Insights and ideas

Looney Tunes and other stuff!!?

Ah!! The good old days of Saturday morning cartoons! I still remember how great it was to wake up on Saturday morning and beat my brother to the television! The race to the television was an important because the one that arrived first set the pace for the cartoon viewing schedule!

I was recently talking with my new wonderful friend Bret and the subject of cartoons came up! As it turns out we both enjoy Looney Tunes who’d have thunk it?! His favorite seems to be Fog Horn Leg Horn; a good choice mind you but I would have to say I prefer the little Chicken Hawk. I just always loved his spunk and tenacity. He was this tiny little brown bird about 1/64th the size of Fog Horn but that never deterred him from hunting Fog Horn to take home as dinner for his family. He would walk right up to this huge white chicken and say “I’m a Chicken Hawk aaaaand you’re a chicken! You’re coming with me!” then the battle would ensue. Chicken Hawk vs. Fog Horn Leg Horn who would win this week and what crazy stuff would he do to take home his prized catch of the largest chicken on the farm? He would try everything from dynamite to hiring the dog to help to building various traps. Time and time again the little guy would fail but he stayed in the fight and never ever quit. He was a Chicken Hawk he was a hunter and he had a goal. He would try and try again and finally one day he had worn Fog Horn Leg Horn down and he was able to capture him and drag him back to his family.

There are many reasons to love the Chicken Hawk one is he was just plain funny to watch, he was smart too he always had a new way to catch him a chicken! (He actually said that at times. My grammar is a little better than that.) As I said earlier he was full of spunk and fight and the word quit was a foreign concept to him. In all his wit and imagination my favorite thing about the Chicken Hawk was his sense of purpose and destiny. He knew who he was and why he was created and nothing and no one was ever able to derail him from fulfilling his purpose of being the greatest hunter gatherer of all time. I used to wonder how this baby Chicken Hawk even knew what he was, how did he know he was a chicken hawk and who told him what a chicken hawk is supposed to do and how he was supposed to behave. One day I was watching him and he said he knew he was a chicken hawk because his father was a chicken hawk! He had gotten his purpose and identity through his father! Once he knew who he was and what he was designed to do in life he was on a course set for achieving his goal. He went after it will all he had and the circumstance of his size and obvious limitations never discouraged him. There were even a few times that Fog Horn tried to tell him he wasn’t a chicken hawk and made attempts to derail the little guys zeal but the Chicken Hawk never heeded the words of Fog Horn he remembered only the words of his father; “You are a chicken hawks and you hunt chickens!” Even in the onslaught of lies and deception the little guy stood strong and never forgot who and what he really was.

As Christians we must define ourselves just as the Chicken Hawk did, we must look to our Father to see who we are what we are to become and how we are to behave. Let God define you and tell you why you are here and what you are to do in life. When the voice of deception comes to you recall the words God said to you in Jeremiah 29:11 He has a plan to prosper you and give you hope and a future. He wants you to succeed and has already given you all you need to achieve your purpose. Hold on tight to the truth of His word and the strength of His voice. Stand firm be strong never be derailed be a Chicken Hawk!

Thursday, January 12, 2006
I will just tell you a truth I have learned this week. When I was somewhere around the age of 16 my mother revealed to me the circumstance surrounding my conception. It was one of those times in life that take you by such a shock that you don’t really know how to process the information. There were a great number of years I didn’t even think about or remember what she had told me. It wasn’t until I was in college that God decided it was time for me to deal with the implications of how my life began. (I promise to tell they story but that will come later in the post) My initial reaction was one of shame and confusion I began to doubt whether or not my mother had really loved me as she always said or if she had over compensated out of feelings guilt and regret. I realized fairly quickly that those apprehensions and fears were nothing more than lies from the enemy to derail my life thereby destroying the plan God had for the life He has given me to live. Although I knew the truth it was years before I really dealt with it and found a way to draw strength from the situation.
On Tuesday night of this week God showed me something new in the situation. Pastor Mark Brand was speaking he said that all life is given by God and if you are breathing you have a purpose in God; a simple truth that I already knew but something caused me to listen a little more closely as he continued. He then said there are hundreds of acts of violence or sin each day that do not result in life but sometimes God decides to bring something good out of a bad situation; He will look into the midst of an ugly situation and say “I am going to bring life from this! It will be a life consecrated to Me a person that will love Me with all their heart and live to see My glory fulfilled!” That is what God did in my situation; you see my father was an abusive alcoholic man, and one night in his drunken fury he raped my mother and my life began. My mother had told me all those years ago that I was not supposed to be born and I was only here because my father had forced her against her will into the act of violence which resulted in my conception. But GOD (I just love that phrase) looked down from heaven and He said That’s not true! God looked into the situation and said: This life is MINE I created her and she has a divine purpose! She will grow to be a strong, vital, witty, fun-loving, joy-filled, Daughter of the King! She is MY child and her value, her substance and all that she is; is rooted in Me. I will give her direction. I will give her hope. I will give her dreams! I will prosper and never harm her! I love her with all that is in Me for she is my little girl! I am her Daddy and her life; although in the natural, seems to have originated in violence; in Truth it originated in My heart in My mind and from My desire to know her to love her and to watch her grow. She will love me with all that is in her and through her life I will be glorified!!
With that said, I guess my encouragement to you is; don’t allow the natural circumstance of your life dictate how you live. You have been created by the same God with the same level of purpose and He loves you every bit as much as He loves me and the rest of humanity. Walk away from the lie and stand on the promises of God! His promises are infinite and His word is always true affirming and life giving!! Stop looking to the past to define who you are and look toward heaven and let your Father show you who He has always intended you to be.

