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ICU

November 15, 2011 by Mark King 4 Comments

ICU smells funny.
I have spent a little over a week watching my father lie in a bed. There are cables and tubes everywhere. Sometimes I worry that my size 13 shoes are going to hook around my dad’s catheter, loosely attached to the bottom of his bed, and tear it out; sending two liters of stale pee gushing too the floor. This week I have a done a lot of worrying, a lot of waiting, a lot of trying not to acknowledge my worries and fears, a lot of getting upset with nurses that don’t seem to be moving quickly enough, a lot of being annoyed with doctors that never come by and a lot of thinking about my family. My life this week seems summed up best by the following list:
  1. Go to hospital and wait. Try to use phone to look at comics for sale on ebay.
  2. Wait some more and greet all of dads co-workers and church friends. This involves me  trying to be nice as someone else offers to pray and I have to hold their hand.
  3. Wait for answers that never come quickly enough.
  4. Go find fast-food.
  5. Go back to hospital and wait. Try to stream net-flix which is blocked by the free wifi at the hospital. Hulu works but as usual, nothing good is on.
  6. Go home and dream about hospitals and funerals.
  7. Repeat

As I am trying to process what it means to see my father in a hospital, I keep coming back to three thoughts.

1. Lists are stupid. I don’t ever want to live my life going by a list.
2. My greatest fears are steeped in loosing people I love.
3. Waiting makes you think.

I know that these three thoughts seem random and overly simple, but they keep running around over and over and over and over and over in my mind. I think they tie together and might be a piece of what God is trying to show me this year.
Let’s go backwards:

3. Waiting makes you think.
I have had a lot of time to wait. I am naturally not good at waiting. Just ask my wife how I am with Christmas presents. November 25th is just as good as December 25th. I have tried to distract myself in every way possible while waiting on my dad. I go do the the meal runs for my sister and mom. I roam around the hospital and ride the elevator. I download applications on my phone and then delete them. I even played a game with myself where I would try to find a different bathroom every time I needed to go. Hospitals have a million bathrooms and none of them are clean. The point is that despite my high propensity to find joy in distraction, there was just too much waiting. Eventually I had to think.  My thoughts, which I had been really trying to avoid led me straight to where I knew they would go. My worries and fears.
Some of my fears are stupid and some I won’t even give voice to because they might overwhelm my entire being.

2. My greatest fears are steeped in loosing people I love.
This week I feared that I might loose my dad. This week I feared that I might have to spend another week or two in the ICU looking at him hooked up to tubes, watching him move from looks of extreme pain and discomfort to looks of raw fear and confusion born from heavy sedation and a ventilator. This week I feared that might not have been the best son I could be. This week I feared that I would see my mother, who is the strongest woman I know, break down.

This is where the blessing comes in. It is in the fears and worries that are wrapped around my heart and brain that I was reminded of how much I love my family. The love I have for my wife and parents and sibling, is a love that is deep and real, the thought of separation from that love is one of my greatest fears. I think that sort of love must be the love that Jesus talks about when he sums up the second greatest commandment:

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

As I think about it, that same love, that I first experienced from my parents, I can now not only reflect back to them, but also to my wife and some friends. My father and mother where the first two people on this planet to love me in a truly second commandment way. No wonder the thought of being disconnected from that is so scary. It’s also amazing to think that through their love and the love of God I learned how to love others.

1. Lists are stupid. I don’t ever want to live my life going by a list.
This waiting that led to thinking about my fears leads me to my last thought. Lists are dumb. I want to stop thinking about life in terms of lists and focus instead on thinking about my life in terms of who I care about. Do I get to spend today being loved by God and loving him? That’s a great day. Do I get to love my wife today? Count that as a highly productive day. If I truly believe that the two most important things are the love of God and loving others then my true focus and measuring rod of success for a day should be did I get to receive and give love today?

I want my life to be surrounded by what I truly care about.

If I, when lying in a hospital, wake up to find money, security, a completed check list, a well organized calender full of finished meetings and neatly crossed off successful programs but have not love, I have missed the greatest gift both my earthly and heavenly fathers have given me.

 

Jelayne, love, Mark Study 2011/2012, Roy King

3 topics that scare our Church (part 1)

August 25, 2011 by Mark King 4 Comments

I have been looking through the book of Mark a lot lately. As we walk through Mark at Abide, we are going to be hitting on some tough topics. I thought it might be good for you to here how we are planning on approaching them at Abide. Here is the first of three!

1. Money- In Mark there are a few places that mention how people in the Kingdom of God should view and use money. Take this story for instance in Mark 10:17-31

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

    “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”

  “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

  Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

  At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

  Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

  The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

  The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”

  Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”

  Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”

    “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.

Are we as believers, really ready to give away our possessions to follow Christ? Isn’t America on of the wealthiest countries in the world right now? Does that mean we will have a hard time entering the Kingdom of God? There are so many questions that this scripture can lead too. here is one that I struggle with:

Is tithing a commandment? Am I really expected to give at least 10% of what I earn?

