I (Heart) Bradcreating a culture of change

I’m on my lunch break at work right now and for the whole day I’ve been having a feeling or thought that has been nudging me all day.  It’s been a good nudging.  It’s been one that I have needed to respond to.  It’s a beckon that I need to just drop what I’m doing and to just go after that which calls.  It’s not the beckon to post a blog, but it’s been the Holy Spirit drawing me to itself.  It’s been Jesus just calling to me, seeking after me to give me rest and to take my burdens from me.  It is the Holy God of the world looking to relieve me of the things that cause me worry and stress.  I try so desperately to hold tightly to these things and cling to them as if I have some remote idea on how to handle them.  All the while God is looking for me; PROACTIVELY searching out my heart to pull the stuff off that is smothering my joy and fire; to remove the hindrances that keep getting in the way.

All day I have just heard,

“Why won’t you lift that up to me in prayer?”

“Son, let me have this one”

“Leave it in my hands”

Well, this afternoon I’m breaking down and just stopping my ridiculous movement away and now I’m going to wait to be embraced.  I’m going to wait to be held by the arms and grace of God that I really so strongly need right now.  I can’t keep carrying the burdens of worrying about the people and things in my life.  We’re called to more than just worrying and we’re freed so we don’t have to be weighed down.  Today I want to do everything I can to embrace that, even for a moment.

I think I’ve lived most of my life with only a decent portion of my heart FULLY SURRENDERED to Christ.  I think I’ve never lived with real, true abandon for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and today that realization is leveling me; crushing me.  I am quite sure I’ve always kept a piece of the “old creature” with me and I guess this is God’s way to pull me away from everything but His mercy and grace and I hope it’s how He shows me how to let go FULLY and COMPLETELY.  I really just want to finally shed my old self and be done with that part of Brad Gross as soon as possible.

Prayers appreciated

Today, on the drive home from Noodles & Co. I saw a man who was a quadriplegic and I remember praying, “God, could you heal that guy right now so he can walk and be completely recovered?”  And I remember thinking to myself after that, that God could do anything he wants and if he wanted to heal him he would.  And then I remembered a conversation I had with my dear friend Shane Kuester about prayer.

We had been discussing why God doesn’t really perform a whole mess of miracles anymore (as if we new what we were talking about).  Shane had asked me why we don’t see things everyday like they saw in the Gospels.  The healings. water to wine, etc that seemed so prevalent in the Gospels.  My stab at that quesiton was that God does that kind of stuff all the time; that’s the 8-5 for God and we miss it because we’re not close to him.  We miss it because we’re too busy demanding God to do “tricks” for our viewing pleasure–as if God needed to perform for us to believe!

Then it hit me today.  When we’re close to Him we are close to our father.  We are favored sons & daughters.  In my finite, idealistic mind, I want to say, “God doesn’t have favorites” but I know that’s not true.  Yes, he loves all of his sons & daughters.  Scripture even teaches us that he loves those that don’t even know him!  But look at David.  Look at Jesus.  ”A man after God’s heart” and “My son with whom I’m well pleased”, respectively.  God is showing favor to his sons.  Those who draw near, those who long to be with Him, those who give themselves to his cause.

Every King has subjects.  Some are in the inner circle of the king, some are loyal & serving subjects, and some are JUST his subjects.  I think of Maximus in the film Gladiator.  He wasn’t born into royalty, he wasn’t part of the Caesar’s family, but he was given the ear of the Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, and the favor of Aurelius because he served him faithfully and pursued his council.  God really spoke that to me today that I need to serve Him faithfully and pursue his council ALL THE TIME!  It will earn me the favor of my king and a birthright like no other.  I will be granted a deeper access; one that is very personal.  I will be extended a place in His family when I’m not even related!

What’s funny is how I could’ve missed this in my life.  My best friend’s dad has done the same thing for me.  He is a dude who writes books, speaks all over the place, has been very successful in the financial world and is just an instense source of wisdom and knowledge of the Word.  I know there are probably a ton of people who would love to be close to him and have access to his wisdom and connections and whatever…he’s an amazing guy!  For me, I’ve overlooked that as he’s brought me in and called me one of his own.  From receiving Christ in his home at the age of 5 to going on family vacations.  I have been given and shown exceptional favor, more than probably anyone outside of their family.  I know almost EVERYONE in their extended family as well and I love them all.  I have front door and refrigerator rights in their house…which in their house, is hard to get!!

But anywho, this is about God and wanting to have more of Him and wanting to draw near to him to be his favored son so that I can call upon my Father who knows me and I Him and see Him do great wonders!  I needed a reality check today and I sure got it!

Well I’ve been up and down, in & out all morning hoping to attach to iTunes to find the new 3.0 update for my iPhone.  So far, no dice.  I did see on twitter that an approximate time is Noon CST for the release of the new software…that ticks me off, was hoping to get it loaded before work so that I could play with it on my breaks and what not.  Looks like I’ll need to wait until I get home…only 11 hours from now!  LOL!

Oh well, looking forward to that and hoping my local AT&T store has enough stock of the 3G S to exchange my 3G.  If not, I might be cutting it close waiting another week or two as this friday, I will have eaten up 14 days of the 30 day return policy…so hopefully if I don’t get one this friday, in 2 weeks I’ll be able to get one which will then put me at 28 days–just inside the 30-day limit.

Alright, time to shower then get ready for work…hoping the commute is light today.

This weekend was a good one.  It was short (something we’ll talk about in a few) but it was eventful.  I really enjoyed this weekend and it was good because it was spent with friends.  Being with my friends and family is probably one of the best things in the world to me.  I love technology and movies and of course music, but nothing is more fun than being with people and sharing laughs and cries with them (yes, even I cry).  But why is this weekend short, you have 3-day weekends every week, don’t you??  Great question!  Let’s talk about that!

Well, since the end of January, I’ve been working a compacted schedule.  I work Tuesday through Friday, 7:30-6:00pm.  Yes, the 4×10.  4-days, 10-hours each day.  When I started this schedule, I anticipated that it would be a little tough to get used to, but 4 on and 3 off seemed like such a better deal than 5 on 2 off.  So, I wanted to give myself at least a month to get used to it…well, ya know what?  I never got used to it.  It was very hard.  Come Thursday afternoon of every week I was spent!  By the time I got home on Fridays I was just beat up and I’d be in PJ’s by 7pm and asleep by 10pm.  Saturday was another recovery day for me so in actuality I only had a 2 day weekend, Sunday & Monday.

The reason for this is that it was hard for me to fit “life” into the spaces in between 7:30 & 6pm.  I had to either put non-work life into Saturday, Sunday & Monday, or it just didn’t happen.  Coffee after a 10-hour work day (add to that at least 2 hours a day for commute) with someone was never a good option as I would fall asleep on them while we were hanging.  Just a few weeks ago I went to a good friend’s house to watch the Champion’s League final and after dinner, before the start of the 2nd half I was dozing off.

The worst thing that came from the schedule change was that I wasn’t able to put the gym in the schedule.  For me, that’s huge!  I need to workout.  I have a lot of ground to take back weight-wise and it’s not easy when I come home and I’m just lethargic.  I prefer to workout in the morning and starting at 7:30am and traffic making me have a 1.5 hour commute meant that working out in the morning was not an option.  I’d have to get to the gym at 5am on the dot and begin working out immediately to just get cardio with some weights in and not to mention, I was just beat in the morning when I woke up so the gym wasn’t happening.  So, my body has been suffering and when that happens, EVERYTHING suffers.  My doctor explains that the body is like a tripod made up of 3 legs: Spiritual, Emotional, & Physical.  If one is suffering the others are suffering since the tripod of life is not balanced.  In other words, I wasn’t giving myself enough margin.

So, I had to ask myself a quesiton:

“was the extra day off worth throwing my health away on?”

The answer was simple:

“No!”

So, I told my supervisor last friday that I’m switching back.  Tomorrow will be the first Monday I’ve worked since the end of January.  It will be weird to work 5 days a week, but not a big deal since I will get to spend more time with my friends at work.  I’m looking forward to that.  I’m looking forward to a stable routine for the week.  I’m just looking forward to stability in general!

Anywho, time for bed, gonna get up and hit the gym…that’s the hope anyhow.  Normally, when I have worked 5 day schedules, I take Monday off as a morning of rest and reloading.  I might do that tomorrow.  We’ll see.  If I feel good when I wake up, it’s on!

Yesterday, I did something that was just EXCITING!  Before I left work, I logged onto Sprint.com and paid my last Sprint bill and then headed to the truck.  Destination: AT&T store.  Reason: Purchase an iPhone 3G.  Mission accomplished!  She’s docked up to the ole PowerMac as we speak recharging her forlorn battery.  I have been an app downloading machine!  LOL!

I never though a cell phone could be so much fun, but it is.  It’s awesome!!  I love it and it’s everything my friends who have iPhone’s told me it would be.  Seemless syncing with my Mac and wi-fi browsing at home–2 things I never got with my Samsung Instinct.  So, I won’t bore you any longer with my iPhone love stories.  LOL!

Tonite I had the opportunity to return to a summer day camp that I spent many of my summers working at.  It is a camp run by my old home church that has been a very powerful outreach tool into our community.  It is the best summer day care you can get for your kids in Lake County and it’s obvious that’s true judging by the size of the camp and how it’s grown.  It has put the local park districts to shame and it’s been so amazing.  Kids come to camp, hear the Gospel daily, then take it home with them and we have seen so many families get saved over the course of the last 20+ years of Camp.  It was an honor for me to be able to come back and share with everyone something I’m very passionate about–Biblical Finance!

