MAP International: My new (or is it old?) work home….

  Well, it’s time for a major life change.  I worked for MAP International as the Information Technology Director for 16+ years.  I left to do my own thing, which is where I have been the last 6 years or so.

Well, I am back, as MAP’s new Director Of Business Information Systems (BIS)!  I have been in discussion for a couple of months with MAP since their current director left about the possibility of rejoining the organization.  It was during a couple of conversations with one of MAP’s board members (Thanks Chok-Pin)that I realized I did still have a lot of passion for what MAP was doing, and when I found out all the great work projects that would be there for me, I had to make the change.  I officially started back there on June 3rd, but only on a part time basis to get my hands on what there is to do.  I will be full time on July 1st.

Someone asked last week me how it felt to be back.  My answer?  “Feels like putting on a comfortable pair of old shoes”.  I will miss working with some of the great clients I have had the last 6 years, but am looking forward to the change back to working in a global organization as part of a great team of dedicated Christian people.

Thanks to God for the guidance — he is in this move for me.  Also thanks to those who helped me talk through this possibility.  Nice to know there are supporting people around!

And thanks so much to my wife for supporting this move, she is my partner of partners, and I am indeed a lucky man!

 

Jenny from Subirana

Jenny from Subirana

Originally uploaded by Dennis Rice

On my recent mission trip to Subirana, Honduras, I met a little girl named Jenny. She stole my heart, and I will remeber her for a very long time. Pray for my little friend Jenny, pray that God will give her a rich life. She certainly enriched mine.

 

God was with me today …

(Note — I had prepared this post last September on an airplane, but never did actually publish it.  I just saw it in my drafts folder and felt it was worth posting, so I am publishing it now, 8 months later anyway!)

I am writing this from probably 20-30,000 feet in the air.  I am on vacation, exactly where I want to be right now.  I have been having really great conversation with my wife, which is an absolute joy.

In the world’s eye though, this should not be a happy moment for me.  I should be mad, frustrated and upset.  You see, the journey thus far has not been a joyful one if you look at it from a certain perspective.  We had a 3:30 p.m. flight to Cancun.  We were on our way to 7 days of all inclusive sunny Caribbean happiness.  Sound like fun?  Oh yeah.  I have been looking forward to this for weeks now. 

Bad things tried to happen to us.  Our originating flight was delayed by weather for 2 1/2 hours.  We only had 45 minutes to make our connection in the first place, so it was looking pretty ugly.  Who cares?  My wife and I decided we would be together, exactly where God put us, no matter what physical location that ended up being.  We prayed that God would just give us joy as we watched the frustrated people around us sink into depression.  That was a huge victory for us.  Long story short, we arrived at our connection point and had 6 minutes to make it to our connection. For some reason, that flight had been delayed as well (and was waiting on us), imagine that.  We made the flight.  Thank you Lord.

So now we are on the final leg of our journey, and will arrive at our destination just a couple of hours late, but relaxed and thankful to God not just that we got there, but that we managed to somehow have a God experience, just in the simple process of flying in an airplane.  Is it a miracle?  NO.  It is a God thing, and they happen every day.  I honestly think God honored our attitude, our prayer, and gave us a fun journey while people around us griped and complained.

God things are all around us, and I am so grateful that he has given me a hunger to look for them, even when MY plans seem to go awry.  An even greater joy is that I got to share it with the partner God gave me, and who I love dearly — my wife.  Thank you for her Lord.

As you take your next step, and I mean the VERY next one, look for God.  He’s there — I promise, it is a 100% guaranteed event.  Look for Him, he will make himself visible, and you too will then know the joy of my day today.  That joy comes from knowing that not only was God there, but I saw him.

Thank you Lord.

 

Sustaining the warmth of the moment

This is not a blog post with answers.  It is one with questions.  Help me with your thoughts please.

I struggle at times.  I struggle to stay near God, and the warmth of his fire and his presence.

As I move through each day, I have my moments when I talk to God, moments when I listen to God, and then there are those moments when I cry out for God.  Regardless of which of those it is, I stay warm when in those moments, because I am near to God.  Then I am ashamed to admit that I have those moments when I am not thinking about God at all.  I know why — it is because I am walking away from His fire, and I lose the “moment”.

