amateur theology from a guy with two first names

I have had an off week. Maybe not the whole week, but for sure the weekend. I haven’t been able to focus on anything, my brain is just jumping from one thing to the next. It all started on Friday…(cue fade back music)

For those of you who don’t know yet, we’re living with some friends of our in Montana. Jeremy, who used to be my wife’s youth pastor back in the day, had Friday off which gave the two of us a few hours to just hang out without thinking, “I should go to bed soon. I have to wake up early for class/work.” He told me that he and Rachel (his wife) are thinking about becoming consultants for a company that sells toys for children. Think AVON parties, but everything’s for kids. It’s actually a pretty cool thing, and I think that they could do well with it here. That’s not the problem. The problem came about 20 minutes into the conversation when it somehow (I don’t know how, I would never insert my own dreams and ambitions into someone else’s conversation!) got brought up that I would love to run a music venue/recording studio. I’m pretty sure it was at this point that my eyes glazed over and I started just repeating phrases like, “Ya, man. That would be really cool.” or, “I bet you guys would be really good at that.” All the while I was thinking of how I should start working on starting my record label.
The problem is that I allow this thought to completely engross all of me. It’s happened before, and at the best I’m usually out of commission for a week. I commit all that I am to figuring out the best, cheapest, coolest way to make my dreams come true. I stop listening to the people around me. I lose patience with my wife and kids. One phrase stampedes through my head over and over and over again, “How cool would it be…” And then, like so many before me, briefly remember that I’m a Christian, so I plaster a giant fish, or maybe a cross, on the side of my ME statue and call it a “Christian” venue. I tell myself the lie, “God wants you to have a great life. Do what you want, and if you believe hard enough and click your heels together three times, Jesus will bless you with success. Put a clever verse on your letterhead or paint them on the walls, wear your witness. That’s how evangelism’s supposed to be.”

The problem is that the entire thing is for me right now. Ya I like to pretend that God is a part of it, but it’s really only an afterthought thrown in to try to appease the tiny, pushover, “all you get is lip-service” god that I have set up for just such occasions. I’ve felt like crap pretty much all day because of this, felt myself ignoring the God of all creation in favor of the god of Givetonywhateverhewantsville. Until just a few minutes ago.

I was perusing a friend’s website when I noticed a guest blog by Shawn Shoup, a former Rapid City youth pastor who I had worked/played with a couple of times. What caught my eye wasn’t the post itself, but Shawn’s other blogging endeavors. I was caught off guard at how busy he was when it comes to the interwebs. I decided to check out a website Shawn blogs for called YouthSpecialties.com, where I ran across a couple of posts that helped bring me back around. I won’t really go into detail here and now, this post is already getting a little long and I have to wake up early tomorrow for my first set of presentations at the new job. The first was about Mentoring, something I will be starting in the next couple of weeks. The other talks about how, although we may have large visions, we should start small. Although Jesus could have Messiah Punched Israel into submission, He started His work by building relationship with just two men. Even at it’s height, Jesus’ ministry only amounted to a dozen guys and a handful of women(one of whom was His mom, which is kind of a given!).

It’s not that these were terribly profound things to read, they were merely what I needed. It’s not the big, revolutionary ideas that change hearts, but the smaller ones that you hear over and over again, that have the power to make us into new creations. I’m pretty sure C. S. Lewis said something similar to that. Feel free to attribute it to me though, it’s a pretty good line if I do say so myself.

All of that to say, I spent the weekend searching for something to complete me, and in the process rejected the one thing that could. All of the excitement and fulfillment that I had felt the last couple of weeks was forgotten. My job, school, and new friendships started to pale in comparison with the Tower of Babel I was building in my head. All I had to do was take my eyes off of God and glance in a mirror, and I became completely self-absorbed. So now I’m making a commitment, a resolution if you will, to not only accept where God has me right now, but to find joy, solace, and completion in the opportunities God is putting in front of me. Outside of that, this world offers only disappointment.

Vaya con Dios

Tony-Bobs