Ok so I am sitting here on a Saturday afternoon. I am watching the Dawgs march down the field (Go Knowshon!!!) cleaning the apartment and about to start laundry where I will probably read and or work out (probably not work out because I think laziness is calling my name and to lose weight would be a waste of the money that I have invested in my physique).

So sitting here I decided to write because I haven't written in a very long while. I have been thinking a lot this week about what was preached last week at church. I, like many, grew up thinking that the story of Jonah was one of God pouring out his wrath on Jonah for not doing God's WILL. The story takes on a whole new meaning when one word is brought to light. In verse 3 in the first the plot thickens as Jonah flees the PRESENCE of God not his WILL. Now the story is of God going to great links to lovingly pursue his son AND A CITY to bring them in his presence and not merely punish him into submission. The story is not about one man but the kingdom and one man's part in that kingdom. It's about God and him going to great lengths to bring people into community with him. It's but a chapter in the whole story of redemption and restoration.

Jonah got distracted with his own little kingdom. I can completely relate and understand why. God told Jonah to march up to an evil and violent people and call them out. I find myself living for my kingdom far more often than I would even like to admit. I Christianize my autonomy and somehow turn the grace and sufficiency of Christ into a super highway to meet my own needs and fail to think of THE kingdom.

"It is a sweet thing that we serve a dissatisfied God who has destinations in mind for us that we would never choose for ourselves. It really is a good thing that he wil not be satisfied until he has gotten us exactly where he created us and re-created us to be."
- Paul David Tripp A Quest for More

The Dawgs just won...now to the laundry!

So I am almost through moving into my new casa. And I love it. I have been looking at houses for a little while but decided to go with an apartment. Why you might ask (even if you don't I am going to give you an answer)? Well first of all I want to save up more money for a down payment which would allow me to have cheaper payments and get rid of or almost get rid of PMI too. Also, it helps me budget what life is going to be like with a mortgage. And I am single and a one bedroom apartment is plenty of house for me. So I don't have any roommates which I am thrilled to death about. It's just me and Calvin alone to conquer our castle together. Only if he hikes his leg on anything he is taking a two story plunge to Hell with maybe a yelp to say goodbye. Ok maybe not but I will beat him to the point he'll wish I would have thrown him over the railing.

Well with this new parsonage I want it to be a place where sinners and saint feel at home. I want to have pagans and pharisees over for dinner to hope to win both with the gospel. One of the exciting things is as I was moving in Saturday a friend of mine that I went to High School with walked out a door in my same building. He is living with his girlfriend behind a door that Calvin might try to mark as his too. Then today I was driving in and I saw a guy walking with his wife and as I rode past I was like Holy Cow that is Philip Potter. I played football with him all the way through 9th grade before he transferred to HoCo to play with Jason on the O line. Also, Saturday I ran into a girl that was at the tattoo place when I was getting my cross done and I use to hang out with her a little when we played on a co-ed softball team together. I met one of her roommates at the sinful skin marking place well I saw her roommate out one night with their other roomy and low and behold I already knew her through an ex girlfriend of mine. My ex and her went to church together during H.S. before she went all pagan and wild.

Alright so I am rambling on here but I share all that to say I want to reach my neighbors with the beauty of Jesus lived out in life together and have people come over and see Jesus through me. It's exciting when you start to see that the fields are white and I hope and pray that the Lord of the harvest will use me as I go to work the fields.

Have you ever had so much to say you don't know where to start so it doesn't seem like anything will come out right? Well that is how it is with me tonight. Every time I start to write all my thoughts get jumbled together and nothing seems to appear on screen how I am thinking it in my head.

Basically this week has been pretty crazy. I want to start off by saying that I thank God for his constancy and to ask for prayers.

