Attractive



Throughout the ages, signifance has been placed on the way a person looks, dresses, smells or talks. In our day and time, the newest thing is face-lifts, botox, physical enhancements, fad diets and spray tanning. Society tells woman they are only beautiful if they have a size 0 waist and curves to boot. We raise our children to see the world through these eyes and are continuing to create a culture that bases everything on a certain look.

But being attractive is not a bad thing. Yesterday, Pastor Mark led us through a sermon on understanding that we are Christ's Ambassadors. In coming to terms with the fact that we are indeed an ambassador of Christ, we must realize that people are watching us. The community wants to see how we live, how we talk, how we love and how we respond. Truthfully, many un-Christians are just waiting to see us fail and not respond with love and grace and have their opinions of Christians as hypocrites confirmed. Therefore, we have got to take our obligation as an ambassador for Christ seriously. It is an honor and a privilege that God wants to "attract" others to a relationship with Him through me.

As I was reading through the book of Philippians, I came across a particular passage that stuck out to me. The Message translation says that we are to life a life that will "make Jesus Christ attractive to all." God has chosen to use you and me to attract others into a relationship with Him. Therefore, the way that we live our life must be appealing. We must live an abundant life, a life filled with joy and peace and love. Life is difficult and people are looking to Christians for an answer.

Does the way that you live your life give others hope?

Total Failure

I created this blog with a new name and a new direction to keep up the balancing act of trying to be a dad, a husband, a friend and a pastor. Well, my Jenga game, a.k.a. my life, just came tumbling down because I have not posted anything since November. I could give you every excuse in the book; travel, sickness, new responsibilities, adoption, kids, poopy diapers, and the list goes on but really each of those is just an excuse.

I am not even going to try and say things are easy or simple because they are not but Life is Good. Our children are wonderful and each day with them is a new treasure from God. I fall more in love with my wife everyday watching as she continues to become the woman that God created her to be. I love my friends, family and co-workers more than I could possibly put into words.

But even when things seem to be going great, life happens. If you take your eye off of the prize for one second, you may fall. I feel like I took my eyes off of Jesus during this time period of my life. I for sure praise Him for all of the amazing blessings but I was not consumed by him, I was not driven by his love and I have been left feeling empty. This season of my life I began to wonder can a person love God but not be in Love with God and I have come to the realization that the answer is an abundant NO. If you began to feel this way or walk this way, you are becoming lukewarm and there is nothing worse than a lukewarm follower.

As I search and pray, may you take an honest look at your own walk and see if you are on-fire for God or has your spark fizzled? May God consume every aspect of our lives in such a way that our spark will never go out.





Humility

Several times in my life, I have been called egotistical, arrogant or proud. Now, I do not really think that I fit any of these words but I guess that some people feel that is how I come across. However, there is a big difference in not being arrogant and actually being humble.

Humility is something that I struggle with because I believe that to be humble means to admit that you need help. I have no problem admitting to God that I need help but sometimes I have a real problem asking others for help. Maybe it's because I am male or maybe I have this feeling inside of me that wants to help others but never admit that I need help myself.

Over the past few months, I have learned to humble myself before lots and lots of people and say that I need your help. My wife and I are in the middle of adopting two beautiful children from Russia and the money needed for the adoption is great. We had some wise friends that have adopted several children advise us to ask for help. I remember well Kat and I leaving that meeting and both of us thought that asking others to help us was not something that we felt comfortable with.

God changed our minds. I think that maybe that was the day that I became a parent. I thought more about my children and how to get them home than I did about myself or asking others to help us. We sent a letter to a few friends and asked them to help and God showed up. Friends, family and people that we didn't even know gave us items for a yard sale. Praise God because we raised enough from the yard sale to buy our remaining plane tickets. Literally, the people that helped with our yard sale are responsible for bringing our children home.

However, the humbleness did not stop there. God continues to work on my heart. We were asked to submit our story to an online magazine to raise awareness about November being Orphan Awareness Month.  Then we were told that for every person that comments on our story, we receive $2 to go towards our adoption.

http://sixseeds.tv/s/content/adoption/663-adoption_the_hunter_family

Above is the link to our story.

God did not stop here. A friend of ours and the lady that cuts Kat hair wanted to help. She decided to have a Cut-a-Thon at her shop, Envy. She will give all of the money raised to our adoption fund. This event will take place Sunday November 14 from 1-4 p.m. She and some her associates will do trims and eyebrow waxes.

