Why I like Tea Parties

This past week we found out about the T.E.A. parties happening all over the USA.
We ended up as a family and friends going to downtown Deland, FL to join the protest. WHY? Because I am not in favor of the way our President and congress are handling the financial situation in America. One of the speakers today said in America we as Americans are concerned about this taxation overload becuase of the money, whereas she coming from Cuba being an immigrant are concerned about where this will lead as regards to Freedom. I am not sure of the solutions for our country, but sitting around and complaining is not the answer and wrting and calling leaders is one of many and I believe just getting out among other people who believe the same way is powerful and confirming as well. God help America to stay free as there is no other place left to go after America.

From T.E.A. Party

Strange Things in DeLand FL.

I moved to DeLand, FL in January. I was excited to serve God in my new assignment. We have a nice home, nice church and nice community among nice neighbors. My first day in the home before my family arrived I noticed two people cutting through my yard. Jerry and Bob are there names. They came right up to my back door and said are you new to the neighborhood? I told them I was and Jerry ( who I decided was a women and not a man after a few minutes) said, you have a nice dog. I said thanks. I noticed they were carrying a heavy bag of beer.Within the next few days Jerry made a habit of cutting right through my back yard and coming back about 30 minutes later with a bag of beer. Well, within a few short days I realized Jerry and Bob had a addition and my yard helped them get to the source faster than the road. When my wife and kids got to Deland I wondered how this was going to work and had decided that Bob, Jerry and I needed to talk soon about my yard as a short cut. One morning my oldest daughter Chelsea said, “Dad who is THAT PERSON WALKING THROUGH OUR YARD? ” I said, oh that’s just Jerry, she going to the store. Well, I knew I had to get this short cut deal nipped and especially so now with a 6 and 10 year old that like to play outside in the backyard. When I confronted Jerry about finding another way to the store besides ‘MY Back Yard’ she seemed a little put out and told me all her reasons why she needed the shortcut. Well, being the man of compassion I am, I told her, Sorry, but that’s your problem and this is my yard. Jerry was kind enough to comply and probably now gets a little more exercise as I see her walking the streets now often. So now my problems are over until about 3 weeks later when….Three weeks later about 9:30 p.m. on a weeknight I decided I was going to bed early one night. When all of a sudden I hear the front door bell ring! Thinking it is someone I know I head to the door and open it to find a woman between age of 26-30 acting scared and asking me for money for gas. She said she needed it for her car that ran out in front of my house on her way to Denny’s to work. She also told me she was a single mom with two kids and needed gas to get to work. I thought as fast as I could on my feet. My first thought was ‘no money’ and my second thought was ‘is this real or scam?’ Then when she asked for $10.00 I thought, let me just pump her gas for you down the street. So I said, “miss go to the gas station around the corner and I will meet you there in a couple minutes”. She said, I think I got enough gas to get there”. Out of gas and enough gas to get there! I thought this should be interesting. After going to 3 gas stations and looking for this frantic mom I decided she was scamming people who just wanted her off their doorstep and $10.00 was an easy solution to getting someone late off the porch, well at least for some, but not me.I told Becky about who was at the door and she thought people must know this is a pastor’s home or something, but I think there are just strange things happening in this great town of normal people. So now we are here over two months when we have my oldest daughter’s boyfriend from out of state come visit for a weekend and friends from our old home visiting the same weekend. After our Sunday evening service about 9:30 p.m. the 5 teenagers decide to go for a walk. I told them to go just a few blocks down and you should be fine. I told the young man with the 4 girls to take the family dog for a walk with them as well. I figured all is well and harmless, especially with a dog. Harmless until I get a frantic call from my 14 year old telling me that are being beat up and chased just down the street. My first reaction was “are you kidding” and then I knew it was serious. I jumped in my car only to leave the other mom’s wondering if they were dead or something as I did not stop long enough to tell them anything my daughter was telling me.The short version of this story is that two older teen girls and two men in a black car pulled up and taunted them to fight them while walking the dog. They resisted and ran and two of them got attacked and my poor dog even got kicked over. They did get away and no blood was shed, but it was a strange thing. We filled a report with the police and the officer assured me it was one of the safest neighborhoods in DeLand. We laughed as we retold and reheard the details and all ended up ok.A few days later I told this story to some pastors at a local clergy meeting, only to be re assured that DeLand is a great city and that the event the teens experienced was highly unusual. They said the same thing the police said. So I spent several days telling my girls it was ok to walk the streets and it was just a weird thing. I even told a two hour walk with my dog all over the streets and neighborhoods last night to have a fully enjoyable walk and decided this great town. Until…..That’s right, until yet another strange thing happened tonight. I was sitting in the living room on my pc when I heard the doorbell ring at 11:15 PM. My first thought was, I wonder who this could be this late at night. Then my next thought was I am not just opening the door this time. So I turned on the porch light and this young black woman about 22 dressed nice who did not seem drugged or desperate stands there looking at me through the glass hole in my door. I said through the door, “what do you want”? She said, do you have a wife? Well, I wonder what she has in mind if I answer yes or no. I decide to go for the, ‘what do you want question again’ and stay in the drivers seat on this deal. Eventually she said I need to talk to women as it is a women problem I have. In notice she is dressed nice with either a cell phone or walkman in her hand and still wanting to talk to a woman. I finally said, why did you come HERE? Basically why me, why this house? I finally told her to go to the police department, only to have her say she did not know where it was. I said I don’t know either and go away please. So she turns away and heads down the street.My girls come up and say, “dad who was that?” and of course I told them the details and one of my girls said we never had people even come to the door where we use to live on Halloween and here people are just strange apparently all year. Or at least we have gotten our share in two months.I like DeLand and I do think it is a nice safe area, but on my street there seems to be some strange happenings and I wish I could figure out if I have just been sheltered for far two long a time or if what I am calling Strange Things in DeLand are just normal to most people in most small towns and I am a getting to play catch up in my first few months in town.

