Mr. Zuckerberg once said that he’d like Facebook to be the first thing people check in the morning and the last thing they see before they go to bed (I couldn’t find a link for this quote, but I’m pretty sure he said that).  In my case, the goal of Facebook has been realized.  I check Facebook before I even get out of bed and I’m usually up late reading articles people have posted.  I’ve never tried to calculate it out, but I’m sure Facebook consumes a significant portion of my time each day.  Most of it is passive viewing.  I check for updates or anything of interest while walking in-between classes or while watching TV.  But I still spend an above average amount of time on the site.

Part of the reason you give something up for Lent is to make space for God and experience God’s provision, protection, fullness, etc.  In post-industrial America, we’ve done a pretty good job insulating ourselves from needing God’s provision.  We have savings, and credit cards, and luxury and when added together there doesn’t seem to be a need for the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  I’ve written about that before and preached to myself on that very topic, but I still fall short of living in the full grace and freedom of God.

Facebook might not be the singular object that creates the gap between God and myself, but it plays it’s part.  Facebook is a time consumer.  In this phase of my life, time is at a premium.  I have several obligations that deserve my full attention and Facebook robs from them.  On Ash Wednesday, I will be surrendering my Facebook account.  My wife will change my password and will keep that a secret from me until Easter Sunday.

This may seem trivial, and it definitely comes off that way, but I think it will be valuable.  I will still have my phone, email, and I’ll probably blog from time to time… so my availability won’t change but my online consumption will be significantly less. My fear is that I will simply substitute my Facebook time with something similarly wasteful.  I’m really hoping to use this season of Lent to reflect on my need for and reliance on God.  I also want to learn how to best manage my time in the way that God desires.

Fasting can be a great time of discovery…so what are you fasting from this Lent season and what do you hope to discover?

I believe the US government should create a law making the import of goods produced with child labor or forced labor illegal. I’m not sure how the legislation should be written or how the enforcement should be handled, but we as a society and country should no longer benefit at the detriment to the most vulnerable of the world.

Because we have no easy way of knowing if the goods we consume have been produced through forced/child labor AND we have limited purchasing options for fair trade goods in many categories (electronics, textile, etc.)…we need reform/regulation on the systemic level! I am beginning the research phase on these issues and will continue to update you all as I learn more.

Here is the link to the .pdf of the report: Click Here!

I care about people.  I believe that business can be (and should be) a driving force for good in this world.  When a business operates ethically and responsibly it benefits humanity.

It’s been drilled into me that the goal of business is to maximize shareholder’s wealth.  That is the logical purpose of business.  But what if that wealth is maximized at the detriment of it’s workers or the environment?  We see so many examples of that type of unbridled greed in the media everyday.  I don’t think it’s too much to say that businesses should have an ethical aim to maximize stakeholder’s wealth.  I believe business ought to adhere to the maxim, primum non nocere.

My understanding is that as an accountant, you are asked for the facts and analysis of financial statements.  An accountant prepares and communicates information for the users benefit, whether that user be management, investors, creditors, or regulators.  Accountants aren’t asked to manage the corporate culture of a company or provide ethical analysis of the supply chain.

Certainly, accountants have a tremendous ethical responsibility to prepare accurate and true financial statements in accordances with GAAP.  How then does an accountant have an ethical influence on the human aspect of a business?  Because I am not nor have not worked as an accountant, I cannot answer that question.  But it’s a question I think about often.

In walks the convictions.  Which followed by some action.  This morning, I tweeted that I was going to narrow my wardrobe down by fifty percent.  No problem right?  If you know me, you know I’m not the most stylish and don’t have too strong of a connection to fashion.  So I began the easy work of removing half of my clothes (underwear and socks excluded).

This is my closet before:

This is my dresser before:

I found this task to be much more difficult than expected.  I also realized I have a ton of clothes.  It’s embarrassing how full my closet is with clothes I’ve collected over the last ten to fifteen years.  Most of them I don’t wear and even more I don’t fit.

Here’s how I did by the numbers:

First pass (clothes removed/total clothes)

Dresser: 22/43

Closets: 80/208

Grand total: 102/251 or almost 41%.

Yikes!  First it’s crazy that I have 251 articles of clothing.  Second, I thought I did great on the first pass, but didn’t really make it to my goal.  To get to the 50% goal, I still needed 23 more articles of clothing.

Second Pass

Dresser: 3 more

Closet: 8 more

Second Grand Total: 113/251 or 45%

The second pass was difficult.  I removed some items that I had some personal attachments to.  There were two shirts that I’ve had since 1997 that I’ve been holding on to because they reminded me of a significant week in my life.  But I hadn’t worn them since 1997.  That was tough.

