I AM Thinking About Her

When men focus on mentoring younger men, one of the biggest complaints that I hear from women is "why are you just focusing on boys or young men?"  Girls and young ladies matter too.  My response to that question is, "Yes, you are 100% correct, girls and young ladies matter too."  However, that would not be the end of my answer.  As the father of three beautiful young ladies, I would finish my answer by saying, "Girls and young ladies are exactly why we should focus on boys and young men."

So many of our young men and boys are in turmoil.   They have no direction.  When you think about the large percentage of fatherless households, you have to at least think about the question, even if you don't ask it aloud - "Who is modeling biblical manhood to our boys and young men?"  For the sake of our young ladies, we must place emphasized attention on our young men.  Who will our daughters wed?  I will not willingly give my daughter away to someone who is lost, only for him to help her lose who God intended for her to be.

I want to lend a hand in showing young men how I want my daughters to be treated.  I want to talk about chivalry.  I want to talk about the ugly word of submission and how it is not just for her in marriage.  I want to model before young men, the image of biblical manhood for my daughters sake.  I want to show young men what real love is and how it is not connected to the lower extremities of their bodies, but rather to a loving, gracious God who the Bible says, is Love.  (1 John 4:8)

We say we want lower divorce rates and less domestic abuse of women.  I believe a strong remedy for both is to mentor and grow young men in the faith of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  How can we expect them to love our daughters if they don't know the Architect of Love.

What do you think?

The Road to Success

What does the road to success look like to most people?  Is it an automatic thing where you try and succeed on the very first try?  I would venture to say that most successful people only find success after they have experienced failure.  With that thought in mind, if you are someone who is afraid to fail, you may never find success.  I truly believe that even those things that we might appear to be horrible at doing, are things that are necessary for God to prepare us for what we are meant to be great at doing.  I tried this and failed.  I tried that and failed.  I tried again and again but yet I failed again and again.  How does this benefit me to keep trying? 

      1)  I gain perseverance because I have
            continued to try in the face of
            failure. 
      2) Although I may have failed, I have
           gained valuable experience along
           the way. 
      3) I have gained insight into to what
          works and what does not work.  So
          as I come to the thing that God   
          has purposed for me and I look back
          over my past failures, I am able to
          take a little from this experience and
          piece it together with a little from
          that experience and throw in a touch
          of this from another experience.  I
          then realize that my past failures
          where not failures at all.  They were
          just stepping stones that were
          preparing me for my success.

Romans 8:28
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Be encouraged.

Bigger is Not Always Better

As we enter into this new year of 2016, God spoke into my heart that bigger is not always His intent to make my life better.  He gave me a visible illustration so I could see what He really meant.  I like to write.  At times I will sit down to work on material that I have previously worked on and God will give me a lot more to say so that when I put the work away at the end of that sitting, it is more than when I sat down that day.  That is great, but it is not always like that.  Sometimes I will sit down and God does not give me more to say but He does give me better ways to say some things that I have already said.  So I will go through my previous writing and restate some things in smaller concise ways.  On these days when I get up from my writing, the finished product is usually smaller than when I started.  My finished work is not bigger but it has still changed for the better.

God always wants us to be changed for the better.  It is important that we adjust our perspective and look more for better and not so much bigger.  So many times we are looking and expecting God to do big things in our life and many times are disappointed when we don't get them.  Often if we would just change our perspective we would see that God did do something better.  We just missed it looking for something bigger.

In 2016, lets look for better and not bigger and see how much more God can influence our life from the inside out.

Believe and be blessed in 2016.

Where My Island People At?

I have often said that people who stay to themselves are consumed by themselves. This is just another way of saying that if you purposefully stay in your own little world and choose not to interact with anyone else, for whatever reason, your problems will seem to multiply exponentially. Little problems will always seem like big problems. Everything will be major. Anger and frustration will become your best friends. I call this kind of person an island person. Very rarely are visitors allowed on your island.

My Pastor often tells our congregation that you cannot fully grow spiritually the way God intended for you to grow in a non-corporate environment. You can grow up to a certain point, however at some particular point in time your growth will stop. We were created to be relational beings. We were never meant to live life completely alone. This is demonstrated in three very visual cinematic examples that most of us may be somewhat familiar with:

1) Scrooge. He was an old man who was financially wealthy but relationally poor. He, to a certain degree, hated people. In order for him to see the damage that his perspective on life had caused he had to be shown himself through the eyes of his past, present and future.
2) The Grinch. The Grinch had been mistreated as a child because he was different from the other Who’s in Whoville. As a result, he hated people and separated himself far away from everyone in Whoville. It was the love of a little girl that defrosted his frozen hardened heart and showed him how important people were to his life.
3) The movie Cast Away starring Tom Hanks. This was a man, by no fault of his own, who was stranded on an island in a plane crash. The loneliness nearly drove him crazy. It got so bad that he ended up creating his very own friend so he could have someone to talk to. He painted a face on the soccer ball and named it Wilson. He just needed someone to talk to.

