Serve one another…

and everything else will fall into its proper place.  It is the most sustainable model for living ever put forth.  Sadly, in this season when we celebrate the birth of the One who came to teach us how to serve one another, the atmosphere is more than a little self serving. The commercialization of this holiday seems to suck the meaning right out of it.  It has become a marketing frenzy of epic proportions, a competition to buy more, get more and have more of way too many useless things.  If Christmas is a celebration His birthday, then why are we the ones getting the gifts?

If we could just learn to live with a mindset to serve one another, each with whatever gift they have been blessed with, we might find that there is enough abundance for everyone to have it all. What we have managed to really screw up is the distribution of the abundance we do have, and we have done that by failing to serve one another.

Just prior to his arrest, Jesus offered to God the Father His prayer for us.  Even while anticipating the agony He knew He was about to face, His prayers were for us and not for Himself.  He prayed that we would be a unified body, and an unmistakable witness to the love the Creator has for the children of His creation.

 “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.  I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”

John 17:20-23 (NLT)

We humans have a tendency to make everything a competition.  When we compete, there must be winners and losers, and let’s face it, our society just doesn’t place much value on losers.  We have lost sight of the basic truth that everyone has something of value to offer, and that the true value of their gift is revealed when it is received by one who needs it.  That is how we can best serve one another.

I was recently blessed with a more vivid understanding of how simple it can be to serve one another while viewing an award winning video produced by Sharon Wright.  She has graciously allowed me to share it with you here.

When we truly serve one another, we recognize the deepest needs in others, and meet them with the resources we have at hand.

Even those with the least of worldly possessions can have a dramatic and positive impact on the life of someone else.  When we walk this earth with a single purpose at our core, to serve on another, our words and actions can reach far beyond our small circle of influence, allowing the love of God to be seen, felt, and heard.  That, indeed, is what Jesus prayed for.

   ^“As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”   1 Peter 4:10 (NKJV)

When we serve one another, we are becoming the change we desire.  When we serve one another with joy, we shine the light of Jesus all around us.

So what change do you think we could achieve in this world if we celebrated the birth of Jesus by bringing Him a gift?  The gift that would delight Him most would be for us to make it part of our daily lives to serve one another in small but meaningful ways, to serve on another with joy, to serve one another with grace, to serve one another with our time, our talent, and our treasure.

Friday morning I received a shocking email announcing the death of Pastor Leonardo Diaz, District Superintendent and Pastor of the United Methodist Church in Manzanillo, Cuba.

Pastor Leo at the Pulpit

I First met Pastor Leo when he visited the United States and spoke at Temple Terrace United Methodist Church in Tampa, FL.  I really got to know him on my recent trip to Cuba.  Pastor Leo and his wife led the delegation that met our mission team at the Santiago airport when we arrived, and escorted us all the way to our destination in Niquero.  He was charismatic to say the least… a better description, a character!

At first, the details were sketchy.  We were told a bus collided with his car.  He and his driver were found dead at the scene, his wife was seriously injured.  It was not until Sunday morning that I received an email with more detail.  I wanted to share that message with you because it speaks volumes regarding the faith and perseverance of the Cuban people, and of the final acts of a leader who was loved by many and will be sorely missed.

Pastor Leo lived his faith and gave his witness up to the very moment of death.

The message that follows bears witness to that faith and so much more… Read Post »

There is a dark cloud where our healthcare system once stood.

I would not normally use this venue as a political forum, but with so many Americans unemployed and without health insurance, I felt I had to share with you the reality of what can happen should you actually need medical care and be unable to pay for it.  We have heard a lot about ObamaCare, and I even believe I am paying for it with my tax dollars and increased health insurance premiums (that came with larger deductibles and co-pays), but I see no evidence of it in the real world.

The past 10 days has been a real challenge for me.  I feel as if I have been stuck under a dark cloud.  I was thrown into a world of things I did not understand, that needed to be untangled and set right in order to get a family member the care she needed and deserved after a serious injury.  This world I did not understand (and still don’t), is the maze of bureaucracy we call the healthcare system.  It is a dark cloud at best.

I would like to think that some people fare well through it because they have jobs and insurance, but only a portion of what we encountered can be explained away by the fact she was not insured.  And for those of you that have been deluded into believing that the unemployed, under employed, and other unfortunates are well taken care of by this system.

The truth is, if they are not strong enough to fight the system in the midst of fighting to recover from illness or injury this dark cloud will simply chew them up and spit them out.

It began with a car accident.  She recalls bits and pieces, but was in and out of consciousness prior to arriving in the Emergency Room.  In the ER, the x-rays revealed a broken back.  The staff member assigned to wheel her out of emergency motioned for her to get in the wheelchair on her own.  When she fell to the floor trying, she had to ask him for help.  I know of at least a dozen unemployed persons who would have known better than that.  Read Post »

What’s up with those crazy Charismatic Christians anyway?

