God Smiling

I had one of those moments last night when you know God knows what it is in store for you & is probably smiling.

During a frustrating time for me this past week, my wife, Julie, shared what she thought I should be doing, & even shared the scriptures of Gideon & his story in the OT, (Judges). I was frustrated for doors that I thought surely would be open & have proven not to be. She told me I should rest and allow God to open the doors He chooses and that until I got out of the way & rested these doors would not open.

We went to Lifepoint Church yesterday evening & guess what the message was based on? The exact same thing my wife had been telling me all week. Guess what scriptures the message was based on? Gideon, Judges, I shook my head as my wife smiled beautifully at me, with the confidence that she was in tune with the Holy Spirit, even if her husband was not at that moment.

And then I heard my Father whisper something to me. I have told Julie I have not heard his voice this year that I know of. I mean that supernatural whisper where you know it is Him. I share this carefully & I am never one to say God said this. God told me to do this.

Let's be real. It is far to easy for us to want something so bad that we convince ourselves that God has spoken to us. I love reading Mark Batterson. He often alludes to the inverted gospel. The gospel where we chase and do what we want & then ask God to come in behind us & bless it.

I have surely done it. My life drastically changed when I began praying earnestly in any pursuit. God, open the doors you would have open & close the ones you would have closed. Regardless, of how much I desire them to be open.

God really does have our best interests at heart & it took me over five decades of life to trust that & even then as in last week I mess up. I want to force things to happen. Do it under my own steam.

So here I am God. I will rest & wait on you.

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They Gonna Hate Anyway

Recently, a friend told me how this person in their life talks down to them in the company of others, & behind their back. A third person noticed this behavior & asked my friend why this person would do that. My friend did not bash the offender. They handled the situation with grace & forgiveness.

I was lifting weights this morning and listening to Mary J. Blige. (yes i do on occasion) The song "Work That" was playing & the lyrics in bold below brought the conversation back to light. Don't we all have or have had people in our life that live these lyrics? It is really sad because most the time they lack the honesty to recognize their behavior.


Let em get mad
They gonna hate anyway
Don't you get that?
Doesn't matter if you're going on with their plan
They'll never be happy
Cause they're not happy with themselves 

People often quote John 8:32  And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Obviously, Jesus is the truth. But a truth I believe we must reach is the ability to be honest with ourselves. Only then can we truly experience what God has for us. He surely will not force us. He sends whispers, people, maybe even bolts of lightning, but still it is our decision to look inside. We have to be willing, (gasp) to be wrong.

I have more faults than I have time in this life to write about. But I have something special inside of me I would not trade for silver or gold. I can look inside. I can be wrong. I can apologize when I am. Maybe I learned that in reverse from my dad.  

This morning, Julie & I, were praying before she went to work as we try to do everyday. I prayed about many things but I thanked God for our marriage. For the gift we have in each other. I thanked him specifically that we both apologize easily and grant forgiveness freely. I don't know in a marriage what could be more important.

Think about the lyrics to the song. Sometimes you just have to back away if possible. Maybe it is a work situation & you can't. Just try to recognize that it is more about them than it is anything to do with you.

I can get bogged down with people like this. But in time I make it back to being grateful for the people I have in my life who share any triumph I have as if it were their very own.

They'll never be happy
Cause they're not happy with themselves 

There is hope though for these people. They can be happy with themselves & others. Because the truth will indeed set us free. Make us new people. A new creation. I am getting close to 60 years of age. I have run the streets till dawn. Many high flying experiences. Done things that if I wrote the truth it would be considered fiction.

And the truth is I am happier right now than ever. More at peace than ever. It is not even close. Julie receives a lot of the credit from others & from me. And rightfully so. But it goes far deeper than her. If I would have not reached that moment where I looked inside truthfully and said, "God, I am tired. Tired of doing it my way. Chasing my dreams. I will walk the path you lay out." If not for that she would have never entered a relationship with me. She is a woman of God and he comes first. And I would have it no other way.

So when people can't be happy for you, or they need to prop themselves up by standing on the backs of others. Just realize it is not about you. It is about them.  And you can't fix it.

