Friday Funny

OK, so this past week was Father's Day, and it's been stupid hot down here in Cajun country.

I know. What do these two have in common? Stay with me.

Both of these scenarios got me thinking of a piece we did five years ago. Our message series was called "The US Male." Get it? Anyway, the original idea was that all of our senior staff would come out dressed as postal workers and do a little stupid dance. Well, everyone backed out, and my pastor says, "Hey man, you're funny...you do it."

So I did it. Except I did it on video. It was, like, 167 degrees that day (evidenced by the huge amount of sweat seen in some of the shots).

A couple of funny things about this shoot, apart from the heat:

1. I had a guy was sitting in the middle of the road in his truck, playing this song over and over for me to dance to. I'm sure the neighbors were wondering what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was going on! I literally had a piece of paper and a golf pencil in my pocket. As I would do one dance, we'd stop tape, I'd pull out the paper and pencil, and cross it off, then move on to the next dance. Efficiency, you know...

2. We saw an actual postal worker out there. Now, I know the USPS is a little weird about their stuff, and I was worried we'd (I'd) get in trouble, but he just looked at me, smiled and gave me the "what's up?" chin lift. All good in the hood.

Anyway, here's the vid. I've lost weight since then. Hope you enjoy it!

Satan's Own Calendar

Okay, I've got it figured out...

As I sit here, watching "The Ten Comandments" with my daughters (don't ask...), eating Easter candy leftovers, I've just had a revelation.

My enemy, Satan, has finely crafted a scheme to keep me fat. He has set up the American calendar to arrange it so that just when I'm doing well, another event comes along to blow my diet. Here's the list:

January:  New Year's Day

February:  Valentine's Day

March/April:  Easter

May:  Mother's Day

June:  Father's Day

July:  Independence Day

August:  My birthday

September:  Labor Day

October:  Halloween

November:  Thanksgiving

December:  Christmas

And then it all repeats again, year after year, pound after miserable pound. If these were the only times I ate, then it wouldn't be a big deal, but c'mon, give me a break!

The Biggest Loser

OK, Crossroads Church just did a series called "The Biggest Loser." The premise was taken from the Bible verse "I must decrease so that He can increase." We used it as an opportunity to discuss weight loss, as well as lordship and discipline.  We also did a competition for people 50 lbs. or more to lose weight, and gave out pretty cool prizes for the biggest loser. Pretty cool stuff.

A couple of nights ago, I was watching the program, and I had an interesting thought come to mind. Before I share this with you, please keep in mind that I'm not trying to build a new doctrine here, it's just a thought...

Why does this show have such appeal? Think about it. You've got two trainers, both pretty hard on the contestants (quite frankly, Jillian Michaels scares the poo out of me), but they're amazing.

Bob is a real encourager. His contestant is at the absolute end of his/her strength, and he looks him/her in the eye and says thing like "you can do this" or "I believe in you." During workouts, Jillian is there, all up in their grills, pushing her contestants in (rather authentic) drill sergeant fashion, but one-one-one, she has a much softer side, and her deal seems to be getting to the bottom of why the person is overweight, and she cries with them, and lets them know that they are special.

Both of these trainers are examples of what discipline and hard work can give a person.  Bob and Jillian were both quite wealthy before this show began, but you can tell that they haven't let fortune or fame isolate them from the common man. There are plenty of hugs to go around, and you can tell that they are truly emotionally invested in their teams.

The result is that you have a group of people who enter this competition, and their lives are forevermore changed. They confront their demons head-on, and they conquer them, one by one. They put aside the past and make changes for the future.

Do you see where I'm going? This show is a microcosm of Christianity. Plain and simple. The world is filled with people in desperate need of someone to push them, someone to take them from a state of dysfunction, and bring them to a place where they are changed, and then go home and make daily (if not hourly, or minutely) changes to transform their own families. Unwittingly, Bob and Jillian have shown exactly what Jesus does every second of the day. He's got all the wealth we could ever imagine (multiplied by a an uptillion gazillion billion), but He gets involved in our lives, and He changes us, but He expects discipline and time put in. But in our race, the biggest losers win much more than prize money...

BTW, since January 1st, I've lost 12 pounds.  By tomorrow (my official Friday weigh-in), I should be under 300 for the first time in about ten years.