As I grew up one thing I always valued was my family. Any disagreements my parents had they never let me or my brother know about them. Well that all changed a couple of months ago. I won't go into all the details now but my mom expressed somethings to me through tears one night while my brother was at the hospital having surgery we were in the waiting room and my dad was at home. So for the last couple of months I have watched what I always knew was there start to become shaken. I saw my mom express things to my dad and watched as it seemed as though nothing was changing. Well Monday it finally happened. My mom moved out and I listened to her cry.

So here is where my family seems to be:
My mom is torn and feels guilty
My dad is devastated and crushed because I guess he didn't think my mom was serious
My brother is angry and wants nothing to do with either one and he is pretty much running from it
I am concerned for them and feel awkward talking to either one

I went by my mom's place (that seems weird to say) on Tuesday night just to see her and let her know I love her. Also, just to let her know that I am not going to forsake her because she left (something she was worried about and still worries with my brother).

I won't go into all the details but I ask that you pray for my family...not merely that my parents will work things out and everything will go back to the way it was but pray for God to introduce them to himself. Pray for me to speak the gospel to them and show them the gospel because I am baffled at times on how to do this...especially when you get angry at times.

So I am reminded that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever!" and that his faithfulness "stretches to the sky." He is constant even when this world is shifting and circumstances leave us undone.

Thanks for the prayers,
Heath

As a follow up to my last blog:

Warner Robins is the place I learned about life. A huge part of my early life (I would say when I was young but I like to think I am still young) was consumed with sports. Like most boys, I went from one season to another. Often without any off season. Really a lot of times there was an over lap. Especially when I started playing with school teams.

Warner Robins is where I learned to throw a football, hit a baseball shoot a basketball, and kick a soccer ball. I love this city so I am going to boast a minute about my suburban sprawl I call home.

Warner Robins is home to 3 of the last 4 GHSA AAAA state champ (including a back to back run by Northside HS...ticks me off to say that)
Warner Robins is also home to the defending Little League World Series Champs. Now in defense of that WORLD title they just repeated as Georgia STATE champs! BACK-to-BACK
Article

Get Some! haha

Ok so tonight after work I went straight to Atlanta Bread Company. This place is quickly becoming office space for me.

So while sitting here doing some work and some reading (mostly reading) and listening to Pandora (a lot of Jazz music) I watched people.

I live in Warner Robins the poster city for a modern boomtown. Suburbia at its pinnacle. We have as many strip malls as churches which means we have more Mexican restaurants than Methodist churches and more Subways than Baptist. Everyone lives in their own little world. There is no local downtown area to flock to so we spread out to one of the "it" places...Atlanta Bread Company being one of them.

It's a city without a distinct personality. If it does have a personality it's transient. People are passing through. Until they are redeployed or their company moves them. Slowly there is some semblance of roots taking hold and character being developed. The people who grew up here and moved away for college are starting to come back and raise their families here.

So here is what I see in Warner Robins A Harvest. People really wanting meaning, community, and life. They want God...they Need God and Jesus died to give Warner Robins a God to worship and a Community worship Him with.

Suburbia...it's a place where disconnect happens. It's a place where harvest is going to happen.

Loving My City!!!

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
8 it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said [ to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” 10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in [4] blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. Rev 19:6-16

Imagine the scene myriads of people from every nation, tribe, and tongue gather...for a party. Not just a party the greatest party of all time. It's really loud and it's really ticking off the people on the other side of the gulf. The people have gathered. In fact, all of heaven and earth is gathered waiting for the main event. Up until this point there have been foretastes of but the main event is about to take place! All of the people are waiting their groom/hero. He is what they are eagerly awaiting...in fact he is the main event!

Here comes this man riding on a horse. The man is Jesus and the picture John gives us is radically different than the passive feminine Jesus we grew up reading in about in Sunday School. He shows up with an impressive authority and power. He is a warrior...a mighty warrior with Blood Stains on his garments. Leading his army directly from battle he steps off his horse with a fresh tat on his thigh so in case you didn't know already now you can't miss it he is "King of Kings and Lord of Lords."