When I am away from God, I feel cold.  I feel alone, frustrated, and easily defeated.  When I am with Him, I feel warm and empowered.  Yesterday in church we were singing “How great is our God”, and it felt so warm.  Then when I was on my way home, I was playing the Casting Crowns song, “Between the altar and the door”.  The song talks about how we lose our follow through between the promise we make to God at the altar, and the door when we leave the church.  That is when we walk away from the fire.

Stay with me here a minute.  The warmth comes from being next to God’s fire and the incredible warmth we get from being there.  But when we walk away from the altar and the fire (and into the world), we lose that warmth.  I believe it is because we step out of the moment (where God is), and begin to depend on ourselves.  Consider this verse:

Psalm 46:10
“Be still, and know that I am God;
       I will be exalted among the nations,
       I will be exalted in the earth.

Staying in the moment means staying close to the fire.  It is easy to leave the moment (and God) behind, and step out of that warmth.  When I shift my thoughts to the next thing, I start depending on my own ability.  That always leads to trouble.  When I step out of the warmth, I step towards sin and things not of God.

So how do we take the moment (the altar, the fire) with us?  How do we move forward through our day and not leave God behind.  How do we “Be still”, yet keep our life moving?

What are your thoughts?

 

My friend Tito…

I just got back from a mission trip with my church to Honduras, but that is not what this post is about.  When I got back, I had an email from an old friend.  It was a very nice surprise.

Tito was a guy I worked with at MAP International probably at least 10-12 years ago.  Tito and I had this passionate and fiery relationship that I describe as one of my best working relationships ever.  Half the time we laughed and had fun, half of the time we argued voraciously.  Regardless of which it was that day, we walked out of the room passionate about our relationship and with a healthy ability to keep “duking it out”.  The passion we both brought to the table on the projects we worked on was pretty intense.  We did not always agree, but we did agree to disagree pretty well.  As I look back on my now 25 or so year working career, I have had a couple of these relationships, and they are the ones I enjoy the most, mostly because they seemed to stay pretty honest.  If I felt Tito was being an idiot, I told him so and vice versa.  I am ashamed to admit there was one time (okay, may two) that he was probably right.  We had the passion of youth, but lacked the maturity of experience.  But the bottom line was, we respected each others passion, committment and ability to get the job done.

In the last couple of days, Tito and I have had a great exchange of updating info, and it is very nice to see that we have both matured and see things in a different light.  It would be interesting to see how our working relationship would be different considering the life experiences we now posess.  I would be surprised to see that Tito had lost passion, but if he is like me, the things we are passionate about are vastly different than they were years ago.

I am thankful for relationships God has given me in my life, and Tito definitely counts as one of those.  Thanks Tito, for reaching out to me again.  I am sure you are still idotic about a few things, but my ideas could have a few flaws in them still myself… 

 

Living from the inside out …

I drive a lot.  In my day to day job, I spend a lot of time driving from client to client, so I spend a lot of time in my car.  I have found a really great way to spend all of that time.  I have a Zune mp3 player that I download and listen to Podcasts on.  It is a great investment if you have time like that.  I listen to audio books (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were my last ones), I listen to different preachers, and I listen to my own pastor’s messages again and again.  I really look forward to it.

One of my favorite podcasts is from Mars Hill church where I hear a lot of Rob Bell.  I was listening to one of his talks yesterday, where he was discussing the “Alter Ego” that people have.  You know what I mean, that public face vs. the private face that only you and God see.  Now this thought and topic is not something new to me, I have heard it many times before, but not presented in a biblical format like Rob did in this talk.  I won’t try and duplicate his thoughts or scriptures exactly here (listen to his podcast, you’ll enjoy it), but he used a passage to look at the true and underlying self, and how addicted we are to feeding it.  These are my thoughts after hearing that message.

I have one — an Alter Ego that is.  There — I said it.  I have this person inside of me that communicates with God on a pure and naked level that knows and understands all my problems, my faults, my pure motives and dreams, but I do not show that whole person to you except in glimpses.  Then I have this outside person who I put on and display to the world because I cannot trust the world to understand and appreciate the person I am on the inside.  It is risky to say this, but it is true nonetheless.  Now please understand I am not trying to be deceitful or misleading, but I do not show you all my innermost self because I am afraid.  I am afraid of you knowing all my weaknesses, faults and motives.  My inner being is sinful and full of pride, it’s motives can be selfish at times, and I have difficulty controlling what it does.  It is a regular wrestling match in there.  I suspect it is the same with you if you are honest.  God knows and understands it though.

