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Our local high school football team had the most dramatic turn around I think I've ever seen in a high school team. They had only scored in two games the season before. A new coach took over, and the next season they were in the state championship and were on top many years after that!
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I was a Flash Gordon freak when I was a kid. Now, you probably have led a deprived life and you maybe say, "Flash who?" Let me bring you up-to-date. Flash Gordon was an inter-galactic hero that was made famous in a serialized movie that I think might have been filmed way back in the 1930s. No, I did not see it when it first came out! But it kept going on and on and on forever. I think you might still be able to find it sometimes on late night TV. Every episode ended with Flash in a jam, and he was always ready to be destroyed by some space monster or death ray. And you were sure there was no way Flash was going to get out of this one. There always was. He always did, and there is always a way out for you and me, too, if you're working for the right director.
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My next door neighbor in our dorm in college always wanted to preach like Billy Graham. I mean he really wanted to preach like Billy Graham. He would tape Billy Graham on his radio program, and then he would listen to the tapes over and over again. He would copy everything, including even the inflections of Billy's voice. And then he would watch Billy Graham. He studied his gestures; he'd try to get them down and gesture just when Billy Graham would. He'd hold his Bible like Billy Graham. Now you are going to think he was really a fanatic, but this really is true. He told me he even counted the words per minute that Billy Graham averaged and tried to get the same pace. Wow! That's a crazy way to approach ministry, huh? Well, it's more common than you might think.
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It was right at the beginning of the first Gulf War when I got an unusual and an unexpected insight from one of the soldiers who had been shipped out for that very dangerous mission. Thousands and thousands of our military were sent out to the desert to try to liberate the nation of Iraq. And they were hit with such intense desert heat that it could require six gallons of water a day to keep from dehydrating. And they faced the very real fear of chemical warfare. They had to be prepared to resist that. Not just guns and tanks, but deadly gas.
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I think I've been on a diet since I was about six months old, or at least it seems that way. I guess my "thorn in my flesh" is my metabolism. Is that possible? It refuses to convert calories; it loves to store calories instead. Now, over the years, I've made friends with my metabolism, and that's probably why I left 210 pounds years ago and have been able to stay, you know, a lot lower than that by 40 or 50 pounds over the years. I've learned how much intake I can stand in relation to how much I'll be exerting that day. The problem is that the day is filled with caloric choices, whether it's a nibble on those snacks that somebody brought to the office, or getting a sandwich from the deli like everybody else is, or eating that tempting dinner that my wife has prepared.
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If you're not an avid basketball fan, you may have never heard of Stacey King. He actually some years ago was a rookie player with the Chicago Bulls. I think you've probably heard of Michael Jordan, one of the all-time great superstars of professional basketball. One season, Michael Jordan broke a single game scoring record, and Stacey King, the rookie, had a great quote after that game. He said, "I'll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points in one game." Actually, Michael Jordan scored 69 points; Stacey King scored one. I know the feeling!
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It actually starts while men are still boys, "I'll beat you!" It's that innate desire in a male to compete, to conquer, to win. A girl is a conquest, a game is a conquest, a career or a business is a conquest. In Spanish, men were called conquistadors! Give them a challenge in their field or in their interest area, and they will work hard to conquer it. Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that these conquerors retreat when the challenge happens to be in a relationship.
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Not long ago I was at a conference in a beautiful mountain setting. We had our work all spread out across the tables we were working on. The tables became messier and messier as the day went on. You know how those meetings go. And, after several hours of our, shall we say hot air, the room was ready for some ventilation. So a couple of fellows went over and opened the windows real wide, and oh did that felt good. And then, a big mountain breeze came up and blew through the room. Some people thought the wind was just what we needed. But some of our work started to blow around, and some thought it was suddenly too cool. One man got up and loudly slammed those windows shut! It seems as if there are always those who want to shut the window when the wind is starting to blow.
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Somewhere on your body there is probably some mark or scar from your early days of riding a bicycle. Most of us took a pretty good spill somewhere along the way and we've got the marks to prove it. Well, our family was staying at a little cabin in the woods, and our oldest son came cruising down this little dirt path on his bike. He spun out on the gravel and he had an unscheduled meeting with the ground. When he got up he was bleeding pretty profusely from his mouth.
