A thought occurred to me yesterday about Christians and sports. For many years now I have watched the church take a stand against certain worldly activities and remove themselves from them while chastising those who do not. Good examples in my life have been secular music, movies, science and politics. I have certianly been a part of this as well. With good intentions we have wound up removing ourselves from culture and failed to be the salt and the light that the Bible tells us to be. The Bible is clear that we are to be in the world but not of the world and I think we have often confused the difference out of fear or lack of knowing the difference. We haven’t spent much time training up a new generation to be effective in these areas and create change. The irony that I considered in a conversation with friends yesterday is that we haven’t done the same thing in sports. We pat athletes on the back and encourage them to make a difference when they make it to the pros, but we tend to clobber a musician who would consider joining a secular music group to go on tour…

This is the first post in a new series I’m calling “Email from the Trenches”. Every week I get emails through the church website that are left by church email spammers. Some of them are intelligent… but many are not. In the last few months, I have received over 300 of these messages. They are not your typical spam though, each one had to take the time to fill out our website form and actually paste their message in before sending it. I don’t want to discount the many legitimate and touching emails that are left by other genuine people, but the spammers are worth having a little fun and some conversation over.

Let me just start this whole series off with the subject of the Email from the Trenches #1. The subject was simply titled “Alien Demonic Forces” … I knew right away this one was going to superceed a previous favorite that had to do with youth camp fundraising by selling Ladies Corsets.

Life has hard questions..

• Am I willing to ask the hard questions?
• Have I made excuses on God’s behalf because I couldn’t answer the tough questions myself?
• What are some areas of my life that I don’t yet trust God in… especially because I couldn’t resolve a tough question.

I recently read through Brian McClaren’s “A New Kind of Christian” book and found it very thoughtful. I must admit that the book challenged many of my thinking patterns and the way that I handle my relationships. I may not have agreed with everything that Brian’s book is about, but i certainly caused me to take a deeper look at how modernism has affected my spiritual life and the relationships that I develop with others. I’ll be posting more my migration to a new version of me… since i’m still in beta.

I yelled at God this week.  I think He may have been yelling at me the last several months…. so a  few days ago I yelled back…. in fact it was more like a tantrum.  I guess all the Monday’s in my life ganged up on me at once and I had a breakdown… after words I could barely speak.. in fact it’s been several days and I’m still struggling with losing my voice. In all the hollering between God and I, apparently I damaged something.  I’ve read many times in the book of Psalms where David yelled at God…. theres a few places where It really sounded more like my tantrum.  Well, needless to say, God and I have things in perspective again…. I’ve decided to let him take care of running the world… and I’ll practice listening more. I’m sure glad that He’s big enough to take it, and love me the same when I was done.

Today I am having one of the best lunches ever, my beautiful third grade daughter inlcluded me in her school lunch making plans last night and left me a suprise this morning. On the menu for today is: PB&J sandwich, Lays classic chips, a golden apple and Capri Sun fruit punch with a straw. There also seems to be a signigicant measure of love placed into the whole thing that I could taste in the first bite of the PB&J sandwich that I’m sneaking a little early for breakfast at my desk this morning before my IT volunteers arrive. Thank you Lord for my kids, this is what life is really about. Today I have to give the Smarter Sheep award #2 to my daughter LilyAnne, for reminding daddy of how truly blessed that I am.

Dear Dad,
I have to say that I’m continually amazed at your openness to learn new tricks even as an “old dog”… as i have watched the last couple of years, your ability to let God show you new things that may seem contrary to the old school way of doing things is incredable. The other day I mentioned to another pastor that you said you were really having a good time with the “Confessions of a Pastor” book and even preaching out of it . He laughed and said “wow, he’s going to get himself fired if he’s not careful..”  The neat thing is, that you seem to be at a place in your life where all that matters now is what God wants to do with your life and how he wants to use your influence regardless of the status quot …as your proud son and a friend, i just wanted to encourage you, dad, and let you know that it really shows… and it’s driving me to go deeper in my own relationship with Christ… so at the end of the day, your accomplishing what you set out to do… raise kids that would go farther, dig deeper and trust Jesus Christ even more than you did… thank you for the example that I’m working hard to compete with for my own kids.

Yesterday my oldest son who is 15 came in the house while his friends were out front skateboarding on that eye sore of a skate ramp they built in my driveway… jeff jr. proceeded to tell me that one of his buddies was having a hard time at home because they were going through a financial tradgedy. His mother wanted him to hang out in our neighborhood with his friends tonight because she didn’t have any food in the house to feed him. Jeff jr. also noted that the boy didn’t have a board to skate with and had asked his mother for one, which resulted in her breaking down in tears because she wanted her teenage son to feel like he could fit in but didn’t have grocery money let alone, cash for a skateboard. I could tell from the look in my son’s eyes that he was deeply concerned and I was also very proud that he felt he could ask us for help… my son gave his extra board away last night and I put the boy to work for 15 minutes straightening the garage so that when he went home to his mom with the biggest chunk of cash he ever got for 15 minutes of work, he could at least honestly tell her the extra grocery money he found was for work he had performed…… this morning he brought me a note from his mom which read, “Dear Mr. Bull, thank you so much for giving my son an opportunity to work for you and make an effort to contribute at our home when times are tough, this helps his esteem imensely, it’s interesting how things work out for us when we are in need”…  I don’t know the mother, and barely know the son.. but I do know Jesus… and I know Jesus wanted to skate with the boys yesterday and help feed their mom’s as well.