The News

Hi All,

OK before I start, let me say that I mean this first part in jest.  Let's take a look at the news for a few minutes.  As I have stated before, I live in Fort Worth, TX.  Over the past few days, we have had an ice storm that shut down most of the city.  We did need the news to tell us which schools are closed and which businesses are closed and we did watch it for that.  But what we didn't need the news to tell us was what was going on outside.  When I looked out the window, it was white outside.  There was sleet on the ground and ice in the street.  When I looked at my wife's car the windshield was covered and so was the top of my Expedition.  The conclusion I drew from all this was that there was sleet on the ground and that the roads would be bad.

Fortunately for me, I didn't need to look outside because for the entire news broadcast, they went from one person to another showing sleet on the ground.  Each one of them would take their cue and act like they were breaking a story worthy of some type of national news prize.  It would go something like this:

Newscaster:  Now let's go to Frank in downtown Fort Worth.
Frank:  I want our camera man to zoom in on the gutter by the side of the street.  Get a tight shot of the white stuff.  As you can see from our close up, the rain that came down earlier was affected by the drop in temperature.  When the temperature went below 32 degrees, this liquid turned to a solid and it's now sleet!!!

Newscaster:  Thank you Frank for that information.  Now let's go to Sue who is in Berkeley.  Sue, what do you have?
Sue:  What we're looking at here is the total coverage of an entire front yard plus their bushes with sleet!!!

This scene goes on for 30 minutes!  Why is that when we got it the first time?

OK now on a much more serious note, we do need to be careful of the amount of time we watch the news.  Remember news companies get paid to sell stories and for the most part, bad stories sell much better than good ones.  The last time I watched the news, there were three stories about bad things happening to people, the weather, one bad story, sports and ending it all was one bad story.  If you feed yourself on those things, you can start to meditate and focus on these bad stories.  Before you know it, fear can begin to creep into your life and the next thing you know, your eyes are on more of the bad things going on in life than the good things that God can do for you.

I made a decision to spend very very little time watching the news and like one of my favorite preachers said, I missed several crisis that were on that I didn't even know about.  They didn't bother me in the least.  If you are going to spend time watching the news, I suggest you pull out the Bible and see what the news is on your future!

That's another Opinion of the Minion.

What's Steering the Bus?

Hello All,

I am finally getting around to writing again and I apologize for taking so long to get back to it.  Today I want to talk about what's steering your bus?  What's directing your life?  The answer to that is easy - our thoughts direct or life.  The bible says in Proverbs 23:7 that as a man thinks in his heart so is he.  What does that mean, your thoughts are steering your bus!  Have you ever sat around and worried about a big test.  Every time you think about it, you become afraid of failing it?  Then when you actually take the test, you don't do so well?  I know I've done things like that.

Let me tell you about one area that this has happened and what I figured out to do to stop it from happening again.  My company had a big client up until about a year ago and I listened to several people who would worry with me about this big client and what they were trying to do to us.  We all worried for several months and then I found myself worrying about what would happen if we lost them.  How would we survive and what would we do.  Now there was no real obvious signs of things going wrong with them but my heart began to be fixed on how we would lose them.  Sure enough, at the end of last year they fired us!  Just like Job, the thing that I feared had come upon me.  I believe that this is always the devil's plan for our lives.  He is constantly trying to steal, kill and destroy.

Now thank God that He is gracious enough to see us through our mistakes.  When I realized that I was doing it with another place in my business, the Lord showed me what I was doing and I was able to stop.  Why didn't God show me before I lost the big client?  He was trying to tell me, I just wasn't listening.

If we just stopped right here this would be good news but this isn't as far as it goes.  See, we can set our minds on good things and they will come to pass too!  There is another aspect of my business that is starting to go really well.  It is actually multiplying.  I don't mean it's growing, it's multiplying.  Now we started talking about this business at the first of the year much differently.  When I started this year, I was talking about this business being much larger than it is now.  I was seeing it, I was believing it and I was expecting it.  Guess what - that's exactly where it's headed.  As I am thinking in my heart, so is it.

So let me ask you, where are you seeing yourself?  What thoughts are you allowing to run around inside you?  Do you see yourself as overcome or overrun?  If you are struggling with this today, do me a favor.  As hard as it may be, take 10 minutes a day and start to use your imagination.  See yourself overcoming the thing you are struggling with.  See God stepping into your situation and it turning around.  See yourself as the victor not the victim.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Holding Grudges

Hi Everyone,

Someone who follows me on Facebook, NP, asked me to write about holding grudges so here's my take.

