Master Won Ton video #4

Thought some of you might get a kick out of seeing this again.

How to date and not lose your body

When I was a kid I used to cut a lot of lawns, one of which was for a lady in her 80s.  Each time I cut her lawn, however, she would stand at her screen door and watch me.  I always felt like she was making sure I was doing my job right.  I hated that feeling.

I have found that, in general, I don’t like when people watch me do things.  For example, I literally cannot type while someone is standing over my shoulder!

Yet, there are other kids, like some of mine, whose main way of feeling appreciated looks like this: “Dad, watch me.”  It’s crazy just how different people are.

The same is true of men and women.

There are a million ways that the sexes are different, but one of them is how they feel about their bodies.

When is the last time you heard a 110-pound guy ask if he looks fat?  Um…never.  Guess what?  Change the gender and the scenario is commonplace.  Guys are much more in tune with their own bodies, while girls almost feel detached from it.  This has a tone of implications, but let’s look at the issue of affection in dating.

Guys are most often the initiators in relationships.  They ask the girl to a dance, or to go out.  They also tend to lead physically.  They will be the ones, typically, who decide to put their arm around their girlfriend or to go in for the kiss.  Some of this is society.  We assume this is the guy’s job.  Some of it is God-designed.  We are very physically driven. 

Girls, on the other hand, are naturally more modest and reserved physically.  It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t like a guy’s touch, but she doesn’t want to be manhandled, nor does she want things to move too fast.  This is hard for guys to comprehend.  Because physicality is instinctive to them, they figure girls are the same.

So, what do you do about this? 

Fire can burn down a house, or…you can build a fireplace and let it bring warmth.  Physical desire

needs parameters so it can serve a relationship instead of torching it.  For both guys and girls, take some time to design your fireplace.  You can do this whether you’re dating nor not.  Think through what your limits are.  How far is too far for you? 

Don’t listen to the crap you hear around you in movies or from friends.  Think it through for yourself.  What is okay and not okay?  Where is the line for you?  What parts do want to make sure no one touches.  Sounds weird, right?  But if you don’t think about it now, when the heat of a moment comes, you won’t have a road map to follow. 

It may also be good to consider what situations you would want to avoid so that you don’t find yourself compromising those limits.  For example, maybe you have a great basement rec room with a TV.  Being alone down there with a significant other on a Friday night could be a volatile setting. 

Here’s the most awkward of all.  If you get serious in a relationship, I would challenge you to have a conversation about physical limits.  Yes, it’s completely awkward!!!  But when I had this conversation with Beth when we were dating, we both felt respected and felt like we were on the same page because we knew each other’s limits.  By the way, guys, I challenge you to be the gutsy one and bring the subject up first.  Let your girl know that you care enough about her to do this.

There is a mystery to the dance of men and women and this is not to steal from the fun of that mystery.  God cares deeply about that dance and how it will play out in your life.  Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4:4-5, “Learn to find a wife in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like those who don’t know God.”  To me the differentiation he is making is a matter of control.  Holy and honorable respects the other person, treats them like a princess or prince-with dignity and adoration.  Passionate lust treats the other as an object to be used where it’s okay to ignore their interests. 

So, enjoy figuring out the opposite sex.  It’s nerve-wracking and fascinating at the same time!

How to date and not lose yourself

My analogy wasn’t exactly right last time.  I said that “There’s one basket, though, that is more important than any of these and has helped me weather every storm.  It’s the one that is tied onto my wrist and never drops.”

It’s not really on my wrist.  It’s not just another basket in my hands.  I realize that I am IN this basket. 

Your soul, your inmost being, the you of yous, like your body, can get tired when stuff hits it.  Relationships are full of hurts.  Even good ones!  When two people are trying to get along and share life together, you will indeed hurt each other (For good relationships they learn to use the process of hurt, forgiveness, and reconciliation draw them closer).

Obviously, break ups hurt, but even when a dating relationship is going well, you are two people with differences and those differences will sometimes hurt each other. 

That is tiring to the soul. 

Sometimes you can feel worn out, like you have no more left to give.  Or you may really think the person you are dating is worth it, but you don’t know how to get past an issue that the two of you are facing.  You are tired.

So when those egg baskets fall and break, you may fall too.  What will hold you up?  Where will your tired soul go?

David, in a song he wrote, has the answer for me.  “My soul finds rest in God alone.” 

If your soul is rested in God…

…you still have something to live for if you get dumped.

…you can forgive your boyfriend’s stupid comment.

