Money…A Means Not an End

August 28, 2013 / mcalcagno / Leave a comment

Oh boy…here is a topic that seems to stir up an emotion charged response from so many people. Whether that response is positive or negative the topic of money always comes with extreme human emotion. So where does God stand when it comes to money?

Money is referenced over 140 times throughout the bible, not including references to other currency, and sin, in general, is the only issue that exceeds money in the number of times mentioned. I have two verses that resonate with me:

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

Matthew 6:24

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many grief’s.”

1 Timothy 6:10

As with everything in our lives, it is a choice…..we can choose to focus all of our attention on where we stand financially or we can work on trying to balance our attention. If we choose to praise God first and trust in him he will provide for us as he knows what we need. The key to this is he is not looking to fulfill your wants but your needs and not on your time table but in time within his plan for your life.

I have tried the shortcut early in my faith journey…I would say to God, “please bless me with this amount of money and I promise I will do good things with it”. God knew my heart at that time and knew I wasn’t ready. In fact, you have heard about lottery winners who have had horrible lives after winning a substantial amount of money in one shot…..that is not God but evil providing those winnings as the evil forces of this world know how easy it is to distract us from looking toward God and will use everything it has to keep us away from God.

If you sit down and really look at your financial situation and look at the needs of your life…shelter, food, water, clothes…and lift it up to God and truly trust in him you will be blessed. If you are blessed with more than you need than begin to share it. You were blessed to be a blessing. If you think you don’t have enough to share start small by buying a coffee or a meal for the car behind you at the drive thru window. If you need more ideas there is a great blog at http://projectlighttolife.wordpress.com/ that I follow and the author Christine has several amazing ideas about how to be a blessing to others.

In closing, don’t let money control your life…don’t let it be the master of your journey. Appreciate what you do have and begin to find ways to share with others. Find ways to put money to work for you and for God by giving and it will come back to you over and over again.

Peace.

Reflect, Restore, Renew

August 24, 2013 / mcalcagno / Leave a comment

The following is taken from my Devotional bible and was written by a man named Bob Benson. I share it because it is an excellent summary regarding the presence of God in our lives. Also, because Bob Benson who was one of the Christian world’s leading publishing executives and the author of six books, he succumbed to cancer in March of…..1986. Yet here I am in August of 2013 and his words still provide a blessing to me this day…maybe they will to you to. Well done Bob Benson…Well done.

When life caves in, you do not need reasons, you need comfort. You do not need some answers; you need someone. And Jesus does not come to us with an explanation; he comes to us with his presence.

We are always seeking the reason. We want to know why. Like Job, we finally want God to tell us just what is going on….

But God does not reveal his plan, he reveals himself. He comes to us as warmth when we are cold, fellowship when we are alone, strength when we are weak, peace when we are troubled, courage when we are afraid, songs when we are sad, and bread when we are hungry.

He is with us on our journeys. He is there when we are home. He sits with us at our table. He knows about funerals and weddings and commencements and hospitals and jails and unemployment and labor and laughter and rest and tears. He knows because he is with us. He comes to us again and again.

– Bob Benson

Peace to you today.

Patience and Persistence

August 22, 2013 / mcalcagno / 5 Comments

Sometimes we all wish God worked like a drive-thru…quick, cheap and efficient? We could just pull in and get whatever we needed whenever we needed it. Those thoughts come directly from the world we live in. Everything in this world seems focused on the quick, convenient, fast and easy…we want more we want more.

My toughest moments in my faith journey…times when I have felt a letdown or disappointment have occurred because I lacked Patience and Persistence.

Patience – defined as “bearing pain or trials without complaint”; “showing self-control”

Persistence – defined as “to go on resolutely or stubbornly in spite of difficulties”

These are two qualities that are not promoted in our world yet when we focus on them we usually are closer to living God’s plan for our life rather than our own plan. I have always been a better husband, father, son, brother or friend when I practice patience and persistence.

In my spiritual life I define Patience as waiting for the Lord. He is always there and he always working his plan in your life even when you think nothing is happening. Every interaction with another person is an opportunity and a blessing. When we are patient we can smile and make eye contact with the grocery store or convenience store clerk. When passing by someone we know we can say “Hi” with a smile instead of “Hey, How you doing?” as we speed past not waiting for a response because we didn’t really want to know how they were doing at that moment. When we are patient as a friend we really listen to what our friend is saying and not thinking about what we are going to say next in conversation. When we are patient we will be willing to sacrifice some of our own wants and needs to help others.