We've all been there.  There's that one person who has really done something wrong to us and we want to get back at them so bad we can taste it.  We dream of all the witty things we would say or how we would act given the chance and we think about how good it would feel to finally let that person have it.  I mean we deserve to get even with someone if they have done something wrong to us.  If you are a Christian you have to turn the other cheek once but after that you are out of cheeks and it's time for payback.  Now many times we don't pay the other person back we just think about it.

But even when we do pay them back, we often feel worse for what we did to them than we did before we did it.  One time I was in a movie theater with my brother and his wife.  We were in line to get popcorn and all the things you need to see a movie and there was this guy who said that my sister-in-law didn't pay for her hot dog when I knew she did.  I don't remember how it started but he said something that was kind of insulting and I didn't wait to hold a grudge, I let him have it right there.  I said some really mean stuff that cut him down to size.  Then we went into the movie theater and I felt so terribly awful for saying the things I said.  See my mom always told me that two wrongs don't make a right.  So what did I do?  I went back and found the kid and apologized profusely for my words.

So now let's deal with what happens when we hold grudges?  First of all, the real person it hurts is us.  Grudges don't normally hurt the other person because they normally don't even know about them.  But what they do to our insides is pretty bad.  They make us feel all sorts of negative emotions that really can do us harm.  If we are not careful, we can spend a lot of time mediating on all the negative stuff which is really bad for us.  

But also did you know that when we hold things against other people that it will hinder our prayers to God.  The bible tells us to forgive others so God can forgive us.  That's pretty heavy stuff.  So I can hear some of you saying, "That all sounds good but I've tried everything and I just can't let go of this grudge."  Well that's not true.  Did you know that there is a lot of power in the words we say.  When we go around saying things like I can't let go, we only make it harder to actually let go.

The answer to this lies in that hole under our mouth.  If you want to let go of a grudge, make a conscious faith decision to let go.  Then say out of your mouth, "I let go of that grudge that I have against so and so."  At that point, it's a done deal.  So what do you do three minutes later when that negative feeling starts coming up?  You say to it, "Nope I have already let go of the grudge and forgiven that person."  If you keep saying that, eventually it will become a reality in your life and you can finally be free of the grudge.  Remember, if you are a Christian, you got saved by faith.  You can let go of a grudge by faith as well.  When you do, God will help you let go.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Fear

Hello everyone,

Today's topic is fear.  It's something we see all around us and something we deal with daily.  If you ask any of my five children or possibly my wife, they might tell you that I look really scary in the morning because my hair looks so bad in the morning!  OK, all joking aside, I want to take a more serious look at fear.  Just this past week I was in a meeting with someone who told me that a little bit of fear was a good thing.  This person was trying to make a point and she was very very wrong.  Fear will kill you.  There is nothing remotely good about it.

In her example, she stated that if we don't teach children to fear their hand getting burned by a hot stove, they could get hurt.  What she should have said is that if we don't teach children to respect the heat that comes off the stove, they can get burned.  But they definitely should not fear the stove, there's nothing good that can come from fear.

Now I can already hear someone saying, "Mr. Minion, the Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."  That is what the King James Bible says but what that word fear means is deep respect and reverence of the Lord.  Remember this, the Bible says that God is Love and that perfect love casts out fear.  That means that if we go near God that His love will cast out fear.  Let me put it this way.  I'm a dad and I definitely want my children to respect what I say but I certainly don't want any of my children to ever fear me.  It would hurt me to think that one of my own children was afraid of me.

I don't even think that horror movies are good for us.  Think about it.  They can desensitize us to what fear actually does.  We like to watch movies that have fear in them because most of the time there is no "real" fear that would come after us from them.  But they teach us to live with fear and that fear can be amusing.  I personally prefer comedies because I like to laugh.  The Bible says that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

So what about fear?  I heard a preacher say one time that the shadow of a dog never bit anyone. How often do we sit around being fearful of what might happen.  I know someone who is going back to school and this person is afraid of some things that might never happen.  This person is worrying about things before they even come up.  Now I'm not telling you to plan for things and make sure you know what to do if something happens but that is much different that worrying about it.

Earlier this week, I was in a situation at work and worried about it for two days.  The particular thing I worried about never even took place so I worried for nothing.  Worse than that, we can't stand in fear and faith at the same time so I wasn't even standing in faith while I was worrying about it.  How dumb was I?  I have recently realized that there were several areas of my life where I was worrying about things and I am making the decision to quit.  Fear is of the devil.  I am striving more and more to work with one of my wife's 2 Ts (trust and thankfulness) - trust.  When I role the cares of those things over on to the Lord, He can take them and do something about them.