I was sure that God was through but he was not. A lady that my wife and I have never met wanted to help. She decided to have one of those 31 parties. So she set up an online party where people can go and shop and we get part of the proceeds to help with our adoption. This same lady had her house burn down within the last few months and she lost everything.

Humbled. I am Humbled.

On top of all of this, people have been giving us cash donations. It is so difficult to accept money from people. I have seen God through so many people from helping with our yard sale, donating items, bringing gifts to our shower, kind words of encouragement, donations, helping get the word out for our fundraisers and so many other ways that I can not even remember right now.

Humbled.

And I believe that God has humbled me the most seeing so many people care for and pray for our children without even meeting them. I believe that our children will hopefully never doubt for a second they are loved because of the kindness that you have shared during these past few months.

I sit here in awe of God and the people that I call my friends.

"All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time (1 Peter 5:5-6)."

FEAR

What are you afraid of?

I am afraid of all sorts of things. Spiders. Clowns. Spider Monkeys dressed up like Clowns and Heights of course. 



Growing up there was a hit television show called "Fear Factor." I always watched and thought that I could go on the show and win with ease. In my head, I would be able to stand up to my fears and overcome them without breaking a sweat. Not sure if this was really the case or if I was and maybe still am diluted in the head.

What are you afraid of? What are the deep fears inside that you don't talk about? I am not talking about spider monkeys dressed up like clowns (but that would be really scary).

One fear that I don't discuss or even think about until I decided to type this blog is that my children will not attach to me. Anytime that you adopt, a parent reads material and articles about attachment and the difficulty that can occur. I pray that this fear will never come true.

Do you fear God? This was a question that I never thought about until Wednesday. My Wednesday night class watched a dvd called Basic. As the class watched the dvd, we all began to ponder the role of fear in our relationship with God. Psalm 111 states that the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We all want more wisdom but I had never equated that Fear and Wisdom were interlinked.

So are we to fear God? Is there such a thing as a healthy fear? I am not sure I have wrapped my mind entirely around this subject but I plan to continue digging deeper into these questions. Will you join me on the journey of determining how fear plays a role in our relationship with God?

Birthday Cake

Some of you might think that since my wife posted two blog posts today that maybe I am trying to compete with her but I assure you that this is not the case.

After reading my wife's blog this evening, I felt compelled to post my thoughts.

Growing up, birthdays were filled with family and cake, friends and cake, toys and cake. It was always a great time of happiness and love. I remember parties when I was young where my friends came to my house and I remember a recent birthday where Kat surprised me and took me to Indianapolis to see a concert.



However, today our son B turns 2. We will not be there to hold him, give him presents or to watch him blow out his candles and my heart breaks. I know that it seems trivial to some but tears stream down my face as I think about not spending the day with my son on his birthday.

I hope that we will not miss the 1st birthday of our little girl in late December. If you think about it, will you pray that our son feels God's love on a day that we, his Earthly parents can't show him love.

BALANCING ACT

I am consistently inconsistent with updating my blog. I have great ideas all the time but rarely type them into my blog and thus my blog is rarely updated. As many of you know, my wife and I are in the process of adopting and Kat has been a very dedicated blogger. She has been open and honest about our process and I believe that God is using her ability to write to touch lives in a very real way and I am so thankful for that. She has been trying to get me to blog for months and I kept telling her that I would. Between her pleas and my co-worker and friend's post (Tonya) yesterday that discussed the fact that we should just blog even if it's not perfect, I feel compelled to blog.

You may have noticed that I changed the name. I feel that with our adoption and the simple fact that my life is about to change, I wanted to change the focus of my blog to encompass my entire life. I want this blog to look at my life from all of the hats that I currently wear or will wear in the future. I had considered writing one blog about my adoption journey and another blog about my career. I think that a life is interwoven and needs to be multi-faceted in order to reach many people. So my hope is that this blog will reach people from all backgrounds and all walks of life.

Thank you for reading!

Owning your own Sin

As I read Blue Like Jazz, I was struck by this statement made by author Donald Miller. He says, "The entire world is falling apart because nobody will admit they are wrong. But by asking God to forgive you, you are willing to own your own crap."



The words of Donald just swam through my mind and coursed through my veins. Our world is falling apart because we can't admit that we are wrong. This statement is so true. Too often we become so consumed at pointing out the flaws of others that we do not see our own miserable failures. We are a society that is quick to become defensive and even quicker to become offensive.



We spend way too much of our time concerned about other's issues. I feel challenged to take a look in the mirror and humbly admit to our Heavenly Father my "own crap" where I have fallen short. What would our world look like if more people were able to confess their own failures instead of looking around for someone to blame?