Be Not Afraid

    My wife, Elizabeth Heath Hershey shared this blog with me a few days before Christmas by John O'Leary. Elizabeth saw John speak & he really touched her so she began following his blog. As I circled back through my emails & read this, I felt the strong need to share John's blog with my friends & family on FB & those that follow my blog. Thank you, Elizabeth for sharing this message with me. I am now following John's blog too.
    Early this morning, as I found myself praying again and still mourning for the tragic losses of lifes & families devastated in Newtown, I found myself silently "wishing" that those struck down had all become God's angels. My heart wants so badly for all of life's tragedies to become triumph.
    If we live our lives honoring our loved ones who have passed on like this heartbroken Mother honors her lost child, imagine what a better place our world would be?  Tragedy and triumph...  Jim

Be Not Afraid Rising Above by John O'Leary

Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Jesus

    Merry Christmas.  Happy Birthday Jesus.  Today is my favorite celebration of the year.  There are so many days to celebrate.  I love the verse from the book of Psalm, Chapter 118:24 “This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” For me this simple verse reminds me to rejoice and be glad in every day.  It is a verse that gives me joy when I struggle to feel joy.

   Christmas Day is the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  And when we focus our minds on Jesus and His amazing life, I have come to believe that our hearts will follow.  On Christmas, I find myself wandering what it would be like to be there in that manger for His birth.  Wise men took a great journey to welcome Jesus.  They followed the star and came to celebrate Him and give Him gifts.  I wonder what it would be like to be one of the wise men?  Think about it, taking a long journey to welcome the birth of our Lord and Savior.

    As I welcomed the birth of a child into this world I experienced a feeling of anticipation and hope and love like no other I had experienced. The miracle of childbirth is so amazing and humbling.  When it was my own child, my knees became weak. I can remember feeling both so nervous and excited – anticipating whether she was healthy or even whether she was a boy or girl. We chose not to know ahead of time.  I often wonder what God thinks about something or how He feels. Fortunately, He shares so much about Himself and His relationship with His people in the Bible. I wonder how He felt at the actual birth of His only begotten son, Jesus?  I know God is love and He feels perfect love.  I find myself asking Him to make my love “perfect.” When I read about His description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, I see my love needs to grow.

    Even though I was made in the image of God, I realize that He is my creator, our creator.  The hands that created me created the heavens and earth.  He created the seas.  The morning sunrise was His doing.  And, He created this Holy Child with an amazing plan for Him.  A child who would only live in the flesh for 33 years.  Yet, this child would become the Savior of the Earth.  His spirit would be with us forever.

    The birth of Jesus was not necessarily the beginning of the story.  It seems to me the story began in the beginning described in John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  God’s plan for us is beyond my wildest dreams and imagination in so many ways.  However, I hold on with all of my heart, all my mind and all of my soul to the conviction that He created me with a plan in mind.  And, I will look to Him to find His plan for me and I WILL rejoice and be glad in it.

    For me, each of our children are “perfect.” I know and they know that they have plenty of imperfections.  We share in the knowledge that I have plenty of weaknesses as their earthly Father.  But, I love our children as they are, perfections and imperfections.  They honor me in so many ways.  They make me proud.  They help me see and believe even more in Gods work in this world.  Before I loved them I feel like I loved others with so much passion and emotion.  Since I came to love them, I feel like my love increased beyond my own imagination’s measure.  As I came to realize that, I loved them even more.

    I want to be careful here.  I am not suggesting that people who have not experienced having children to love do not love as fully as others.  I AM suggesting that I did not love as fully before experiencing the amazing honor of being a Father as I did when I became a Daddy.  I am so thankful for the increase I saw in myself for the capacity for loving.  There have been other wonderful circumstances in my life where I saw my love grow.  Each of those are to me a miracle of life that make it even more worth living.  As we journey through life, I believe God opens doors for us to increase our love for Him and for others.  I hope to walk through all of those doors the Lord has in mind for me.

   Today, we celebrate what I have come to know and believe as life’s greatest miracle.  John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  As we read more of God’s word and believe in Him more in our hearts and minds, I find it becoming undeniable that God always keeps His promises and that God’s son is who God says He is.  As He said in front of witnesses in Matthew 3:17, “And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." 

    Thank you God for this day.  Thank you for the gift of your son, Jesus.  May we honor and glorify in celebrating today on Christmas and all the days of our lives.  Imagine that?  Every day we celebrate the birth of our savior, the Lord Jesus and His amazing gifts of faith, hope and love for us.  Amen.  Merry Christmas!

There Will Be a Day

    Over the years I have come to love and thoroughly enjoy "rock" praise music.  Music of worship that tends to get me fired up and even reminds me of my youth.  A time when life seemed so much more simple and I still possessed a youthful innocence.  I couldn't wait to become a grown up and do all of the things I was driven to do and dreamed about.  And, you know I have been so incredibly blessed to do a great many of those things I dreamed about.