Look at this passage from Malachi 3:6-10

“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need…”

Look at What Jesus says in Luke 11:42

“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others

In the Mark Passage Jesus seems to have the expectation that money is a distraction that keeps people from him. In Malachi God seems very upset that people are not giving a tithe. In Luke Jesus tells the pharisees that the care about the justice and love of God as well as tithe.

There are over 200 verses in Scripture about money.

Why are we so scared to talk about it if God isn’t?

In Acts it says that first church sold all of their possessions and had everything in common. 

What has happened?

Maybe part of the problem is that we have forgotten a few other commandments along the way.

like:

You shall have no other Gods before me- Exodus 20:3

Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.  -Deut. 16:17

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it- Proverbs 3:27

Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.- Proverbs 28:27

Jelayne and I, at the beginning of this year, sat down together and decided that there is more than enough scripture about giving God at least 10 percent. We also decided that there was more than enough scripture about the dangers of making money more important than God. We decided to give a full tithe and to sit down again next January and figure out how to grow into giving more than the minimum of 10 percent.

I tell you this not to brag or guilt people. I tell you this becuase if you believe in Scritpture as the Word of God, you can’t ignore this topic. After  Jelayne and I spent some time reading and thinking about these scriptures we couldn’t continue to only give halfheartedly or when it was convenient for us.  I challenge you to go to this website www.christianpf.com  (I found this site with a Google search, I don’t know much about the site itself, but I did check several of the scriptures and they all were correct.)  Read these passages and act on them. For some of you it may mean starting to tithe for the first time. For others it might mean giving more than a tithe. Set the precedent for giving to God, in your family.

You might also be surprised to read in some of the passages about why God ask us to give back to Him.

But that is another, maybe much longer subject for later.

Leave some comments to start a conversation about money, giving and tithe as well as what our other 2 scary topics might be!

distractions, Jelayne, Kingdom of God, Mark Study 2011/2012, Money

Looking Behind the Curtain.

April 26, 2011 by Mark King 0 Comments

My wife, Jelayne, and Kathy Wingard have been leading a small group on Wednesday nights centered around the Old Testament prophets.

Recently Jelayne shared a passage that they were getting ready to teach on. Click on the reference to read it.

2 Kings 6: 8-23

I was reminded that there is a “spiritual curtain” that exists in our world. If we could pull it back we would see the much larger spiritual world at work all around us. Isn’t it strange to consider that God is present and working in a very real way every minute of every day?

Sometimes I wonder how differently my day would go if I was more aware of the spiritual world interacting with mine. I mean, if I could see angels or see demons or see God’s hand moving through all creation I have to imagine that it would greatly influence how I lived and who I was living for.

Well… I have been practicing a discipline to help keep me in mind of how real God is.

Revelation chapter 4 describes the throne room in heaven.

Then I looked, and, oh!—a door open into Heaven. The trumpet-voice, the first voice in my vision, called out, “Ascend and enter. I’ll show you what happens next.”

2-6I was caught up at once in deep worship and, oh!—a Throne set in Heaven with One Seated on the Throne, suffused in gem hues of amber and flame with a nimbus of emerald. Twenty-four thrones circled the Throne, with Twenty-four Elders seated, white-robed, gold-crowned. Lightning flash and thunder crash pulsed from the Throne. Seven fire-blazing torches fronted the Throne (these are the Sevenfold Spirit of God). Before the Throne it was like a clear crystal sea.

6-8Prowling around the Throne were Four Animals, all eyes. Eyes to look ahead, eyes to look behind. The first Animal like a lion, the second like an ox, the third with a human face, the fourth like an eagle in flight. The Four Animals were winged, each with six wings. They were all eyes, seeing around and within. And they chanted night and day, never taking a break: 
   Holy, holy, holy 
   Is God our Master, Sovereign-Strong, 
   The Was, The Is, The Coming.

9-11Every time the Animals gave glory and honor and thanks to the One Seated on the Throne—the age-after-age Living One—the Twenty-four Elders would fall prostrate before the One Seated on the Throne. They worshiped the age-after-age Living One. They threw their crowns at the foot of the Throne, chanting, 
   Worthy, O Master! Yes, our God! 
   Take the glory! the honor! the power! 
   You created it all; 
   It was created because you wanted it.

What an amazing picture. Can you imagine standing in that room? I think it might be hard to remember to breath. I would probably try to hide in the back behind someone else.

My discipline is this:

I read through Revelation chapter 4 before I pray. It reminds me that although I am praying to my Father, I am also praying to a very real, all powerful, magnificent God King.

Needless to say, it has changed how I pray. I’ve also noticed that throughout the day if I can imagine myself standing in that room, I seem to live much more in the present. What I mean is that suddenly my problems, challenges and distractions seem very small and using my day to please God becomes much more important.

Do you need to refocus?

2 Kings, Jelayne, Refocus, Spiritual Curtain

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