…you can keep loving your girlfriend when she’s in a bad mood.

…you can still be ‘ok’, even if you and your boyfriend are having issues.

…you don’t have to be so crazy jealous of everything your girlfriend does without you.

…you can know that you are still loved and important even if you don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend.

…you can survive betrayal and have the strength to find love again someday.

None of these things are easy and they will hurt.  But the song (from Psalm 62) goes on to say, “Pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge.”  Let your soul rest inside God’s basket and you’ll feel much safer trying to carry the other ones.

How to date and not lose your soul

Is it possible?

Imagine that you are living in some time warp and it’s the olden days.  You just went to a nearby farmer to get a bunch of eggs for your family.  You put them all in a basket (remember, it’s old time so there’s no Styrofoam containers), and start off walking down the path back to your home.  The basket is quite heavy considering how many eggs you have.  So heavy, that it will surely make your fingers ache as you walk the hour-long trek to your house.

As you round a corner that takes you through a short cut via some woods, you stumble a bit on a rock, lose your grip on the basket, and bam!  The cracked eggs lie gooey all over the ground.

Now let’s reverse the story and add several baskets.  Now you’ve spread out the eggs that were in the one basket into four.  Of course, you still stumble at that corner, but this time, instead of dropping all your baskets, you just drop one.  Yep, you lost some eggs (bummer!), but you’ve still got three baskets left.

Dating can be a lot of fun.  It can also destroy you. 

So, how do you avoid the destruction?  Carry more egg baskets.

Going out with someone is always going to affect your heart.  While you are acknowledging that you like someone else, you are also putting your worth ‘out there’ as well.  One of the pleasures of dating is that it feels really good that someone else has picked, of all people, YOU to be their favorite.  Naturally, if you eventually break up, it hurts because they’re not just rejecting your taste in music, but you as a person.

There’s no way around that hurt, but there are ways to avoid it destroying you. 

In the egg analogy, eggs are your sense of value, worth, well-being, the sense that “I’m good.”  As humans, we place those eggs in certain baskets in our lives.  If you put them all in one, though, like a dating relationship, and you drop it (aka someone dumps you), you will feel worthless, used, unlovable, bad, or worse. 

Dating tends to make people want to put everything into that basket.  How do you know if you are putting all your eggs in a dating basket?  We get clingy, we stop caring about what anyone else thinks, we don’t listen to other’s advice, we think nothing else matters, we ditch all our friends and sometimes even family, we get overly jealous and suspect others of plotting against our relationship, or we might even feel like our significant other is our reason for living. 

Outside of the fact that if you lose this person you will have nothing left, the one basket thing also keeps people in bad relationships.  I’ve known girls who had abusive boyfriends, but were convinced that if they broke it off they would have no life afterwards or that no one else would ever love them.  So, they stayed in the abuse. 

So, spread out your sense of well-being in other things too, like your interests, your hobbies, your family relationships, your friends, or your talents.  These are the things and people that can hold you up when you hit the crises that life sends your way, like a breakup.

There’s one basket, though, that is more important than any of these and has helped me weather every storm.  It’s the one that is tied onto my wrist and never drops.  I’ll hit that in another post.

Wisdom from a Vampire

I read a vampire novel!  It was my first.  I know it’s hard to believe, but I never read any of the Twilight series, though I saw the first movie.  The book I read was simply called The Vampyre by

John Polidori in 1819.  In it, the main character Aubrey joins a mysterious man named Lord Ruthven on a trip. 

Aubrey is not initially aware that his companion is a blood-sucker, yet he can’t help but notice Ruthven’s strange behavior.  When they stop in towns, Lord Ruthven is very generous with needy people…certain needy people.  If someone is legitimately poor and needs help, Ruthven gives him nothing, but if a person seeks money to spend on vice (a fancy word for sinful stuff) Lord Ruthven gives lavishly.  Even at the gambling table, the secret vampyre wins against desperate men, but loses on purpose to greedy men.

We can learn from this vampire!  Lord Ruthven desires to destroy and the best way to do that is to indulge our sinful appetites.  Sin is such a churchy word to throw around.  This story illustrates what it truly is though: anything that destroys life, love, and relationships. 

Jesus said that evil “comes to steal and destroy.”  That is evil’s goal in our life.  We need to recognize that we have an enemy, and it’s not a vampire.  Our enemy wants to wreck us, to shame us, to make us feel worthless, to get us to go further in our self-destructive habits, to burn the people that love us, to break off connections with others, to isolate, to hate others and ourselves, to not care enough to do much for those around us.

