Troy A. Brewer's Blog, page 356

Overcoming The Drama and The Trauma

 

In 1982 a bunch of my knucklehead teenage friends and I swarmed onto my mother’s house like a cloud of locusts. We ravaged everything in the refrigerator, fell onto the couches and turned on the tube.

This is back before any of us had satellite or cable, much less the web or smart phones, so a live event on the five or six channels we had was a really big deal.

Oh there were the Saturday night watches with Fritz Von Erik and Rocky Johnson. Every now and then Evil Kanevil would jump over something cool or one of the Wallendas would walk a tight rope but this was legit!

A South Korean fighter named Deuk Koo Kim was going to brawl for a title fight with Ray “Boom Boom" Mancini. Mancini predicted it would be “all out war” and Kim threatened somebody could even die.

I remember the room and the fight like it was yesterday. Long hair, caps and cowboy hats, cutoff blue jean shorts, boots and shoes all over the floor. The strong thick accents in contrast to Sugar Ray Leonard’s smooth and professional commentary. The image of Caesar’s palace through the flicker of the television and my goodness, what a fight it was.

For the first nine or ten rounds, the two warriors went toe to toe and they were incredibly even matched. Mancini’s eye was swelling shut, his ear was tore open and he even considered throwing in the towel. However, in the later rounds Mancini somehow found the strength to dominate and just started throwing way more punches. In the beginning of the 13th round Mancini ran across the ring and charged Kim hitting him with a flurry of 39 punches. Kim somehow came back and fought just as hard. When the fighters came out for the 14th round, Mancini literally ran at Kim again, charged forward and hit Kim with a solid right. Kim reeled back, Mancini missed with a left, and then Mancini hit Kim with another hard right. Kim went flying into the ropes and his head plowed into the canvas. Somehow, the warrior Kim managed to rise unsteadily to his feet, but referee Richard Green stopped the fight and Mancini was declared the winner by TKO, nineteen seconds into the 14th round.

In the midst of all the excitement, nobody knew that at that moment Kim was dying. Later, Ralph Wiley of Sports Illustrated, said Kim pulling himself up the ropes as he was dying was “one of the greatest physical feats I had ever witnessed.”

If you don't know, the drama and the trauma of what happened next, you really should look it up. Deuk Koo Kim immediately fell over and died not long after of a severe brain bleed. It was a terrible, terrible tragedy that America saw live and it changed the sport of boxing forever.

The distance was changed from 15 rounds to 12 rounds which is the equivalent of taking the 4th quarter out of a football game. Ray Mancini was never the same after that and didn't box for very much longer. The referee actually committed suicide and so did Kim’s mother!

It was a royal stinking mess that traumatized people and terrible decisions were made in the midst of the dark drama and aftermath. It happened to boxing and sometimes it happens to all of us.

I think there are unavoidable times in life where we are thunderstruck with the introduction of dramatic dread. Something hits us that isn't on our radar and traumatizes us into a period of time where we are vulnerable to making bad decisions -even making things worse.

This is why you need a tribe. A supernatural family of believers that are full of faith and the Holy Spirit. This is why you need a community of Christians. This is why the Bible says do not forsake the assembly of the brothers.

You don’t go to church so that God loves you more. You intentionally connect with the body of Christ so that you can keep loving God when you otherwise would be crazy. Sometimes we desperately need “healthy” hearted people to stand with us and declare the goodness of God in the Land of the living.

You don’t want your life altered forever or even ended because of the dramatic trauma that comes with bad things. The Goodness of God will help you overcome that and I hope and pray that you are surrounded by Christians who have an agenda for goodness and the love of God towards you.

"Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counselors there is safety." Proverbs 11:14

When The Light Turns On

MISSING IN THINKING

There are some really smart people in this world. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I am however, aware of stupidity which might make me a little higher on the cerebral food chain. Maybe not, but my lack of being able to comprehend real smartness, probably allows me to think so. 

