Growth

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a 5 ton pile of dirt that I had dumped on my driveway. the reason I did this was to re-landscape an area in my front yard. The area above is the almost finished project. The only thing left is for the grass to fill-in completely.

When I planted the grass, I did everything I was told to do with it. I spread the seed. I fertilized. I raked it in lightly. I watered it several times per day (and it has rained like crazy this month!). Yet, after ten days, I saw nothing, not even a little sprout of green anywhere.

So, I called the place where I purchased the seed. I was told to give it a couple more days as the ground has been cooler than normal (I guess because of global warming--lol). So when I got home that evening, I looked again, and grass was coming up--yea!

Each day I look out there to check its progress. Most days it just seems like there is no change. But over the course of a week, the change is pretty drastic.

Much like the spiritual growth path we all are on. There are some days when it just seems like nothing is happening, or it seems like we are moving backward! But, if we continue to seek after God, over the course of time He is fertilizing and watering and before we know it, we are much further than we ever thought possible.

Bumpers

Last Wednesday through Friday my wife and I attended the Call2All Congress in Dayton, Ohio. It was amazing!

One of the speakers in the business track talked about the importance of having "bumpers" in our life. He said that a bumper is like a bumper used in a bowling alley for kids to keep their ball out of the gutter.

In life, a "bumper" is someone you have given permission to to speak Truth into your life and to hold you accountable. It could be that you need to be bumped because of your eating habits, your lack of exercise, your looking lustfully at members of the opposite sex or spending quiet time with God.

This was a great analogy and I also believe we all should have bumpers in our life. This is tough, though, because having bumpers in your life will force you to change and to grow. Change and growth many times is painful. We might have to give up something that we really like. But, this is the path to true growth and fulfillment in life.

I feel so blessed to have a number of bumpers in my life. These are other men who pray for me, encourage me and speak the brutal truth to me. I had breakfast with one this morning and I have breakfast with another tomorrow.

Do you have bumpers? If not, I challenge you to seek them out and ask them to breakfast or lunch.

New Surroundings

Four weeks ago I took KC, one of our two cats (yes, we have cats - I like dogs also, but for now we have cats) to be euthanized (he was 14 years old with failing health). A week later we decided to get another cat so we brought one home from the Humane Society in our community.

When we first stopped in at the Humane Society, they had probably 35 cats in cages there waiting for families to "adopt" them. Each cat was desperate for loving and attention.

When we finally brought our yet-to-be-named kitten home he was extremely skittish. He would jump at the slightest sound and anytime we would walk toward him he would run away as quickly as possible.

At first I thought this was very strange. Here is this cat, who hours earlier was in a cage and desperate for better living conditions. Now he has what he wanted but he is scared to death.

Then it hit me - he was outside of his comfort zone.

This is no different than each of us. Anytime we grow, anytime we want better circumstances we need to get outside of our comfort zone. We need to do the uncomfortable and we need to do it in spite of our fear.