“But,” Jesus goes on, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”  What part of you is taking life?  What voices are trying to tear life and love from you? 

I’m trying to listen more to Jesus’ voice that tells me to choose His way, to choose to live life fully and to love fully.  I have a tendency to listen to the other voice that says, “You’re not enough.”  That

can depress me and keep me stepping away from my wife and the people in my life.  Yet, I’m recognizing evil’s voice more and letting the great power of the Holy Spirit override it. 

Join me in fighting the life-sucking vampires!

Master Won Ton video #1

Master Won Ton shares the joy of his wisdom again :)

Miley Cyrus in Church

By now most of you have heard about the whole Miley Cyrus routine at the VMA awards.  Reactions have been everywhere from shocked to disgusted.  Miley, once the iconic wholesome girl whose poster graced many a tween bedroom wall, now has become the dart board for our moral outrage. 

But I recently saw something much more destructive.  In fact, it’s insidious, meaning that it slowly enters into our systems without us knowing.  And…I saw it at a church. 

Let’s be honest.  Are we really that shocked at the former Hannah Montana’s routine?  Brittney Spears did the same mouseketeer-to-racy singer routine before her.  It’s almost like a tried-and-true formula for kid stars if they want to make it big after puberty.  Sad, yes.  Surprising, no. 

Here’s what concerned me more.  Recently we visited some friends out of state and went to church with them.  In the bulletin I saw an announcement for a women’s group.  In the description of the group’s focus it stated that they wanted to work against our culture’s vision of women as “strident, selfish, sexual, and independent” and teach women to replace this with a biblical view of womanhood. 

My first thought: “strident?  Isn’t that a brand of gum?”  I looked it up.  It means something like loud or boisterous.  Apparently, that’s bad.  Sorry for you extroverts. 

“Selfish”?  Ok, I get that one.

Now here’s the kicker: “sexual.”  That’s bad, right?  This is the insidious lie that gets injected into our systems as Christian teens from well-meaning people.  When listing sins, sex and sexual are thrown in without a thought.  So, not only do we feel that routines like Cyrus’ are dirty, but the fact that we kind of enjoyed it also makes us feel dirty. 

According to the description of this women’s group they were going to discover the true biblical view of womanhood which is non-sexual.  Huh? 

We do ourselves no favors when we shame our sexuality.

Most of us, especially when sexuality is new to your life as a pre-teen and teen, already feel so awkward about it.  Then our Christian environments proceed to shame us for those feelings. 

The Bible is an incredibly sensuous book that, if depicted exactly in film would garner a higher rating than R.  The Song of Solomon is just one example of God’s delight in the beauty of romantic love and its sexual expression.

Like all the greatest things in life, sex can bless, but also harm.  So, yes, God has guidelines for healthy sexual expression.  But beating ourselves up for our sexual nature and criticizing Miley Cyrus do very little to help us discover this. 

At our core, we have desires…and God delights in us at our core.  Believing in that delight has done more to help me follow him than any wagging fingers ever have.

Jesus didn't like prayer

When I first learned to pray as a kid they were things that you recited. 

They rhymed, aka “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest and let thy gifts to us be blessed.”

They used fancy terms: Who says the word “bounty” anymore?  Or what’s up with “thy”?  (my apologies to Shakespeare)

So, naturally, when I prayed on my own before I went to bed (because that’s when God listens best), I created a format to use.  I would ask for certain things, pray for a prescribed list of people and at the end, no kidding, I asked if I could talk with my favorite deceased relative.  I would love to know what I said to those relatives now. 

This is all very innocent, but it seeped into my subconscious that praying requires some mix of formula and a splash of fancy.

Even when my relationship with God truly become mine when I was in high school, I still felt the need to say majestic or ‘spiritual’ terms.  Yet, here’s something funny about Jesus:

Jesus didn’t like prayer…when it was formulaic or fancy.

One time when he was hanging out with his buds, Jesus told them, “When you pray, don’t do it in a really fancy, public way.  And don’t be like the people who babble on and on, because they think they’re heard because of their fancy words.”  (My paraphrase of Matthew 6)

Mrs. Courtney hit it on the head in chapel today.  I love how she said to just be yourself.  Talk to God like your close friend.  He loves to hear you, just like Mrs. Courtney loves to hear her little son. 

And the really crazy news?  Your Friend is a really powerful dude!