You are currently browsing the Good News Journal weblog archives for October, 2009.
October 29, 2009 by Sal Termini.
Have you ever thought about your legacy?
Will people say kind things about you?
Will history be able to record that you made a difference in peoples lives for the better?
Will you be able to say, “my life counted for something?”
I have just asked you some probing questions. I fired one question after another at you. Every now and then we must evaluate what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. Let’s explore these questions together.
Legacy - An honorable legacy is leaving something good in the world after you are gone, perhaps even something ongoing.
Making a difference - Is helping to make someone else’s life better, not just your own.
Making your life count - The essence of life is that we lived helping to make the world we live in a better place.
What will people say about you? - If you were present at your eulogy would people say you made a difference in people’s lives for the better?
What we live for says a lot about us as a person. I think many of us never ask the deeper questions necessary for a fulfilled and genuinely happy life. Most people I know just want to be happy and don’t really understand how to live. We have been conditioned to believe that happiness comes from pursuing only our own personal goals.
If we are honest with ourselves people live in a use, use kind of existence. We care about one another but subconsciously we use each other for the goal of reaching our own personal happiness. Inevitably we will find our deepest motive is self satisfaction. We can be sad at the misfortune of others but our main focus is our happiness
I took some sociology courses in college and did some extended study on sociology web sites recently. One of the conclusions of sociologists was that truly happy people find lasting fulfillment when they help others. The core ideal was our fulfillment comes from not just meeting the expectations for our own lives but also bettering the lives of others.
An important moral questions we must ask ourselves is whether we are responsible solely for our own personal satisfaction or are we responsible to help others to also find happiness.
Jesus talks about this interconnectedness when He taught to love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus was teaching us to have compassion. Jesus was teaching us to make compassion an integral part of our lives. He was teaching us to learn to truly care about others and not just on a superficial level. We must make compassion for others a personal goal and part of our overall strategy for our fulfillment and happiness.
Matt 9:36But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.
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October 21, 2009 by Sal Termini.
When I was about 12 years old I used to play in a parking lot with a stone wall at one end. My friends and I were playing army and I was hiding beside this stone wall. I noticed the stones had gold colored flecks in them. I had been watching a cowboy movie where some men discovered gold in rocks like this in a mine. The rock wall I was sitting next to had the same flecks of gold I saw in that cowboy movie. I took a some of the loose and broken rocks in the wall and filled my pockets with as many of them as I could carry. When I got back to my house I laid them down on the back staircase of our house. I got a hammer from the garage and tried to separate the flecks from the stone. After about a half hour I had a small pile of gold shavings.
One of my friends came over to my house and asked me what I was doing. I told him I found gold and that I was going to be rich. I was so happy that my family would never have to worry about money again. I also thought about that big toy store down the block on the main avenue. I looked into that toy store window so many times only to leave empty handed. I was going to buy all the toys I dreamed about.
My friend sat down beside me and smiled. He looked at me with a look that said how can I explain this. He told me that there is real gold and something called fool’s gold or pyrite. He said I found pyrite. Well I was brokenhearted. In an instant all my dreams collapsed like a house of cards in a tornado. I had found fool’s gold, not the real thing.
About 15 years later like so many others I believed in making money and living life to the fullest. I had opened a bar and earned my living by partying all night. I once got a navigator from a major airline so drunk I had to put him in his car to sleep it off. It was two in the morning when I put him in his car and he had a seven o clock flight that morning. My tip cup swelled with five and ten dollar bills. The parties at the bar kept getting wilder and more crazy and my tip cup became a bucket. Some nights violence broke out or people were sick from drinking too much. I saw myself as providing a service to numb people from the pain of life. I once drove a motorcycle around my bar just to get everybody wound up. Halloween was like a freak show as we gave out prizes for the best and worse costumes. I continued to do crazier things to fill the place night after night.
I had several other friends who owned bars, and after we closed at three in the morning we would visit each other’s bars and party some more. It seemed the more money I made the wilder and more discontented I grew. The second hand smoke, drinking, and shallow people were taking their toll on my psyche. One night a friend I thought we could trust betrayed a group of us with pot laced with LSD. It was a terrifying experience. I remember meeting him later that day and giving him the beating of his life.
I did not recognize myself anymore. I was getting lost in a lifestyle that was going nowhere but down. All my bar-owning friends had already been divorced some several times. They talked about alimony, never seeing their kids, child support payments, new cars, and their new girlfriends. Many had liver problems, lawyers fees, DWI’s and been arrested for violent or indecent behavior. We looked like overweight vampires living night to night going home in the daytime only to sleep. Everybody thought I was living the dream life. After all, it was wine, women and song. A false bravado made us feel immortal and we thought, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die.
I got invites to other clubs and met owners who were raking in lots of money but were in the same rat race and predicament as the rest of my bar fly buddies. In the larger circles of power, drugs, violence and sex was the norm. I was once invited to Studio 54 in Manhattan, which was at that time the placed to be. There were famous musicians, movie stars, the bored, the bored rich, and the perverted packed in that place, wall-to-wall.
I was watching the dance floor from a balcony one night when what looked like prison spotlights shined over the dance floor. The people dancing looked like serpents in a pit as the blinding white light cascaded over their writhing limbs. I thought I was having a psychedelic flashback. I fell in love once a week only to find some flaw that justified my moving on. I started to grow hard and even more selfish as I met and spent time with some high powered connected people who were out to get whatever they could get from whoever they could get it.
One cold winter night I had chest pains. I thought I was having a heart attack. While my friends were driving me to the emergency room, I remember punching the dashboard thinking, “I’m going to die and my life has been meaningless up till now.” I wondered where I’d wind up if I died. I felt so alone. I had watched men and women cry night after night in my bar with broken marriages, broken lives and shallow relationships culminating in one too many one night stands and bitter memories. I decided I did not want to end up like that.
About six months later I sold my bar and very few of my so called friends called me or spoke to me again. They just moved on to the next party. When I sold the bar I held the note and let the new owner run under my liquor license until he got his. The person I sold the bar to took the cash and the money he made over the year and never paid the taxes and even stiffed some of the vendors and took off. I received a call from the IRS. They said I owed $10,000 in back taxes. He was running under my liquor license so it made me responsible. He disappeared and was never heard from again. The bar sold again but I left the business with nothing.
One night in December I walked out on the back deck of my house and looked up at the dark sky that was filled with stars. The sky looked like diamonds sprinkled on velvet. I wondered how life could be so beautiful and so ugly. How could you live a life filled with people and be so lonely. How could life be so exciting and yet so empty at the same time. I shook my fist at heaven and yelled at the heavens hoping a god or some power would hear me. I felt empty and angry. I had done what I wanted to do. I had made money, partied, met powerful people, and broke some hearts. What was missing? I remembered that day when I filled my pockets with pyrite thinking I had it all. I could have anything I wanted only to find out it was fool’s gold.
Too many people are caught up in the glamour, celebrity, wealth and power only to be disappointed and broken hearted. They find out their fifteen minutes of fame is not enough to satisfy them for a lifetime.
Today I am rich with truth, and genuine love. I stopped chasing fool’s gold. Jesus Christ found me at the end of my rope and pulled me out of the snake pit. He pulled me out of shallow dreams and selfish people.
The silence is so loud its deafening among so many who can’t admit their lives are empty and are too proud to cry out.
That cold, dark starry night, God heard my cry and came into my life and filled it with truth and meaning. Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose their souls.” I have met too many lost souls chasing fool’s gold. Turn to Jesus Christ and learn life is richer when you know you are loved by God and your life counts. When you start helping others life flows back into your soul. I discovered my life will have just begun when I leave this earth, because I will go into an eternity filled with God’s love. Heaven is a place where dreams are no longer broken and hearts are no longer disappointed. Call on God. That emptiness and dissatisfaction you feel is God calling to you come home. It’s time to stop chasing fool’s gold.
(Matthew 11:28-30 NLT-SE)”Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
Send me your story of Faith in Christ and His love and delivering power.
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October 14, 2009 by Sal Termini.