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Five beaches that became bloody battlefields, and that became the turning point of World War II. It was D-Day, June 6, 1944 when the allied forces invaded those beaches on the coast of France and began to move against and tore Germany. Of course Nazi stronghold after Nazi stronghold fell to those advancing allied troops, but the war still dragged on. Finally, the allies smashed into Berlin; the war still was on. Eventually, it came down to a few blocks around Hitler's bunker, and finally only after Hitler's death, the surrender came. Then the war was over. There had been a lot of victories along the way, but the war wasn't over until the last stronghold surrendered.
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I remember this one visit to Texas where they got me on a horse. Bet you wish you could have been there! They were there with a camera. See, I was with a group of teenagers doing a radio program, and we decided to do part of it with me on horseback. I'm not sure why, but that was what we did. I had asked for like a nice, gentle horse; a tired old horse. So as I started to mount the horse I said, "By the way, what's his name?" They said, "Tornado." I knew I was in big trouble! I said, "Do you have anything named Glue Factory?" They didn't.
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Some of my favorite moments in our kids growing up years have been story-telling time. Now, we did the obligatory Little Engine That Could and Winnie the Pooh, in which I used all of my weird voices. But my best memories are of the Bible stories. Evidently I don't always communicate all the information very clearly. I remember one time after we told the Bible story about the book of Genesis, I said to my daughter, "And Honey, do you remember who the first Mommy and Daddy were?" And she said, "Yep! Eve and Steve." Okay, good, so much for my Bible teaching. I said, "Do you remember who their boys were?" She said, "Yep! Cain and Mable." There we go again.
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There's something invigorating about being the first one out and around in the morning; you sort of feel like the conqueror of your environment. Like when you're the first one out exercising in those first hours of the new day. I had that feeling one morning as I went out for my fitness walk (That's fitness, not fatness).
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Surprise! I used to be in a quartet. Oh I did! Listen, don't laugh out loud. Yes, when I was in college, for a little while I sang in a gospel quartet. I did not sing any solos. No, no solos for me. Now, musically, I'm okay in a group. Solo – not so much. You know, in a way, we're all like that.
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Nantucket—a romantic island off the coast of Massachusetts. Waterbrook—a humble cabin in the woods in the mountains north of New York City. Long Beach Island—a little house by the Jersey shore. See, those are places where my wife has been her most beautiful. That’s not because she had new makeup on, or was all dressed up, or did her hair differently. Those are just some places where we’ve gone to be alone, and where I finally slowed down and noticed her again. She’s beautiful all the time, but I don’t notice it all the time, because I see her best when we’re alone. If you’re in a lonely time right now, let’s talk.
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It's amazing what a difference two words can make. For example if you're a teenager, your life can change dramatically when you hear just two words, "You're grounded!" Or if you're working, "You're fired." Or those two words that changed my life forever. You know what those two words were? "I do." It's amazing what two words can do.
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The story goes that some years ago a cartoonist named Walt Disney-maybe you've heard of him-well he went with his children to an amusement park, and he was disgusted! The park was covered with litter, bathrooms were filthy. And that day Walt Disney made up his mind that the park he wanted to build someday would always be clean. If you've ever been to Disneyland or to Disney World, you know Walt Disney got his way.
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At first, Rob's friends thought he was avoiding them. They'd ask him to go somewhere and he'd say, "Sorry, I can't." Eventually he told them why he couldn't go. He had something much more important to do. He would just say, "I've got to go to my meeting." Not too many teenagers would choose going to a meeting over going with their friends, but Rob made a good choice. See, Rob is a teenage drug addict, and he's being rehabilitated through a 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. One important key to fighting his problem is attending that support group meeting several times a week.
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The last place I wanted to be was New Zealand, but I was stuck there. Now, I have nothing against New Zealand. In fact, it's one of the most beautiful countries I've ever seen. But I had spent two weeks there in ministry and it was time to be home. I wanted to see my family and I had a lot of important appointments at home.
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One of the temporary after-effects of my wife's bout with hepatitis years ago was some memory loss. Now, I forget a lot of things and I don't have an excuse. Well, for a while, my wife had a great excuse for forgetting some things, because that memory loss had some real effects. Like the day she left the pot of water on the stove to boil. She promptly moved away from the kitchen and forgot all about it. She told me she even forgot about it after she smelled something burning. So, she went all through the house; checked the dryer, checked the furnace. "What in the world is that burning smell?" Well, when she finally decided to check the kitchen, you can probably guess what the scene was. Oh yeah, there was no more water left in that pot; it had boiled dry. The burner was red hot; the pan had become part of the burner. It was bonded to the burner. It literally had to be broken off. Yeah, she needed some heat to do her job, but not that much heat!
