God Confidence

Sometimes I appear to be amazingly self-confident. I wish I could say that is true, but I question myself all the time. But there is a confidence that I have that generally I have all the time. The confidence in God. God confidence if you will. This gives me the freedom to try and possibility fail at just about anything. This gives me the confidence to know that no matter what happen, I still have God.
Now this God confidence is something that comes only from that relationship with Christ. I deal with people everyday who lack that God confidence. I often wonder what they could be if they had that God confidence. I wish I could show them what they could have.
So I depend on God. I rely on God. I tell people about my love for God. I pray and hope, that others will have that God confidence.

No, I am not a machine

I realize that I have a lot of blogs about a great run. About how good it felt. Well today I am going to do something different. I am going to tell you about my run today. It did not feel good. It was not how good it was. Honestly, I had nothing. It did not feel great. I am glad that I did it though. Hopefully tomorrow, I will run again and it will feel great!
Just felt like I needed to blog about a run with a bad ending.

Our job and God's job

This is one of those times that I need to remind myself of something. It is our job to plant the seeds. It is God's job to grow them. I sometimes wish it was not that simple. I wish that there was a way to make sure that seed grows. I wish that I could be the one to make it grow. It is not that I want to be God or anything like that. It just pains me to invest so much time and energy into a persons life and see them throw it away. I wish I could say that this happened only once to me. Or that this will not happen again. Or that this is a "first." Sadly it is not and will not be the last time.
Then I think about God. Boy, He sees his creation screw up time and time again. He invested his time and energy in our lives, and we rejected Him. That would stink huh?
Investing time and energy into people lives does not always turn out the way we would want. I know that can hurt. I know that can be discouraging. But fortunately, our job is to invest in people lives. What they do with it, well, that is God's job.

Bristol Weekend

Honestly, I feel bad that the pictures could not show the magnitude of the weekend. It was huge. Wow. What fun! Hope you enjoy the pictures:

The boys loved the free stuff I brought home for them. (I loved the price)

Bristol Bond

That's right folks. I am off to Bristol! I have wanted to go to a Nascar race for a long time. I have wanted to go to a race at Bristol for a long time. This weekend I am going to do both. I am going to the Nascar race at Bristol. I know I don't seem like that typical Nascar fan. That is OK. I am going to have a blast. It is going to be legendary!

Spending the 99.9% on the 99.9%

When you are helping people, you always are risking the chance of helping someone who is going to take advantage of you. People who are going to cheat "the system." No matter what type of safe guard you have in place, people will find a way to get around them.
Now understand something here, it 0.1% of the people cheating, of the people taking advantage. The rest of the 99.9% need help. So what I want you to do is to spend 99.9% of your time on the 99.9%. Don't let that 0.1% waste all your time. Don't let the 0.1% stop you from helping the 99.9%
In the USA we work bout 2000 hours a year. That means you can spend 2 hours a year worrying about that 0.1% of the people. That includes the time you are mad at them, the time that you are worried about setting up your "fail proof" systems, and the time that you spend trying to recover your loses. Not two hours a day, not two hours a week, not two hours a month, two hours a year.
Spend your time focused on those who need help!

The 10 year rule

(Note to self: Yes Dan, I am reminding you of this)
The 10 year rule may have been developed by my dad. At least he is the one who taught me about it. The 10 year rule is a simple one to understand, but so hard to follow through. The 10 year rule is this: It takes 10 years to see the results of the effort you have poured into a persons life. That sounds crazy doesn't it? 10 years! 10 years is a long time. But to see those results that you want, 10 years man. I wish that results came a lot quicker. I wish that it did not take 10 years. But hang in there, hang in there for 10 years, and maybe then you will see the results you desire.

How we treat people

I was driving down route 8 the other day. Something that I have done way too many times. Therefore I often start thinking about everything else. So let me share some of my thoughts

1. God matters
2. People matter to God
3. How we treat people matters to God

When I thought through those points, It just made everything so clear. God cares about how we treat people.

Boy night

Tonight, Heather had a meeting to go to. That means that I got to stay home with the boys. When it is just the boys, it is play time. We spent an hour running around the house chasing a ball and tackling each other. You know, the type of fun that boys have with their dad when mommy is not home. It was just so much fun. What was even better, the boys then cleaned up really nice and took a bath with no problem. It is night like this that make up for all the other nights. It was great fun. I love the fact that my boys are getting older so we can play boy like games. I am looking forward to many more boy nights! This is one of those times where I might be blogging for myself. But for all of you with boys out there, it is boys night!