Hit Me Like a Sledgehammer!

Sledgehammer to the chest! Ouch! It was like I went flying. Took the hit, flew off my feet, and hit the wall, and then like some twisted kind of cartoon had that dazed look, stars floating around, and slowly I slide down the wall. It could only be more funny if Bugs Bunny was actually standing there making some wise-crack remark.

Someone said something to me recently that just totally blindsided me. It hurt. It made me angry. I didn’t react very well. It was of course based on a reaction that I had to someone else. Have to say, they did pretty well with their response to me, even though I totally blew it.

But you know, when I calmed down, their words made me think. I knew that some things were going on inside me, and that I have been a bit off, but I also thought that I had been keeping it more internal than I had been. Leigh-Anne and I have been having discussions about how to manage our house better, and how to change the environment in our house.

I was totally angry when we left church. On the way home Leigh-Anne turns to me, and says, “You really need to look at that. If people are seeing you like that, you need to deal with it.” I totally admitted that I had to. I was hurt. My pride was hurting. My feelings were hurt. I was frustrated. I HATE to be the one that is wrong! Darn that pride!

So when I get home, I have to apologize for my infraction… Sucked! I hate being wrong! I was though. Then I had to think about how this bad attitude could be impacting me in any other parts of my life.

The person that said the comment that hit me so hard wasn’t trying to be mean or anything, but they did sting me for a second. I know that this was something goo in the end because I had a verse of scripture that kept running through my head. Proverbs 27:6 “Wounds from a friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.”

Have to keep on this self-examination. I have to make some changes to myself…. Now on to action!

The Truth Project

I’ve been studying the Bible, and building a relationship with God for a long time… since I was a really young kid. I seemed to grasp the concepts of forgiveness and sin at a young age, but in the culture that I grew up in, the people around me were very Christian based. As I got into high school however, to be a Christian became an oddity. It’s like the people that I grew up with, had parents that didn’t raise their kids to be Christian too. Like most families in the culture I grew up in, many of the parents didn’t like the “set of rules” that the Christian faith put forth. That was back in the early 90’s when I graduated. THEN I went into university, where young people are totally thrown into every kind of philosophy know, and (from my experience) all of them were presented in a fair and accepting way… oh, except for Christianity. I even tried to search it out by taking classes in Religious Studies. HA! What a joke!

So now the people in my age group are raising kids after being taught some very anti-Jesus concepts. They teach those to their kids. So for someone like me, who is raising children in a Christian home, they will need to know what they are talking about. Their friends will have questions and objections to the Christian faith. Some things will be answerable because they are fact based, while others will come down to choices of convictions and values.

So as a parent, a dad, I want to be able to help to structure the thinking about my beliefs about faith and the Bible, and then I can teach that to my children.

Over the next twelve weeks, in my home, we will be running this course called The Truth Project. Please check out their website and see if this is something that you could implement in your church!

(Click Here to go to the Truth Project website)

1 Peter 3:15 ESV
"But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect"