To say there’s a down turn in the economy is an understatement, mumbled in low voice by some, because maybe, it’ll send a wave of panic through the stock market. Or in a smaller world, you’re afraid you might “confess” something and give it more power! Personally I think you can’t address a problem if you’re not talking about it.

I’m not gonna launch into some diatribe about what the President ought to being doing, or the government. And I’m not gonna start pointing fingers at the selfishness of corporate CEO’s. We are where we are. And I’m sure for more reasons than we can ‘appoint’.

 Bottom line is, most likely, your seeing a smaller bottom line this year. Or maybe you’ve stopped reaching a bottom line all together except that one at the unemployment office. But in the case of at least one “Self Employed” singer songwriter, honestly, I’ve never experienced anything like this. My mom says she survived the Great Depression. “I only have weekly ones so far, that I go through weakly” I told her.

 What I do know is that there are some great things about lean times. Number one, it sharpens your focus. It also has an incredible impact upon your motivations. Humility too becomes more necessary. I find myself looking for ways to get things done by offering more services! I’m now willing to do a concert AND pass out flyers at the door! I’ll even clean up the sanctuary when we’re done and lock up.

 You have to be aware that your promoter friends and outreach ministry personnel are experiencing a backlog of undone work. They’re probably doing the jobs of people they had to let go to stay afloat themselves. Sometimes what they need most is some outside encouragement even on the phone when they’re telling you “Maybe next year”. Don’t get too near sighted in all this. Pursue whatever you might contribute with encouragement and conviction.

 Here’s a chance to see God work a miracle. The one where your prayer life gets really sincere! In the last two years I’ve learned the first and last names of everyone I work with across the Globe. My conversations with “co laborers” are longer than they’ve ever been. I’m seeing a true relationship where you actually know what a ministry is doing and how much that is costing. You might even know who the volunteers are. In fact YOU may have to be one.

”A famine in the land” can also produce a famine of encouragement. The one thing that has to happen before changes come is to see the goal beyond the obstacles. Attitude may be the only thing to keep your circumstances from overwhelming you. The best way to maintain a good attitude is to apply encouragement to others even in your own dilemmas. Kind of like sharing the gospel with a tooth ache!  Here’s where you find out for real if your faith is real! Can you believe that God has your back? Can you believe that his process for all of us is exactly on schedule, that there are no coincidences? Easy sometimes to sing about Trusting God, but God forbid we should actually have to do it.

 In hardship we get to strengthen our song material before it’s written. “if I didn’t have a problem, I wouldn’t know that God could solve them” sings Andre Crouch. I personally don’t think that was his last problem he was singing about either. Success is mostly guided by a supply and demand mentality. Maybe we could apply that now to “encouragement” as a real product. It might be in shorter supply than quality musicianship at this point. An attitude of encouragement is like singing or writing music. You don’t need a budget to do that part!

 Here’s what else you can do with absolutely no money: make your prayers real. Look to encourage others before the contract is signed. Make relationships that are based on common ground. Find people you “resonate” with. Look for ways to be authentic! And lead by example. And trust others with your life! It’s not just God that will get you through. He uses relationships!  You can’t turn the sail boat if it’s dead in the water. And without God’s unseen power, like the wind, we will reach no destination worth arriving at.

 Purification is not a fun process. But the end result is more valuable. Gold and Silver is what we use to purchase what we really want. But it’s not the prize itself! You have the prize when you find your focus in pursuit of your passion. Christ will redeem your hardships! See that! Believe that. And watch it come true.

 We both know you could have prevented it if you wanted to. But you didn’t. I know that there is an appointed time for all of us with eternity. I just wish you could have scheduled her appointment a little farther down the road. We could discuss the ramifications of free will that you’ve gifted everyone and how it impacts all of us. But that doesn’t bring any one back from the dead.

 I’m nearly speechless here. I’m filled with a wild mixture of love and pain, resentment, sadness, and one giant question mark about your plans. Right away I feel responsible to speak for you about why you allow this kind of tragedy. But even an accurate answer would not change the aching of hearts broken. And seeing a nine year old lying in a coffin will never look right to me.

 Personally I can see how you move most of us along as a direct result of the current pain we’re in. Nothing seems to change without the pain of loss. It’s the only way we overcome our fears of changing the way things are. I pray her sacrifice is not wasted. That what needs to change in our lives here will be brought to pass. And I pray that children lost will speak to us from their shortened lives that we are responsible to love those we love deeply with all the immediacy that this moment brings.

 A friend of yours told me there’s a difference between endurance and perseverance. The first is a matter of toleration while the second is a real pursuit, a moving forward in the belief that “love” will always win, truth will overcome, and darkness will dissipate. I’m picking what’s behind door number two in this case.

 Take care of Erica for us, give her some hugs and kisses too. Let us rest in the pleasure of knowing that she is in your arms, safe and secure from all alarm.

And give us the strength to live fearlessly because we knew her to be that way. Until we meet again Erica, we’re leaving a light on for you down here!

 Thanks for letting me share… amen

David McLaughlin

David McLaughlin talks to Bryan about what’s going on in his life and career. Fun stuff!

They talk about the new website, Twitter, the videos, Hogwash and more.

You can play using the convenient player below, or right-click on the player to download to your computer.

The mechanics of force feeding yourself a decent attitude

By Bryan Duncan

Losing a bad attitude is like trying to get the cat off the curtains.  And what with the information super highway boring a four lane straight through the middle of your skull, you know there’s gonna be a pile up in the tunnel. With every “purpose driven” pursuit, there comes a stagnant build up in the “pipeline”. Negative thoughts and emotions have a way of creating a sewer in front of the septic tank. Think of it as a hairball in the shower drain.

Motivational Breakdowns are a lot like Mondays. Suddenly the weight of routine seems unbearable. You find yourself annoyed pulling your socks on in the morning, spilling coffee on your shirt for good measure. You just can’t think in a forward direction. Now you’re snapping at the garbage man for making so much noise. You’re dreading the “supposed to be happy” phone conversations that get the steely bolder rolling for another round of pin ball. Loathing and resentments hang like Spanish moss in your head, thinking of all the irritating people you can’t seem to change..

Uncomfortable emotions tend to linger longer than the euphoric. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I don’t mind feeling good and it never seems to last long enough.

But what often goes unnoticed about my bad attitude is that it is never constructed from a single event! My tendency is to attempt to erase it however with a single thought. It’s like a Hail Mary prayer! Sometimes you have to dismantle the whole drain pipe to get the clog out.

Thinking about something else is what I usually start with in trying to change my dysfunctional position. But that doesn’t really take the sap out of the sycamore either. It’s like that Ginsu knives commercial, “wait there’s more”! Changing the subject is just a flanking maneuver. You still have to have a front line facing the enemy.

Here’s where I begin to think of my deeper strengths.  And then reconsider what I was born to do. (you have to know that first). It’s been a matter of returning to my original passion before the beehive hit the ceiling fan.

My first two attempts at redirection are often a knee jerk reaction and poorly managed by the way. But sitting with encouraging books on a regular basis has been the new Draino for the maintenance of my mental channels. Don’t roll your eyes at me here with your bad attitude. Even Draino takes 15 to thirty minutes to work and maybe a repeat. Discovery leads to insight which leads to better thought processes. But if you’re going to pan for gold you’ll be washing a lot of filth around before you find the flakes.

Sometimes you gotta remind yourself that you are a “prospector”! You just sometimes look like a posthole digger.

Best line of offense though is ironic. It’s other people! Yea, it is sometimes the very ones who put you in a piss poor attitude to begin with. You gotta be talking to more than one person! I’ve discovered the magic number might be six. You need that many to find one who’s objective on any given day. ”In the counsel of many there is safety” .. that’s in the Bible by the way. It moves on rather quickly from there but if we “pan” that for a second we might find that it works like this: If I’m gonna talk to a tax attorney today, I need  to call my investment broker too. O.k. that’s too dignified… I’ve I’m gonna talk to my ex.. I might want to drop in on my counselor later! That’s not to say that every counsel is gonna be fun. I’m just saying that balancing your perspectives through more sets of eyes than your own is priceless.

I make a point to call at least six people outside my daily universe over the week. I have the luxury of getting other writer’s on the phone occasionally, even as I’m reading their books. And I usually hang up euphoric about the possibilities afterward. Choose your six from a wide patch of cultural cloth too, not necessarily someone you always like or even who like you. I love talking to people who actually resent me on some level. They force me to look at myself in a different light. And afterward I’m just excited to see a friend!

Notice that so far I haven’t mentioned “prayer and meditation” specifically. That’s because all of the above is part of my prayer life and devotion to my Supreme Redeemer. Even the word “prayer” constitutes a narrow definition in most of our minds. You know you’d have glazed over if I started with that verbiage. Prayer is the conversation constantly going on with the almighty even when I’m having a conversation with someone else at the same time. Balaam’s donkey comes to mind on occasion. (God, speaking to me through an ass).

Finally, what is it that I can find the courage to change in this moment? Well today, I thought I’d write an article about a bad attitude! Now I can’t remember where I was emotionally when I started this piece. I got caught up in the word possibilities. Passion has returned and now I can put my shoes on.

Sharon Chiles was my girlfriend’s mother. I met her thirteen months ago. A week later she was diagnosed with cancer. She came to my house on Thanksgiving and I had met her one other time at the home of one of her five kids. By then the chemo had taken her hair.

Yesterday, I watched her life slip by in a slide show.  It was a simple collection of pictures that, when taken years ago, we’re never thought of as a final look back. 30 seconds as a little girl, before fashion statements and make up. 30 seconds, transforming into a woman, and she was gorgeous. 30 seconds of wild times and big smiles.

And by the end of a single song of background music, though still radiant, she was in her fifties. But then the song changed with the opening sound of a penny whistle, reminiscent of the theme music from the movie, “Braveheart”. And there she is, sitting upright in a hospital bed, half of what she was on the outside.

Cancer has a startling way of narrowing who a person truly is. Gone are the trappings of fashion and the Identifying marks of individuality or social distinction. And suddenly the one focus is upon the eyes, from where the light of a true soul seems to come.

I believe Sharon was redeemed. By that I don’t mean the Christian concept of being  “Saved” in the acceptance of a savior and given a redirected sense of purpose. No, Redeemed-To be bought back, like being taken off the pawn shop floor.

I don’t know why some people tend to linger at death’s door longer than others. I’ve heard stories before this, of loved ones “being given permission” to let go. And even with that, Sharon lingered for an uncomfortable amount of time. It was as if she were waiting in line, as if there was some kind of back up of souls knocking on heavens door.

Funerals are exhausting for the survivors. Maybe it is because we’re forced to see the end of our own lives coming too quickly. We’re forced to look at how fragile faith in eternity can be. “Visit the dying often” someone quoted to me once. “because it brings an immediacy to our lives”. A lot of phrases float around at funerals. “She’s in a better place” I hear most often. But it is said most often with just a hint of fear that our hope in the scriptures on eternal life and destiny will fall short. Fear of the unknown is exactly that!

I found one  piece of imagery fascinating, given grave side, from a Van Dyke poem on Immortality, of a ship sailing into the distance until it is out of sight. (only as I recall) it went “ Though she slips from our view on the shore, the ship is still strong and under full sail and carrying a full cargo, and coming into view of another world”. “There she is!”  “they exclaim on the other side as she appears on a new horizon”. That is my hope!  The hope that Jesus is right! There’s more to life than this life!.            Trusting in God for what I don’t have a clue about really is what death offers those of us still living. I can still see Sharon in my minds eye, the way I can see heaven and believe it is there! And now, when I see heaven?, I don’t see streets of gold anymore. I see the faces of the people I’ve known!  And I close my eyes and look and say… “There she is”!

We have all heard at least one story of the preacher running off with the organ player. “and he claimed to be a Christian” we cluck.. like a Christian doesn’t have the propensity for failure. Look in the Bible. King Solomon, touted as the wisest man in the world and his dad David too, or how about Samson? They’re at the top of the list of God’s favorite men to speak of, all with one thing in common: a fascination with God’s “creation”.

Christian men must struggle with lust. But it remains a pink elephant in religious circles. It is the riskiest of subjects to bring up, putting fear in the minds of women.  And the indictment aimed at men is almost universal unless yer a monk in a monastery. Even then I’m not sure you can escape the thoughts of your own ‘self satisfying” desires, or the truth of being created as a sexual human being.

Denial for Christian men begins with assuming that a spiritual life can exist separately from a sexual life. Sexuality and Spirituality must be addressed in the same equation.“every man who ever walked into a strip club or surfed internet porn sites, is looking for GOD” says Steve White in the book “Eros Defiled”.

We long for what is awe inspiring, captivating our undivided attention, motivating all our senses, leaving behind any self awareness….

Every man’s battle begins because contemplating these attributes of God does not bring the immediate satisfaction of contemplating the attributes of a woman. Who was made in the image of God!  At the heart of a man is the desire to be surrendered to a power greater than him self!  Distracting thoughts of his own inadequacies. It is a desire to be overwhelmed with glory. But alas pornography is the short circuiting of a man’s natural desire to worship God. Lust becomes an addiction!, a sedative for lack of peace in a man’s soul.

Worship of God does not deliver such an instantaneous rush of natural endorphins. Maybe it’s because God sees more value in long term achievement through a real relationship. Sexual failures are cast in a disgusting light, something more immoral than other sins because of the awareness of the collateral damage. But in labeling it with such intensity, solutions are rarely embraced. One must be honest about one’s propensities for desire before that desire can be challenged.

The simple admission of a problem with lust for men usually does not come until the desires have become unmanageable. Because  “the eye is not satisfied with seeing”.  So “the preacher runs off with the organist”! It takes a strong man to admit his weakness before it destroys him. Even then there’s a road to redemption to be followed.

Pornography capitalizes on a God given desire. Adam was pleased with the woman God created, similar to himself but mysteriously different! The Garden was free from a conflict of will in the beginning. No mention of “other women” in that story. But there was the implication of “forbidden fruit”, Implying the one rule, the restricting of our desires.

Even God admitted it was not good for man to be alone, he left the will to choose in a man’s hands. Choice is necessary to true conviction!  “Choose this day whom you will serve”?  I would say that choice comes by the minute on a daily basis.

I like the advice a mountain biker gave me once, about how to traverse treacherous terrain without a devastating crash…“Don’t look where you don’t wanna go” !