# posted by jan : 11:05 AM 1 comments


Comments:
janny - that was awesome. i only cried a little bit. don't listen to the song "held" when reading this post!! you are correct - God has an incredible plan for your life and has already accomplished so much in and through you. you're amazing and i thank God everyday of MY life for giving YOU life.
# posted by alanna : 2:33 PM




Comments:
janny - that was awesome. i only cried a little bit. don't listen to the song "held" when reading this post!! you are correct - God has an incredible plan for your life and has already accomplished so much in and through you. you're amazing and i thank God everyday of MY life for giving YOU life.
# posted by alanna : 2:33 PM

I originally started this entry last night but blast it all!! I didn’t have a CD to save the entry to so I could easily post it to this site today! AND I don’t have internet service at home so you can surely imagine my dilemma!!! Okay enough of that and on to the reason I am writing today.

Every year my church has a corporate fast; we all take 7 days together to seek the Lord. We turn off our televisions put down our novels and our newspapers withhold at least one meal a day and look to God for direction in the New Year. I always look forward to the fast, God always shows Himself so strong in the time we set aside and consecrate to Him. In the 3years I have been participating God has always shown me what I need from Him.

I was thinking about personal testimonies on the way to work today, it is interesting to me how one person’s story can touch many people in various ways. Our minds may want to tell us that we can only minister to those who are like us but God can take one story and out of that speak a hundred different truths to those that are listening. Last night the pastor was talking about his resistance to God’s call on his life, he said a lot of things about it but in the end made a point that struck me, he said that not everyone will want to resist the call on their life; many people truly want to do the thing that God has called them to and because of that wanting end up believing it is not truly His will because the want to do it so much. (I hope that makes sense) I guess in a nutshell he was saying that some of us will never fulfill the call of God on our lives because we think the dream He has given us it too good to be true so we assume it wasn’t His idea in the first place. That my dear people is a lie! God places those dreams inside of us for a reason and they are always going to be so amazing and so good that we won’t be able to believe it possible but with God ALL things are possible if we will only believe! That realization is so freeing to me, I have often felt the dream inside my heart was prideful and wrong. I have fought with that feeling many times over the years yet the dream remains unchanged and the desire does not wane. It is always so affirming to hear a pastor say something that lets us know our desires are not wrong when they are centered on the Lord. It is good to know that my dream is not my own but the call of God.

So I guess in closing I will say follow that dream that has been steeping inside you for so long, because if it honors God and blesses people then it is your destiny!

i was listening to a rich mullins cd today and was surprised to find myself tearing up at a song that by most would be considered a fun playful song that is really only for children... the lyrics are simple and dont (at first "glance") make you say hmmm wow that is powerful or i never thought of that before... so many of his songs are deeply thought provoking and strike a chord deep within me that take me to a place with God that i had not been to previously... like the color green... the line "the color green fills these fields with praise" causes me to remember that all creation cries out in prais to the Father... but this song is one rich did not write it is one from far back in my childhood that i learned in sunday school as at toddler.. (well maybe 1st grade but you get the idea) the song you ask?? Praise Ye the Lord.... yep that song makes me quite verklempt WHY is the very question i asked myself and more to the point i asked God to show me the reason for this emotional reaction to a "camp song" as i hear the people he leads in the congregation singing this song in a 3 part round the tears come and i feel silly... the more they sing the more i cry... why??? until today i didnt have any idea WHY.... but as i listened and prayed i realized that these people were having fun singing this song.... they enjoyed what they were doing and will very likely always remember the day they sang this song because it would surely have left a indelable (sp?) mark on their hearts maybe because rich mullins was leading it but more likely because as they sang the words they joined the rest of creation in doing that which they were created to do Praise the Lord!!! at the core of who we are there is a desire a hunger a need to worship and praise something greater than ourselves ... and God is the only One that is worthy of that praise so as we find that place and fill it with the proper praise toward God we cant help but be marked we cant help but be changed we cant help but be impacted because we have finally touched base with all that we are at the height of all we can do.. that being giving Praise to our God... as we do this He will move in and through us to bring further praise and glory to His name and drawing us ever closer to our purpose to serve Him to honor HIm to love HIm to Praise Him.... our purpose is praise!!!!

So last night I got to go back to bible study.... It was the first time in like 6 weeks.... I had been working the late shift at work and wasn't able to go.. But now we have a full staff so things are better... Last night was DVD night we watched Believing God taught by Beth Moore... It was a wonderful message.... She told a story that caused me to really start thinking.. When she was about to turn 6 she asked her aunt to buy her a baby elephant so she could ride it to school! How random is that but the thing that she said made her aunt so happy about it was that Beth had the resolve to ask for it totally believing her aunt could and would provide it.... And that is how we need to be with God we need to ask Him the impossible. As I drove home that night (it is now 3-4 weeks later) I felt a need to pray so I did.... At first the prayer was an overall prayer for many things some to do with family some to do with friends co-workers and the like.... Suddenly without any warning or real thought of my own I started to pray about the ministry I want God to give me.... I didn't really know what/how to pray but I knew I needed to pray... It was only when I started to talk to God that He made something abundantly clear.... The ministry He wants to give me is like that of Beth Moore Joyce Meyer and Katherine Kouhlman combined... I wasn't even sure why these three women came to mind so quickly then He showed me the correlation.... As He sends me places what people will receive is the Word without error the Truth without apology and His Power without limit... Beth Moore is an amazing teacher she Knows the WORD and teaches it well.. Joyce Meyer is an unashamed speaker of TRUTH to a world that is rejecting truth yet she never hesitates to speak it nor does she hold back while speaking it... And Katherine Kouhlman was among the most anointed of healing evangelists of modern times... I believe God wants to bring these three things together to create that three strand cord which cannot be broken to impart more of himself to mankind... We come to know God by faith... faith comes by hearing the Word of God... As we are taught or study the Bible God reveals Himself to us... The more we read study and hear the word the greater our faith is strengthened and the more we want to know His Truth... The bible tells us that Jesus is the Truth which is the point on which the whole of Christianity is based..... The aspect of truth I want to mention here is that the bible tells us if a man says he loves God but hates his neighbor then the truth is not in him.... So many of us are guilty of this very thing.... We have fallen into global minutest of relativism and a brushing aside of absolutes.... This is a scary and dangerous place to allow ourselves to land because God makes the reality of absolute truth abundantly clear to us in His word and displayed in the life death burial and resurrection of His Son JESUS.... To ignore it and say it isn't truth is not a place I want to be and it is my desire to bring others to that same revelation before it is too late... I feel that a large part of how people will come to know God's Word and seek His Truth is by His manifest Power in the lives and ministries of the believers He is sending out... The manifest Power of God in a life a city a state or a nation is irrefutable and undeniable... And when it is witnessed lives are changed hearts are mended and souls are saved..... And it is this Power that draws us into wanting to know more about the One that provides the Power... He wants us to have all three the WORD the TRUTH and the POWER of God should be such an intrigal part of who we are that without the proper balance of all three operating in our lives we can not function.... We should do nothing without the blessing of God on it knowing what his Word says about it how the Truth is communicated through it and how His Power is displayed as a result of it.....

do you have a song that you would call your testimony song? you know what i mean?? that one song that when you hear it you just say that song is about me it describes my life perfectly!! i think most of us probably do I have such a song as well.... it is the song Offering by Third Day..... whenever i hear this song i am brought to tears at the realization of all that God has done for me... the words of the song say Magnificent Holy Father I stand in awe of all I see Of all the things You have created But still You choose to think of me Who am I that You should suffer Your very life to set me free The only thing that I can give You Is the life You gave to me This is my offering, dear Lord This is my offering to You, God And I will give You my life For it's all I have to give Because You gave Your life for me I stand before You at this alter So many have given You more I may not have much I can offer Yet what I have is truly Yours these lyrics bring so many thoughts to mind i am not sure which to focus on first... so i guess i will just tell you why this song is my testimony song... back in 1996 my church in KY was getting ready to build an addition to the existing building and as most churches do we had a pledge drive to raise the initial lump sum to back the loan with the intent of completing the project debt free... on this particular sunday morning we were having our service in a hotel so that we could bring everyone in at the same time... as we walked in the ushers gave everyone an alabaster box.... we were told to hold on to them and Pastor Bo would explain there purpose soon... i remember thinking how beautiful the box was and how grateful i was to have it.... i was thinking about the things i would be able to keep in it and that it would look really cute sitting on my dresser!! as the service went on Pastor Bo was talking about the woman in Luke that broke her alabaster box and pour its contents on Jesus... it was at this point that he told us of the purpose behind the boxes we had received..... he said that he wanted each of us to consider what we could place in that box and a gift to the church and a promise to God of our pledge to see the building project completed... as he began to explain my heart began to sink... you see at the time i was unemployed and living in my sisters basement so i had nothing to pledge no way to contribute to the building fund at all... i felt unnecessary and as if i had somehow failed God because i had nothing to give.... but then the thought occured to me since i have no THING i can give and no money i can pledge i will place my life inside this box (symbolically of course) and lay that on the altar with all the other boxes with the monetary pledges so many others had made.... it sure didnt feel like much at the time and i didnt even really know exactly what it would entail but i wanted to give something so i gave God me.... and the song describes my action perfectly.... sometimes it doesnt feel like much when we give our lives to God.... because we live in such a materialistic moeny driven world but when it comes right down to it really all the stuff we have and the money we get belongs to God any way all of it is HIs so in reality all we are doing is giving Him what is rightfully His to begin with... our lives are the only thing we truly own and by life i mean more so our free will to choose how we live and what we do while we are here.... it is the only thing God says is ours because He wants us to want Him... He wants us to understand our need for Him but He will not force Himself on us so He gave us a free will a mind of our own and lets us decide whom we will follow..... so giving our life to Him is the best thing we can ever do for ourselves.... you may think so if i give my life to God then what happens??? do i become a slave and lose my ability to decide things for myself what happens..... well it is the strangest and most wonderful thing you can imagine... when you give up your life to God that is when you really find it and come to understand what i truly means to live!!!! i know it may not make a lot of sense but it is true.... once i layed that alabaster box on that altar and walked away i knew God was going to do something amazing and unexpected...... i didnt know what but i was ready for the adventure!!! so many things have occured between then and now so i wont bore you with all the details but i will tell you this as God has used me to do things for HIs kingdom i am the one that has benefited most.... not only have i gone overseas 3 times and had the opportunity to preadh to thousands i have grown as a person and have learned what it means to be in love with God.... it has enriched my life beyond description and i know He has only just begun to do all that He has planned for this life He so lovingly gave to me... i dont call it my life anymore but i call it His life because i reliquished control and i am so glad i did so as i walk through life i remember i am on a path that has been created just for me and along the way adventure and blessing abound..... and i am the happy blessed benficiary of a life lived in service to God that offers more freedom than any other path i could hope to find.... He has created such a path for all of us and wants each of us to plant our feet upon it and start the journey He has planned but first we have to decide our life is not our own but His and His alone then and only then will we see the path and have the courage to walk it one step at a time

have you ever had the opportunity to watch a person take their first steps into the destiny God has planned for them? i am doing that at this very moment.... it is almost surreal yet not at all surprising... it is a moment i have been anticipating for years and have always known it would come.... i have the distinct pleasure of witnessing my best friend practice for an upcoming concert at a place called the love lounge in deep ellum... which is one of those little annexed areas of the city where the extremes of the human race go to mingle... on most nights when you enter this place you will see the worst kinds of debauchary and sin imagineable.. at first sight those may be the only things you see but when you look closer and into the eyes of the men and women who have ventured to this place for a night on the town what you will see are souls searching for something more... looking for something to give them purpose and meaning... something that will give them cause to live outside themselves and on the edge of an adventure bigger than themselves... this is the area to which my best friend is taking her music.... and in her music she carries God's message... God's message is one of purpose and destiny a message that can and will change what is sitting behind the eyes of those men and women searching for something that will last beyond the weekend and sink deeply into their hearts.... she is called to carry the gospel to the lost and dying of this world and show them the way to the throne room of God almighty... her's is a calling that is vast beyond all measure because it is firmly rooted in the revelation truth of her God... a truth she has welcomed into her life and allowed it to transform her into someone unstoppable... a woman bent on seeing the captive set free and souls released to worship the Creator of all that is.... as i sit here on this otherwise normal thursday night, i am watching destiny unfold.... it is truly humbling and i am overwhelmed by the reality of what is taking place! her unapologetic abandon to a life on fire for God is what He desires from each of us... He isnt asking all of us to be muscians He is calling each of us to be that which He has created us to become..... what He has created us to be is men and women in love with Him... He created us to be His children and to be in relationship with Him for all eternity... how we each relate to Him is as individualized as our fingerprints but all are equally valuable... God has a purpose for you just as He does my friend... i urge you to find that purpose and live your life to fulfill it..... He wont let you fail He wont let you falter He wants you to succeed.... as you follow Him your dreams will come true and at the end of it all you will look back on your life and be satisfied with what you see.... stay close to Him follow His lead and you will change the world because your purpose will have been fulfilled.... witnessing destiny is awesome!