Third Pass

Dresser:  3

Closet: 9

Third Grand Total: 125/251 or approximately 50%!!!

The third pass cut even closer.  The items I removed were pieces of clothing that I fit in and would probably wear…so it was just deciding what I would wear least.  I mean, I still would have 126 articles of clothing left to wear.  Obviously, more than enough.

Dresser After:

Closet After:

Donation Pile:

Lessons learned:

My possessions do indeed have a grip on my life, but this exercise stretched me a little bit.  There is freedom outside of the things we buy and clothes we wear.  I’m hoping to do similar exercises with other categories of possessions in the near future.

I already posted this to my Facebook, but it’s worth posting again here.  This is a video of Tim Keller talking about doing justice.  I believe there is a lot of Truth conveyed in this video that we, too often, would like to ignore.  It’s worth the 53 minutes.

Here are a few quotes from the video and book I’ve been looking at…

“they would insist that helping the needy through generous giving should be called mercy, compassion, or charity, not justice… ‘charity’ conveys a good but optional activity… gifts to the poor are called ‘acts of righteousness,’ as in Matthew 6:1-2.  Not giving generously, then, is not stinginess, but unrighteousness, a violation of God’s law.”

“The Biblical understanding of justice is that we owe one another what we have. If I have been given by God money, and education, and skills, I owe it to my community to spread it around. If I hold it in, I am destroying the social fabric.”

“They should not squeeze every penny of profit out of their business for themselves by charging the highest possible fees and prices to customers and paying the lowest possible wages to workers.  Instead, they should be willing to pay higher wages and charge lower prices that in effect share the corporate profits with employees and customers, with the community around them.  this always creates a more vibrant, strong community.”

Despite our God being a God of Justice, talking about doing justice within the Christian community can be tricky to navigate.  There is a great unnecessary tension that arises between evangelism and justice whenever doing justice is discussed.  Christians and churches are cautious to focus on doing justice out of a fear that it would create a works based salvation… and in that caution we often completely neglect the subject of justice.  There’s always a lot of talk about abstractly loving your neighbor but no real world application for combating injustice.  I believe evangelism and justice are not mutually exclusive.  I liked the example from the video of the airplane and the two wings being evangelism and justice, without both in the Church it can’t fly.  Out of our grace and acceptance in Christ we are free to work for justice.  Out of the realization that everything we have has been given by God, we are free to give to others without fear.  Yes, as humans we were completely deserving of our unjust world because of our sin… but God generously gave us redemption in Jesus Christ and He fights for and desires justice.

But you should know that I am not a theologian nor am I a great example of living a life standing for justice.  I want to learn from you… What does justice mean for your life and for the church?  How ought the Church be involved in justice?  Is justice a primary concern for the Christian and the Church?

This is a large topic and I plan on writing more as I learn and grow… but I would love to hear from you in the mean time.

These are my goals, hopes, desires, and expectations for my life in 2012.

School

Straight A’s

Accounting Internship over the summer at a local CPA firm.

Health

Ride 3 Centuries (Canyon Classic, Riverbank Cheese & Wine, and ? ) and ride 2,000 road miles.

Coolest 24 (raise over $1,000.00 and win)

Be completely vegetarian, and as close to vegan as possible.

Weigh 185 to 195.

Race one triathalon.

Run one half marathon.

Faith

Be involved in our churches oversea mission somehow (going or fund raising).

Become more involved in our church.  Serve.

Family

Take Nixon to the snow at least once.

Use my days to spend quality time with my son.

Be more romantic to my wife.

Learn how to better encourage and motivate my wife.

Financial

Maintain our monthly budget, saving and tithing and using our money wisely.

Miscellaneous

Be a better friend to a few key friendships I have slacked on.

Read (Grapes of Wrath, The World is Flat, Think & Grow Rich, Palace of the Pigs, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy)

Not post a single blog about the presidential election and not get drug into any political debates on facebook.

Find a mentor…

Write and take photos.

1. Attend 35 church services.
2. Finish 30% of my Squareback.
3. Write 24 blogs.
4. Read 6 non school/work related books.
5. Lose 4 inches on my waist.
6. Save 4 months worth of emergency money.
7. Get a 4.0 in all my classes.
8. Ride 3 centuries.
9. Take 2 vacations by airplane.
10. Complete 1 triathlon.
11. Write 1 piece of fiction.
12. Buy 1 gun.
13. Get 0 tickets.

Let’s see how I fared…

1. Attend 35 church services.  BASICALLY A SUCCESS.  I don’t think I made the full 35 services, but came close.  I made this resolution because Brittany and I had finally decided on making Redeemer our home church and I wanted to actually commit to going.  Even if we didn’t make 35 services, we feel commited and connected to our Redeemer family.

