pipe up and agree with you about how smart they are, then go one to explain that Dad thinks that the friends’ kids must be from under the sea because Dad always says they are “shellfish little monsters”.
4. To catch, keep, or “settle down” a mate.
   When it comes to “catching a man” nothing works better than giving him all the benefits of a marriage without any of the commitment – benefits like an energetic, live-in lover, an in-shape, perfectly coiffed and made-up lady ready to hit the town on a moments notice, and a “50/50″ relationship where she holds down a job to pay “her share” of the bills but still does the dishes and laundry.
   It is possible that a child might have an effect on all of the above.
5. To carry on the family tradition.
   My Dad was a high-school sport’s star and farmer, a man of the land. I am a techno-geek and a urban dweller. He could never understand how I got a paycheck without getting dirt and grease under my fingernails.
   I have 5 kids – not a one of them has ever compiled a Linux kernel, hacked their cellphones, or solved a problem with a shell script. Maybe one of them will an athlete or a farmer?
6. But, babies are so cute!
   Yes, they are… Until the first time you feed them one of those jars of mystery baby food, then awful smelling stuff comes out of them from every direction. Stuff capable of staining any known material.
   I once heard it said they every baby changes to look like a miniature Winston Churchill at some point in their young lives. I be leave this is even true for the little girls. Winston Churchill in a frilly pink dress with heart covered tights – yeah, that is cute.

So, what is a good reason to have a kid? Because God made us to share our lives. Because few relationships in our lives will help us to understand the love Father more than learning to love our children. Because few endeavors in our lives will be more challenging, more joyful, more frustrating, more fulfilling, and more lasting.

They teach us love and grace, sacrifice and humility, perseverance and patience. With God’s help and guidance, they will grow to learn the same lessons from their kids. ( Who Grandpa will teach to get a soda from the fridge, watch UFC, and hack a cellphone while bragging about them to the other grandparents! )

I don’t get a lot of comments on my blog, so it’s encouraging when I do. On one of my previous posts, Writing on the Door Post, a slow trickle a comments has broken my heart and got my hackles up a bit, as well. While the blog is about memorizing scripture, for one reader it triggered memories of a Christian father who abandoned  his family for a younger woman. Another reader’s pain and frustration with unfaithful men wrecking havoc on wives and children.

Mind you, I am not frustrated with my readers – I’m right along with them in their frustration and hurt when it comes to men acting like dogs instead of the servant, prophet, priest, and king they are called to be.

I am probably going out on a limb here, but I have never encountered a marriage in trouble or one ended in divorce where the problems couldn’t be traced back to a husband not fulfilling his role as defined in God’s Word. I don’t say this lightly, and have been presented with ton’s of examples of wives cheating or abandoning the relationship, but when I ask if the husband had fulfilled their role as servant, prophet, priest, and king, I get a lot of blank stares and embarrassed mumbles.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have had met one guy where it seemed as if he was acting in the position God had appointed for him, but had been abandoned by his wife anyway. However, it didn’t take too deep a look into the wife’s past to discover there was a husband that had failed (in some horrible ways) to fulfill that God-calling – her father.

Guys, today’s FaithHack is for you. If you want to see the revival of trust, fidelity, and passion in your marriage, Be The Man. Not the man the world called you to be – one of the boys, woman crazy, self-indulgent, effeminate, materialistic, domineering, disaffected, selfish, ( you get the point ) – but, Be The Man that God is calling you to be.  If you need a great example of a husband, don’t look to TV Dads or Hollywood Husbands, but try looking to Jesus as your measuring stick.

He is Servant – Understanding and meeting your spouses needs is probably one of the best preventatives of marital strife. I have found it hard grumble about someones flaws when I have set my heart and mind on building them up. Weaknesses and failings become opportunities to “fill in the blanks”, to be a provider where provision is needed and not just where I am good at it.

Being the provider is not just about getting a paycheck and paying the bills, but it is about being a “help meet” or an “appropriate and matched companion” for your wife. Think about all the ways she make your life easier. What more can you do to make her life easier, more secure, and more enjoyable?

He is Prophet – No, not the “press the envelope to the swami hat and guess what is in side” kind of prophet. Your wife and your family needs you to be a prophet in God’s sense of the word: Speaking God’s heart and mind into their lives. Next time you you go to speak frustration, anger, or pettiness toward your spouse, remember that your are appointed to be the prophet for your family and the words coming out of your mouth reflect God to them – do you really think He would want you to say what you where about to say as if it was in His name?

He is Priest – Whether you like it or not, you guys are the appointed as the priest of your home. It is your job to lead them toward God, to be the intercessor, the worshiper, and the discipler of your family. I am not saying that each member of your family isn’t to seek a personal relationship with God, but they should desire to do that with you as the example – not in spite of you.

