Dan Byl

Tracy Chapman, Change

If you knew that you would die today,
Saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that love can break your heart
When you’re down so low you cannot fall
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around,
Makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change?
Makes you change?

If you knew that you would be alone,
Knowing right, being wrong,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings up pain that can’t be soothed
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around,
Makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change?
Makes you change?

Are you so upright you can’t be bent?
If it comes to blows are you so sure you won’t be crawling?
If not for the good, why risk falling?
Why risk falling?

If everything you think you know,
Makes your life unbearable,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you’d broken every rule and vow,
And hard times come to bring you down,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would die today,
If you saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you saw the face of God and love
If you saw the face of God and love
Would you change?
Would you change?

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The other day a friend and me had a little run in with a person from a group that is involved with a lot of organized crime. We happened to find our selves on “their” dock, and they did not seem to like us being there. This particular person came out to the end of the dock we were sitting on and told us to get the @#$% of his dock, and proceeded to punch me in the side of the head.

I promptly started defending my self he then tried to push me in to the lake so I knocked his hands away, and made a fist to drop this guy. That’s when I saw it, the vest that he was wearing had a badge on it. The badge of a well-connected and dangerous group of criminals. Frustrated I doped my fist and watched as he turned and punched my buddy in the head. He had seen the badge and blocked the punches as best he could with out ever raising a hand against the aggressor. We then proceeded to leave as fast as we could.

The thoughts that comes to mind after a bit of reflection on the whole situation are these, first, organized crime is so eighties, GET OVER IT. Second is how do we walk out with the authority that we have as sons and daughters of Christ, I mean this guy belongs to a bunch of punks that think they own the world, and just because he had that vest on me and my friend who could have tuned this guy (like an expensive guitar) with out thinking twice didn’t lift a hand.

We walk around this world with the almighty backing us. Should we get vests too? That might not fly to often I find myself hiding my beliefs or worried what people will think if they found out that I am a Christ follower. Should we not walk out everything we do with the boldness that this guy had. With the confidence to walk up to two guys bigger then him and just start swinging.

I know that we are called to walk in love, so why don’t we walk up to the people around us and love them, let the people around us know that we care, that we love them because that is what Christ has asked us to do.

That looks different in every situation, but I think that we can walk away from every situation leaving people feeling loved.

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Well I said I would tell you about the Nothing box, so here it is the profound truth about the nothing box, the man’s favorite place. I have been watching a DVD series called Laugh Your Way To A Better Marriage, by Mark Gungor. Every person on earth should watch this not just married people.

In one of the DVD’s he talks about a man’s brain and a woman’s brain and the difference. One of the significant differences is this, In a mans brain there is a box for everything, none of the boxes touch, and there is one box in particular that man loves more then any others. It is the box that if given the option he will default to every time. This box is, you guessed it, the nothing box.

Now in this box there is nothing, there are no thoughts, There are no pictures;,there is nothing. They have done a study and found that a man is capable of thinking about absolutely nothing and still breath. That is why men can do nothing for hours on end and love it, We will sit in font of the T.V. for hours with out actually watching anything. We can play video games and ignore the world for days, this is the reason a man can enjoy fishing.

I thought this was funny, I had never really thought about it, I guess I was in my nothing box. But when I am stressed I run to my nothing box, the place where I don’t have to think about the thing that is stressing me out, My wife will ask me what I am thinking about and often my answer is nothing. I often wondered why there was nothing there and now I know. And now she knows that it is not that I don’t want to talk to her, it’s really that I am actually thinking about nothing.

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I have a confession to make. I often am not listening to you speak, I am just being polite till it is my turn to speak again.

Yes unfortunately this is true. Do you ever find that this is something you do? I do this all the time. I will say something, the person across from me will say something, and almost as soon as they begin, I am conceiving a way to prove my point to them again. I am not listening to what they have to say, I am running around my mind finding facts and data, to support my claim. And then I am chomping at the bit, hoping they finish blabbing soon so that I can try and prove my point again.

This probably sounds way worse then it actually is, almost everyone I know is guilty of doing this. We as people want to be right and we feel that the more time we spend talking rather listening is a somehow a gage for how right we must be. Because if we were wrong then we would have to listen to the other person inform us.

Solomon, the wisest man in the world, said that a wise man says little, and that even a fool who remains silent will look wiser then a wise man that talks lots.

So next time you are having a conversation, count how many times you are just waiting for your turn to talk and then ask your self why?

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How much time a week do you spend researching or studying something that is just for you. Not actual homework, or something you have to do, but something you want to do? I am realizing that my most interesting friends are all people that read books, that are in pursuit of some sort of understanding and are passionate about something, anything really. Not just going through life, deflection and surviving.

I have realized that even if I am not passionate about what the person in front of me is passionate about, I can get right into what it is they are doing, their passion is contagious. I want what they have. The thing that I have to watch is that I don’t just jump into everything that everyone is passionate about and spread my self so thin, that I end up losing my passion all together.

Pick something, anything and start learning about it, and I guarantee that if it isn’t something you can actually personally be passionate about, it will lead you so something, that may lead you to something that you can actually be passionate about. And when you find that thing your life will explode, no not literarily, you will find you have more energy, more life, more desire to do everything.

Begin to ignite that passionate side of you.

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I don’t like this statement at all. Because if everyone in the world were perfect, I wouldn’t get angry, I wouldn’t get hurt, I wouldn’t feel rejected and my life would be perfect. So what it really comes down to is that everyone should start being perfect and then life wouldn’t be so hard.

How many of us secretly believe or at least desire this to be true? I know I do, way more often then not. “The reason I am mad is because YOU made me this way.” It’s actually a funny statement when our emotions and feelings aren’t connected to it. So why do we default to this statement whenever we get hurt, or get angry? The reason is, it is so much easier for someone else to change then it is for us to change.

I wrote earlier in a previous post that, working on our crap is like surgery without anesthetic. I still believe this to be true, and every person that I have asked about this believes it to be true as well, or has some idea of what I am talking about.

I know that if I want any of the relationships I am in to work, if I want to grow as a person, if I want to begin to walk out what God has called me to do in my life, it has to start with me. I have to ask God what lies I believe about me, and what his truths are about what I believe and the way he sees me. I have to be willing to let down my walls or at least open the door so that God can come in and start to work in me. I don’t want to get all cliché but sometimes there really is no better way to say it. The only way to work on our crap is to let God do it. I don’t know my head from my @$$ most days so why would I know how to fix me.

There really is only one way, and its not self help books.

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