2.  Finish 30 % of my Squareback.  FAIL.  I think I may have moved the Squareback 0.08% forward.  I sat down over the summer and did a few square feet of sanding by hand… which was enough sanding to make me lose interest in sanding it myself.  When I was working and making money, I thought I’d be able to pay someone to get the Squareback 30% done.  Now that I’m poor, it might be a few years before I make any progress.

3.  Write 24 blogs.  FAIL.  Counting this post, I will have published 10 blogs.  I came up a little short.  Hopefully next year I can make the 24 blogs.

4.  Read 6 non school/work related books.  FAIL.  Let’s see, I finished 4 non school/work books.  I started a few others, but didn’t finish them yet.  It’s too bad I didn’t include school books, because I read a ton of those!

5.  Lose 4 inches on my waist.  SUCCESS.  Well, this spring I was at a 38 and I’m back into 34′s.  Yes!

6.  Save 4 months worth of emergency money.  FAIL.  I only worked 4 months this year, so it made it a bit difficult to save 4 months worth of emergency funds.  I sure wish I had those funds…

7.  Get a 4.0 in all my classes.  FAIL.  I got four A’s and one B for an overall 3.85 gpa.  I’m feeling confident going into the spring semester.

8.  Ride 3 centuries.  FAIL.  I rode one full century and also rode on a team in a 24 hour bike race.

9.  Take 2 vacations by airplane.  FAIL.  Brittany and I had the joy of flying to Denver in March for our anniversary…so we only took one vacation by airplane.

10.  Complete 1 triathalon.  FAIL.  Hoping to do one next year.

11.  Write 1 piece of fiction.  FAIL.  Didn’t even think about it.

12.  Buy 1 gun.  FAIL.  My financial situation made this one difficult.  But I think I did get Brittany on board with the idea.

13.  Get 0 tickets.  FAIL/SUCCESS.  On January 12 I got a speeding ticket….but I did a trial by written declaration and won!

All in all, it was a great year.  There might be a lot of FAILS on that list, but I think it was a successful year.

Stay posted for a recap of the year and my 2012 goals and expectations.

But that’s not true.  There is something outside of the black and white.  When God simply calls us to be fishers of men, makers of disciples, preachers of His word, looker afters of the orphans and widows, my immediate inclination is to connect that to professional ministry.  It seems so logical…what other options could there be?

I become a Pharisee that is trying to create a religious system that meets my requirements of the Christian faith.  I lose focus of the Good News.  I do not have to create/invent the perfect Christian life.  I do not have to decide the direction of my life tonight.  I am accepted.  I am secure in Christ.  I am redeemed.

I sweat the small stuff too much.  This is the stuff that keeps me up at night.  I am a constant questioner and I want to be a constant listener.

When I sat down to write a blog, I was anxious.  I was dreading having a month off school (I felt like it was going to be wasted time).  But I’ve written this blog three different ways and after each draft God has calmed my heart and brought me closer.

Psalm 23

“The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, 

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

 in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me

 all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

God, I am your sheep and you are my good shepherd.  Thank you.  Protect me from the wolves that would take me away from you and keep me from the unsafe paths I try to follow.  Amen.

“This is an essay I wrote about my experience at the 1997 Free Methodist International Youth Convention at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins.  This was written while the memory was still present in my mind, so please pardon my youthful sentence structure and dramatic recollection of past events.  This was a turning point in my walk with God.  I had already committed my life to Him, but this event brought much life to my faith and ultimately impacted my high school years for the positive.”

In the July of 1997, I had no idea my whole worldview would change and effect the future of my entire life.  It is amazing how significant a vacation or a trip to an unknown place can change a person’s life.  Sometimes on journeys that change people’s life the influencing factor can be meeting a person or a sight seen along the way, but for myself, it was a natural disaster that really introduced me to the life I wanted to live.  Through that event, I realized what the important things in life are and the values that I wanted to live for.

When I was in elementary school my parents divorced and my father remarried that brought a new approach on life.  My younger sister and brother were the first ones to go to church with Michele, my new stepmother.  I stayed home on Sunday mornings and hung out with my dad and did guy stuff.  But every Sunday, my brother and sister would come home with either a cinnamon roll or a doughnut from Sandy’s Ice Cream and Doughnut.  I begged every week for them to bring me one home the next week, but was repeatedly told that in order for me to get a cinnamon roll I had to go to church.  In fifth grade I began going with my brother, sister, and step-mom to the Free Methodist Church in Modesto.