My stupid detector went off at an airport in Uganda on one of our mission trips. After a long haul across the pond and the Sahara desert, I couldn’t find a piece of luggage in the airport baggage area. I went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that my bag was missing and it wasn't on the carousel. I was worried about it because it was loaded with shoes for my orphans and I really wanted to bless those kids. I was leaving from Entebbethat night and would not return to the airport for ten more days.   

She smiled, told me not to worry because they were trained professionals and I could trust her because I was in good hands.

Then she looks my in the eye and asked, “Has your plane arrived yet?”

At that moment I knew I would never see my bag again.  

A CHECK UP FROM THE NECK UP

I was talking to a good friend of mine who is a local police officer. As bad as I have always been, I can’t help but love cops. He was telling me about these funny kids who had gotten into bad trouble and he couldn't decide if what they did was really stupid or really smart.    

He said somebody he knew had positioned his police car in a place where it waseasy to catch people speeding and one day he sat there for hours and not a single driver went over the speed limit. He was sitting there thinking it was strange with all the traffic, when his wife called him laughing hysterically. 

“You’re not going to like this but it is really funny.”, she said.

“There’s a kid about a half mile south of where you are parked that is holding up a big sign that reads SPEED TRAP AHEAD, COP IS HIDING PAST THE RED BUILDING. Here’s whats really funny, about another half mile past you is another little kid holding out a big bucket with change in it and a sign that says “SPEED TRAP TIPS. THANK YOU!”

MUSCLEHEADS

Comedian Ron White says you can’t fix stupid and I pretty much agree with him except I would say, You can’t fix someone who is content with being stupid. Just because you are born a slack jawed knucklehead doesn't mean you have to stay that way. 

I think one of the neatest things I have seen God do in my own life is make me a gifted learner. Just because your not smart doesn’t mean you can’t learn to learn. 

When you really fall in love with God, you fall in love with life and suddenly begin to have an appetite for the next big thing in every way you can.   

I have never been the sharpest knife in the drawer but I promise you, my walk with Jesus Christ has given me confidence to take on the academic fires of the world with my water pistol of a noggin. 

Sometimes a miraculous healing that God loves to do is to fix the part of you that just can’t get it. We partner with the Holy Spirit into being led into brilliant thoughts and really cool ideas. I think the moment when the light comes on, is in fact a God moment. I am convinced God can make anybody a gifted learner of something. You are smarted than you think, even if you haven't tapped into it. Ask God to show you something brilliant.   

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

JEREMIAH 33:3

Troy Brewer pastors OpenDoor Church in Burleson, TX and can be found at opendoorexperience.com   and troybrewer.com

Friends in High Places

1989 was an exceptional year, I think. Not just because Taylor Swift was born, but because of things like The Berlin Wall came down, the world wide web flickered on, and I began a crazy cool marriage to the love of my life. 

Back in the day, two guys in Nashville joined with some songwriting buddies at the famous eatery called Tavern on the Row. They ate a bunch of food, drank a round of drinks, and threw song ideas back and forth, as you would if that was what you did. 

When the check came, Earl Bud Lee realized he had forgotten his money. He was asked how he was going to pay for the meal, and he replied, "Don't worry. I have friends in low places. I know the cook.” Lee and his songwriting partner, Dewayne Blackwell, immediately recognized that the line, "friends in low places" had potential.

Not long after, the same two were at a party, celebrating a recent #1 hit by another songwriter. They began to talk about the title and the idea of "friends in low places" and, "at that very moment, it all started to come together in a song," Lee said. They didn't have any paper so they wrote the song on napkins and took it back to the house for polishing up. When it came time to put it on a tape to shop around as a demo, they asked a guy who sold shoes in Nashville if he would sing it for them. He was a struggling musician with wild ambition and his name was Garth Brooks. 

Nobody had heard of him or the song, but the next year that same tune spent four weeks at #1 on the Hot Country Songs, and won both the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association awards for 1990 Single of the Year.

ALL KINDS OF FRIENDS

I have had friends in all kinds of places throughout my life, both low and high.  I have learned a lot about friends in my forty-nine years. Because I still live in the same area where I grew up, I have friends right now that I knew in elementary school, and it’s a wonderful thing to enjoy friendships that last over forty years.  