If Churches Meant the Songs They Sing

This past weekend we attended Beach Blast in Myrtle Beach. Our main reason for going was the four of us love the musical group, Jesus Culture. They did not disappoint. They don't just perform. They worship and with that worship they pull down the Holy Spirit.

One song in particular, Holy Spirit You are Welcome Here,  really made me think. Check these lyrics out.

 Holy Spirit you are welcome here
Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere
Your glory God is what our hearts long for
To be overcome by Your presence Lord

What if churches not only sang this song but literally meant it?


But I am pretty certain we must really mean we welcome the Holy Spirit, and not on our terms but God's. We might have to let go of ritual, tradition, and our comfort levels. What a concept if churches were led by the Holy Spirit and not just on occasion. Not your minister, elders, the ones that give the most money, the ones that complain the most, but a church really plugged in and willing to not only invite the Holy Spirit but to give free reign. Is it possible? I believe so but some hard truths would have to be dealt with. I can think of a few.

Church staff would have to trust God and not their salary provided by the church. That is tough. They have families to feed as well, right? What about music? The very way many of us express worship the most. Sadly, it is as big a divider in church as anything I can think of. The music is too loud. The music is too tame. I don't like hymns. I only want hymns. We have traditional and contemporary services because of music. In essence we create two churches within in one church. Is that really what Jesus wants for His church?

I love my church but I struggle with it. We talked about implementing changes years ago. I never forget one  person saying, "There are two types of churches, relevant and irrelevant. We have to decide what we want to be." Years later we still have not decided. Sadly, that is a decision in itself.

Many years ago I was told this joke.

It is Sunday morning and a man who had to much to drink the night before is sitting on the sidewalk. A nice car comes to a stop beside him and the man driving asks, "Sir, could you direct us to the Church of God?"

The man scratches his chin, deep in thought. "The Methodist Church is two blocks east, but the Jones' family owns that. The Baptist Church is one block west but the Smith family runs that. Mister, come to think of it I don't really know of a church God owns around here."

A long time ago the most spiritual man I ever knew, Horace Hilton, left a large church, to come Shepherd a church with fifty members. It was a traditional Presbyterian Church. He came with a message of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Pretty radical message for that time. I asked him once, "How many members left?"

He responded. "About half stayed and half left." The church grew dramatically because he was following the Holy Spirit. He did not get  hung up over people who got angry and left, and yes took their tithes with them. He trusted the vision that he was shown. Soon, that little church was the most relevant church in the area.  

Think about it.


 Holy Spirit you are welcome here
Come flood this place and fill the atmosphere
Your glory God is what our hearts long for
To be overcome by Your presence Lord

The Foundation & Getting it Right

I am in my mid fifties and I have been married for a little over one year. Like many of us I had a string of failed relationships behind me. I had spent quite a bit of time alone in the past few years and I reached a place where I told God, "I don't want to be alone the rest of my life but if it is not something you are on board with I don't want any part of it because it will fail like all the others." I actually meant that when I said it. Because, let's be honest, don't we often charge down the path of our choosing and then ask God to bless it after the fact? I'm not saying he can't or won't, but it took me a long time to realize it is much wiser to bring him in earlier rather than later.

My wife, Julie, and I met at church where I jokingly say she barged across the front of the church and introduced herself and life was never the same. We had that wonderful initial mutual attraction where your emotions run wild and you miss that person the moment they depart. We even had a supernatural moment where we knew that God was on board if we chose to go forward. It was still our choice. We could have chosen to hang on to past hurts and future fears.

We prayed a lot together. We also shared unpleasant things about our past, about ourselves. That is hard isn't it? You are falling for this person and you don't want to give them pause. I often said to her. "Let's put all our chips on the table. Let's find out early if there is a deal breaker."

So that was our foundation. Honesty, not just about the good stuff we like to share, but the stuff we still have scars from. The things that we are still uncertain about.  By choosing to do this something almost as wonderful as falling in love with each other occurred.  By sharing those difficult things we found a safe place with each other and we helped heal each other of past hurts.

