Cleaning Up the Lost

When I was at McNeil Jr. High I remember getting “on fire for the Lord.” I remember telling a few of my lost friends that they should stop cussing. Instead they should start going to church. I was never received well. Usually, I just felt more isolated and alone. But I at least did the right thing. To me, that was what mattered most – being right, but boy was I wrong!

I feel humbled to know that it was me who went around trying to change my lost buddies. I didn’t have any understanding of grace or the power of Christ. Grace was just a pretty word that followed the word “Amazing” and the power of Christ was something I believed I could conjure if I tried hard enough. My thoughts of salvation weren’t about Christ, but sadly instead about me. I sought to be a mover and a shaker that would make God really proud. I now see my efforts were meant to build up me and not Christ. I was a Christian, but what an ugly picture of Christ I painted.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul addressed some Christians about the sad and distorted beliefs they preached and practiced. In Chapter 5 starting in verse 9, he wrote:

“I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore ‘put away from yourselves the evil person.’”

None of us has “arrived”, but it is an awesome and overwhelming thing when one realizes that there isn’t a single thing a person can do to earn God’s favor. Everything a child of God has is wrapped up in our free and unearned favor from God. On the cross Jesus did all the work to make us acceptable in God’s eyes. We are all sinners and that won’t change until we shed this body of flesh. I’m not justifying sin, but I acknowledge it is Christ who has taken away ALL my gunk and sin - past, present, and future. And for His great love I serve Him. God knows us inside and out, and accepts us solely because of Jesus.

It is not our job to clean up the lost. The most effective witnesses merely tell what God has done in their lives. They publicly give God glory for His grace! We are called to love and not judge, but there is a fine line between loving the sinner and accepting their sin. It is a painful thing to see someone you love in the process of screwing up their life, but if they are spiritually dead, you must focus on showing them the love and grace and forgiveness of Christ working in your life. Don’t focus on trying to change them. They may hear the gospel at church if you invite them, but it is a sad thing to see a lost person who has been duped with the appearance of a changed life and not the real deal.

I once told a lost friend who was living with his girlfriend that they really ought to get married. The Bible said so. I told them that what they were doing was sin. So after they had lived together for a few years and had a couple of kids, they had a super big wedding. What a relief! Now they were official, and would finally find favor with God. That’s not true, but in essence that’s what I told them. Why didn’t I just tell him what God was doing in my life? What I did wasn’t for him, but for me. I felt justified in knowing I had preached the Word! I felt like God would favor me more since I did His work. I took the easy way out. Well, they got divorced within two years, and we hardly talked after that. I think he felt like I was a liar. He didn’t feel a change, but instead a disappointment.

Yes, my friend needed a changed life, but I gave him an impossible task. “Clean yourself up!” is what I basically told him. “Try harder! God might accept you then.” That was the gist of what I told him, but now those words hurt for me to hear them. I wasn’t introducing him to the God who found me a stinking filthy sinner, and picked me up, and cleaned me up. I was telling him of an impossible God, who would never be happy with him. Try harder! Try harder! Dear Reader, I am using myself as an example for your benefit.

It is Jesus who must change us. Only Jesus can change us, and He does it from the inside out. When I was lost, I knew it and I loathed myself for it. I knew I was full of evil and darkness. I didn’t need someone to rub it in. It is not our job to clean up the lost, but to love them the way Christ loves us all.

Ready, Set, Summer

Get ready. Summer is almost here, and for Wichita Falls, Texas, that means hot, hot, hot! .

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I really like Wichita Falls. The people are mostly friendly. The traffic is light. And the climate is mild for 8 months of the year. From June to September though, it is extremely hot! It only gets down to about 79ºF at night in mid-summer. Call it good, call it bad, but there is also no humidity, so it's a dry heat - with little to no rain, and mostly clear skies.

During those sweltering hot days, the heat just drains me. I find myself dreaming of moving to cool places. Literally cool! I have researched different climates and rainfall and have decided that I don't know what I want. I like it here most of the year. Winter is usually pretty nice. In the winter, if you want to call it that, it gets really cold for about 28 days, but that's not four weeks straight. It's spread out over October through April. February is usually the coldest month with some freezing rain.

We don't get much snow. It might snow twice in a winter. When it does snow, kids will be covering the whole yard carefully scooping the thin layer of snow off the ground just to make a two foot tall snow gnome. On one of those days, kids could probably sell their snow drifts like a commodity to some poor child that wasn't lucky enough to get a 4" snow drift! Also don't be fooled by the messed up school definition of summer. September gets really hot most afternoons of the month. The mornings start off cool though. And also it gets windy in September.

I love Christmas! Sometimes when it is 115ºF in late-July, I like to bust out the Christmas music and dream of better, cooler days. If you want to psych yourself out on one of those melt-your-shoes kind of days, just take a trip to Hobby Lobby and hang out in the Christmas in July display area for an hour or two. The smell of plastic Christmas trees might not be healthy to breath, but if it gets your mind off the summer heat, it could be just as good as swimming.

Let's talk about swimming. Now if you know me, you won't be wondering this, but some of you may be thinking, "Why not just go to the pool?" Reason: I really hate swimming. I don't see the point in it. I'll go a couple times a summer because Joyce and the kids like it, but if I had my "druthers", I'd never go. Joyce and my sister Penny have taunted me before saying that I couldn't swim, but I showed them! I just don't like getting my head under water, and consequently I am opposed to water-boarding and believe it is torture, akin to swimming.

