What Can't You Stand?

Moses, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Billy Graham and Dr. Bob Pierce (Founder of World Vision) all had one...A Holy Discontent. Moses was bothered by the oppression of the Hebrew people. Martin Luther King was sick and tired of the discrimination of blacks, Mother Teresa couldn't stand to see the poorest of the poor living without hope and dying without dignity...and the list goes on.

In his book: "Holy Discontent" Bill Hybel's uses the story or analogy of Popeye and his eating spinach. When he would finally have enough of what ever was going on in that epsiode he would say, "I can't stands it no more!" Then he would pop open a can of spinach and get huge forearms and take care of whoever or whatever it was that was causing trouble. And that is the question that keeps getting asked in this book...What can't you stand?

How do you answer that question? What takes place in this world that everytime you see it you just want to explode? For me several things come to mind: people that misrepresent the Church, the name of Christ or Christianity in the Media. Students blinded by the enemy and missing out on a relationship with God. Finally, I would say it would have to be Christians in general who do not care about missions. I guess that my list could go on and on, but those are the first few that come to mind.

I love what he says about Mother Teresa and this REALLY challenged me...he said, "Mother Teresa didn't devote herself to this casue because of a fat paycheck every month; she served the under-resourced people in her midst because her holy discontent had her by the throat and wouldn't let go."

Am I living out my life with my holy discontent grasping my throat not willing to let go? Or am I simply going through life collecting a paycheck and doing a job? I don't know where you are at in your life right now, but will you join me in asking God to help us identify our holy discontent? But lets not stop there...lets get off our butts and do something about it!!

inventory

This weekend Meg, Keri and their mom have been doing a garage sale. So needless to say this past week we have been going through the house finding things (and we had plenty of things) to sell in the garage sell. My brother-in-law said it best, "this can get addictive, you keep going through your stuff saying, 'what can I sell?'" It has caused us to do some real inventory on our lives and posessions.

Let me ask you this...do you have to much stuff? I recently read an article in Relevant magazine about our generations "addiction to money," It was a very insightful article. Tony Compolo made this point: Over the past 25 years the average size of homes have increased by 40%, and it is not because we are having more kids, actually we are having less. It has everything to do with the fact that we have more stuff, and what is crazy is that we are having to rent out storage units to hold stuff that we can't fit in our homes.

If Meg and I get to the point where we are trying to figure out where to put stuff that we have, to me that is a sign. We need to get rid of some stuff! I never want to get to the point where I can't park my car in the garage because I have too much stuff. If I reach that point, then somebody is either getting blessed by me giving it away or it's time for a garage sell!

So if your bedroom or house is a little crowded...be a blessing to someone else and give some stuff away...or have a garage sell...either way take an inventory of all the stuff that you have and haven't used for at least a year! And get rid of it!