A lot of “mainstream” Christians just don’t understand the charismatic movement, though it has been around since the events recorded in the book of Acts.  The term charismatic took hold in the 1960′s as a revival began to occur in some Protestant denominations.  I believe that is because they are more conscious of what other people think than what God wants… so well schooled in the doctrine of their church that they do not have the capacity to let go and let God!  I just love hanging out with the charismatic crowd because when the spirit moves them, they are not conscious of what anyone thinks.  It is all about God and what he is doing in them in that moment – that is all there is.

The charismatic movement has touched all of the predominant denominations in one way or another, as young Christians are seeking a more experiential spiritual life. More conservative worshipers resist change, and because of the actions of some tent meeting con men, may be doubtful when they see the Spirit move upon an individual in a manner that is anticipated in a charismatic worship environment. What this is all leading up to, is something my pastor said to the congregation a couple of weeks ago that really took me by surprise. Read Post »

Today I want to share a bit of my recent trip to Cuba

Blessings & Adventure,

Lynn “lynnibug” Rios

Today I want to share a beautiful piece my friend Shirley wrote.

Spiritual Dreams

I had written
reams and reams of fleshly dreams
reams and reams or so it seemed

Not until I made flesh to be like dead
Could I have
What I had said

“Release the obsessions, the cravings of old
is what my spirit man told my soul

For what you desire is in the spiritual realm
If only you allow your spirit at the helm

Your flesh cannot possibly unlock your treasures
Only your spirit man can have that pleasure

So what is this thing that I cannot see
So Powerful so Strong and softly
Killing Me

It is my True Self my Spirit Man
Warring for me and taking a Stand

“Saying”

You no longer have need of
Fleshly direction
For I have brought with me
Divine Correction

No longer will you write
dreams of death

For that is what you do when
You write from flesh

Your spiritual Power will manifest your dreams
And your flesh can only follow
as part of the Team”.

So now I write Only Spiritual Dreams
That come to pass without a seam.

Written by
Shirley Matta
copyright 2010

To God only, Belongs the Praise!

How did I end up in cyber hell and how do I get out?

I imagine you have heard that when you are on the path God wants and doing the work to build His kingdom, that the devil will come after you with all he has got to impede and discourage you. Well my friends, I have been in preparation for a mission trip these past few weeks, and each and every thing I have needed to do, the enemy has showed up to test my resolve.

This is how I ended up in cyber hell.

It all started with the discovery of over 7000 system errors on my computer, which prevented my antivirus from running. I had already acquired a larger computer that I planned to migrate to after the trip, so at least I was not at the center of cyber hell, only on the fringes. So began the migration project with a computer on either side of me, downloading files to an external drive on my right, and deleting all of the unnecessary files on the “new” computer on my left – about 170 GB of them. I brought that computer back to its pristine state without the aid of those convenient system discs. Then moved on to about 100 GB of stuff on the old computer to move to the new one, including passwords, bookmarks, address books and such. That was my first 2 days in cyber hell, and the enemy was pretty p – o’d that I came through it so well.

The “new” computer had precious little RAM for my multitasking, and of course the extra memory card I had in my old computer was not the correct one, so I ordered a 2G set from Crucial, and got back to my mission trip preparations while I waited for the memory cads to arrive.  That was when I started setting up a new laptop computer to be taken to a pastor overseas.  This laptop replaced the old computer to my right, and as I tried to install a few things while catching up on 3 days of email I was behind from my previous adventures in cyber hell, it took me to cyber hell again. Every time I turned around, that little notebook was rebooting… critical updates, more on that later.

What should have taken just an hour or two was dragging into the wee hours of the night again. I was feeling pretty lucky if I got 6 hours of sleep a night through those several days of cyber hell.  Fast forward to Wednesday and my RAM has arrived. I am so pumped knowing how awesome the computer will be once I get that RAM installed!  So I crawl up under my desk to open the box and pop in the cards, and to my amazement everything goes perfectly (except some funkiness with the connector latches) I slide the panel back in to close up the box and get ready to get back online. I push the start button and… black screen with blue box says no signal… back in cyber hell! .

I was convinced it must have something to do with all of the trouble those pesky latches gave me, and so I opened the box up to remove and reinstalled the cards a bunch of times with no success getting the computer to run.  By now I am freaking out.  All that work to move the files and now this computer is dead!  This, I am convinced, is the deepest center of cyber hell.  Next I called the IT manager where I work on his cell phone even though I knew he was probably cooking Wednesday night dinner for his church.  He walked me through some troubleshooting steps and determined it was probably the video card and told me to bring it in in the morning and he would take a look at it.   I was devastated.

As I was closing up the case to pack it into the car, my hand brushed by a yellow plastic button with a black arrow on it and it moved.  Hmmmm, I wonder what that thing is… so I pushed it to see how far it would move.  Click, buzz, hum, the system fired up and worked flawlessly!  Thank you Jesus!  Imagine that, a reset button.  I was free from cyber hell… but not for long.  It was time to get back to the pastor’s computer.

Back to a computer on my right and another on my left.  As I was organizing my “new” computer I was setting up the one for the pastor, loading some programs he wanted and getting all those windows updates that you need when you fire up a new one out of the box.  I was back in restart cyber hell.  I would be in the middle of loading software, and while I stepped away for just a second, windows would do it’s automatic restart and I would have to start my install over gain. I don’t know how many times that happened, but it was 2:oo am when I finally got out of cyber hell and off to bed that night.