I am no one to counsel anyone. But even I know honesty is the only good way to build anything worthwhile. Push through that fear of hiding things, of ignoring that little voice in your spirit that keeps you from having peace.

I have written about a foundation, a beginning, so maybe many of you might think that this could not apply to you. I beg to differ, because I believe in a God of second chances. I believe you can choose to start over and not with someone else. You can choose to build the foundation fresh, even if it means first taking a sledgehammer to the previous foundation.

You have to be honest. You have to be able to handle truth. And the best advice I can give is when it feels like it is going astray, get down on your knees together and pray. God bless all of you.

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1610091361

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Billy Beasley resides in Carolina Beach, NC with his wife Julie, and one spoiled rotten black Chihuahua mix, Sydny. He has lived in this area of southeastern North Carolina his entire life and many years ago was among the very first students to be bused to another school to achieve real integration.

He shares two simple beliefs with his favorite character in this novel. Faith in God and a conviction that ‘hearts have no color’.

The River Hideaway is his first published work of fiction.

Heaven is for Real

I saw Heaven is for Real last night and I continue to be encouraged with how well Christian based movies are doing at the box office. The theater was close to capacity last night, which considering it was beginning the third week I found impressive.

I enjoyed the movie and I won't play movie critic here, though we are all movie critics, aren't we? Some are just wise enough to get paid to do it.

The part that intrigued me the most was how the same people who prayed for the little boy's recovery, also found it difficult when he began speaking about visiting Heaven. I think it removed them from their comfort zones. It is easy for us to discount what we have not experienced personally. I have heard people say they are comfortable with their church, or their particular denomination, and its routine. I wonder did Jesus die on a cross so we could be comfortable?

It is also resonated with me with an event in my own life. I have shared previously about my Damascus Road bright light moment when I was a troubled young man. I was dramatically Born Again.

Many people questioned what happened, though my life turned immediately. A story like mine, turning from a life of drugs, alcohol abuse, crime, and promiscuity, I thought the church people would receive me with open arms, and some did. Many did not. They turned their nose up at me. They balked at a story of a young man walking a street one night, and hearing, and experiencing intimacy with God. His life changing with the blink of an eye. Maybe they did not understand because it did not happen to them. They questioned whether it was real. They questioned whether I was sincere. Maybe living on probation with a suspended sentence hanging over me, maybe, just maybe I was doing it to fool the law. Secretly, I was probably still distributing pounds of marijuana. 

Now, I always thought there was a God. I didn't believe until that night He met me as I walked gazing at the stars with no destination in mind. But in my worse days I would have never tried to involve God in a ruse like that. Justify my life, sure. But proclaim to be Born Again just to hide drug dealing. No, even I was not that bad. And, I was plenty bad.

They were uncomfortable with the change in my life. Just as many of the same people were uncomfortable with my Mom, who at the age of 53, a good church attending christian woman, also had her Damascus Road moment and was dramatically Born Again. They liked her better, were more comfortable with her being like them.

I was a young man then, and I did not realize how much courage it might have taken for a outstanding member in the church to say, "I never really knew Jesus Christ. I was too prideful. I thought I was better than other people." She changed as much as anyone I know. It did not matter that she did not have a bad life behind her to turn from. She went from a comfortable Sunday school teacher to being totally in love with a Savior. 


Maybe in hindsight it was not difficult for her to be that honest. Maybe she experienced something so powerful, so life rearranging, that she could not have kept quiet about it if she tried. She knew the voice she heard when she was so broken was real. Just as I knew it was Jesus Christ who met a lost young man on a street one night. And, yes, just as a little boy visited Heaven.

The world of Facebook has many drawbacks but one great thing is I have been blessed to reconnect with people of my youth. One in particular is Nicky Pipkin. I told him this story once of what occurred to me after we lost touch. He listened about how the good religious people reacted to my conversion. He said something that I have never forgotten.

"Maybe them not believing says more about their life than anything to do with yours."

Now available on Amazon.