So why do I share this with you?  I want to compare the beings in a way that helps us understand our struggles.  When we are truly worshipping God, whether publicly or privately, we open a window to our inner soul and being.  This is where God is, and this is where he can support us in the changes we all desire to make to ourselves, to our inner self.  This is where the raw sin, anger, pain and strife is that we cannot cover up or hide from Him.  I can hide it from you most of the time, but it gets exposed at the most critical times of our lives such as true conviction, the death of a loved one, the collapse of the outer being.  Am I making sense here?  The outer being is but a fragile shell that takes a tremendous amount of effort to keep intact.  Our outer being is not honest and naked before men.  God sees the acts of our outer being, but holds us responsible inside for those acts.  The outer shell at times does reflects what is inside regardless of how hard we try, but there is always that secret inner being.  I believe we all struggle with that.

One of the best ways we can expose this being is to develop relationships that we trust.  Do you have anyone in your life that you can expose you innermost being to?  I find it to be a rare thing that people do, which is a sad thing.  Our spouses or significant others are probably the closest to that, but in essence we are not always truly open with them due to a fear of loss.  So we tend to kind of spread it around a bit.  Some honesty here, some honesty there so that we do not completely overwhelm any one source.  Seeking that person we can share completely with and be open with is important.  It’s brutal to do though.  Hmmm, let’s see — who do I know that would hear any of my innermost thoughts and sins and still not judge me, not tell anyone else, or not endanger some critical component of my life, yet still love me completely?  Wow — tough call.

Let me flip that around a bit.  Are you that person for anyone else?  Think it through before you answer.  Can you sit still and listen to a friend, spouse, etc. and never judge, get upset or angry with them over what they think, have done or feel?  Tough job!  The closer to that person you are, the harder it may even be.  In ministry I have done some one on one listening sessions with some people who are not even a close part of my life, and it is tough to put on that poker face when they let the shocking facts loose sometimes.  I find myself saying, “Jesus — let me hear the heart and not the act” in order to resolve my immediate external reactions.  I have yet however to have one of those sessions without feeling God used me in some way.

So who is the true listener?  Jesus.  Yeah — I know, it sound so oversimplified.  But think about it.  My innermost being can only truly answer to Jesus.  When I am in a position to be the listener, it is Jesus that gives me the strength to do so in a way that allows him to use me as a tool to help.  He’s on both sides of the equation once again bringing about reconciliation to Himself.  Awesome.

I believe that God wants us to be ONE.  I believe he wants our inner and outer self to be a mirror reflection, or better yet that there not be an outer being.  I believe that in Heaven there will be only one being.  He will work with us to achieve that on earth if we learn to trust Him, and to trust those he sends to help us break down that outer being.  He also calls us to be that listener, so look for your opportunities there.  When they come — stop, push yourself aside and listen.

Some people are more successful at being the same inside and out than others.  I think God truly has helped them to be that.  They are the ones you know that seem to have a lot more peace, a lot less strife in their walk.  That doesn’t mean they do not face trouble, it just means they have learned to listen to God and to be open with those he sends to be his helpers.

I am thankful for those in my life that listen.  I am thankful for those in my life that allow me to be a listener.  I pray we all can learn to trust Him and those he sends.

I think I need to go find my friend now.  I have some things I need to share with him.

Technorati tags: alter ego, rob bell, mars hill church, podiobooks.com

 

Inconsistency ….

I got a comment on a previous blog post I made today, which was the first comment I have had in a while.  Not hard to understand why I have not gotten many cooment — I haven’t been blogging! 

I have been inconsistent in sharin g my thoughts.  I have also been inconsistent in my time with God.  I really do not understand myself here.  I do enjoy my quiet time, so why do I not do it?  What is that force than stands between me and that joy?

 Our message at church this morning was about reveling in the presence of God.  I am going to try and focus on that more by doing my quiet time.  Pray for me okay?  I need the encouragement to develop a more consistent process there.  I’ll also pray for more committment to blogging, whether anyone is hearing me or not!

 

How did I get here?

I have stopped trying to figure out where I will be in 5 years.  Or 4 years, or 1 year for that matter.  If there is any one thing that we need to keep in mind as we try and control the direction of our lives, it is how powerless we really are to control what totally happens to us.