Because I am a pastor, I have experienced the great pain of losing friends that I love very much. You do that when you pastor a congregation. The single hardest thing about pastoring a church is knowing that no matter how great of friends you are with people, they can turn on you after one single service or one thing that they don't agree with and never ever speak to you again. I am talking about never again. 

David knew it. That’s why he says in Psalm 41:9: “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.” 

Friends will do that sometimes, so will family. People are selfish and when they don't get their way, they can be crazy. With that said, you might as well risk having friends anyway.  

In the Ecclesiastes 4:10, King Solomon said this: “For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! 

The fact of the matter is that life is much better with friends, and the Bible has a lot to say about friendship. I think companionship and being friends is really God’s idea. Look at these verses about the importance of friendship: 

Proverbs 11:14 - Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.

Proverbs 17:17 - A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 27:17 - Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

C.S. Lewis said, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” He also said, “The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.”

Let’s you and me make sure that we are good friends to our friends. Luke 6:31 says, “…as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” Romans 12:10 says, “Love one another with brotherly affection. Out do one another in showing honor.”

My good friend King Jesus is the ultimate example of a selfless friend. If you haven’t been friends with Him you should look Him up. Because He is a wonderful person to know. 

Troy Brewer is senior pastor of OpenDoor Church in Burleson and can be found at www.opendoorexperience.com and www.troybrewer.com

Valuable Scriptures

A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX

There are tons of biblical and kingdom references in the movie The Matrix. In the second Matrix movie, Agent Smith’s license plate is “IS 5416”, which refers to Isaiah 54:16 from the Bible, and it says:

         “Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.”

Perfect! Agent Smith and the connection to Isaiah 54:16 is nothing short of genius on their part. While the Wachowski brothers were entertained by the scripture, I suspect they didn't heed it as evidenced by the fact that the Wachowski brothers are now the Wachowski sisters. Ouchski!There seems to be a lot of that nowadays.

According to religionnews.com it’s the most shoplifted book in the world. I’ve had several stolen from my car when I was younger. I’ve had prisoners use it’s pages as cigarette paper. I’m talking about the Bible and the lack of value we as a society have for it.  

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Are there mistakes in the Bible? There was in 1631. Two London Bible printers accidentally left the word “not” out of the seventh commandment, which then read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” You can buy a copy for $90k on Ebay. It’s something akin to The Queen James Bible, but for those who like to sometimes “self-identify” as not being married at all.  

The newly produced Queen James Bible, also known as the Gay Bible, has been reproduced with only a very few select verses altered--the ones that relate to homosexuality. There is a growing market for such a book.

The homosexuals are not the first ones to cut and paste their own versions of the written word. They are actually in respected company.

Thomas Jefferson created his own Bible out of scraps from the New Testament in order to focus on the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and intentionally left out anything that had to do with miracles. He didn't want a Bible with the impossibilities of miracles, and especially a resurrection. In other words, like so many in our day, Jefferson was willing to value tiny parts of what Jesus said as long as it didn't confront his destructive behavior or disbelief. Reminds me of the church lady from Saturday Night Live: “How convenient.”   

LIVING THE LIFE  

What’s real is that people are going to live however they want to live, and I am fine with that for the most part. I truly mean for the most part. I am not okay with some things: don’t assault me, don't try and stop my car in the middle of the highway, don't terrorize my family or my friends, don't take away my freedom or my property, don’t persecute me because I'm a Christian, don't tell me what I can or cannot think, and don't tell me what I can and cannot say. 

 

I’ve noticed that people who have no respect for the scriptures are the very people who would be happy to do those things to me and to everyone who doesn't agree with them. Their hatred for the scriptures is an objection to calling selfishness good. The opposite of love is selfishness and this is what people who hate the scriptures call love. 

Self indulgence, self identification, selfishness at everyone else's expense. Anything “self” other than self control because that would require selflessness, which is what the scriptures say the love of God is all about. 