If you've never been here to Wichita Falls in the heart of summer, then you really have no idea what it's like. Once our whole family went out walking in the cool of the evening in Holliday when we lived there. We were so grateful for the sun going down. It was noticeably cooler! We passed the bank and the digital sign flashed the temperature: 106ºF!!! Yeah. Pretty sad, huh?

I try to make the best of it though. When I started at Howmet, I remember putting a meat thermometer in the car to see how hot it was after work. It was usually about 175-190ºF. I decided I could use the car like a slow cooker on a typical sunny day. Now if you try this, please make sure there are no clouds in the forecast, because if it clouds over then you just end up with a slightly heated up version of what you started off with.

One of the funniest things is how much hotter Wichita Falls gets than other places around here. On the news weather map we're usually about 5-10 degrees hotter than all the other towns around us. Just drive an hour in any direction away from Wichita Falls, and enjoy!

Today is not that bad - rainy and cool. But I know what lies ahead. And if anyone knows of any "cool" places throughout the year that they would like to share, then please do. I don't think I'll ever make it to Seattle or Eureka, California. Also I would like to hear what other folks from here do to battle the heat. In the meantime I guess I'll just keep on developing my imagination through daydreaming of cool places.

--Johnie

Peppermint Palace Providence

When I was a kid growing up in Wichita Falls, my idea of a having fun was usually fishing or Putt-Putt mini-golf. I think Showbiz pizza opened up around 1981-82. My brother Harry worked there I believe for a short time in high school and he graduated in '83. Well, when my dog Ralph died, I remember that dad took me to Peppermint Palace to get my mind off of it. I really liked that place. I thought it was a lot better than Showbiz.

Also dad took me there after grandpa Hundley died. He really knew how to help me not think about death. He also took me there a few more times. During one of those visits, I remember how good I felt getting to be "the hero" by helping a couple of lost girls get out of the giant tunnel. Well, Peppermint Palace only lasted a few years before it went under.

A few years into our marriage I told Joyce about how wonderful Peppermint Palace was. She agreed. She said they went there several times growing up. She was likewise saddened when it closed down. She also remembered one specific time her and her sister got lost in the giant tunnel. Fortunately a nice boy helped them find their way out. Kinda makes you wanna say hmmmm......

I like to think it was her and her sister I helped that time. I feel glad to be a child of the God who can make a special moment even more special years later. I know that God is always working behind the scenes in ways we are clueless to. He is in control of it all. Was it Joyce and her sister I helped? I can't prove it, but I believe it.


--Johnie

Have You Ever....

I'm going way back to 1983, when I was king of the streets - on a bike that is. I had always heard the stories of how my older brother Harry had been a member of the local Hell's Angels bicycle gang as a kid. The stories were always fresh in my mind when the wind was blowing through my hair while standing high on my BMC. I was really a pretty good kid and I never broke any windows. But I remember one really bad thing about riding a bike - shoelaces. Maybe you can sympathize with me.

One particular day after it had just rained the night before, I had the pleasure of getting to ride my bike home early from school because of a dentist appointment. I would meet mom there and she would drive me. Now I was pretty close to the house on Parklane and my house was at the end of the street where it met Harbor. I was trying to think of how to best dodge getting splashed by the giant puddle in the drainage ditch that cut Parklane in half.

This is where a cold sweat of fear flushed over my body. I couldn't peddle or brake. My feet were stuck to the peddles. Both shoelaces had come unravelled and become thoroughly entwined on the peddles making my feet essentially tied down. I was sabotaged by my own poor ability of tying shoes. So I continued on down the sidewalk towards the puddle.

I say it was a puddle. It was about 9 feet wide, 5 inches deep and spanned the entire street connecting the alleys. I remember thinking, "I'm not going fast enough to make it through!" I wanted to put my foot down on the ground, but alas, my feet were glued to the peddles. As I reached the water my bike had slowed down enough so that I started to wobble. I reached down and tried to get a shoe off, but when I did I lost my balance and with a pretty big splash and a roller coaster scream, I went down. I was in the middle of the water.

That was bad, but the worst part was that I couldn't just get up. I was still tied to the bike. It took me at least a minute to get a shoe off. Even then I still couldn't get up because the other foot that was under the bike was still connected. Also, as if the fall hadn't scratched me up enough, I could feel the slow scratches I was giving myself just trying to get out from under my bike in the flooded street. I struggled for quite a while, angry and crying at the injustice and humiliation of this unbelievable series of bad luck. I cried for help, but no one was around. I kept thinking how stupid I was not to tie my shoes better. I must have looked like a flopping fish trapped in a tide pool at low tide.

I'm not really sure how long the whole thing lasted. It probably wasn't more than five minutes. But I remember a car passing by as a soggy downtrodden me pushed my bike that last hundred yards home.

My mom looked at me surprised with a "Where have you been?" But she cleaned me up and assured me that I was going to be alright. I guess we all have stories like this one. In the end I learned to not only tie my shoes, but to tuck the laces into my shoes, and eventually I learned the treasured "double-knot". But I figured I'd share for the benefit and possible amusement of anyone who might be having a bad day. I hope it cheers you up to know that it could be worse.

--Johnie