Passion and Ambition

This is some thoughts from a journal entry on January 11, 2011.

Does passion drive ambition?

In my mind it does.  The more passionate I am about football the more ambitiously I will try to watch it and be apart of it.  The more passionate I am about my marriage the more ambitiously I will work at it.  The more passionate I am about the word of God the ambitiously I will consume it.  The passionate I am about discipleship the more ambitiously I will disciple.  The more passionate I am about the Kingdom of God the ambitious I am about bringing it to earth.  We go at this for days but I think you get my point.

Can passion be taught?

Kind of rhetorical but I do not think it is something that can be taught but must come from within.

If passion drives ambition what drives your passion?  The Word of God?  The Holy Spirit?

The word and spirit light the fire of passion, sustain it and allow other factors to contribute.  What factors contribute to your passion?  Is it the 7 billion that God desires to lavish his love upon?  It is the legacy you have to leave to the next generation?

Let the passion and ambition flow from you to fight the good fight and achieve the dreams of your heart.

The Chase is On!

We all have things we want to do in life.  Some call them goals, aspirations, or dreams, but whatever they are they are deeply rooted in our spirits.  They have some sort of motivational factor that causes us to listen as it beckons from within us.  It is almost like a caged animal eagerly pacing, waiting for the smallest opening to be released into freedom.  However we seem to do an amazing job at taming the animal feeding it tranquilizers in the form of fear and uncertainty.  Once the tranquilizers have taken effect the animal inside us grows weak and apathy sets in.  Soon the door is wide open and no lock is needed to keep the animal in, because it has become content in its boxed in life.  The dream never dies it now just lacks the motivation it once had to call out to us and spur us on to greatness.

What does it take to release it from within us?  To allow it to drive us to uncertainty?  To cause us to act in complete faith?  It wants to be released, chased down and caught.  I have never hunted but I can imagine when the chase is on nothing else matters.  You don’t care where your are going, what you are stepping in or the scenery along the way.  However, when you catch it, it has to be a feeling like nothing else.  Mark Batterson wrote, “Your greatest regret at the end of your life will be the lions you didn’t chase.”  So lets release the animal out of its cage.  Lets release the dream within us and not worry about where it is taking us.  Lets be motivated by the chase because we were created for greatness.

The Good Ole Days

My father-in-law sent this to my wife and I thought it was awesome.

“First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.  They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.  Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps, not helmets on our heads.  As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.  Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.  We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.  We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren’t overweight.  WHY?  Because we were always outside playing…that’s why!  We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.  No one was able to reach us all day.  And, we were OKAY.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scrap and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.  We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.  WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found  them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from those accidents.  We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse.

We ate worms, and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.  We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and -although we were told it would happen- we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.  Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment.  Imagine that!!  The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!”

This just made me laugh and think about how we are raising our children.  Are we really protecting them or just really afraid?

Manly Jesus

For most people, a Christian man and being manly have about as much in common as ham and tuna fish. If you like Rob Schneider you will know what movie that is from. Anyways, we as Christian men have become passive and for some reason I think we have lost sight of the manliness of Jesus. In some modern representations Jesus looks more like a Swedish stripper with his long blond hair and blue eyes than he does someone from the Middle East. I think he looked a lot more like Osama Bin Ladin than the way he is commonly represented. I am not saying Osama is manly just that Jesus probably looked like him when he was alive.

In Luke 13 starting in verse 10 Jesus is in a synagogue on the Sabbath teaching when a woman crippled by a spirit for 18 years comes in to worship. Jesus heals her on the Sabbath and this did not sit well with the synagogue ruler. Of all the days to do this He had to do it on the Sabbath. The synagogue ruler said, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

“The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites!” I love it! He just gave the woman life and the synagogue ruler tried to take it away over some religious formality. His tone in this scripture does not resonate with most representations of Jesus. I believe we need to embody some of this part of Jesus. He yelled in the face of the opposition to the point that Luke records that “When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated.” Now I am not saying let’s go around humiliating people but let’s be men. When the enemy comes against you or your family do you timidly pray for help; or do you stand your ground and yell in its face humiliating it into surrender.

We come in the name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit and have the authority on earth to be Men of God. Let’s start acting like it!

A Note from my Heart

Hey Friend,

In the past few weeks I have really been thinking a lot about you.  I really love you and I hope by this point you know that.  Forgive me please if at any point I have expressed anything other than love to you.  Also I wanted to share a few things with you that have been on my heart.  First, however, I would like to ask you a couple of questions and for you to be completely honest with yourself and me.  Have you ever stopped to ask God what he thinks about you and how he views you?  Also, how is your heart?