Can it be that simple to stop fear.  The answer is yes.  Quit choosing to live with fear and start choosing to live with trust in God!  When fear comes, tell the devil you aren't buying and choose to walk away from it!

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Judgments

Hello everyone,

Today I want to talk about judgments.  Are they good or are they bad?  Once I had someone tell me that we should never judge anything because judgments were bad.  I responded that it seemed that we were judging judgments and that seemed bad too.  Obviously this circular thought made my head spin.  Today I was sitting at lunch with a couple of friends of mine and this subject came up again.  We should never judge people right?  Doesn't the bible tell us that we should not judge others?  Actually, that is correct.  The bible does say in Matthew 7:1 that we are to judge not lest we be judged.

So what does this mean?  Should we judge anything at all after reading this verse?  My friend at lunch today said that for every scripture in the bible, you can find some other scripture that contradicts it.  I don't think this is totally true.  I do very much believe that for every scripture in the bible we can find another one that seems to contradict it but I don't think the bible contradicts itself.  God's not schizophrenic.  He knows what He's doing when he rights something.  My friends and I were talking about a highly debated subject in Christian circles and we were talking about someone that we both knew who was connected to the subject.  My friend stated that he didn't judge this person we both know and I think that's right.  I don't judge him either.

After all, most of us who call ourselves Christians are known for being judgmental of others while not judging ourselves very well.  We seem to want to judge others in strict accordance with their actions while we want others to judge us through the eyes of grace.  In other words, we want to judge others of their sins but we don't want to deal with our own sins.  So we need to quit judging other people right?

The answer to that question is yes.  But let's look at judgments in general for a second.  I don't believe that all judgments are bad.  I think we have to take a look at our own lives and judge our own actions.  One of my friends at lunch today brought up the part of the bible where it says that we shouldn't go around trying to take the speck out of our brother's eye while we have a plank in our own and that's true but if you read the rest of that passage it says to take the plank out of your eye so you can see clearly how to take the speck out of your brothers.

Here's where I'm really going with this.  While I don't believe that we should judge other people, I do think we need to have our own sense of what is right and wrong.  Sin is sin.  I don't have to judge or define it, the Bible does that on it's own.  If someone's actions are wrong, it's OK to internally know that their actions are wrong.  But to look at that same person and say they are a bad person isn't OK.  The point I'm trying to make is that while I don't think we should judge anyone or exclude them from church for something they do that is wrong, I do think that we can acknowledge TO OURSELVES, not to them, that what they are doing isn't right.  That doesn't make them a bad person, it doesn't condemn them to hell, it shouldn't even kick them out of the church but I am tired of hearing people white wash things that God clearly says is wrong.

So if you see someone doing something that the Bible defines as sin, don't judge them personally and the vast majority of the time it's not even your place to tell them what they are doing is wrong.  But do notice that their actions don't line up with God's instructions.  Then, without looking down at them or judging them personally, take a look at yourself and see what actions in your own life are not measuring up to God's instructions.  Ask God to help you be a better Christian.

That's Another Opinion of the Minion

I Have a Plan

Hello Everyone,

Today I want to talk about plans.  How many of you have them?  We all do.  We have plans for lunch, tonight, this weekend, next week and many of us have long term plans for our life.  If you are young you may have your plan for high school or college or even younger parts of your life.  How many of you who are either in your first year of college or below feel pressure to come up with your plan for your life as a teenager?  Well, it's been a few years since I was a teenager but I remember feeling that same pressure growing up.

I need a plan for certain parts of my life now.  As some of you know, I got married again in late March.  We have five kids between us and we need a bigger house.  So we made a plan.  We looked at a piece of land in a really neat part of town and we started working on our plan.  But some things came up and we are not sure if we will be able to do this or not.  So my wife said we really need a plan about where we will all live now and she is very right.  I remember sitting for a couple of days worrying about what our plan should be.  I looked at many different scenarios and tried many different ways to make things go the way we wanted them to go.

At the end of all this worrying, I came to a very interesting conclusion - I didn't have a plan that would work and I couldn't figure out how to make any of my plans successful.  Guess what?  That's a very good place to be.  As a matter of fact that is a great place to be.  No, I am not crazy.  I finally got smart.  Why is this such a good place?  Because instead of working on my plan, I finally decided that I needed to ask God what his plan is for our house.  Did you know that the Bible says in the book of Jeremiah that God knows the plans he has for your life?  It also says his plan is a good plan for your life.  Want chapter and verse?  Well I won't give it to you - look it up! 

See, I was working extremely hard on my plan and the way I thought things should go.  But notice what the verse doesn't say.  It doesn't say, "I, the Lord God, know that you have the perfect plan for your own life and I will bless any plan you want for you life."  That sounds nice and I think we all wish that God would do that sometimes but He doesn't.  All that time I was working on my plans and God was sitting patiently on the sidelines of my life watching me run myself ragged.  I can see Him sigh as if to say, "I have a plan but I can't help you until you ask me."  I can see something in His face.  It's almost like He's bored.  He's not the least bit worried because He has a plan.  Guess what, His plan is blessed.  It will work and it will be the best possible house for my family.  He's not in a panic.  He knows exactly what to do.

We finally humbled ourselves and said, "Lord, we don't know what we need to do here but You do.  We are expecting your plan to work for our situation."  You know what happened to me?  All the weight of the whole thing was lifted off my shoulders and He started carrying it.  I am literally at peace with His plan and I don't even know what it is!  That's why He tells us that his burden is easy and his yolk is light because when we put His burden on correctly, He does all the carrying.

So let me ask you - Are you currently facing a situation where you don't know what to do?  Are you frustrated or in a panic?  Well instead of running around trying to make your plan work, why don't you just ask God what His plan is for your situation and let Him show you the perfect plan!

That's another Opinion of the Minion

Letting Go

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post in a long time and for that I apologize again.  I know I need to write more and I hope to in the future.

Today's post is about letting go.  It's a message that has come to me from several different places in the last week which usually means the Lord is trying to tell me something.  I want to start with an illustration from a very good friend of mine, CS.

He recently told me about something that happened to him.  He was visiting with one of his closest friends when several of his friend's family showed up and had a lot of negative things to say about C.  They were very bitter about some "perceived" wrong that he did to them.  Now from our discussions, I don't think he really did anything wrong to them but this perceived transgression was really bothering several of them.  Here's the kicker.  This happened over a decade ago.  They have been harboring this grudge for a long time and guess who wasn't bothered about any of it until recently? - CS.  He didn't even know it was out there.  Pretty crazy stuff.  What's my point?  If you harbor a grudge against someone the only person you are really hurting is yourself.

I think that's a good point but I want to talk for a minute about the definition of letting go that the Lord keeps bringing to my heart.  I have to let go of the past.  In my current life, I don't have as many "things" as I once did.  I don't live in as nice a house as I used to and as a matter of fact, my ex-wife still lives in the nice house where I used to live.  I also don't have a boat like I used to.  And here's something else from my past that I don't like - I can't run as fast or as far as I could five years ago.

I've noticed lately that I have spent some time regretting not having the "things" that I used to enjoy.  What makes it worse is I am facing a couple of struggles.  Lately, it's been easy to be frustrated about the past and not really notice the great things that are going on around me.  So the Lord finally dealt with me to let go of the old house and let go of the boat.  Part of the problem of remembering the "good old days" is that they really weren't all that good.  I was just remembering the best parts of the "old days" and forgetting all the hard stuff that made them not so good at the time.  Another part of the problem is that while I was focusing on how things were, I forgot to focus on the good plan that God has for my future.  I'm on the verge of a couple of very significant breakthroughs in area's of my life that will put my family and I in the best financial place I have ever seen.

This year one of my businesses suffered a pretty big setback but it's still going strong and looks like there are opportunities to grow back some of what we lost.  Another of my businesses is on the verge of taking off in a way I would never have seen back in the good old days.  So what the Lord was finally saying to me is that at this stage of my life it's time for a new beginning not a being bogged down in trying to my recollection of the good old days.  But in order to move higher, I have to let go of some of the things I have held as important.

Something else I noticed was that I was holding on to feeling guilty about some bad choices I have made.  The worst part about that is I can't change any of them.  I can make choices about my future.

So I want to encourage you.  If your are holding on to things that are holding you down, it's time to let go and move up.  It's time for you to move out of your past and move into your future.  Maybe the devil has told you that because of something you did wrong it your past, that your life can't be as great as you would like.  That's just simply a lie.  Did you know that after the prodigal son came home from wasting all the money his father gave him that his father not only took him back but blessed him with fine clothes and a big feast.  God has a great plan for your life and nothing in your past can stop you and God from achieving a bright future. So let go and get going!!

That's another Opinion of the Minion

The Apple Seed

Today I want to encourage you to hold fast to the dreams that God has put in your heart.  Sometimes we have to continue to work a while before we see results.  I bet there are some of you who read my blog that are saying to yourselves, "I want to quit.  I've been working toward a goal for quite a while now and it seems like I will never get there.  I'm not even seeing results or at least not the results that I want to see." 

