Update from Todd

This past year has been a year of extremes and what I perceived as the most difficult year of my young life.  I have suffered multiple events this past year that were so painful I was certain I would not be able to recover.  During the same year I experienced the deepest level of intimacy with our Father and some of the greatest moments of joy.  So I write this now as one who urges you to consider your life.  Have the highs and lows of your year brought you closer to the Father, or are you a person who has allowed your past to distract and discourage you?   Regardless of the level of Holiness or lack of Holiness you may have reached in life, I believe this is an applicable verse for us all to meditate on this year.  Philippians 3:12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.

     We are in large a generation of people who don't understand what it means to meditate so let me help.  Have you ever been worried sick?  Have you ever been so anxious about something that it keeps you awake?  If so, you have mastered the art of meditation.  You have successfully meditated on something so powerfully that it has actually altered your physical state of being.  The only problem with this type of meditation is you have focused on wrong things.  With that I am urging you to meditate on what Paul has urged us to do. 

     In the sport of Bull riding we see a very small fraction of men reach what is considered the elite level.  The Built Ford Tough Series.  Although each sport has an elite level there is something unique to the sport of Bull riding.  The men are not all great athletes, they are not all strong,  very few are smart, and they aren't even all cowboys.  One thing they all share is a superior ability to fail well.  What I mean is they can have their face slammed into the arena floor, stomped on and have their leg shattered and not let effect them.  At this elite level of our sport, the average buck off rate is well over fifty percent.  That means more than half the time you go to all the trouble and expense to show up at a bull riding, you fail.  That is if you consider bucking off failing.  Sure, it means you don't get paid, you don't get the points which keep you on tour, and you might have got hurt.  Oh well, you tried your guts out and did all you knew to do.  Get up, make sure you are doing what is right, and do it again.   

     Over the past year you have had hundreds of events take place.  Some good and some bad.  Some you had control of, some you didn't.  Some where beautiful surprises, some where horrible nightmares.  The year before was the same and the year before that.  And the year to come will be no different.  There comes a time when you must realize that there are circumstances that we each face and will continue to face that have threatened to define us.   When one of Gods greatest ambassadors (Apostle Paul) said he knows what it is like to have it all and have nothing and has realized he can have joy no matter what, it should give us great hope.  In suffering, this happens in me when I get to the point where I  quite asking God to change my circumstances and begin to plead with him to change me.  Even more, don't let this hardship pass before I have learned all I have needed to learn during this time of suffering.  When things are all going good and all is well, I do the same.  I ask our Father for transformation in my heart in regards to how I can use my abundance to love the people around me.  I guess what I am saying is maybe we should spend less time praying for our problems and hurts to go away and more time asking for wisdom on how our Father wants to use those things to transform us.  When you have done all you know to do and have placed the smallest seed of Faith in the truth that God loves you and still offer a great plan for your life, you are fulfilling the will of God for you.  Our Father said it was his will that we be sanctified (set apart). 

     I ask you now to consider this.  If you stay on the course your on right now, can you say that you are headed closer to our Father or further away?  Your circumstances may have very little to do with that answer so be careful not to excuse yourself based on condition of your life.   Your successes and highlights, hardships or your failures are all great tools of learning if you are willing to embrace them.  We are promised that our Father will use all things in our life and work them together for our betterment and for his glory.  He wants to make us more like Jesus.  So I say lets get up again consider  our selves and see if you are becoming more Christ like or are you being more conformed to the ways of the world. 

 

Todd