Now Or Later

This blog is dedicated to Max Price, Leroy and Tommy Callison, and Maurice (plus any various crackheads and many temps from Recycled Fibers of Ohio).

Let me start with the previous mentioned parties (as you may not even remember me). Believe it or not, working with you guys left a lasting impression. (a good impression) Max, with your first day temp ticket in your briefcase and saying,"I wish I owned this place so I could drag you out in the street and beat you into a pulp and not have to fire myself!" You taught me how to work hard but work steady; to keep an eye out around me for others, which was a very fundamental lesson that somehow I escaped learning even though I grew up in the church. To 'safely' operate a tow motor in very dangerous conditions...

Leroy, you taught me a lot. Thanks for putting ends on the extension cord that I found in the trash pile. Thanks for keeping an eye on me and helping out with lots of stuff. You'd better be nice to Tommy because he's the best thing you ever produced!

Tommy, if you've not gotten out of this crazy place, or if you're actually telling the truth, and you ARE impervious to pornography, you may be the only man on the planet that is. If that is so, blessings! Stay! Tear men away from the PC mag pile unless they're looking for Bibles! Dude, you sowed into my life so much. Praise God for you. Keep looking after your family. If you haven't been walking with God, He's still there and you're not a whore (and even if you are, He loves you, too). Thanks, bro.

Maurice, MAINTAINING AND SUSTAINING WITH NO COMPLAININ'! Thanks for the line, you big whiner, and I'm far enough away from you now that you can't kick my butt. You're a really good foreman...one of the best I've ever had.

For the rest of you who have read this far, and are still reading, thank you! Allow me to explain: I worked for about a year at a paper recycling plant in Moraine, Ohio (Dayton area). So for any of you think I'm not 'go green'...phooey. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. The only reason I left the job is because I was trying to stay faithful to my wife to keep a promise I made to her and to obey the Lord. God led me out of there with my stinkin' perverse mind and my $8 per hour to a company who paid better, had better benefits, better working environment, and it was good foundational training for work I would do later. I'm now making $16 per hour with the best benefits available in America. I work for a man who loves the Lord more than anything. That in itself is testimony to where God has led me. Praise His holy name!

So, back to RFO (recycled fibers of ohio)...

We recycled cardboard, and all kinds of paper. Most of it was pretty harmless (except for the dead dogs and unexplainable garbage). There was one pit in particular that tended to get a lot of people in trouble. The PC mag pit. If I remember correctly, that's 'post consumer magazines'. The pen is truly mightier than the sword, and pictures are even stronger. So, given the type of paper, this pit contained primarily old bibles that didn't make the final publishing, and hard pornography.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 says,"This day, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life that you and your children may live. And you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is your life, and He will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

Never in my life and never again have I seen such a dramatic example of blessings and curses in the same place. It was a very dark time in my life and my life was shot. I remember trying to be a good little baptist, singing praises to my God at sunrise. When the sun comes up, even over Moraine, it's beautiful. I remember singing in my tow motor "Holy, Holy, Holy". One of my problems at that time was that I was hip deep in pornography. I somehow managed to keep it hidden from my wife for about four months. That was the worst four months of my life. I finally got the guts (or she extracted it) to tell her the truth.

Let me take this moment to tell you the truth: You are naked before God. He sees everything you do, everything you think, and everything you watch, and everything you say. You will remember your life here for all of eternity, either in heaven or hell. Jesus is coming soon(He said 'soon' 2000 years ago and a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day to him). So let me say this first to me, and then to anybody who's listening...REPENT! FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND! Wash your hands you sinners, and cleanse your hearts, you double minded. The judge of all the earth is standing at the door and you will have to give an account for everything you do in your life. That is the truth. Jesus Christ is Lord. He loves you, no matter how messed up you are. I'm sure you've heard the gospel a million times in America (we're just not very good at living it out). Thank you if you've read this far.

So, I made one promise to my wife that I actually kept. I told her if I kept falling into pornography I would quit my job. So I did. And God led me to much better places. I learned something there by what we produced. You take bulk paper, either in book form or magazine form, and you break it down into loose paper and feed it into a conveyor which feeds into a baler machine. So, then you ship bales of paper to the various paper mills where it is broken down to the core elements of the paper and then recycled. I wouldn't want any of you to actually see this, because it's rather disturbing, to see the precious word of God ignored and treated like trash right along side the nastiest filthiest porn that's available in the world.

God started speaking to me clearly about this time in my life. When I heard him speak, I tried to obey. He blessed me every step of the way. If you don't want to do the big study, I'll make it simple: trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. The whole law of God and the prophets is to love God with everything you have and to love your neighbor as yourself. Pornography, in particular, loves no one. It treats human beings (men and women) as if they were animals. Pieces of meat for sale to feed a ravenous, disgusting, pack of dogs that are never satisfied. I'll tell you one thing I learned: if you care about your livestock (I'm a farmer), put down the wolf. If you care about your family, put down the filth. If you care about your soul, and your eternal standing with God, you need to picture the end of your life as that bale of paper, because whatever you produce in life is going to be put before God for His inspection.

"Only one life, and soon it will be past. Only what you've done for the Lord will last." -Christafari

A Different Take On 'Train Up Your Child'

We were having dinner at Wendy's tonight, and I saw a horrific display of disrespecting parents. There was a boy who looked about pre-teen age with his father and grandmother. The boy looked at his dad (who had a cast on his arm) and he said," I can't stand you; why don't you just shut up!" He continued to say 'shut up' many times. My wife saw the grandmother giggling. Well, me in all my country charm, just about offered to this man: "Obviously, one of your arms is healing and your boy needs a thrashing. Do you want me to take him out back?" Apparently, it's not polite to talk about that in public, so I didn't say anything, but you all are going to hear about it now.

Proverbs 22:6 says," Train your child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not turn from it."

Now, I'll admit: I like to play with words. The Word of God also says that there is power in words; both for life and death. So, I like to see what life I can eke out of them.

Let's picture training your kid as being a lot like making a place for a locomotive to go. This is going to be a challenge to all the parents (in fact it's challenging me even as I write it). Let's start at zero: picture a train with absolutely no track. It's big, it's powerful and it has the potential to do great things. But it can go nowhere. If it tries to go anywhere, it'll just tear up everything around it. This is not a good thing, especially as we refer back to training children. You have to start somewhere, even if you haven't done much of anything. You may say," I don't know how to teach." I tell you, if you're able to hold down a job, make a living, etc., you could teach them something, even if it doesn't seem like much to you.

So let's go back to the train analogy. Picture a locomotive with not enough track. It's got a full head of steam, making good progress, and it's really going somewhere. Somewhere along the line, it runs out of track. This is possibly worse than having no track at all. We've all seen what happens when trains come off the track. This is a challenge, again, to all the parents: don't ever give up! Don't give up on your marriage and don't ever give up on raising your kids, either. You've started a good thing, now finish what you've started.

I've got to believe that the best way to raise kids is with vision. Picture this: you've not only got them started and kept them going, but you've given them a vision that will far outlast you. You need to understand that the family is the most important thing that you'll ever do. You could give your whole life to some company or job and they'll forget you in six months. Your family will remember you for generations. Understand that you have a position of power and influence. There is no better 'track' to follow than God's Word. It will not only help you steer your own life right, but that will lay the foundation for the future generations of your family.

How To Be Blessed In A Dark World

Deuteronomy 30:19 says,"This day I have called heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live."

Time to talk about a subject that people don't like about. Preachers, pastors, psychologists, counselors, teachers, etc. try to explain away problems or throw pills at them. Have we forgotten we are spiritual beings? Have we forgotten that this is a war? Have we forgotten that what we do matters? Yes, we have forgotten! Now let us remember!

1 Corinthians 16:22 says," If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him!" That's the Apostle Paul being led by the Holy Spirit. I wanted to throw that one in there for anyone who likes to disregard the Old Testament. Curses by godly men were spoken well past Jesus' time. I understand that we can't take the Word out of context, but you can't treat it like two books--it's one book with the same message throughout. I'll sum it up: We made a big mess and God needs to get us out of it!

So now let us talk about what messes we've gotten ourselves into. One thing that we do from time to time (but some of us are really good at) is DISOBEDIENCE. Disobedience brings a curse! REBELLION, DISRESPECT FOR AUTHORITY (whom God put there), ANY FORM OF OCCULT (horoscope, witchcraft, mind-altering drugs), NEGATIVE SPEECH, MORAL SINS, SINS OF OUR ANCESTORS, LEGALISM, CARNALITY, APOSTASY, THEFT, PURGERY, ROBBING GOD (tithe), SELF-IMPOSED CURSES (cursing oneself or one's own body), CURSES SPOKEN OVER US BY SERVANTS OF SATAN, etc. These are all things we deal with that muck up our lives and steal our freedom that Christ wants to give us.

Haggai 1:5 says,"This is what the Lord Almighty says,'give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill, you put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it." If any of you think I'm preaching too hard, I'll tell you personally that my life used to be like this verse. Now that God has shown me the mess I was in and how to get out, I literally have no need. I don't want to brag, but I'm a blessed man. We've been able to do things on my meager income that people don't normally do, and it's all God's blessing. If you feel that you're putting your money into a purse with holes in it, you probably are!

My desire for the people of God is to be blessed. This can not be done accidentally. It's easy to fall into a pit or a murky quagmire, but it takes a little bit more work to get out of it. Let me just say that I highly recommend that you read Derek Prince's book "Blessing and Curses: you can choose". I'm pulling a lot of this information straight from this book and it has helped us immensely to put an end to curses and to enter the blessings of God.

One important thing that I've learned is that forceful men take hold of the Kingdom of God. If you're just content to get stomped on by the world and kicked around by Satan, then that's exactly what you're going to get. But if you, as a son or daughter of God, rise up in Christ and have the boldness to say,"I am blessed, and I want nothing less," that forcefulness will see you through. This is not for the faint of heart. There's a certain truth in the saying,"Nothing's free"; true, God's grace is free for everybody, but it cost Christ everything. His grace is free to all, but His blessings are conditional; you cannot live the way you want to and expect to be blessed. He tells us clearly in the Word what He blesses and what He doesn't. See Deuteronomy 28. The cool thing about God's Word is that if you honor it, the blessings will overtake you. On the flipside, if you rebel against it, the same thing happens with the curses. Either way, God's Word is supreme and it has the power to rule all men.