The one question I ask myself every time you come to my mind is; Are the words I speak to you bringing you life?  I asked that question because that is something I think God has asked me to do with my life.  He wants me to speak life and bring life especially to dead things.  I believe that when I am bringing dead things to life then I am fulfilling some of the destiny God has called me too.  Don’t get me wrong I am not calling you dead but I do believe we all need life spoken to us versus death.  Also I want to live a life that is open and transparent before God.  I say that to you because I believe our relationship should work the same way.  I want us to walk openly and transparent before each other trusting that we have each other’s best interest at heart.

The last thing I what to tell you is something that is constantly keeping me in the process of learning and growing.  That is listening to the voice of God in my life.  What is God saying to me, how is that for me and possibly for others around me to bring life?  So how intentional are we about listening for the voice of God in our life?  I believe this is so important because He is the Word and we are the voice.  So we MUST speak.  When we speak the Word of the Lord dead things come alive.

Thank you for always being in my corner and going to the ends of the earth with me.  Lets continue to do this together because it was made to be done that way.  Plus, we are weak in just ourselves but together our efforts are expounded.  I love you, stay full of the Holy Spirit, and lets stay unified with one purpose to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.

You’re always on my heart,

Josh Bruce

The Opposite Spirit

Do you ever stop and think of the way you respond to situations?  I know what most of you are thinking.  Of course I do!  I know it may have seemed like a dumb question but lets take it a step further.  Do you ever stop and think about your response and compare it to what is perceived as “normal?”  What is interesting is that no one thinks other wise what we take as the “normal” response.  A guy cuts you off on the highway.  Expected in return is some obscenities and telling him what number he is.  Or a young waiter or waitress takes your order and screws the whole thing up.  Of course you should tell them they suck and complain how they are so incompetent.  Most people would not think these are out of the ordinary responses to these situations.

But what if we chose to act in the opposite spirit.  What if in the situation the normal response was hate and we choose love.  Here is a big one, the normal response is anger and we choose grace.  Is this not the example God gave us?  He is the only one ever for all time that has ever had “the right” to choose not to act in the opposite spirit.  But the amazing thing, he chooses the opposite every time.  He chose it in the garden, chose himself for the cross, and continues to make that choice everyday.  I believe that we have the same responsibility to choose to respond in the opposite spirit.  I just wonder how people will begin to take notice when the “normal” response is not given.

The New Year…What will we make of it?

With all the talk of the new year I thought I would jump at writing something about the year to come.  I tried to muster some thoughts but really got nowhere.  I know that’s a weak excuse and I may have taken the easy way out.  However, I know I could not really have come up with something any better.  This is from Andrew Shearman’s blog he posted on the 2nd of January.  I also suggest you go to his blog, he is an amazing man of God and you will be encouraged and challenged.

RESOLUTE OR IRRESOLUTE….?

So what you have promised yourself this New Year?  Some major life change, a modest tweak or nothing at all.  I read in James yesterday: ‘You will be judged on whether or not you are doing what Christ wants you to.’ (2 : 12)

Ultimately, I think, people commit to what they believe in. So, this year, like every year, you will commit to what you really believe.  Not just what you say you believe, but what you really believe.  The uncommitted are unbelievers.

James and his epistle – dismissed by Luther as ‘the epistle of straw‘, because of James` emphasis that faith always produces actions (works) – does however strike the right balance between what we say and what we do.

You will be resolute about what you really believe and therefore act upon, or irresolute if it`s just another good idea or another brilliantly impressive unimplemented plan.

My friend, George Ridley, says: “I like what I`m doing, a whole lot more than what you are talking about doing…”
Come on Now!  Let`s say “Amen” make a plan and do it!

Drawn to the mess.

I got to hang out with my best friend Andy Jones today.  We did what guys do, we shot the breeze and went to Starbucks and Best Buy.  But something more significant happened in between the toffee-nut lattes and big screen TV’s.  We shared our own struggles and shortcomings to one another.  Knowing that each of us is willing to bear the burden of the other.  Of course it is not always easy.  Sure it gets messy and dirty when you are open with someone, but is that not the way it should be.  Were we created as the 1 in 7 billion to do this on our own?  Or is there a better way that involves us taking a risk, being vulnerable, and trusting our heart to someone else?

I want to encourage you to find someone that you do trust and take this journey with them.  Share the load and get messy.  I hope that as we take this journey we all will be drawn to the mess.  The greatest thing about stuff that is messy and dirty is usually underneath all that mess is something beautiful.

Another blog to add to your list.

I know what many people who know me are thinking.  Did you not have a blog once already?  Yes.  In the two years it was up you only posted about 20 blogs?  Yes.  So why is this any different?  To be honest I do not know it just is.  I know that does not put much hope in the people reading this but I guess you can only be silent for so long.  Anyway I hope you do join me on this adventure as we discuss abundant life, the value of love, and the pursuit of our destiny.  Also there maybe the occasional stories of motorcycle rides and other epic tales of Josh Bruce.