Well I can tell you I have been there before and I even face that now (well sort of).  There are a couple of areas in my life where I truly believe I know what the end result looks like.  But right now it doesn't exactly look that way.

Do you know what happens when you plant an apple tree seed?  If you water it properly and take care of the soil sooner or later it will sprout up an apple tree.  After a while the apple tree will produce apples.  But guess what.  The apple tree doesn't start producing apples the day after you plant the seed.  As a matter of fact, if you were to dig up the seed and look at it right after you planted it there would be nothing different about it.  It would just look like a dirty seed. 

See that seed needs to go through some days where there is no sunlight.  It goes through days that are rainy and it goes through days where people are putting fertilizer (that is manure) on top of it and all around it.  It needs to go through some days where there is nothing but darkness and pressure all around it.  If you left it above the ground where it was always bright and there was no pressure, it would wither up and die.  It would turn to dust.  But if you take away the sunlight, throw in some pressure, manure and plenty of rainy days the next thing you know that apple seed will begin to multiply and push it's way through the dirt to the surface.  It takes the pressure of the soil and the manure and takes nutrients from them.  It takes those rainy days and uses the water to grow.

I believe we are all in places where there is pressure in our lives.  For me personally, I know of a couple of places where I feel pressure.  If I look with my natural eyes, I don't see much movement or much way of getting through the dirt to the sunlight.  I've seen plenty of rainy days lately.  But I know what those rainy days mean.  Those rainy, pressure filled days where I see know light at the end of the tunnel mean that I am one step closer to getting above the ground and bearing fruit.  I'm one step closer to the success that I want and to the goal that I set.

So let me encourage you in this.  If you are facing what seems like an impossible situation right now.  If you are trusting God and putting your faith to work but you aren't seeing the results you want, don't quit.  All the bad stuff that is being thrown at your dream is a sure sign that your sprout is about to push through the surface!  You may only be one step from getting the result you wanted.  So don't stop trusting God to do what He said He would.  This could be your last day in the pressure!

It's happened again.  I've blogged myself happy. 

And that's another Opinion of the Minion

The One That Got Away

Hello everyone.  It's been a long time since I put anything together and I am sorry for that.  Today I want to talk about the one that got away.  Have you ever heard a song by Garth Brooks called "Unanswered Prayers"?  Basically Garth Brooks is talking about going back to his old high school and looking at his life growing up.  He's with his wife and apparently loves his life.  But his life isn't exactly what he thought it would be back then.  He prayed for God to do certain things in his life and God didn't answer those prayers but things turned out good anyway.

I find this very interesting because it happens so often in life.  It happened to me recently.  I pray every day that God will protect my business and that I will not lose any of my clients.  Now my company has had this one client for over 15 years and it's a big one.  We learned in December that effective at the end of July of this year, they will no longer need our services.  At first I was really upset.  Their decision not only effects my life but the lives of 20 to 30 people around me because it either effects their check or someone in their family.  That was a tough pill to swallow because I prayed about it all the time.

Now let me rewind a couple of years.  In January of 2010, the Lord instructed me to start a small company.  This company is very similar to the company that I run now with some marked differences.  This company isn't very big yet but it has potential for tremendous growth and we are already seeing it start.  After a couple of weeks of figuring out my current company in the aftermath of our upcoming loss, I began to see what the Lord had in mind when He wrote, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Jeremiah 29:11.  I finally got a glimpse of His plan.  I could see that this decrease was actually increase in disguise and it's already coming to pass.

What I didn't see at first was this.  The one that got away needed to go away so I could land a bigger better fish.  I think that happens often to us in life.  Now let me ask you this.  What are you feeling so dis draught about right now?  What set back or disappointment are you facing?  Is it a bad grade at school?  Is it the loss of a girlfriend, boyfriend or job?  Maybe it's the loss of your house or something else due to the economy and you are mad at God about it.  Well I can certainly understand your frustration.  Let me tell you this - God does too.  It's OK to get mad at him.  He has big shoulders and He loves you very much.  He will even let you yell at Him.  So get it off your chest.

But after you are done yelling and getting upset, I challenge you to take a look around and see what God has in store for you.  If you ask Him, He will reveal the next door that needs to open.  And guess what, the thing to replace what you lost is probably right around the corner.  If it's from God, it will be better than what you lost.  Remember, sometimes you have to prune a tree so it can grow taller and stronger.

That's another Opinion of the Minion