He is King – Before you get excited and think you have this one covered as you sit in you royal blue La-Z-Boy lounge – ask yourself – “Am I King, Caesar, or Tyrant?”.

By my understanding, a Tyrant uses his people for his own glory and self-edification. I am always amazed at the size of the statues being toppled on TV when another tyrant bits the dust. Did they really think outsiders would be impressed by the edifices to the tyrant and not see the neglected and hurting people building them? Guys, think about what that shiny new, bright red, Dodge Ram 3500 really says about you when your spouse is at the food bank.

A Caesar takes credit for the successes (but not the failures) of his subjects. He makes sure history sees the conquests and victories of his subjects are the direct results of his leadership. When was the last time you said, “She did that.” instead of “We did that.”?

A true King takes responsibility for the welfare of those he has been appointed to serve and protect. He builds castle walls to protect his people from attack, and store houses to protect against famine. He trains up his son’s to be men of honor and courage and defends the virtue and hearts of his daughters. A King raises up his successor with an eye toward ensuring that his people will continue to be served when he is gone.

So, guys, it’s time to Be The Man!

Just about every morning, one or both of my two youngest boys wakes us up to crawl in bed for a morning snuggle. It is pretty easy to predict how the day will go for them by how they act in those early morning minutes. If they are whiny, or argumentative, or sullen, it’s going to be one of “those days”. If they are cuddly, or silly and playful, or asking about what they get to do today, it is likely to be a good day.

The sovereign LORD has given me the capacity to be his spokesman,
so that I know how to help the weary.
He wakes me up every morning;
he makes me alert so I can listen attentively as disciples do.
- Isaiah 50:4

Isaiah had it right. Our countenance, our outlook, our focus for the day, is often set in those early morning moments. If the first thoughts in our mind are, “Oh, no. Not another day!” or “I hate mornings, I don’t want to go to work!” then it  is likely that our “prophecy” will be fulfilled and it will be a bad day.

If, however, we wake with Him on our mind, and acknowledge that He has something special for today, then it is just as likely that it will be fulfilled and we will see God’s hand in our lives.

I usually wake up telling my Father, “Good morning”, ask Him to open my eyes to the provision He has for me and my family, tell Him that I will be open and expecting an opportunity to share the Good News of His son with someone, and thank Him for His Word and the chance to know Him better through it.

Try this. When you go to bed in the evening, ask the Holy Spirit to wake you up in the morning, before your alarm clock rings. Ask Him to remind you who your provider is and where your hope is. Ask Him to full you with a hunger for His word that will over power your normal hunger for coffee and a bagel.

When it happens, and it will, thank your Father for the wake up call. Remember that He will be faithful to open His Word to you and give you a gem to start your day with. Then get your butt out of bed, and, start the coffee (your spouse will thank you!) and open a good book – The Good Book.

If you take this challenge, leave me a comment about what happened!

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth. – Deuteronomy 11:18-21

I recently read how modern-day Jews still follow this admonition by attaching something called a mezuzah, a small box or scroll shaped container attached to the front door frame containing a small roll of parchment inscribed with a prayer from the Torah called the Sh’ma and one of the names of God, Shaddai. ( “God Almighty is sufficient” )

My wife has also taken this scripture to heart, so it is easy to encounter a verse or an encouragement as you look around our house.

Here is an example over the dining room table (where many chores originate and much homeschooling takes place):

I have to admit that, in the past, I have struggled with scripture posters, framed samplers of Psalms, fish symbols on cars and WWJD wristbands. It always reminded me of the Applebee’s watresses trying to fit in one more cheery button to “prove” they cared deeply about my cullinary happiness. Getting my order right and on time should be proof enough.

But I am learning that this, like so much of my relationship with the Living God, is more about my intent and the condition of my heart than posters and stickers. Yes, wearing a WWJD wristband can be motivated by a spirit of pride, the desire to look and act like the cool Christians at church, but… BUT, it can motivated but the humbling realization that sometime we need daily, even moment-to-moment, reminders to put on the mind of Christ.

Putting up scripture posters or cross-stitch samplers of Psalms could be a way to impress your church friends with how holy your home-life is, OR, it could be an attempt to fix God’s word in your heart and mind and in the hearts and minds of your family.

I put a fish symbol on the back of my VW Bug, not to show off my Jesus chic, but to remind me to drive courteously and with tolerance of others varied driving skills. It’s far less likely I’ll communicated to the driving-challenged with creative sign-language if I am reminded of whom I serve, but, more to the point, if I know the other drivers know whom I serve.

