Author Archives: Dave

By the way, someone let me know yesterday that the settings were set too restrictive and not everybody could leave comments on here. So I fixed the settings, and everyone should be able to comment now. Let me know what you think!

I’m sorry, but when I wrote the title in this thing, I was flashing back to the first Batman movie like back in the 80’s, when the Joker’s riding that big float in the parade at the end of the movie right before they release the gas, and Prince’s song was playing in the background…”Trust, who do ya?”

Okay, that was a total butterfly…

I’ve been reading through John in the mornings, and I had an “ah-hah” moment this morning. Like, you know how you’ll read something that you’ve read over and over and over since you were a kid, and then one day the Spirit just reaches out of the page and slaps you right in the face, and you get something out of it that you’ve never gotten before? Well, I had an “ah-hah” moment this morning, and so I had to share it tonight.

We’ve all read the verse over and over and over, and probably even memorized it. Jesus was saying, “Your heart must not be troubled. Beleive in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you” (John 14:1,2, HCSB). Great verse. There’s a lot in there. What I’ve always gotten out of that verse is that we shouldn’t stress over stuff in this life, because He’s coming back for us.

But I read that this morning, and a different set of words literally just jumped off the page at me. “…if not, I would have told you.” I can almost hear Jesus saying, “Guys, if wouldn’t tell you this if it weren’t true.”

But when I read that this morning, and I stopped, and re-read it like 3 times, the Spirit just whispered in my ear, “You can trust Me!” And that sounds simple, but think about it. I get stressed sometimes. I’m a full time grad student, and I have term papers coming out of…well, let’s just say I’ve got a lot of them right now. Time is an issue. Money is an issue. Friendships can be an issue. And I get stressed. I get stressed because I stop realizing that God will handle it. “You can trust Me.” In fact, here’s how The Message paraphrases the 1st part of that passage: “Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me.”

He can handle whatever it is that I’m stressed about. I just need to trust Him to do it.

Trust, who do ya?

If you listen really close, I think you’ll hear Him whispering in your ear.

“You can trust Me.”

Remember, when you were a kid, how amazing balloons were? Balloons signified birthday parties, New Year’s parties, carnivals…they symbolized many things, but one thing was always in common…fun! Balloons meant fun!

(well, I knew a girl once who had a phobia of clowns…so they probably didn’t mean fun for her…but we won’t go there)

Did you ever pop a balloon on purpose? I did. It used to be hysterical to sit on it and pop it, just to scare someone else in the room. Ah, the things that used to amuse us! The balloons that symbolized so much fun to us, we destroyed, and somehow thought it was cool.

My emotional balloon gets really full of hot air sometimes. I get way too proud for my own good. About a year ago, God really started working on me about pride. I remember asking Him to show me the areas of my heart that contained pride, but really being horrified at what He showed me. I struggle with pride. I suppose it stands to reason. Artists love appreciation. I love it when people read something I’ve written, watch one of my plays, hear me speak at an event, and tell me how great a job I did and how much it “moved” them. Because I was educated in a secular performing arts environment, where the ultimate reward, the only thing worth seeking after, was the applause of the audience. I had no clue until about a year ago how proud I tend to be.

So I had to start taking that balloon, and popping it. Sit on it, blow it up, get rid of it. Because pride is never held in high esteem by God. It’s what got Satan kicked out of Heaven. It’s what caused the Fall…Adam and Eve wanted to be like God. We don’t want to get rid of it though, because it makes us feel good. Something happened tonight that, as much as I would never admit it, trashed my pride. Slammed it to the mat. But by trashing my pride, God did exactly what He needed to do.

He woke up the right people…He just chose to pop a balloon to do it.

My balloon.

Good for Him.

I was watching this special episode of “Cops” tonight (go ahead…laugh!)…it was a special about NOPD dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So this one officer that the camera was following went into his own house, and it was a disaster…furniture smashed up against walls, walls green with mold where water had been…a mess. He was salvaging some pictures off the walls, and he said something like how he was glad that his wife wasn’t there to see it, because all of their dreams had been built there and to see the devastation would have been more than she could bear.

I guess I started thinking about building dreams. I have the worst habit of building my dreams on financial stability and professional success. I concern myself a lot with my bank accounts, investments, and where I’m going to get published. Sometimes I forget why God called me to write in the first place…to reach people, to encourage people, to communicate Him. That’s where my dreams should be built, not in how much money I get from it all. Being a grad student has been good for me, because my income is about a quarter of what it once was, and it’s forced me to be less materialistic. Funny how God works, isn’t it?

Jesus reminded us that, “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34, NKJV). The place where we are focused is where we will build our dreams. God wants us to focus on Him, and build our dreams there, to invest in what will last forever, not what will go away in a few years.

I guess I build my spiritual dreams on investments that have a low expectancy of return, when I could just as easily invest them into something with a huge rate of return. If that were my retirement portfolio, it would be a no-brainer.

But I guess that, spiritually, it is my retirement portfolio, isn’t it?

I hope I retire well, don’t you?

This is going to sound so totally random tonight…

One of the things I love about writing this is that it gives me a chance to reflect back on what happened through the day, what God showed me and did for me during the day. But this morning I heard this, and I thought immediately, “that’s what I’m writing about tonight!”

My pastor gave a really awesome message this morning (well, technically I suppose it was yesterday since I’m writing after midnight…again) about being dead to sin, not letting sin rule our lives as Believers. He took it from Romans 6. One of those services that becomes very real to you, like the Spirit is whispering right into your ear the whole time. And then, like that wasn’t enough, something absolutely profound happened at the end of the service.

The worship leader is praying to close everything out. I love hearing this guy pray because you can tell he’s seriously talking to God, I mean conversationally, not in some rehearsed speech or contrived language. He just talks to God when he prays, like he’s really just saying this to God and the microphone just happened to be there…the way it should be when we pray. But this morning as he starts to pray, he pauses for a second like he’s searching for the right words to say, and he prays, “Father, help us to live like we’re dead.”

I walked out of the building totally hung up on how profound that was.

I mean, think about it. The entire thrust of the morning was about truly living in God, in the freedom that Christ has given us, and therefore being dead to sin…accepting His life, and dying to the lusts of the flesh. What better way to sum it up: live like you’re dead. Because isn’t that what we’re supposed to be, is dead to the world? In the world, but not of it, and all that? Paul said we’re “crucified with Christ.” We’re dead to sin. We should live that way. We can, if we accept His victory over it.

“Father, help us to live like we’re dead.”

I guess we should all spend more time praying that this week, shouldn’t we?