I firmly believe that God’s financial model that he lays out for us in the Bible is more than sufficient.  It is all about hard work, discipline, maturity, forsaking instant gratification for serious long term decisions.  It’s completely thorough!!  I love it.  So tonite, I got to share why we tithe, why we save, how we WORSHIP God with our finances.  Why we should budget.  What it means to be a steward of your money.  I shared testimony of how my money has stewarded me and enslaved me in my past.  And most of all, we talked about the freedom God wants us to experience financially.

The whole time I was preparing for this, I just couldn’t help but see tons upon tons of parallels to every other part of our Christian life.  Be disciplined, be patient, be wise, think ahead, give generously, be faithful with what you’re given, honor God…I mean, all of these things you can use to discuss the Christian walk.  It’s amazing!  I just wanted everyone to understand that finances are a process like maturity and that no one has an “easy” time with finances.  I think overall it went very well and I enjoyed being there with the staff!  Good times.  By the end of the night, almost every budget worksheet I brought in was taken by a staffer.  God is calling us to obedience with our finances and I just wish more churches talked about it.  I wish more youth groups and Christian Colleges talked more about it.  Oh well, I’m done, just had a lot of fun and wanted to write about it.  Peaces.

Well, the new theme is finally up and running.  John Saddington, over at Human3rror came up with this amazing theme and I did a little custom work to it to make it a little more iheartbrad-ish.  It really didn’t need any kind of customization whatsoever because it was done right, so all I really did were some color and font tweeks.  I’m very happy with what came of it.  I am by no means a code-warrior so trying to figure out where everything is located in each file takes the longest time.  So, today, after the final tweeks were done and the custom header images uploaded I decided to go live this afternoon.  Glad I did.  Got some great feedback about the look even from the creator himself, Human3rror.  Thanks for everything you do John!

As for the update…let’s dive right in, shall we?  Good!

4-day work weeks are most appropriate in warm weather and blizzards.  That sounds only half weird I would imagine.  For those of you who don’t know, I work 4 10-hour days instead of 5 8-hour days each week, with Mondays being my extra day off.  So, I get to have a 3-day weekend every weekend.  One of the many perks I have at my job.  I’m very thankful for that.  The 4-day schedule doesn’t really pay dividends unless the weather is warm & sunny or a raging blizzard.  I mean, who cares about a day off if you have to stay inside because of the rain.  You can drive places but big deal, right?  When the weather’s nice, you get to be outside and soak in as much sun as you can handle.  During a blizzard, you get a free pass to avoid the 3-hour one-way commute to work.  It’s the days in between those 2 extremes that are somewhat vanilla.

Well, today was one of those warm & sunny days and it was awesome.  Got up, did some laundry, showered, did breakfast & ESPN then it some more housework.  Outside to get the mail and then the next thing I know it’s lunchtime!  On the road to grab lunch with my closest friend in the entire world at one of the most amazing delis you could ever go to.  Lunch was a roast beef and cheddar hoagie washed down with a diet Coke.  I give the meal and place 4-Stars!  After lunch, we just went and sat in the sun for the next 45 minutes and caught up.  After that, headed home, and enjoyed some more sun.  Then the temperature dropped almost 20 degrees and began to thunderstorm!  How nuts!

On to a totally different topic….Social Networking.  For the past few years I’ve been a pretty hardcore, social-networking junkee.  I have the facebook, the twitter account, the blog (obviously), and the smartphone that allows me to do almost everything anyywhere I am.  It’s been pretty interesting that as of late, I’ve been losing interest in things like Twitter & Facebook.  Well, I lost interest in Facebook a long, long time ago.  But I have always loved Twitter.  Well, not too much anymore.  I’ve felt like Twitter has become cliquish as of late.  I liked Twitter because it gave you the option to talk to people who are normally “untouchable” to unfamous people like me who don’t write books or pastor huge churches or lead large movements.  Just regular guys who are doing what they can with the time and talent they have.  Anymore, I feel like it’s become one of those A-list type things and it’s been a little discouraging.  I’ve also felt like I’ve been spending more time keeping up with people I barely know as the ones that are physically around me have less and less connection with me.  I think that’s backwards and messed up.  I don’t want to forsake the divine appointments around me just to keep up with “the Jones’” on Twitter.  LOL!  I know some of you are going to tell me it’s all about balance and creating margin, but if I had to create margin, the first thing to go would be social networking and interweb life.  I don’t know, I can still barely remember life without cell phones, facebook, & twitter.  I guess more than anything, I’m trying to find that balance that I know most of you would remind me of.  I want to find something a little more lopsided though, that gives me more, REAL human contact and relationship and challenge.  Most of the people who DM or @reply me from twitter are all people I could SMS or call because I know them.  And don’t get me wrong, I’ve “met” some great people over Twitter and I’m excited about the friendships I now have locally as well as all over the U.S.  I’ll sort it all out sometime.  LOL!