So, scribble a verse or two on the door post, the window frame, the refrigerator. Hang a poster with meaningful verse and a sunset background. But don’t forget to read them, fix them in your heart, let His Word encourage, admonish, convict, and direct you.

I was stumbling some blogs (ouch! I seem to have a bad buzz word infection!) and ran across this this of 12 Ways to turn a bad day into a better one. There is some good advice near, but the one I focused in one was:

3. Sing in your car.

And sing as loud as you can. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to frown while you are singing?

I had to laugh. It’s not a secret that I am among the ranks of the harmonically challenged. I am also called to serve in a fellowship that has a talented worship team and a strong focus on musical worship. Now, nobody has an expectation that everyone be on key, we all know that the focus of our worship is to bring a sacrifice before the King of kings, a sacrifice of our praise, our hearts, and our lives. But… there is something to be said for not sounding like a crow entering adolescence.

With that in mind, I have been changing my drive-time listening habits from preaching/teaching radio to worship and contemporary Christian music. So, if you pass a blue VW Bug blaring out a mix of Third Day and a tom cat in pain, it’s just me, giving God what I have, if not what He deserves.

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. – Proverbs 22:7

My wife and I are big Dave Ramsey fans. If you not familiar with his top-rated, 3 hour-a-day radio program, his 3 NY-Times best selling books on personal finance, his Fox Business Network TV show, or his down-to-earth, biblically based financial advice, you have a couple of things you need to do:
First, get out more often! Second, go to his site, http://www.daveramsey.com, find a local radio station that caries his show and get a copy of his “The Total Money Makeover“.

After facilitating a couple of his Financial Peace University classes in our home, wrestling with budgets and bad spending habits, falling off the wagon and getting back on, we are finally free of the bondage of school loans, credit cards, and car loans. With the exception of our home mortgage, we are debt free!

Depending on your translation, the Bible mentions the word ‘debt’ between fifteen and thirty times. In each case, it speaks of getting out of debt, avoiding debt, or forgiving other’s debts. The only verse that says we should have debt is Romans 13:8

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. – Romans 13:8 NIV

And I would prefer that kind of debt to the monthly credit card extortion letters, any day!

There is no doubt that debt is a form of bondage and imprisonment. While there aren’t bars on the windows or guards tapping on your cell door, your are still locked into your current job (especially if you live paycheck-to-paycheck), shackled to your current car (especially if it is “upside down” or you own more than it’s worth) and walled off from the freedom to do with your money what you want to do by the fact that your debtors (or jailers!) are first in line to grab their share when that paycheck gets the bank.

After paying off our VW Beetle, I realized that, not only are we free from the bondage and stress of debt, but I just got $260 a month raise! My boss wasn’t planning to give me a bump like that anytime soon. With each debt we payed off, more and more money became available in the budget to pay off more debt, do more for our family, friends and church, and be less and less concerned that I had to keep up the frenetic pace I had set for myself to keep ahead of the wolves at the door.

If you are looking for some mental, emotional and financial peace (funny how linked they are), consider making the commitment to cash in your “get out of jail free” card and looking for an FPU class in your area.

( I’m shouting in my titles again, sorry. ) I psyched! A group of my brothers and I are headed to a Christian Men’s Conference called Iron Sharpens Iron in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Saturday.

There is a lot of cool stuff that can come from getting some friends together and heading off to a big Christ-centered event. Whether it the conversations and goofing around on the long road trip, praying and worshiping with hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of people who you don’t know but still have a connection with, getting to hear inspirational speakers you may not have heard before, or just the chance to pick up a cool new book or t-shirt, Christian events have a way of letting you get out the grind we can get into (even us on fire, swing for the fences, shake ‘em and tell ‘em about Jesus types!). They encourage us, build us up, allow us to make new connections and new friends, inspire us to return to our harvest fields with new energy and fervor.

In the past, I have avoided going to a lot of conferences, because, as much as they lift you up, there often seems to be a bit of a let-down right after the conference. The problem seems to have been that all the effort goes into plan for and attending the conference, but little though seems to go to what happens next. Our men’s leadership team has been going through Pat Morley’s No Man Left Behind, which places a lot of emphasis on planning for after the big event. I my case, my small group of guys will be going through Focus on the Family’s Truth Project in the weeks following Iron Sharpens Iron.

So If you’re worried that a Christian event will just pump your sneakers for the short run, or you want to build on the momentum, make some plans for after the event. Plan to joint a new study group, start coffee club with some friends, volunteer for a service ministry like the food bank or life skills mentoring.