The next four years were spent going to Sunday school and to youth group in the middle of the week.  I grew accustomed to the Christian faith and learned all the old Bible stories from Abraham to Jonah to John the Baptist.  Christianity was becoming more and more engrained in my life every passing week.  Between my eighth grade and my freshman year, my youth group had the opportunity to travel to Fort Collins, Colorado for the International Youth Convention for the Free Methodist Church.

The International Youth Convention, or IYC, took place at the Colorado State University Fort Collins campus.  It was seven days longs not including the travel time.  The structure of IYC was like much that of any other Christian camp or convention.  After breakfast, there were several lectures and sermons regarding various topics that occupied the morning times.  Lunch in the cafeteria followed and then there was free time to hang out with friends, talk with pastors, or spend some quality time in thought and prayer.  Dinner usually was served in the early evening and then all the students were rounded together into the basketball arena for an even service of up-lifting worship music, a thoughtful and challenging sermon, finished with an alter prayer call, where student could come to the alters set up in the front and have pastors and friends pray for a specific need or problem in their life or to devote their lives to Christ.  All together, there were four thousand high school students that attended IYC ’97.

There was not a single person in the youth group that had a clue as to what to expect out of this journey to Colorado.  Since I was young and mostly ignorant about what I was really even doing, I just liked the idea of going to Colorado for a week and I was not expecting a life-changing week to unfold.  The youth group decided to drive two large fifteen-passenger vans to Fort Collins.  We spent twenty-four hours in the vans getting to know each other better and creating and strengthening friendships.  Already, the trip was changing our lives and God was at work in our hearts.

We arrived in the afternoon and joined the other few thousand arriving in the chaos of registering and trying to figure out which rooms we were staying in.  The service that was held that night in the arena had an electrifying energy despite the lack of sleep and travel fatigues that plagued everyone.  It was our first taste of what to expect for the week.  We fell asleep pretty fast for a bunch of teenagers together in a dorm room.  The next day was what we had anticipated as far as organization.  We all got to experience the normalcy of the convention day.  We were all learning about our lives in God and what that looked like to live in our future.  The next day was the last afternoon of normalcy that God was going to give us.

Clouds started to roll in the late afternoon.  The pick-up basketball game I was playing with some new friends from Michigan was halted by the start of raindrops.  That night, after dinner, we all gathered in the arena a little tired and really excited about what God was teaching us in the morning lectures.  We began to sing praise songs.  ”Let the rain come down, wash away our sins!”  We prayed hard night for God to work dramatically in our lives and to forgive us for our human imperfections that was evidenced by our sin.

Looking around the arena, it was evident that I was not alone in my state of awe of God.  It felt like God was physically sitting in the arena along side of us.  The speaker that night spoke about the grace of God.  He reminded us that God sent His only Son to die for our sins, even 2000 years later.  We were told that God does not only deserve our following of Him, but desires it.  For those of us who were accepting to that grace and were willing to make a change in our lives and serve God, they asked us to come down to the front of the seating sections.  At every seating junction there was a pastor with a red sharpie that would draw a red dot on your hands symbolizing the stakes in Jesus’ hands at His crucifixion.  Feeling inspired and convicted, I made my way down and asked God to help me serve Him better by remember the sacrifice He made through Jesus.  I walked back to my seat with a red dot on the back of my hand.

Meanwhile, the rain continued to monsoon the Fort Collins area.  Before the actual sermon had started, there was a foot of standing water throughout most of the city.  The rain persisted throughout the service and the water level rose around the arena.  Then the time came for the service to end and dismiss, but because of the rain we were kept inside the protection of the arena.  That did not discourage our time spent with God that night.  We extended the worship and praise music late into the night.  Once there was around six feet of water outside the arena opening at midnight, they decided to have us stay in the arena for the duration of the storm.  What started as a simple summer rain storm, turned into a small disaster.

This is some local news coverage of the storm I found on Youtube.  It turns out it was quite the storm…

 

The water level rose so close that it actually posed a threat to our safety.  Three large generators in huge cargo trailers that were parked out the back of the arena were providing the building and stage with power.  The water level climbed within a foot from the generator and electrical fuses.  That could have potentially caused an explosion that would have destroyed a section of the building where students were.  Because of the excitement and danger, I slept only a few moments that night.

By the next morning, the water had subsided and we were able make out way back to the dorms.  It was an emotionally exhausting evening for the whole youth group.  Pastor Jerry gathered us into a meeting to discuss what had happened the night before and our reactions.  I told them that the symbolic red dot was pretty inspiring, but when I looked down to see the mark on my hand it was not there.  It was washed away throughout the night, much like the sin that it symbolized.  It was at that moment when God was the most real He had ever been.  I knew from that moment, without a shadow of a doubt, that God was alive and present in my life.