On economic fronts, looks like the bailout plan for the auto company’s was a waste of time.  If this isn’t a great indicator of how lame it is when the government intervenes in private business, I don’t know what was.  It goes something like this:

“Hey, before the auto companies that suck file bankruptcy, let’s give them billions upon billions of taxpayer’s money, then they can piss it away and file bankruptcy and get debt protection!”

Ridiculous.  Let’s distriburte the blame, shall we:

Bush: 30% @ fault
Obama: 30%
American Citizens: 40%

See, I’m fair and balanced.   I’ve had just about enough of the government meddling in private business.  Do they want to run the auto companies like they run the post office or their own budget?  You know, lose more money every year, raise the cost of everything and still PISS away all the money.  The government is good at war and representing us abroad, judicial review, etc.  What on earth are they trying to do with the auto companies??  The government helping the auto companies is like going to Craig Ehlo or Gerald Wilkins for advice on how to guard Michael Jordan!  Oh well, this is what America wants.  The American people have spoken and said, 

“We’re too stupid to take care of this stuff, so Mr. President, will you run our economy and everything else for us?  Maybe tell us what to do?  Why stop at the credit card companies”

Alas, I digress, I try not to rant political on here.  I’d much rather it all go down the tubes so that Christ can return and clean up this mess called, “our world.”  Anyone else with me?

I’m sad to report that Rashad Evans lost his Light Heavyweight title to Lyoto Machida.  On a happier note, Mauricio Rua will be his first title defense.  Ahhh, Brazilian vs. Brazilian for the coveted Light Heavyweight title…Finally.  I am imagining it will be a slug fest and you know I will be pulling for my boy Shogun!!   

On a side note to the UFC, I think it’s safe to say that the title holders in the UFC are truly the legit, undisputed WORLD CHAMPIONS since 85% of all MMA fighters fight for UFC.  Actually, let me rephrase that.  85% of the elite fighters in the world fight for the UFC.  Every other organization has such anemic weight classes that it’s ridiculous to think that they could possibly declare their guy the “world” champ.  I would love to see Lawler come to the UFC and challenge Silva.  I think that would be a classic slugfest at 185 lbs.  I’d love to see that one.

I just realized I’ve written a small novel, or novella.  I will retire.  Talk to you all soon.

My weekend is officially over now.  Monday is in the books and Tuesday is just around the corner.  I’m looking forward to this week.  Work has been a lot of fun, I’ve been enjoying our Biggest Loser contest at work…although I did have a sloppy weekend diet-wise so I will need to tighten that up quite a bit this week if I’m to see any improvement in my weight loss–I have a long way to go and this past Sunday’s basketball game reminded me of that.  I have no footwork, no mobility, but still had a little bit of my shot left.  Abe and his brother did great and it felt odd not to do well on a basketball court.  But, I suppose, that’s the price to pay when you let things get out of control.

In regards to an earlier post, I spoke on the phone with Eric Metcalf, who is the Director of Awesome at Community Christian Church in Naperville, as well as the Director of the Residency Program with the NewThing Network.  It was an incredibly encouraging conversation.  I had to be honest with where I’m at and that I’m not ready for the residency program and that I need more training and mentoring.  I need more exposure to the culture at CCC and NewThing.  So, we then began talking about what it would take to get me to Naperville or to a NewThing site to start taking part in the community and learning.  For those of you not familiar with the Chicago area, Naperville is about 1.5 hours west of me, which would mean a 3-hour round trip every Sunday.  I was advised by Nate, that the trip would be totally worth it.  I have to agree.  The more and more I think about this, the more and more I think about everything else in life…the things worth having require the most discipline and hard work.  So, I told Eric that I am trusting and depending on God to position me that way and to begin moving me in that direction.  There are a lot of things that have to happen to get me there but God is certainly in control of all of those things and if this is the destiny he has for me then it will all be taken care of.  I’m very excited!

In other news, I’ve been thinking a lot about the message I heard at The Chapel on Saturday night.  The entire series is about creating margin in life.  Saturday night’s message was regarding moral margin.  Creating the space we need to not fall into temptation but instead, to be led out of it.  It was an excellent message.  It’s a great series!  We just run ourselves ragged and spend all of our money and just give in to the temptations of life ignoring the model God has made for us.  It has been something I’ve been thinking about a lot this weekend.  I keep asking myself this question:

“Where do I need to increase the margin in my life?”

I meant to publish this post in the wake of the mortgage bailout, but for some reason it never published, so here it is!  Hoping to have some more posts coming.