My Walk.

Twenty-one years of military service allowed me to see and experience many things. To live in many unique and beautiful places and to enjoy many different cultures. Even with all that there was a part of me missing, a part I searched for, that I tried to fill, not always in the best way or with the right thing. It took me many years and often an unpleasant journey to eventually find what had been missing, I needed a personal relationship with God. By bringing Jesus into my life I found what I had been missing.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV)

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

That verse says it all in my case. If you had known me before and now seen me you would agree. So this Blog is going to be a piece of my journey, I will rant, rave, confess, share hope, question and, I also hope testify "The Good News". So I invite you to drop by and see how my Journey through this wilderness is progressing. God Bless each and everyone of you.

~ Kent

Monday, February 27, 2012

A Traveling Saint




Sometimes you come across one of those stories that makes you think, that touches your heart and grants you a new perspective. 


Approaching a homeless stranger in need may seem like an uncomfortable experience to you. But you never know who you’re going meet, what stories they’ll have to tell. Just because someone may be wearing dirty, tattered clothes or begging on the street doesn’t mean they are less a child of God.
Read this amazing true story from the Rev. Richard D. Ryan about his incredible encounter with a strange wandering man of God named Daniel.





The Day I Met Daniel
It was an unusually cold day for the month of May. Spring had arrived and everything was alive with color. But a cold front from the north had brought winter’s chill back to Indiana.
I sat with two friends in the picture window of a quaint restaurant just off the corner of the town square. The food and the company were both especially good that day. As we talked, my attention was drawn outside, across the street. There, walking into town, was a man who appeared to be carrying all his worldly goods on his back. He was carrying a well-worn sign that read, “I will work for food.”
My heart sank. I brought him to the attention of my friends and noticed that others around us had stopped eating to focus on him. Heads moved in a mixture of sadness and disbelief. We continued with our meal, but his image lingered in my mind.
We finished our meal and went our separate ways. I had errands to do and quickly set out to accomplish them. I glanced toward the town square, looking somewhat half-heartedly for the strange visitor. I was fearful, knowing that seeing him again would call for some response. I drove through town and saw nothing of him. I made some purchases at a store and got back in my car. Deep within me, the Spirit of God kept speaking to me: “Don’t go back to the office until you’ve at least driven once more around the square.”
And so, with some hesitancy, I headed back into town. As I turned the square’s third corner, I saw him. He was standing on the steps of the stone-front church, going through his sack. I stopped and looked, feeling both compelled to speak to him, yet wanting to drive on. The empty parking space on the corner seemed to be a sign from God: an invitation to park. I pulled in, got out and approached the town’s newest visitor.
“Looking for the pastor?” I asked.
“Not really,” he replied.
“Just resting.”
“Have you eaten today?”
“Oh, I ate something early this morning.”
“Would you like to have lunch with me?”
Do you have some work I could do for you?”
“No work,” I replied. “I commute here to work from the city, but I would like to take you to lunch.”
“Sure,” he replied with a smile.
As he began to gather his things, I asked some surface questions.
“Where you headed?”
“St. Louis.”
“Where you from?”
“Oh, all over; mostly Florida.”
“How long you been walking?”
“Fourteen years,” came the reply.
I knew I had met someone unusual. We sat across from each other in the same restaurant I had left only minutes earlier. His hair was long and straight, and he had a neatly trimmed dark beard. His skin was deeply tanned, and his face was weathered slightly beyond his 38 years. His eyes were dark yet clear, and he spoke with an eloquence and articulation that was startling.
He removed his jacket to reveal a bright red T-shirt that said,
“Jesus is The Never Ending Story.”
Then Daniel’s story began to unfold. He had seen rough times early in life. He’d made some wrong choices and reaped the consequences. Fourteen years earlier, while backpacking across the country, he had stopped on the beach in Daytona. He tried to hire on with some men who were putting up a large tent and some equipment. A concert, he thought. He was hired, but the tent would not house a concert but revival services, and in those services he saw life more clearly. He gave his life over to God.
“Nothing’s been the same since,” he said. “I felt the Lord telling me to keep walking, and so I did, some 14 years now.”
“Ever think of stopping?” I asked.
“Oh, once in a while, when it seems to get the best of me. But God has given me this calling. I give out Bibles. That’s what’s in my sack. I work to buy food and Bibles, and I give them out when His Spirit leads.”
I sat amazed. My homeless friend was not homeless. He was on a mission and lived this way by choice. The question burned inside for a moment and then I asked: “What’s it like?”
“What?”
“To walk into a town carrying all your things on your back and to show your sign?”
“Oh, it was humiliating at first. People would stare and make comments. Once someone tossed a piece of half-eaten bread and made a gesture that certainly didn’t make me feel welcome. But then it became humbling to realize that God was using me to touch lives and change people’s concepts of other folks like me.”
My concept was changing too. We finished our dessert and gathered his things. Just outside the door he paused. He turned to me and said, “Come ye blessed of my Father and inherit the kingdom I’ve prepared for you. For when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me drink, a stranger and you took me in.”
I felt as if we were on holy ground. “Could you use another Bible?” I asked. He said he preferred a certain translation. It traveled well and was not too heavy. It was also his personal favorite.