Jas 3:5-9 GWTIn the same way the tongue is a small part of the body, but it can brag about doing important things. A large forest can be set on fire by a little flame. The tongue is that kind of flame. It is a world of evil among the parts of our bodies, and it completely contaminates our bodies. The tongue sets our lives on fire, and is itself set on fire from hell. People have tamed all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and sea creatures. Yet, no one can tame the tongue. It is an uncontrollable evil filled with deadly poison. With our tongues we praise our Lord and Father. Yet, with the same tongues we curse people, who were created in God’s likeness.
The other day I was watching a preacher on television and he said several things I disagreed with. I then went on to make some disparaging remarks. Another time a politician was speaking and my comments were disrespectful to him and his office. While watching a television show several people were cavorting around in a very godless manner. I made some self-righteous comment about them being disgraceful human beings. Another time I was watching the news and it was obvious this family was in distress living terrible lives using and abusing one another. Again I began to make a remark about their mental capacity when the still small voice of God arose in my heart. God said to me, “Except for my grace you would be the same, if not worse than these people.” The voice was steely and to the point. I needed an attitude adjustment and God was willing to help me.
I have experienced times as a Christian when temptation had gotten the better of me. In those moments of weakness I felt I was barely delivered from evil. We must have compassion on those still enslaved to sin remembering that we ourselves suffer weak moments and should not be self-righteousness . If I stood at all and continued to remain a Christian it was because of the convicting voice of the Holy Spirit turning my heart back to God. I thank God for the Holy Spirit that lives in me. I think about how many times I refused to listen to God’s voice and did something that was displeasing to God. Just as God still loves me and is trying to reach me, so God loves those who don’t know Him and is trying to reach them.
I began to understand Jesus better when he said, “With the same measure you judge you will be judged.” You see dear brothers and sisters it’s not that we are not to judge what is good or evil, but we are not to look down on those who have failed. I have said many times, I don’t know how the light of God’s truth changed my hard heart to love God and truth. I was as sinful and dark as anyone who does not know God. I am deeply grateful to God for not giving up on me. The apostle Peter said in his epistle,
1Pet 4:18 NRSV”If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,Êwhat will become of the ungodly and the sinners?”
He was warning us that even though Christ has forgiven our sins by his death on the cross we can still give in to sin and temptation. The Bible teaches that the whole world lives under the power of the wicked one, which is the devil. The whole world is in captivity to Satan’s lies and he is continually tempting people with them. His temptation works because we have:
I too, was a captive to the devil. I too, was a slave to evil desires. When it’s all you know, that’s how you live. But when the grace of God came in Jesus Christ I saw spiritual truths and principles that transformed my life. Again I say, “If not for the grace of God there go I.”
One of my favorite scripture verses teaches us we are to speak the truth in love. (Eph 4:15) I believe the meaning of this verse is telling us to speak to people to set them free not to hurt them. To recognize that we too have been held captive to the devil and evil. We must remember God loves them and is trying to reach them. I know this because the Bible teaches that it is not Gods will that any should perish. (2 Pet 3:9) I have heard and seen too many times people trying to defend God while hurting those who don’t know him. IÊtoo, haveÊsaid some unkind things trying to win people to God. Jesus said, “By every word you we will be justified in by every word you will be condemned.” (Matt 12:37) I wish I could take back some words that were not filled with love, but were filled with condemnation and judgment. I said these things because I forgot where I came from. I forgot how dark and sinful my heart really was. And when we forget it’s easy to be judgmental. Now I try, before I speak, to remember that, “except for the grace of God there go I.”
I’ve included this wonderful prayer written by a man who probably spoke evil to others and hurt them deeply just like you and I have. Read the fool’s prayer and meditate on how you can share Christ with greater love and compassion.
THE FOOL’S PRAYER
by: Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887)
The royal feast was done; the King
Sought some new sport to banish care,
And to his jester cried: “Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!”
The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.
He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the Monarch’s silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: “O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!
“No pity, Lord, could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as wool;
The rod must heal the sin: but Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!
“‘T is not by guilt the onward sweep
Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;
‘T is by our follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven away.
“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.
“The ill-timed truth we might have kept–
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
The word we had not sense to say–
Who knows how grandly it had rung!
“Our faults no tenderness should ask.
The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;
But for our blunders — oh, in shame
Before the eyes of heaven we fall.
“Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;
Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool
That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!”
The room was hushed; in silence rose
The King, and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low,
“Be merciful to me, a fool!”
-Pastor Sal
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October 5, 2009 by Sal Termini.
About 10 years ago I bought an old Land Rover with visions of adventure. We joined the Land Rover school and did some beach and off road events as a family. We won some trophies and met new people. It was really fun. We decided to visit their more professional off-road school in Equinox, Vermont. There we did their rugged off road course. The instructor thought I did really well and offered me a more challenging course the instructors use to train themselves. The course was to drive straight up a mountain. There were streams, ruts, fallen trees, rocks, boulders, and gullies that all needed specific skills to get around or to go over.
Before we left the instructor said he needed a few things, a compass, GPS, an axe, a first aid kit, and a shovel. He checked in the office but the bag with the equipment was missing. He thought it would be OK if we went anyway as he had run the course several times himself and new the trail. He told us we could avoid most obstacles and if we got into trouble we could always turn around and head back down the mountain if we encountered too much difficulty. So we began and my family and I were having a blast going up the mountain and going over all these obstacles.
When we reached the top of the mountain the instructor suggested I take a rest because it took a lot of concentration to drive around and over these obstacles, especially as a beginner. I agreed and he said he would take us for a walk to see where Vermont met New York state. We hiked about 20 minutes and came to a breathtaking view of autumn leaves and blue skies with great big fluffy clouds floating by. We stood for about 20 minutes more breathing in the cool refreshing mountain air and the beauty of our surroundings. It was getting to be late afternoon and the instructor suggested we start back because it would be to difficult to drive down the mountain in the dark.
We headed back and as we continued walking we all started to feel tired. It seemed to me to be a much longer walk down than the mountain than the trip up the mountain was. The instructor stopped and scratched his head, looked at us with a wry grin and said, “I’m a little turned around and things don’t look familiar. I think we passed this way once before.” He said something about going in a circle but by then I was starting to panic. I thought to myself, is this guy lost? I got a real sinking feeling in my stomach. I was worried about my family because the sun was going down and it was getting cold and we had only light sweaters on. He laughed and said that’s why instructors bring that bag with all that stuff, just in case. He then said something that really scared me: “I should have at least brought my compass.”
It was a terrible thing looking into the eyes of my worried wife and children. I smiled and said it will be alright, lets keep moving. All the while I did not know what would really happen. I cannot tell you what a terrible feeling it is to be lost. The real problem was we could die up here and nobody might know for days. When you’re lost, no amount of natural instinct or skill will get you home. You need a sure guide like a compass to really get your bearings and get going in the right direction. We human beings don’t have a built-in inner compass. Being lost made us weary, frightened, confused, and disoriented. How do we get back without a compass, without something to show us the way home. The most important thing in our adventure was missing and it was a compass. The instructor suddenly remembered something familiar and we eventually got back to our truck and drove back to the lodge.
I learned several spiritual lessons from my trip to Vermont. The devil, or evil whatever you want to call being misguided, tricks us into thinking life without God will be a great adventure. What really happens is we get lost. We cannot find our way, our purpose, our meaning, or the reason for our life. We get lost in the pleasures of the scenery but in reality we are being lead into confusion, fear, and the possibility of losing everything. It may look beautiful, but we are lost and have left behind our compass. We start out our journey knowing we should not have gone without the right equipment. We go because we think God is boring, like the bag of equipment we need to get home. The bag gets overlooked in the excitement and the thought that it might hinder us from having our great adventure.
We go anyway because the lure of adventure calls us and we doubt we could end up in a dangerous or even a deadly place. I have lived my life too many years feeling lost. It is a lonely feeling. I have lived my life knowing the compass was the missing ingredient in my life. I needed a moral and spiritual compass. I needed a compass to guide me to my true home and destination. The only true compass in this world is God. Don’t begin your adventure without Him. Don’t live lost and frightened. Don’t live not knowing the way home to those who really love you. Don’t live your life without that moral and spiritual compass that will be a true guide to a real and meaningful adventure. Don’t live without the compass that will lead you from death to life. I know for me the compass was Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth, and life.”
-Pastor Sal
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