Finally I was ready to start on the last computer… another one that was being sent overseas to a pastor in need.  I thought I was done with cyber hell, but noooooo… after the easiest setup of all on a quite old Dell netbook, I thought I was done.  I was doing a final run through of settings and such, and navigated to the mic and speakers to set the volume levels.  You will never guess what happened… I was right back in cyber hell again!  The system could not see the sound components.  I wrestled with it for another couple of hours, finding drivers and updates and troubleshooting tools, all to no avail, and at midnight, I packed it up to take to a pro I know the next morning, to see if he could make it behave.  Long story short, I had a perfectly running deaf mute computer and that would not do.  Would my time in cyber hell never end?

On my way home from work that day I started making calls to find another laptop donation.  I scored!  This one was even older, windows 2000.  I was told it had some bumps and bruises, but ran fine and everything worked, so I ran to meet my friend that had it and brought it home to get started. I had less than 24 hours to get it done and delivered to the gal that would be taking it overseas… and the lions share of that 24 hours would be needed for sleep and work the next day.

I was getting used to cyber hell by now, so I checked the obvious stuff first.  It took me 10 minutes and a frustrated phone call for help just to find out where the power button was.  Within about 15 minutes of powering it up I discovered that the right hand side of the qwerty keyboard (that doubled as the calculator on those dinosaurs), was frozen on numbers and would not release back to letters. I could not expect the pastor to get much use out of a computer that only supported half of the alphabet, and there I was in cyber hell again, and running out of time.

Did I mention that with all of this going on, I had not made a blog post in close to two weeks and my rankings were visibly sliding lower.  The time had come for drastic action, so I did what we Americans do best.  I got out my WalMart card and I went shopping!  If Satan was that dead set on this pastor not having a computer, then I knew I had to make sure he got one.

After I got home with a new Compaq and set it up, I started downloading updates  hoping to correct a little glitch on the new computer.  I had set it for the correct time zone, U.S. Eastern time, but it was four hours ahead of the correct time for reasons I could not begin to understand.  Maybe that’s what time it was in cyber hell.  I was ready for bed as it was well past a working woman’s bed time yet again.  I stopped at the refrigerator to get a glass of water only to find the bread dough that I had gotten out and put back several times over the evening as my plans had changed… (I know what you are thinking, who in their right mind would try to bake bread in cyber hell) the bread dough had swollen to well past the limits of the pan it was in, for the second time.  My choices were clear, throw it out, or stay up and bake it.

So, I am completing this post as the bread bakes.  I am just too stubborn to let Satan steal my bread.  The pastors will have their computers, and while I eat a fat sandwich on fresh baked bread, Satan can eat my dust!

Blessings & Adventure,

Lynn “lynnibug” Rios

I have been to cyber hell and with God’s help I have conquered it!

Have you ever been at a place in your life when you just flat out need a miracle?

Sometimes there are just no good choices.  When Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt to the edge of the red sea, they were stuck.  They could not move forward nor could they go back.  There were no good choices, only a desperate need for a miracle, and God showed up right on time.

Sometimes the best we can hope to do is to choose the least bad alternative and rely on God to come up with a plan.  I have been trying my best to be supportive of a friend who is in that very place, to help however I can, but the truth is that I have no words of wisdom for her.  I have no idea what I would do if I was in her circumstances, and I have no idea how to advise her beyond saying..

“Do what you feel in your heart is right,” and pray for a miracle.

It was not all that long ago that I was between a rock and a hard place.  I had walked away from a very bad situation with nothing, and had no idea where I would end up or how I would get there.  All I could do was put one foot in front of the other and hope for the best.  I shudder to think what might have happened, had I not had faith and trusted that God had a reason for me to be in that predicament, that He would see me through it, and that in the end it would benefit me to have walked through that fire.  Without God, there would have been nothing but despair in my life, and I could easily have given up.

It was a blind faith that pulled me through that dark season in my life, and one thing I learned first hand is that God can use it all for good.  He opened doors I would never have imagined, and miraculous things happened.  I also came to understand that if you never need a miracle, then you can never experience a miracle!  Now, I dare to dream bigger and to expect more.  I welcome the tough challenges and I savor the moment when God shows up right on time.  He doesn’t show up early, giving me cause to doubt that it is His hand upon my success, but He never shows up too late.

It is a privilege and an honor to receive a miracle from God, so it must also be a privilege and an honor to need a miracle.

I suppose what I should say to my friend is “Just hang in there and do the best that you can.  God has a miracle in store for you, so start thanking Him for it now, and be ready for it when it comes.”   The world has worn her down so brutally that I wonder if she has the vision to take that in and believe it.  And so I will pray that she can believe, and pray that she will receive, and that it will glorify God in ways that neither of us can imagine.

Blessings & Adventure,

Lynn “lynnibug” Rios

Matthew 6:34 (NKJV)
³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.