Creatio Ex Nihilo

Decisions: Are You Out of Your Mind?

A message from the James 1:1-9 by Don Heatley from Vision Community Church 2/22/09

Let me tell you the story about Fred, a man who made many decisions throughout his life.  When Fred was a child, he decided to become a great baseball player.  In school, he decided to become a straight-A student.  In his twenties, he decided he was going to ask the girl of his dreams to marry him.  In his thirties, he decided to write that novel he always had in he back of his mind.  As he approached his forties, he regretted that he could not play a musical instrument, so he decided to learn to play the guitar.  As Fred moved deeper into middle age, realizing that he had no spiritual center, he decided to go back to church and get connected with God.

One might say he was a decisive man.  He had made many decisions. Yet if you looked at Fred’s life when he turned sixty, you would discover that he never played baseball.  He never excelled at school or continued to college.  He never married that girl. He never wrote that novel.  He never learned to play the guitar.  He never got connected with God. 

How did that happen?  After all, Fred had made all those decisions throughout his life.

The problem was, Fred never acted on his decisions.  Decisions are meaningless without action.  You can do the most detailed analysis of every dilemma you face.  You can weigh every pro and con, consult every expert.  You can even be absolutely sure in your own mind that you have come to the right conclusion or made the right choice.  However, if you never take the steps to act on that decision, it was all pointless.

Decisions: Stop Yelling at Your GPS

“Stop Yelling At Your GPS”

A message from the 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 by Don Heatley from Vision Community Church 2/15/09

As Prince once said, “dig, if you will, a picture.”  Imagine riding in the passenger seat of a friend’s  brand new SUV on your way to a concert.  It’s the kind of high-tech vehicle in which you can give verbal commands to the sound system and it plays the file you want.  Each passenger can listen to a different radio station, maybe even watch a different DVD.  There are cup holders, storage compartments and power outlets everywhere.  Most importantly, your friend’s new vehicle has a navigation system.  She has entered your destination into the system and periodically a lovely female voice chimes into your conversation, “Turn left on Highway 211 in 500 ft.”  Or “prepare to bear left in .8 miles.”  Nothing unusual, just an everyday event.

Now imagine that every time the computer voice speaks, your friend talks back to it.  Not a simple thank you, but actually argues with the computer.  During the silence before each command, she says things like, “I hope the next instruction is to turn left.  Please say turn left.  Please make my destination be on the left.”   A few moments later, the navigation system responds, “Turn right.”  Your friend is angry and complains, “Why?  Why turn right?  I wished for a left turn and you didn’t grant my wish!  I wanted a left turn!”

It sounds absurd.  Why would anyone do such a thing?  Yet the scenario I just described is an accurate depiction of our prayer lives.  For many of us, prayers are wish lists of things we would like to see occur.  Not listening for God’s guidance, we think that by informing God of things we would like to see happen, God will somehow make them occur.  If we really want something to happen, we “pray harder,” which we’re not even sure what that is but we’re pretty sure it involves squinting really hard.

Decisions: Signs Along the Way

A message from the Book of Judges 6:33-40 by Don Heatley from Vision Community Church 2/8/09

The first time I read the story of Gideon’s fleece, I was so excited.  It was a beautiful Spring evening when I was about twelve years old.  Months earlier, I had gone forward at an altar call and decided, with little understanding of what I was getting myself into, to become a follower of Jesus.   Afterwards, I learned that one thing that Jesus people were supposed to do was read their Bible everyday.  So I went into a Bible bookstore and bought a copy of “The Way,” a very seventies-ish modern paraphrase of the Bible.  In its opening pages was a chart designed to help you read through the whole Bible in a year, which is exactly what I set out to do.  This explains why I was reading the Book of Judges and the story of Gideon.

I read that story about Gideon putting out a fleece to determine whether or not God would give him victory in an upcoming battle.  First he put it out and said, “Hey God if when I wake up tomorrow, the fleece is wet and the ground around it I dry, I’ll know you’re with me.”  Sure enough, he wakes up the next morning and that is the case.  Still, it is not good enough for Gideon.  He wants to make sure.  So next he asks for the reverse, that the fleece will be dry and the ground around it be wet.  Once again, God passes his test.  So that emboldens Gideon to go out into battle.  God had given him a direct sign that God was with him, that Gideon’s actions and decisions were the right ones.

