Jeremy Reeves

This past weekend a group of my friends and I went white water rafting down the Ocoee River. We had a blast and made lots of long-lasting memories. One of the things that made our rafting excursion so enjoyable was we had a guide in the boat with us. I have been white water rafting several times with a guide so one time me and my cousin decide to brave the white water just him and I in a canoe. We thought this can’t be that hard just get in the canoe and the current will mostly guide us down river. From the moment we put the canoe in the water it was a disaster. We spent more time in the water than we did in the canoe. One time when we got back in the canoe we were facing each other and yelling at each other about which one of us is facing the wrong way. Needless to say our experience that day was not very enjoyable. I am learning in life that if we will rely on the guide that the God has Given us, the Holy Spirit it will make our ride be the most it can be. I love this quote from Frances Chan’s book the Forgotten God “I don’t want my life to be explainable without the Holy Spirit. I want people to look at my life and know I couldn’t be doing this without Him  by my own power. I want to live in such a way that I am desperate for Him to come through. That if He doesn’t come through, I am screwed.”

  I know a whole lot about Jesus. I grew up in Sunday school and saw every story of Jesus portrayed out on a flannel board. I went to Awanas every Wednesday night as a kid, got all the jewels in my crown that I wore proudly on my little red vest. As I got a little older I attended Royal Ambassadors (pretty much Boy Scouts with some Jesus thrown in) and I can still quote the pledge. I know a lot of people here in the Bible belt had the same kind of upbringing. I am very appreciative for my family making sure I was in church every time the doors were open, and I am proud of my background in the church. But I have come to find out it does not matter how much head knowledge I have about Jesus if I am not showing Jesus in every thing I do it is all in vain. This past Sunday at church they played a video blog from Penn Jillette( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG-tkQ_Q2w ) from the comedy/magic duo Penn & Teller who is a well known atheist. He speaks about a guy at one of his shows that gives him a bible. Penn talks about how if people really believe that others are going to Hell then how much do you have to hate someone not to tell them about a way out. It really got me thinking about do I really have the kind of love for my fellow man that Jesus tells me to have? My prayer is for a pure heart and a love like His for all and not just the ones I want to love.

I am about to get totally real in an effort for healing to take place from poor decisions in my past that has left me very tainted when it comes to being involved in ministry. I have been hurt trying to do ministry for the last several years. Much of my hurt was due to my own actions and reactions to situations. I was volunteering with a youth group when the youth pastor left to pursue other ministry opportunities. I told myself “I was ready to take this youth ministry over, after all I do have a ministry degree.” They ended up going with another youth worker to take over the youth ministry (who has done an excellent job). I let Satan tell me all the reasons they did not choose me, like it is because I am overweight and not attractive and they were more worried about the right image than anything else. I tried to keep working with the youth at that church but I would not submit to my pride and ended up leaving that church. I took my family out of a church they loved and were growing in, to a similar a church across town. With my aspirations to still be a youth pastor I jumped in to volunteering with the youth at this new church, and established a great relationship  with the youth leader there. That church decided to revamp their student ministries, cancel all student events and meetings for a couple of months rebrand and relaunch it, in an effort to build excitement. The youth leader they had at that time did not agree with the changes so she decided to leave. So me and my wife become the new volunteer youth leaders of the new youth group. I should have backed out from working with the youth at that time but I was worried about making MY dream come true of being a youth pastor. Every thing is going along good, then I go off with the staff and other church members to a conference. While we are at this conference my pastor starts introducing me to all his pastor friends and even introduced me from the stage as his youth pastor at his church. Not really sure the reasons he did this but it just gave me mixed signals about my role, as I felt I was stepping on people’s toes with every thing I tried to do. So we decided to go back to the church that my wife and family never wanted to leave in the first place. I have to get to the place that it is not about MY dream but God’s will for my life. I have to get to the point that I am ok with just being a great father, husband and friend.

I have had a rocky relationship with my father for the majority of my life. Looking back at my childhood the bonding moments we had were very few and far between. A lot of that had to do with him working a second shift job and him not being home till after I had already gone to sleep during the school year. When I was eleven my parents got a divorce and I saw my father even less. As I got older I grew really bitter toward my father for him not being the kind of dad I wanted him to be. As time went by and I became a Christian I realized I needed to forgive my father for healing to take place. I said I forgave him and that I was over all the negative feelings that I had harboring toward him. It was easy for me to say this as long as he remained at a distance from me. When my father actually started putting forth an effort to have more of a relationship with me I wanted to run as far from him as I could. I figured out the forgiveness I had given him was merely lip service and did not come from the heart. I am just now starting to spend time with my father and actually letting wounds heal. There are so many things in life that are easier said than done but most broken relationships are worth the effort it takes to truly mend them.