I often look back to that week in Colorado and remember how real God was to me.  There was an actual physical act that God used to tell me of His mighty power and grace.  By no means am I willing to put a limit on God’s plan, but I can’t imagine that same insight without having traveled to Colorado.  I firmly believe that God had brought me there in the way He wanted.  God brought me to the mountaintop of Colorado to lift my head out of the valley that was the world I knew so that he may show me His love.  I went home energized and excited about my devotion to God and his love in my life.  It is that same love and grace that carries me through me days.

Rancho Santa Marta is set up perfectly for short term missions trips.  There is room for a ton of volunteers and lots of work projects.  The ranch is a home for about fifty kids and an additional 100 or so live locally but attend school there.  The ranch serves children with different special needs and learning disabilities.  Our team was able to have a lot of contact with local kids.

I worked on three projects: painting the new hay barn, filling a trench, and playing with the kids during the sports camp.

Painting the hay barn…

Filling a trench with 9 junior highers…!

I am not a soccer player.

This trip was an amazing time to get to know others in our church.  Brittany and I decided to call Redeemer home about a year ago, but haven’t really connected with too many people outside of our community group.  A twelve hour drive and then spending nearly every waking moment with a group of people definitely allows for ample opportunity for conversation.  I was amazed with some of the life stories people shared with us.  There are some many tales of redemption and God’s hand in the stories of our church.  I think I just assumed the church was filled with a bunch of Christians that didn’t like their old churche…just boring stories of church shopping.  But I was so wrong to make that judgement.  I think that’s one of the things I love most about God… He loves all kinds of people you can never underestimate the power and transformation of the gospel.  After our short time in Mexico, we feel so much more apart of Redeemer.

God also continued to teach through this experience.  The first few days, I was on the painting crew.  Initially I had a good attitude about it and was willing to work on any project.  But I quickly became bored and tired and started to envy the team that was getting to demolish an old building.  I thought I was stuck doing work that was below me and that I should have been where the action was.  But my plans are not necessarily God’s plan.  One of the reasons the ranch is able to sustain and grow is through the work projects visiting teams perform.  If each team only wanted to work on the most exciting and flashy project, there would be gaps in need and many neglected parts of the ranch.  But God uses each part of the Body for different purposes and they all work together for His plan.  Painting the barn was part of Gods plan and it was my role in the Body to paint.  I need to recognize that I can and should serve joyfully wherever God has placed me.

It also was a reminder that I should keep my hope and faith in God rather than in myself.  Our church spent much of the last year talking about finding our identity, purpose, security, and value in the gospel of Christ rather than in the world or in religion.  More recently we have been looking at how we shift our hope from Him to a variety of idols.  In this trip I could see the fruits of that teaching.  I have been on missions trips that have ended with feelings of hopelessness and despair.  We travel to some of the poorest areas and expect that through our efforts that they would be rescued or saved from their poverty.  When those efforts are futile, there is little hope for the future.  We are horrible saviors and no substitute for Jesus.  This trip ended with a general feeling that we had worked in God’s plan.  Our team moved the projects ahead a little, we loved on some little kids, and we hopefully were a blessing to the ranch.

God revealed many of my idols.  I was reminded that I love global missions but unfortunately for the past few years I have not lived according to the promises of God.  Instead, I have relied on my own ability to provide for my family.  After I was laid off, I turned my hope to the golden calf of a university education.  I think I have even said that I was going to do everything possible to never get laid off again.  School was going to guarantee the good life for me and my family.  I even started mentally spending all the money I was going to make.  My efforts were for meeting my own needs.  When I got laid off, instead of trusting in God’s provision I trusted in my own abilities.  I was living in the false promises that a college degree would give me the good life.  God has been revealing this to me over the last few months and this trip brought it into focus.  My idol of self-provision was going to keep me from participating in what God is doing around the world.  I will miss out on all the cool stuff God has going on if I only focus on myself and my family.  I’m reminded that my path towards education is a huge blessing and can be used for the Kingdom of God.  I’m excited to see what God has in store for me and my family.  Will he use us in a serving role or in a supporting role?  Will my experiences in accounting and finance give way to a specific ministry/mission or will we be used as missions financiers?  Either way, I hope that God and my church keep reminding me that wealth is an empty idol with empty promises.

My church is talking about possibly going to the Ukraine or maybe South Africa next year.  Since getting home from Rancho Santa Marta, my google has been busy looking up everything on the Ukraine.  So stand by and keep checking in with what God is doing and where God is leading me and my family.