25 Specific Things About Me

25 Things Specific Things About Me

by Don Heatley 

1. As a child, I appeared on the short-lived “Lee Harvey Oswald Variety Hour.”  It was cancelled after the notorious “parking garage episode.”
2. When viewed in your car’s side view mirror, I am closer than I appear.
3. In high school I was a pole-vaulter, but was discouraged to discover my school did not have a track team.
4. I always wanted to spend years of hard work, sacrifice and practice to learn an impressive sounding skill for the sole purpose of including it lists such as this.
5. I like my coffee with cream and sugar, but not mixed together.
6. I am distant relative of Wink Martindale, as are you.
7. My dream job would be billionaire.  I have sent out a few resumes but no one is hiring at this time.
8. In the early eighties, I received a patent for developing a method to make Studs Terkel water-soluble.
9. I would like to live in an assisted care facility in my twenties and move into the workforce when I am seventy.
10. I wanted to vote for Obama, because I thought Simon was too hard on him, but I forgot what number to call in on.
11. My biggest phobia is speaking in private.
12. I am imploring all my Facebook friends – no matter what - do not think of 10 gibbons in rubber bathing caps bouncing on a trampoline.
13. I don’t believe in global warming but have recently become concerned about global pureeing.
14. I am often referred to as the 5,645,102,839th Beatle
15. I have never watched Found, 48 or Canadian Outcast.
16. When people first meet me, they think I am shy, introspective and aloof.  However, after knowing me a few years, they discover instead that I am introverted, withdrawn and distant.
17. When I was born, the doctors told my mother I was not expected to live much past the age of 98.
18. I can crack my molars.
19. I believe government should be big enough to keep its citizens safe and keep law and order, yet small enough to be shipped in a mailing tube.
20. In 1975, as editor of my Junior High newspaper, I won an investigative journalism award for my piece exposing Tom Bosley’s role in an elaborate $50 Fonzi scheme.
21. My favorite wine is Château de Pretenteaux with strong woodsy overtones of questioning absolute truth, aromatic hints of man finding meaning through the contextual setting of the text, and a smooth finish of berries.
22. I have traveled extensively throughout the upper 48 states.
23. The one thing I would like to do before I die is not die.
24. When I was single and dating, I was often slapped by young women for discussing my proposed stimulus package.
25. In ten years, I see myself writing my appointments on a 2019 calendar.

Decisions: Destinations

"Destination – Fruit" a message from Galatians 5 by Don Heatley from Vision Community Church 2/1/09

Over the past few weeks, we have explored how we, as followers of Jesus, are to make our decisions.  First and foremost, we learned how critical it was that our decisions be rooted in the will of God.  Although we saw the importance of aligning our lives with God’s purposes in the world, we discovered that there may be many right answers within that will.  Remember, we are called to have our minds transformed to be more Christ-like.  Last week we examined the sources of wisdom that God has given us to develop that mind of Christ.  Our Scriptures, illuminated by the wisdom of those who journeyed before us and the gift of Reason is the place we look and listen for wisdom.  We listen to hear resonances and dissonances that guide us in our discernment process.   As we saw, that is why our church is so vital to our lives, because this community of faith is a repository for all those sources of our wisdom.  Even all these wonderful elements are not enough to help us make good decisions.

Making a big decision in life is a journey.  It is like a trip on which we seek directions.   Getting directions is a lot easier than it used to be.  Just a few short years ago, we relied upon roadmaps.  I remember going on family vacations, driving, getting lost and breaking out the roadmap.  Problem was,it seemed we always seemed to be stored in the car that we were not.  When we were in Pam’s car, it was in mine.  When we were in my car, it was in Pam’s.  If we were lucky, and the map was in the same car as us, we then faced the challenge of figuring out where we were on the map.  That usually took about five minutes, all the while we were usually heading even further in the wrong direction.   Even if we could figure out where we were and where we wanted to be and determine a route to get there, we were then faced with the ultimate challenge of folding the map back up.  That was even harder than reading the map in the first place.