I have gone with a family member to their AA (Alcoholic Anonymous) meetings a couple of times over the last couple of weeks to support them on their way to recovery. I was taken a back by the people in the groups openness and willingness to share on all their shortcomings not just there struggles with alcoholism. I am not completely sure how there 12 step program works, someone pointed out to me that some of the guys were there working on the 13th step, which is picking up women, and he added “the odds are good, but the goods are odd”. Not sure about the success rate of the program but I know talking and admitting their faults has to be very helpful. The Bible says in James 5: 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. This is why it is so important that we have people in our lives that we can be open and real with. I am excited about Life Groups starting back up at my church so that hopefully I can build more relationships and receive more prayer for the many areas that I have faults in.  I have been very proactive in trying to deal with some of the faults in my life and trying to become the Biblical model of a leader, starting in my own home.

My wife and I will celebrate our twelfth anniversary this weekend. We are trying to defy the odds and be one of the 50% of marriages that make it. We have the deck stacked against us statistically. My father has walked down the aisle five times, and my mother is in her third marriage. We were high school sweethearts, and got married really young. I was twenty-one and my wife was nineteen when we joined in this Holy union. There have been many down times, and a lot of learning life lessons together which has made our marriage stronger. As my wife and I continue to seek God’s will for our lives together our relationship seems to get better and better. I can honestly say I love my wife more today than ever because I have been able to watch her grow (and be on the journey with her) as she has become the person she has become. I am looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together and seeing what God will have in store for us.

My son is five years old and I am loving the fact that he wants to be and do everything like his dad. He will wait to get dressed until he sees what I am going to wear so he can dress like me. He only wants to eat and drink the same foods as me. When I am at home he is my shadow, and I love it. I know our Heavenly Father feels the same way when we display the characteristics of Him. I have fallen way short of being like Jesus but I pray that I can get back to that pure passion to wake up with the longing to show the love to others that He showed to me. I know with my son he will soon reach an age where he thinks his dad is not cool, but I am gonna cherish these days where I am his everything and try to make some lasting experiences that we will both keep for a lifetime.

The word Christian is to freely given out and has almost completley lost it’s meaning. There are a lot of people who call themselves Christians that I in no way want to be associated with. I have noticed that here in the “Bible Belt” most people associate being a Christian as some one who shows up at church Sunday morning and gives some money because that is what there Memaw always told them to do. I want to be known as a Christ follower because I am striving to live a life the way Jesus did while he was on the earth. I know a lot of people will disagree with me but I am not jumping up and down about Tim Tebow’s pro-life Super Bowl commercial. I get what they are doing, trying to reach the biggest audience there is. I just feel like all those millions could go to help meeting the needs of some young mom to be, to help her feel more secure in knowing that it will not ruin her life and that she can have her and her child’s dreams still come true. I sure do not have the answers, just afraid it is going to come off as political propaganda and not the love it is intended  to show, just my thoughts.

The Christmas season always seems to be so hectic. I have to work more hours and be more places and get more done than I have time for. So far this Holiday season I have neglected my spiritual life. Over the last several weeks my relationship with  God has turned into nothing more than a mere fist bump once a day or so. Bumping fist with someone has to be about the most impersonal greeting you can have. Do you go around fist bumping your wife, your kids or your mom, no cause you have a deeper relationship with them than that. You long to embrace them when you have not been in their presence in a while. I want to get back to that longing I once had  to be on my face in the precence of God worshiping Him.

I know that one of the most important characteristics of a Christ follower is showing love to your neighbor. I just wonder sometimes if that is enough? We can go out and be his hands and  feet and do all these loving acts for people but if we don’t share the gospel with them also are we really doing what we are called to do. My father who is not a Christian would give the shirt off his back to someone who needed it. Many times when I have been with him he has helped strangers broke down on the side of the road. There are a lot of people and organizations that do a lot of good but do not represent Jesus Christ. I feel we need to be sure and make it known when we do have mission projects around our community that we are showing love because Jesus first loved us and we want them to have the peace and hope that we have in Him.