So, next time a group is getting together to head off a men’s or women’s conference, a worship seminar, or even Christian music festival, plan to go, plan to be inspired and encouraged, and plan to keep the fire burning when you return home.

Opps, I meant “Free Word“!
I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of copyrighting and limiting the reproduction of translations of the Scriptures. I think I understand why the people at copyright holders like Zondervan, the American Bible Society, and the Lockman Foundation have resorted to copyright. I understand the desire and need to protect the integrity and trustworthiness of a bible that is published with their respective titles such as NIV or NASB. I even understand and agree with the need to make money to pay a fair wage to the people who maintain the translations and create the huge range of different formats, notes and helps, and additional content included with modern print bibles. I recently ordered an NASB wide-margin from Zondervan.

But… ( You knew there was going to be a “but”!)

Telling someone they can’t reproduce more than 200 hundred verses, or that any use must not exceed 25% of the total text being published, just seems contrary to God’s expectations for the spread of the scriptures.

Again. I don’t condemn bible publishers for doing what they do, but I am glad there are alternatives and thought it might be helpful to share some of them. The following is not an exsahsive list, more information can be found at  BibleGateway and the SWORD Project :

• King James Version (1611) – It’s the bible Paul carried, right? Because of it’s age, the KJV has fallen into the public domain and is free to copy and reproduce in any format. The availability of the KJV text has also started somewhat of a cottage industry creating updates and derivations original texts.
• American Standard Version (1901) – The ASV is not quite are archaic as the KJV but it has also passed into the public domain. Also like the KJV, the freely available text has spawned at least to other translations, including the freely available WEB (World English Bible) and the copyrighted NASB.
• World English Bible (current) – As noted above, the WEB is based on the ASV ( with some help from the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensa Old Testament, and the Greek Majority Text New Testament ) with more contemporary language and grammar. The WEB currently a work in progress, with some archaic grammar remaining to be fix in the Old Testament. One cool aspect of the WEB is that it is specifically intended to deal with the copyright issue and makes the text available in a wide variety of open formats including an audio version in Vorbis Ogg.
• New English Translation (2005) – The NET is a bit of a hybrid in terms of copyright, in that it is copyrighted, but the biblical text is available in whole for personal use in a number of formats. However, the massive number of translation notes are only available for a fee or on their online tool. I have to point out that I may have a bit of a bias, since I had the opportunity to work with the NET and Bible.org folks.
• Young’s Literal Translation (1898) – For something a little different, the YLT attempts to preserve the tense and word usage of the original Greek and Hebrew text while still being readable in English.

Given the number of good quality, free translations available, there is no reason not fill out your study library with some new bibles translations. You probably wouldn’t want to print them out, so a good (free!) bible study program would be the next order of business, but I’ll save that for another blog entry.

When I was first saved, I had the strange idea that bibles were sacred. I don’t mean The Bible, the Word of God, I mean those paper and ink books that had the Word of God written in them. It might seem like a semantic thing, but the effect of this odd idea was that I thought it was wrong to write in your bible. Like letting the American flag touch the ground or not taking off your hat when you ate, I thought it was somehow disrespectful to underline, hi-lite, or add little notes or cross references. It wasn’t until I got to know some real lovers of the Word, people who lived in and by the Word, and looked at their bibles that I began to change my view on writing in my bible. Seeing their personal walk with, and revelations of, the Word of God spelled out in the margins and between the lines, helped me see my bible as less of a holy relic and more of a daily companion and confidant.

For the past couple of years, I have carried a beautiful leather-bound NET bible that I got as a gift from the folks at Bible.org that I just haven’t been able to bring myself to write in. As a compromise, I have been using the Personal Commentary module in my Gnomesword software to keep notes. This has worked pretty well, but I am finding myself in more and more situations where I have a paper and ink bible with me and firing up my laptop just isn’t convenient.

With that in mind I just ordered a wide-margin Zondervan NASB. This will be the first bible I have purchased with the main intent of writing in it.

If your more of a digital life type, you might want to checkout MyVersion. MyVersion not only lets you make notes, but you can add links, images, and videos and share them with others.

If you have an iPod or other personal media player, I bet it is stuffed full of good music, Christian and otherwise. I found a pretty cool project called Scripture Release that has taken a number of scriptures verses recommended by the Navigators Topical Memory System and put them to music. A plus for me is that some of the songs are performed by Kim Hill, whom I have been a fan of for a long time. The basic idea is that music and song have a way of fixing God’s word in our hearts better than just about any other method.

Since it’s not likely the musical style of the Scripture Release tracks will appeal to everyone, I want to hear about any songs that accurately recite scriptures – songs that, when you hear the tune, the scripture automatically comes to mind.