I don't feel like it’s my job to fix anybody or control anybody. I'm known for who I stand with not against. I am not better than anybody. I am responsible for helping people, of any people group, whether they believe what I believe or not. I am responsible for hearing the cry of victims and fighting their cause, for feeding the hungry, for loving and protecting children, for restoring people who have been outcast, and for doing my part to advance and make better every single thing I come in contact with. I am to answer evil with goodness, have mercy on people, and make a tremendous selfless difference in the lives of people I may otherwise never know. I love truth. I love Justice. I love hope and transformation. 

I know this life, I live this life, I teach this life because these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and the values of the scriptures. Value for the scriptures makes everything better and a hatred for them makes everything worse. 

SMOKING HOT

By the way, on that prison thing I was telling you about in the first paragraph; I had been giving away little bibles and found out they were using the super thin pages for rolling paper. So I began to make them promise that they wouldn’t.  

“I can’t do it, Pastor.” A brave young man told me. “I’m bad addicted to smoking and I ain’t gonna lie to you.” 

“Okay.” I told him. “If you promise me you will read this before you use it, I will still give it to as long as you promise me you will read every single word and read it out loud.” 

He said, “Yes, Sir. I promise.”

I told him to smoke his way through the book of John and read the red letters. 

Troy Brewer is Senior Pastor of OpenDoor Church and can be found at www.opendoorexperience.com and www.troybrewer.com 

Apocalypse Now

I really like Francis Ford Coppola. The Francis Ford Coppola Winery near Geyserville, California, is one of my favorite places to visit in that part of the world. His movies, such as Patton, The Godfather and The Outsiders, have helped shape American culture, but one of his most successful movies was one of the worst in terms of film making disasters. 

Apocalypse Now was shot in the Philippines in 1979 as a war film, set during the Vietnam War. Starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and Martin Sheen, the film follows the central character, Captain Willard (Sheen), on a secret mission to assassinate the renegade and presumed insane Colonel Kurtz (Brando).

Movies have been made and books have been written about the disastrous affairs regarding the filming of this movie. Brando arrived on the set more than 100 pounds overweight and completely unprepared. Expensive sets were destroyed by severe weather and its lead actor (Martin Sheen) got so stressed out he had a nervous breakdown and suffered a near-fatal heart attack while on location. He was only in his mid 30s. Problems continued way after production and the premier was postponed several times while Coppola edited thousands of feet of footage, mostly because they really didn’t have a story line, and the movie could have been any number of movies.

“We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.” Francis said. Drugs, alcohol and an entire crew trying to wrap their heads around the insanity of the characters added to the toxic mixture of messed up mindsets and paranoia. It’s a miracle the movie was made but none the less, Francis knocked it out of the ball park and into cinematic history.

EXPLOSIANS AND ZOMBIES

Recently I have been teaching a sermon series called Jesus Unveiled, and we’ve been talking about the power of Apocalypse. The word Apocalypse has been butchered in our generation to mean the very worst thing that could happen.  I remember when Big Tex caught on fire at the State Fair back in October of 2012. We all joked about it and claimed it was ultimate harbinger of evil screaming, “Zombie Apocalypse!” on the graphics we used.

Well, that’s not what apocalypse means. Apocalypse is how we actually see Jesus. The word is translated Revelation and it actually interprets as Unveiling. It’s that light bulb moment or that supernatural bombshell that happens when God shows us something amazing. Some people refer to it as a moment of clarity, others would call it an epiphany. A thought, an understanding that comes from heaven and changes everything. Sometimes it’s as powerful as alightning bolt and sometimes as soft as a whisper, but it’s always profoundly personal. That’s God. That’s personal revelation. That’s the still small voice that causes others to say that it’s thunder. It’s Jesus showing up, throwing his arms out and saying,“Tada!”

The Bible says that if we will seek Him we will find Him, and I want to encourage you to go after the heart of Jesus Himself because the best thing that could happen is for you and I to have an apocalypse now.

JOHN 12:28-29

Father, glorify your name!” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered…