One thing my dad, brother and I try to do every year is fish on a party charter.  We have been doing in for like 7 years now.  Each year we enter the “big fish” pot, which means whoever catches the biggest fish and is entered into the pot they get half the crew get the other half.  We have one it 2 out of the last 6 years we have gone.  Well I personally have never won it.  Matter of fact I never catch much of anything.  This year was no different.  Adam (my brother) laid into a 19 pound amberjack that won the big pot.  That in itself is amazing because that guy can flat out catch some fish.  I love catching fresh fish then going home and cooking something that just a few hours before was swimming looking for “nemo”. 

            This year something happened to me after that has never happened before.  If any of you have ever spent the day on a boat you know that feeling when you stop physically rocking buy you mind doesn’t.   When I was cooking the fish I got the overwhelming need to grab the counters.  I felt it was necessary in order for me to stand up.  My body said that I was still on that boat, but I was in the kitchen hanging on for the rough seas.

            Later that night I had a thought.  Scripture says in Luke 16:13 no man can serve two masters.  It hit me like a ton of bricks the fact that my body was trying to serve two masters.  One that it spent time with earlier that day and then  the one that my body normally serves.  I thought of the times that I was playing church and not living out my relationship with Christ.  I would have moments, that I called “cross-ups”  were my unchurched friends would come in contact with my church friends.  I would have times where my Christian live would meet my worldly live and those times were major events in my life.  I can remember having to brace myself for the impact of what people would say about me.   Fact of the matter is that God said that we can’t serve two masters.  I spent years wrestling that down.  What are you wrestling with, what are you putting on the same playing field as God?  Lets always remember that He has no equal

This is the hill from my childhood

           I spent most of my child hoodliving  outside of a small town in “the middle of nowhere South Carolina”.  On a road called  Neely Mill Rd is where I learned how to ride my bike, and have the scrapes  to prove it.  We lived near Greer and did everything in Greer but lived about 25-30 minutes away from there.  My street was curvy and hilly.  Soon after I learned how to ride my mother loosened up the reigns of where I could ride.  Just down the street there was a hill that was HUGE.  I had to have that bike at top speed to get to the top of it.  I remember the frustration of having to get off and push it cause I could not pettel it to the top. Then when I was coming down Iwould be scared to death.   This was no ordinary hill this was the biggest hill I had ever seen.   It was at least 40 feet to the top and I was just a little kid, but I rode that hill and I wrecked on that hill more than once.  We moved from there the summer before i started 7th grade.  Years past I graduated High School.  I when off to college and met the lady that now goes by Mrs. Morris.  On our honeymoon we stoped by my old house on Neely Mill Rd.  That mountain of a hill that I remembered so vividly, was about 10-15 feet in elevation.  I still rack my brain trying to figure out how that hill shrunk.

           Now I have different things to worry about than that hill of my childhood.  I have this thing called life that I have to contend with each and every day.  But gue3ss what just like I conquered that mountain of my childhood, we can conquer this thing called life.  Matter of fack God tells us that as Christians we are “more that conquers ” in Romans 8:37.  Just like that mountain of my childhood, one day we will look back at struggles that we have faced and try to figure out how they too shrunk.

When I was growing up, I was all about wrestling.  I lived for Saturday mornings so I could watch those matches that I had waited for all week.  During the following week, my friends and I talked about the matches.  The nights they had pay-per-veiws were the best.  The wrestlers saved their best for those nights, and the fans would show up in multitudes.  The baby (good guy) would face off against the heel (bad guy).  One baby/heel match up that I loved was the Rock & Roll Express vs. Midnight Express.  Week after week they would fight and the fights would go back and forth.  When I was fourteen years old, I got to see the Rock & Roll Express take on the Midnight Express. My buddy, John, and I were dropped off and picked up after the fight.  I spent the week leading up to the event making a sign. One side of the sign read “Rock & Roll Forever,” and the other side read “Momma’s Boy,” the nickname for the manager of the Midnight Express. During the match, Ricky Morton, (one half of Rock and Roll Express) actually came to me and took my sign in the ring.  The crowd started chanting “Momma’s Boy.”  I was on cloud nine. They used my sign, and it was in the ring.  Jimmy Cornette (the manager of Midnight Express)  was jumping up and down yelling “Shut up!”   After the event was over the Rock & Roll Express came to me and took pictures and signed both the picture and the sign.  Mr. Cornette actually came out and gave me an autograph.  That night was  a very exciting night; one that I will never forget.

It’s been fifteen years since that exciting night in my life, and I’m wondering why we, as Christians, act like the heel sometimes.  I heard  on the radio last week that non-believers are the most hated group.  I nearly wrecked my truck at the sound of this.  The guy on the radio actually believes that Christians hate non-believers.  I was floored, but then I started thinking, “OK, why is he saying this?”  I think it’s simple really.  We do not show the love of God like we should. Some of the things that are said at Christian rallies are as far from godly as Satan himself.  We have forgotten what it means to be a Christian for the sake of comfort.  We have stopped reaching certain types of people.  When we look at the size of people’s wallets versus the fact that they are dying without God, we have missed it all.  I wonder if we didn’t take the excitement out of Christianity when we took the love of God out of it.  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” These are Jesus’ parting words to the disciples found in John 13: 34-35.  The reason we look like the “heels,” is because we have placed so many things over God’s love.