All three of these examples might be fictional characters, however they all point back to a very real issue of isolation and separation void of human relationships. Community is just that important to us all, especially believers. If we are to truly grow spiritually, we have to do it in the midst of community. Being an island person will not benefit your spiritual growth. It is a ploy of the enemy to convince you that you are better off on your own. He thrives in this kind of environment. We don’t.

Points to ponder:

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (ESV) – Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him – a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Galatians 6:2 (ESV) – Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

I almost forgot. The most important example of community in the Bible is the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God is all about community.

Casualties of War

Being Veterans Day and thinking about my father who passed away on May 19th of this year has really made me think about the phrase “casualties of war.” Most of us consider casualties of war as those who are unable to walk away from the battlefield on their own or not able to walk away at all. In reality there are so many more that walk away “seemingly” unscathed but forever scarred.

My father, Hubert L. Reece, Sr. walked away from the Vietnam “Conflict” with no apparent scars. As the years progressed he would experience fainting spells, high blood pressure, diabetes which led to his leg being amputated, intestinal cancer, stroke and congestive heart failure. Many of these ailments were attributed to what he was exposed to while in Vietnam. He was a soldier to the very end. On May 19, 2014 at approximately 7:15am, while surround by family his heart took its last beat. It is a moment that I will never forget. The unseen scars of the Vietnam War made my dad a casualty of war.

There are so many more just like my dad. Soldiers who have come home thinking they are ok when they are really not. Today I pray for all of these soldiers. I pray that they find the medical attention that they need. I pray that God will cover their families as they walk this long hard journey of discovering what it means to be a casualty of war; be certain that it is a journey.

To all of our veterans, thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice. It means the world to me. Freedom is not free. Thank you for paying the price that I was so unwilling to pay.

Accountability - The New Ugly Word

Hello all,

I have been away for a very long time. Please forgive me. This has been a hard year for me. I have lost a lot of loved ones who are very dear to me this year including my father. As I am trying to get back on track, I thought it would be good to address the topic of men being accountable to one another. Accountability is kind of like getting your prostate checked. We as men need it but we don’t like it.  Life without accountability could mean self-destruction of ones self.

We as men not only need to hold one another up, but we need to hold one another accountable. It is the only way our society will truly change. We are living in a time where everything is a conflict. It is husband against wife, father against son or daughter, friend against friend. Everything is a conflict and we have not been taught or have not yet figured out how to resolve the conflict. This is why it is important that as men we not only hold each other up, but that we also hold each other accountable to how we choose to resolve conflict. We have to police ourselves so that we paint the picture that others see of us and not allow the media to paint their version of how they see us.

So my question to you: What kind of man are you?

                                          The Man I Am

                       If I see my brother in trouble and do not act
                            What does that really say about me?
                                          Am I a selfish man?
                                       Am I a cowardly man?
                      Am I just a useless man with a senseless creed?
                                     For if God can’t use me
                          I leave room for the world to abuse me
                                 And if God can’t reign in me
                    Then I leave room for the enemy to influence me
                           So the real question that I must ask
                           Is what does God think about me?
                               And when I ask myself this
                              It causes me to reflect on Him
                  I don’t want God to think He’s wasted His time on me
                                The life He gave on Calvary
                               To free this sinful man in me
                          How could I be so selfish to think
                   That I was the only one to deserve His grace
                             Oh but even if I did not say it
                      I surely acted it out in the way that I lived
           My brother was drowning and I did nothing to rescue him
                   Not even a hand out for fear that I might fall in
                  Wow, is this the man that God wanted me to be?
               Are my actions a reflection of His love inside of me?
                  I dare not even contemplate where I would be
        If He hadn’t given His life on a hill for the whole world to see
                              So if I must lose a part of me
                    Let it be the selfish man of my fleshly deeds
                   Let it be the foolish act of standing by silently
                     For if I truly love the God that I say I serve
                  Then let His love and His light overwhelm me
                         So that as I see my brother in danger
                       I won’t hesitate give him what he needs
                                             A hand out
                                           A strong word
                                  Holding him accountable
                                     In truth and in deed
                              And being held accountable
                       Because that man is no different from me
                                  This is The Man I Am
                               Yeah, that is The Man I Am
                                                                         by Bert Reece

The Crack In My Armor

I am looking at myself in the mirror

Looking for some scars

That might cause me to be alarmed

Can I truly see myself any clearer?

Thinking I have all my basis covered

Looking myself up and down

Feeling good about what I’ve discovered

I am a man after God’s own heart

I see a few scars

And a few flaws

But nothing I can’t handle with a little help from God

But wait

What’s that I see staring back at me?

All of a sudden I don’t recognize what I see

Could that really be me?

My body armor is not as pristine and clean as I once thought it to be

God where did that crack come from?

Is it really me?

I didn’t see that coming

I didn’t see that in me

Why would you let this be?

God’s reply to me

You lost sight of who I wanted you to be

I had to show you the crack in your armor

So you could really be useful to Me

God I don’t like what I see

Help me to be who I am supposed to be

Thank You for loving me unconditionally

For opening my eyes

And truly caring for me

Thank You for showing me
The Crack in My Armor

                                                  by Bert Reece