Ok so I wrote all that to say I got my first tattoo today! And now I know Jesus is full of strength because his tattoo is pretty big and mine is one word and it was about all I could take.

Longing for the day when we can gather as the bride and eat dinner with our Lover. Until then I will make myself ready with the
"the righteous deeds" that have been "granted" for me to "clothe" myself. (v 7-8)

You know its just like me to be short tempered and get angry over nothing. Well today was one of those days or I just hid it better!

My day started off great. Working at 6:00 am still catching up on some work that piled up over the weekend and knocking out my stuff before most of the other people showed up between 8:30 -9:00 am. I really like having the morning to do work and get ahead in the day before everyone else shows up.

Well today is Tuesday and 9:30 on Tuesday mornings we have our status meeting with our team. I show up about 2 minutes late because I was on the phone handling a customers problem with the application. When I walk in our manager is in a rant about something. It didn't take me long to figure out what the issue was all about. A carry over from yesterday! A long yesterday which was a long Monday.

Without going into too much detail there is a guy on our team who is totally incompetent and NEVER does any work and ALWAYS has to have someone bail him out and get his stuff done for him. It caught up to everyone yesterday. It was go home time and all of the sudden I get a tap on my shoulder. We have to go to the conference room! huh? We end up spending 4 HOURS trying to trouble shoot this guys incompetence...not help him out with something difficult or help him with some major issue. It's elementary things. He has been working in this field for almost 10 years and we were having to walk him through things that you learn in intro classes in college or at least your first month at your first job. Basically its like a nurse being employed for something like 10 years and having to have someone else run and IV because she doesn't have a clue.

Well to start the meeting off this guy informs our manager that his application is down AGAIN!!! He has already caused us to have a bad eye because it was down Thursday and Monday now Tuesday! Well he knew that and he didn't tell anyone..hasn't tried to resolve it and almost 2 hours into his day he just now let someone know! Basically he has put all of our teams job in jeopardy in January when it comes time to get the contract renewed.

So the manager tells us to start working again to help him. I am sitting there with about 6 other guys who don't have much knowledge of the application and we can't even help him because we are having to explain simple things that he should know. He is a Program Analyst III which makes him a Senior level programmer and he can't even open up his application in the development environment.

Ok so I have vented out all that to say...I was sitting there wanting to cuss getting angry and feeling my blood pressure rising as I just wanted to punch something anything a wall, a face, a brick, something just to release and I realize that I am feeling bitterness and need to repent. We finally figure out the problem at 1 pm and go grab something quick to eat to come back and have one of the other guys come up to me and tell me to go help him he somehow deleted everything on the server and on his local machine..."Are you kidding me?" Anger boiling again...then the guy said, "You need to help him because the rest of us can't take any more and you're the only one with patience.

Are you kidding me...I can just hide it better! I really need some prayer as I try to live out the gospel before these guys. We have a team of younger guys (mostly younger guys) in their late 20's early 30's (I just said early 30's is young..I am getting old). I really want to show and share Jesus with them but days like this I feel the old man rising! Pray for me because I have a meeting with my manager tomorrow and we are going to talk about this last weeks events. I want to speak the truth to him in love and not have any insulting overtones. I really do care about this guy as a person but things like this week cost people jobs...some times whole teams lose their jobs. I need wisdom...man do I need wisdom.

Thanks,
Heath

I have determined that this blogspot thing could be a great way to journal publicly the happenings and random events that take place in this thing we call life; alsol to allow you, the reader to wander through this mind of mine. Be ready it can be dangerous because I have one of the most random minds you can find. I attribute this to my job and sitting behind a desk all day leading to some form of undiagnosed adult a.d.d. For you who read I will try to humor you as much as possible by eliminating the filter and write what comes to my mind as much as possible. Ok I will use some filtering...I promise! I will also try to tick off the "Christian" reader by occasionally writing about Jesus and the Gospel that glorifies him and not promote behaviorism.

More to Come,
Heath
II Thess 3:5

This has got to be one of the funniest videos ever!!!