“I’ve read through it 14 times,” he said.
“I’m not sure we’ve got one of those, but let’s stop by our church and see.” I was able to find my new friend a Bible that would do well, and he seemed very grateful. “Where you headed from here?” I asked.
“Well, I found this little map on the back of this amusement park coupon.”
“Are you hoping to hire on there for a while?”
“No, I just figure I should go there. I figure someone under that star right there needs a Bible, so that’s where I’m going next.
“He smiled, and the warmth of his spirit radiated the sincerity of his mission.
I drove him back to the town square where we’d met two hours earlier, and as we drove, it started raining. We parked and unloaded his things.
“Would you sign my autograph book?” he asked. “I like to keep messages from folks I meet.”
I wrote in his little book that his commitment to his calling had touched my life. I encouraged him to stay strong. And I left him with a verse of scripture, Jeremiah 29:11. “I know the plans I have for you,” declared the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a future and a hope.”
“Thanks, man,” he said. “I know we just met and we’re really just strangers, but I love you.”
“I know,” I said. “I love you, too.”
“The Lord is good.”
“Yes. He is. How long has it been since someone hugged you?” I asked.
“A long time,” he replied.
And so on the busy street corner in the drizzling rain, my new friend and I embraced, and I felt deep inside that I had been changed.
He put his things on his back, smiled his winning smile and said, “See you in the New Jerusalem.”
“I’ll be there!” was my reply.
He began his journey again. He headed away with his sign dangling from his bed roll and pack of Bibles.
He stopped, turned and said, “When you see something that makes you think of me, will you pray for me?”
“You bet,” I shouted back. “God bless.”
“God bless.”
And that was the last I saw of him. Late that evening as I left my office, the wind blew strong. The cold front had setted hard upon the town. I bundled up and hurried to my car. As I sat back and reached for the emergency brake, I saw them-a pair of well-worn brown work gloves neatly laid over the length of the handle. I picked them up and thought of my friend and wondered if his hands would stay warm that night without them. I remembered his words:
“If you see something that makes you think of me, will you pray for me?”
Today his gloves lie on my desk in my office. They help me to see the world and its people in anew way, and they help me remember those two hours with my unique friend and to pray for his ministry. “See you in the New Jerusalem,” he said. Yes Daniel, I know I will.
- Rev. Richard D. Ryan

Monday, February 20, 2012

Reading the Fine Print.



 When we read in the New Testament that Jesus is called Lord we equate that with his Divinity. We think of "Lord" as a synonym for "God". But in the New Testament when followers refer to Jesus as Lord. The word they were using wasn't Yahweh. Instead the word that is translated as Lord in the New Testament is most often the word Kurios. It shows up hundreds of times. And Kurios is a slavery word. Kurios is the word given to the master or owner of the slave.
     The other word we need to understand is the word doulos. That's the word used to describe a follower. The definition of this word isn't difficult. It is a word most accurately translated as slave. Really "slave" is the only way the word should be translated. That word appears about 130 times in the New Testament. For a number of different reasons that word is usually translated as "servant" in Scripture. But the most literal translation is "slave." That's without question the way readers would have heard it. But there is a huge difference. 

A servant works for someone; a slave is owned by someone.

With these words in mind, what I'm about to say seems like it should be pretty obvious but may come as a surprise to fans:

You can't call Jesus Lord without declaring yourself his slave....

Jesus invites you to deny yourself. He invites you to be a slave. But as a slave may I tell you about my master. My master will provide for you. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills; he can take care of your needs. My master will protect you. He speaks and even the wind and the waves obey him. My master has the power to forgive sins. If being a slave to sin has left you broken and bruised and you find your life is in pieces, my master can take the pieces of your life and turn them into a beautiful mosaic. If you are worn out and exhausted, my master gives rest to those who are weary and heavy burdened.

One more thing. When you become a slave to my master, he makes you his son. He makes you his daughter. He calls you friend.


~Kyle Idleman, Not a fan.