68th annual Biker Week In FL

Welcome to my first ever Biker week blog. I must admit the week did sneak up on me. With just 6 days notice I felt our church should do something to acknowledge and reach out to Bikers in the daytona beach area.
Here is a little reflection on my Biker week experience. On the Thursday before the official start I stopped at the Harley Davidson place on I-95. Wow biker everything was there. I spent about 1 hour and 30 bucks for a leather vest. When I got home my Becky and the girls said, " that is so not you". Becky would not even go have lunch with me that week if I wore it. Needless to say i liked and even wore it on Sunday Morning for Biker week. To catch my biker week sermon click here if you got up to 30 extra minutes.

Well I made the promote video for church and the website. See me and Brigette below. I think she will be my biker chick in the family. :)

Then came friday night February 28th. The bikers where flooding into town and the older girls were heading to a Jonas Brothers Movie thing and me and the little ones and a new friend named Mike went to Main St. in Daytona Beach. Wow! that is all I can say. The pictures below are a combination of Friday at the biker thing and Saturday morning at the DeLand 5th annual Biker rally with about 55, 000 motorcycles in town. It was the best Biking day i ever had. I rode witha few others from the church and ended up riding about 80 miles for the day. Lunch on the river, then to the Biker rally and then to Port Orange to a Birthday PArty in the park.





Sunday came and we were hoping for Bikers to roll into the parking lot and to bless them, but it rained and bikers were nowhere to be found. We still had a great day and i have truly enjoyed Biker Week. The motorcyles are still everywhere and next year I hope to do it up even bigger and get my bike fixed up better too.

Is American Dying?

I would like to think that America is well and is as strong as ever, but I'm afraid our leaders as a whole are deeply disconnected from righteous values and moral integrity. They truly reflect us more than we want to admit now and even common sense is missing and we are headed over the cliff within a few short months unless...... For years I have been fighting in prayer and correspondence to my legislative leaders about the issues of the day. The most recent one before 2009 was about the issue of taking away the rights of chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus in Virginia. I got nowhere with that issue either. Even professing Christian leaders in power in Virginia did NOTHING to preserve prayer for the people. I guess they were to busy getting ready for another election year coming up. Since 2009 I still get a constant flow of emails asking me to call , write and beg our congressman, senators and President to stop this or veto that or. vote down this or that. But this year I feel checked in my spirit of the Lord to do nothing in 2009 other than pray. I know I moved and my plate is full, but that is not the reason. I believe the reason is deeper and its a change of course to exclusively look to God and let those in authority do as they will do and pray to God to work behind the scenes. I believe we are at the edge and this administration is locked in and are determined to do what it is intent on doing regardless of what the people will say or request publically. Proverbs 25:5 says "take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne will be. Established in righteousness.". I believe we have elected far to many wicked leaders across the board and the hardening of their hearts this time is beyond the influence of letters and calls. The only way to have true influence for righteousness in 2009 is through prayer. We have much more power in prayer than we want to realize. The greatest turn around's in history were done in prayer. Daniel faced living in a fallen pagan god less culture. He was even instructed legislatively to not pray. But thank God he prayed anyway and at that, he prayed 3 times a day. Eventually through many overwhelming circumstances he was arrested and delivered and the wicked that surrounded the king were removed and righteousness was established. It just took a couple key people and God moving through prayer. But the solutions were all grounded in prayer.

When I get these petitions to sign, request to respond and to call and write, all I get in my spirit to do is PRAY.
My prayer in 2009 for the hope of the next generation and of course this present generation is to pray to have the Lord take away the wicked before the king. Perhaps the cost for some of us is LION den time or jail time. I hope not, but it just might be that kind of a day sooner than we want to realize. We are in difficult times and as a whole the American people have abandoned God and have elected a majority of godless leaders who are now in authority. The prevailing philosophy of these leaders is offerings social solutions to spiritual problems to a sin sick culture. If we want public education to improve we must return God to the public square. If we want medical conditions to improve than we must return moral values to the public square. If we want crime to reverse it's course we need to clean up the airwaves and entertainment venues that include immoral music, movies and the violent gaming industries. The list could go on and on, but true change that is needed now is not more legislative motions, but revival and reformation of the hearts of the people of our American culture.

So my hope and prayer is to rely upon the gospel of Christ thru prayer to see the transformation of one heart at a time. As I pray for the wicked to be removed from authority I hope you might join me in 2009 with more closet time prayer for the leaders in position of authority over us.

Have I grown weary of fighting? No! , but rather I am realizing in this season the Lord would have me do more fighting in the prayer closet and less time in the writing of petitions. Let us all pray for revival and Righteousness to be established again in personal encounters. This is truly our only hope now, that we might be established once more in America as a people of righteousness.