    I have become a Father to 3 children that are far more wonderful than any vision I ever had for my children.  I don't believe I "deserved" these children.  They are so loving and kind to one another and to others.  I am not being a blind Father.  I see they are not perfect.  But, I have to say that they are perfect for me.  I will share more about them in the days to come.

    When I met my wife and partner for the past 20 years, I was a broken man.  I can say that now.  My pride wouldn't allow me to admit then.  And I was so driven to do something with my life, I was afraid to admit I had been a disappointment. 

   I wasn't a disappointment to my family.  They were so loving and accepting of me.  I wasn't a disappointment in business.  I was a young, workaholic who loved my consulting clients and I was making a difference in their businesses.  I had a wonderful mentor.  As I have grown to seek God even more in my life I don't believe I was a disappointment to the God who created me.  If I had so many things going for me, how could I call myself a disappointment?  Who could I be a disappointment to?  The answer is simple, I had been a disappointment to myself.

    If you knew me then you would not likely have known this.  I was a very hard-charging, positive young man.  I loved each day with a great deal of passion and enthusiasm.  I loved others.  I worked hard.  I played hard.  I was totally into whatever I was doing.  I was into self-improvement.  It was practically an obsession.  I was so determined to do so much with the gifts I had been trusted with by my family and my God.  If all of these things were true, how could it be true that I was a disappointment to myself?

    I don't think that my wife, Elizabeth that I met on a blind date knew I had this pain inside of me.  How could I hide this "secret' from the people who I knew best and whom I loved the most?  And, I am overly open person in so many ways.  I believe the answer to this question is very telling about me and about many of the people I have known in my life.  We all have things going on inside of us that we keep to ourselves.  We are not attempting to be deceptive.  We do not want to feel this hurt inside, but we have difficulty finding ways to face it.  What changed for me?  I will attempt to share my thoughts on this through the course of blogging.

  First of all, I was incredibly lonely.  I need to admit that I don't like sharing that.  I was going through a very tough transition and I turned to someone that has always been there for me in life.  He has always been there.  The problem is even though He was always there for me, I had not been so good about turning to Him.  I had become separated from my former wife and I was really ashamed of failing to keep our marriage together.  We couldn't even agree on going to a particular church so we didn't go at all.  Why?  In my opinion, my stubborn pride.  I started going to church by myself on Sundays at a small Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC.  It was tough.  It seemed as though the Minister was talking directly to me.  When he spoke of people and their problems, he seemed to be talking directly about me.  I admit, it was hard hearing that.  But as I heard it more and more often, I saw something starting to change in me.

    I was becoming less and less judgmental about my own problems.  I was somehow starting to hear a message on Sunday about love and grace instead of judgment and condemnation.  I started seeing Jesus in a new light.  It was the way I had seen Jesus in my teen years when I quietly read the New Testament each night before going to sleep.  I started seeing Him with more of an innocence - and I was far from innocent.

    For me this is one of the great beauties of the Gospel and Jesus.  As we seek Him to come into our lives we find Him working inside of us to make us more like Him.  I am not suggesting that I believe I am like Jesus.  Yes, I would love to be more like Him.  Yes, I would love to be free of my brokenness and failings.  I do believe with all of my heart, all of my mind and all of my soul, that if you seek Him, He WILL begin to do His work in your life.  And, when that happens a new kind of peace comes over you.

  Now, I have a tough reality about my own journey to share.  Even though I feel the presence of Jesus in my life more and more often, I still see my own shortcomings.  I am sure others around me see I am so far from perfect.  I still see myself look away from Him at times.  It breaks my heart, but I know that is true.  I share this not to make excuses for my own brokenness or my own sinfulness.  I do not seek your sympathy.  I share this because I so believe that with Him there is hope for me, for you, for all of us.  I find myself feeling at times like Paul shared - Why is it at times that I say and do the very things I hate?  That is hard to feel good about.  But, I do feel good about turning to Jesus.  Incredibly good.  And, I do feel with Him that my life can be and is so much better.  It isn't "easier", but it is more meaningful.

  I thoroughly enjoy Jeremy Camp's song, "There Will be a Day."  It is one of those rock praise songs that really inspires me.  It starts like this: 

 

"I try to hold on to this world with everything I have
But I feel the weight of what it brings, and the hurt that tries to grab
The many trials that seem to never end, His word declares this truth,
that we will enter in this rest with wonders anew

But I hold on to this hope and the promise that He brings
That there will be a place with no more suffering

There will be a day with no more tears, no more pain, and no more fears
There will be a day when the burdens of this place, will be no more, we'll see Jesus face to face
But until that day, we'll hold on to you always."

 

    As we approach Christmas day and the celebration of the birth of Jesus, I pray that Jesus will be someone alive, real and meaningful in your lives and mine.  I would like to ask you for a special Christmas present.  If you will, please pray for me and my family and loved ones that we will all see Jesus in our lives.  My present to you is to pray for Jesus in your lives.  If you would like for me to pray for something else, please let me know.  Merry Christmas!