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One Last Time

 

It has been a long but productive week. The file has been sent in its entirety one and hopefully last time. I worked till 2 this morning, (I am a morning person these days but not that early). It was a great feeling to turn the page & see it blank. As in no more corrections or places to trim the story a bit as suggested by the Publisher, which helps trim the price a bit. Julie & I prayed over it one more time before I hit the send button. I hope this does not come off as egotistical. I have no illusions of being a tenth the writer of someone like Pat Conroy. (my personal favorite) But I do love the story of The River Hideaway. There are parts all these years later that I get emotional about while reading. Have to tune that out when you are editing though. 

I was asked before the Publisher offered a contract. Who will read this book? Good question. I think people who are interested in that era of civil issues, though I want this clear from the beginning this is not an historical fiction piece. People interested in racial division, which sadly still exists. People that don't mind a spiritual element in a story as long as they are not being preached at. (I am the last person qualified to preach to anyone.) People that love a good drama, with mystery and love in it, but neither being the dominant theme of the story. 

One more week and hopefully it will be available for order next Sunday on mom's birthday. I wish you could be here to witness it. But I have to believe that God is allowing  you to peak over the balcony. I miss you but I will see you again. And that is my promise.

Blog on Oak Tree Press (The River Hideaway)

The River Hideaway is a story that is based in the area of Wilmington, North Carolina. The time line is 1967. This is a work of fiction and all the characters exist only in my heart and mind. Still, I could not have written this story without growing up in the South during the time that I did.

I was a product of the first year of forced busing in our area to achieve real integration in our schools. My classmates and I left our predominately white junior high as eighth graders in 1971 armed with the knowledge that we would be the kings of our school after summer vacation. Shortly before our ninth grade began we were informed that we would be bused downtown to what had been two predominately black schools that now would serve as ninth grade centers. It was a clash of cultures that proved interesting to say the least.

Wilmington, NC, like much of the south was a place of much civil unrest during my youth. We were on national news when a curfew was installed because of rioting. There was also the famous Wilmington 10 trial. 

As a boy, I was very close with my Grandmother, Ruth Rogers, and had a more distant relationship with my Grandfather, Jack Rogers. They ran a local fish market until I was nine years old.

We were watching racial riots play out on television when my grandfather said something I hold dear to this day. He was not an educated man but looking back as we watched white and black fight over skin color he said a simple but very wise thing. "Good and bad in all. Good and bad in black. Good and bad in white." I did not realize then what gives me great pride today. My Grandfather delivered fish to black neighborhoods and sat and ate with his customers during a time that was not done. My mom said that she truly believed that Granddad saw no color. My grandparents have long ago departed this earth. But there was a time when I was in the work force as a young man and I would cross paths with an elderly black person and as we shared stories I would mention the fish market. It warms me to this day to recall the endearing voice used when someone would say, "Mr. Jack was your Granddaddy!"

I also recall during that time of unrest  recall sitting in the Southern Baptist Church my family attended and thinking shouldn't this be where we bring our differences? Isn't God's love what could heal all of this ugliness? I did not dare voice that. I knew I was in a place where they would rail against drinking a beer while telling racial jokes in the parking lot. My mom once shared a story that a choir from another area visited our church. The choir contained a black girl. People left and that included some of the deacons of the church.

The idea for the book came to me while watching one of my favorite movies, "A Time to Kill," with my best friend Jack Humphrey. At some point I said to him what if this rich white kid and a black kid meet on a basketball court back in the 60's and become best friends? Many years later here we are. 

One of my favorite scriptures is 1 Samuel 16:7. ...People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

One of my favorite characters in The River Hideaway has a belief that 'Hearts have no color.' I concur wholeheartedly.

It is safe to say racial issues have intrigued me for a long time. Next is a blurb of The River Hideaway. 

The year is 1967 and Wilmington, NC, like much of the nation is embedded in racial turmoil. Bret Marin and Money Wilkins, two boys on the cusp of manhood meet on a basketball court where each earns a measure of respect that leads to an improbable friendship.

Bret’s life is constructed around his love for his little brother Alex and hatred of their cruel wealthy father. Money Wilkins possesses no external luxuries but thanks to his proud black father, Clarence, a builder of houses and lives, he has the greater riches. When his beautiful sister Teke visits it sets off a series of events no one could foresee. The most chilling being the dark night the Klan appears.