 Now I don’t mean that we cannot affect our direction.  We can decide to go to college, or move to Africa, etc.  But those macro destinations are not where we really live each day.  Where we live each day is in the moment, right now, this second.  Did you know that this is where God is?  IN THE MOMENT.  I have no idea what motivated me to sit down here and do this blog post, it just kinda happened.  I did not make an appointment to blog.  It occurred via a series of events that I really did not control.  I won’t go into how it happenned, but it did just occur to me that this was not in my plan for the day, so why am I doing it?

 What does this show me?  It shows me that God is wise.  God DID know I was going to be in a blogging mood, and he knew what I was going to say.  He formed the path around me to give me what he wanted me to say.  “Are you sure Dennis?”, you may ask.  Yep.  I’m sure.  How am I so sure?  Because I know he is there, I know he is speaking to me, I know he has a reason for me to post this, but in all honesty, I do not know what that reason is!

There is a strange peace in that.  Just doing what I hear God telling me to do instead of stressing out about what to do.  Be still, listen to God, and just do it.  Can it really be that simple?

What do you think?  Is anyone listening?  Do you hear God speaking and obey?  I certainly do not do it all the time like I would like to, but when I do…….., I like it.

 

Do do, do, and more do! Where is the “Be”?

There is way too much doing going on, and way too little “being”.  My wife and I were in Cancun last week on vacation, and were doing a really awesome job of just “being”.  We sat on the beach, took a few walks, napped a little, and really just enjoyed “being” with each other.  I talked to God a lot, and it was a calming and really enjoyable experience.

 Then we came back home and had to slide right back into the “doing” mode.  What a bummer.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a lazy person by nature.  I am however really tired of having to go, go, go, and do, do do all the time.  So many times God gave us great example of when he was pleased with people just “being” with Him.  Moses on the mountain, Elijah in the desert and on Mount Horeb, John the Baptist in the wilderness, Jesus in Gethsemane. It’s hard for us now.  We need to fight the urge to sign up for one more task, class, activity or trip.  We need to just plan to “Be”.  I get this picture in my head of maybe 40 or 50 years ago when whole families used to sit on the fron porch and just be together.  Sigh…, where did that go?  I really am trying to adjust my life to less “do’s”, and more chances to just “be”.  Pray for me that I am successful.

How about you?  Do you take time to just “Be”?  Leave me a comment, and I will pray the same for you!

 

A stranger in a strange land …

“Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.” (1 Peter 1:17 NIV)

I have never wanted to feel like I was “different” than those around me.  You know what I mean, it is the whole peer pressure thing that has become such an issue in society today.  It is so tough growing up as a teenager today, the peer pressure is incredible, and that process continues into life later on as we seek to be like others or please everyone around us. ”Be like Mike”, was a catch phrase a few years ago.  Why in the world would I want to be like Michael Jordan?  Money?  Prestige?  What is it that makes that attractive to people?

God wants us to be like Him.  Now there is a role model for you.  Jesus.  Just saying the name invokes awe in some, and fear in others.  Those fearful still see the awesomeness of the name and what it represents.  Jesus was a stranger.  He was misunderstood, mistreated, shunned by many.  So why then does history place such an emphasis on his name?  HE’S GOD — that’s why.  Just accept it, you don’t have to understand it.

God is way too big to understand, He is way too awesome to comprehend.  Understanding God is not a destination, it is a journey.  Walking through life is a daily time limited experience that will only ever scratch the surface of understanding no matter how much study, service, etc. we do.  It is a training period for eternity.  In our desire to understand God, we can get absolutely paralyzed by the expanse of the task.  How do we ever feel we will completely understand Him while on this earth?  Stop looking for a complete understanding and enjoy and experience the awesomeness of who he is not just every day, not just every hour or minute, but every moment.

God is that huge thunderstorm, earthquake or awesome event.  God is also that small voice in your head that tells you what to do if you learn to listen.  It is strange — I know.  It is a concept misunderstood and shunned by many.  Who cares?  It is real, and I do not have to explain it, I just get to enjoy it.

I have been way too wrapped up in making people understand me.  I think it relates to the peer pressure thing to a point, that desire to be accepted and not be looked at as strange.  God understands me, that’s is all that matters.  In the eyes of people around me, I do strange things every day.  Hehe.  Me and God are having fun with that.

I know, I am strange.  Thank God, I am getting stranger every day.

Technorati Tags: Christian, stranger