The other day one of by Covenant Brothers texted me, “Why did God want to kill Moses?” I thought to myself, “that’s an interesting question.” Not only was that an interesting question, but I did not remember where that was. Of course my brother told me; Exodus 4:24. I read it and sure enough, God wanted to kill Moses. It almost floored me. I never thought that God wanted to kill Moses. I mean, IT’S MOSES!!! As the shock wore off I started to think about the passage and the story as it correlated with the rest of the chapter thinking that it would give me a good context for the passage. Problem! The story of God wanting to kill Moses comes out of left field. I mean God just gave Moses this huge mission of standing up to Pharaoh and rescuing Israel from Egypt and the next moment God wants to kill Moses. What do you do with that??? Read More

This morning was not as good of a morning as I could have had. Yesterday I took Anna and Judah to the city by my self for doctor appointments. I did not get back home till 9:30 last night. On top of that Sunday night I could not sleep because my mind was to active so I was up till 2:00am. On top of that my lower back started hurting Sunday morning before Church. So this morning when my alarm went off at 5:30am, so that I could get dressed up to drive back to the City (3 hrs) to attend our quarterly clergy gathering in the Oklahoma United Methodist Conference, it was really hard to get up to say the least. Normally I love going to these clergy gatherings because I get to see clergy friends and generally the presentations are good, plus I get time to pray and spend quality time with God as I drive. It usually is a break from my normal schedule, but this morning it was a difficult drive. I felt tired, in pain, annoyed, uncomfortable, and worst of all lonely. With all the feelings that we experience, Lonely for me is the worst. Mostly because being lonely is a distortion of sadness. Lonely is caused by the sin in the world. We were never created to feel lonely because loneliness is a lie. For me, loneliness comes in my life when life hits me the hardest. Read More

“What would you do with 500 million dollars?” I believe that is the popular question this week. As the powerball lottery reaches its largest sum of over a billion dollars, many people are asking that question. I was asked that question multiple times. Of course I really don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff, but since someone brought it up in my sermon on Sunday I started thinking about it. That is a lot of money. Truly $100,000 would be ok for me. That would at least get me out of debt. But what would I do with $500 million or more. I wonder how many prayers have been prayed these past couple of weeks asking God to give them the correct numbers? A lot of people look to this opportunity for their lives to be changed. Those people have it right, that much money will change your life, but how? Read More

Last week as Christmas came to an end, we decided to take down our decorations. I really do not know which is worse, hanging the greens or taking them down. Now Jessica likes to decorate and every year Jessica is always sad when we have to take down the decorations. On the other hand I am just annoyed. It is sad in a certain way because it is the end of a great season, but annoyed because I have to lug down all the boxes and totes from storage and then put them back again, I guess that is my role in life. As we packed up the tree, because we have a fake one, every year the floor is covered in green pine needles. We have had both real and fake trees and the results are the same. So we vacuum the needles up. Now this was last week and yet those needles are just everywhere. It seems they multiply as they are vacuumed up. Every time I vacuum I find more and more needles. They’re just everywhere. Every time I find them I pick or vacuum them up. As I noticed this weird phenomenon I began to think about how we live our lives. Read More

This morning as I was getting ready I began to think about my daily routines. If I had it my way I would probably do the some thing every day in a certain order. I feel most comfortable with my routine I do every morning, at least I used to. Nothing changes your daily routine like having children. The routine you had before children is completely thrown out the window once you decide to have a child. Jessica and I were both blessed with two children at one time. Anna and Judah came into our lives in 2013 and since then our lives have been forever changed. Not only was my personal routine disrupted, but our married routine was uprooted. Jessica and I had been married for 8 years before we decided to become foster parents. But, we have children now and have developed new routines. All this got me thinking, is there a problem living in a routine. Some people can’t stand doing the same thing every day. What those people do not understand that even they live in a certain routine, even if it is the routine of not doing the same thing every day. I believe we were created with a sense of routines being a normal thing. I think we are “creatures of habits.” Maybe that is why I like being a Methodist. Read More

So I just celebrated my 34th birthday on January 1st. As always my wife (Jessica) and I stay up to ring in the new year, she wishes me happy birthday and we go to bed. I am not a big person on parties so it is usually small, mostly family. This past January 1st was the same as usual. Read More

It seems weird that I would start a blog. Seriously I thought that blogging was a fad that had died out already. When I think of blogging my mind goes directly to Barney Stinson from the tv show How I Met Your Mother. When something great or “Legen-wait for it-Dary” happens he would state, “This is totally going in my blog.” Anyway I digress. As it is a new year (2016) I was wanting to try something new. One of my Sisters in Christ said that she began a blog and thought that I should try it. It was at that moment that I got excited. Of course I expressed my hesitations, but she assured me that blogging still took place and was not just a fad. I will take her word on this issue. So I am starting to blog. This being my first blog I title it “It’s new to me…” Read More