Persistence can be defined as never giving up of God. Things will not go the way you want or just the way you planned but maybe you ran ahead of God and it wasn’t time for you to get that job or start that adventure. Maybe he knows you have some more trials coming ahead. It is not punishment, that is not how God works. He has a plan for how he wants you to use the gifts he gave you and he knows the events you are going to encounter in life. Your job is to learn from trials and pray about them and listen for God to respond. For example, if you need the courage to ask someone for forgiveness or you need to forgive someone for something…pray about it daily and be watchful for that opportunity to be forgiven or to forgive…it will come. Just be persistent about your prayer.

In closing, one of my favorite Bible verses speaks to these qualities it is this:

“I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord”

Psalm 27:13-14

Peace.

Look At the People God Uses

August 17, 2013 / mcalcagno / Leave a comment

While I was thinking about starting to write this blog, I often thought, “What could I have to offer?” or “Why would God want me to speak about him to others?” This kind of thinking is exactly what the Evil in the world wants us to believe. Then I read about people in the Bible or I read what authors like Max Lucado, Charles Swindoll or Rick Warren and Billy Graham have to say about the people God uses and I begin to realize this is exactly what God wants me to do.

As we learn about faith and God’s love for each and every person in the world through life experiences and through the experiences others have written about, it turns out we all have something to offer the world. We all have our own life. We all have had an experience or heard about someone’s experience that was horrific and then it became extraordinary. It all depends on your perspective.

From the Bible we have the stories of…

Noah

Abraham

Moses

David

Joseph

Plus many more….

All of these people had suffered through some tragedy of sin and had extraordinary things occur afterward because of God’s love and God’s grace. Through some of my own life experiences that I have mentioned in earlier posts I have learned to ask, “What does God want me to learn?” or “How does God want me to use this experience to help others?” Rather than asking “Why is God doing this to me?”

God doesn’t “do” sinful things to us…the human race has created and brought about sin all by ourselves. It was our choice. God knew we aren’t strong enough to overcome sin so he did the one thing he could…he sent us his Son. The human race killed him…so God resurrected him to save us all.

So if you are wondering “What do I have to offer anyone?” try asking God and be patient for his answer….he created you, he knows the gifts he gave you. You could start by reflecting on events in your life and this time when you think about them ask yourself, “What did God want me to learn from that experience?” Remember he is about love, grace, mercy and forgiveness.

Peace.

We All Have A Choice

August 10, 2013 / mcalcagno / Leave a comment

We All Have A Choice

Which way to go? What is the right path? What if this or that happens? Maybe I should wait to decide? Life is full of choices each and every day. From many experiences in my life I am beginning to learn to ask different questions like…What is God up to in my life? or How does God want to use me today?

I usually run into trouble when I start thinking too much about a decision on my own and I have been a slow learner when it comes to “consult God first and leave it in his hands”. What I have found is life decisions seem to be easier when I look to God first and ask for wisdom and guidance regarding a situation rather than try to process every “If then” and “What if” I can think of on my own.

I can’t stop thinking about what the apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:10 “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, than I am strong”.

To me that says when I rely on God first, when I surrender to his will and not my own, that is when I can be at my best in this world.

In life it all comes down to this….we all have a choice on how we are going to live our lives…are we going to consult the Creator? The one who made us, who loves us no matter what? Or are we going to continue to stumble along the path of the fallen world and live writhing in sin without regard for what God intended for us? (Been there done that)

We all have been given the same thing…..life and some amount of time to live it…what we choose to do with it is up to us.

May God’s peace be with you.

Music, Faith and Focus

August 1, 2013 / mcalcagno / Leave a comment

One of the most important tools I use to keep my faith top of mind most often is music. Faith based music provides an encouraging and uplifting way to focus on the messages of faith. As I have stated in earlier posts, around Christmas of 1998 I was looking for something different on the radio and I came across a Christian radio station that was playing faith based Christmas music. It was during the Christmas season that year that I began a transformation.

I didn’t know it at that time but God was definitely beginning to chisel away the old me who was only concerned with where I was working, how much money I was making, what others could do to help me, etc. I was like many people focused more on self and less on God. It is so easy to do…..the world we live in constantly encourages us to only be concerned about me, myself and I. Even after Christmas I continued to listen to this station. I had thoughts like “what would this person think if they knew what I was listening to?” As I enjoyed the hymns on the radio in the car to and from work I heard artists like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman and BeBe and CeCe Winans. They sang songs with messages from the Bible. Some top songs from that time were:

Angels – by Amy Grant

The Throne – by Michael W. Smith

More To This Life – by Steven Curtis Chapman

Heaven – BeBe and CeCe Winans

I really began to enjoy hearing these messages every day. I have continued to listen to the same station everywhere I can for the last 15 years. I always have it on in my office, in my car and at home (whenever the kids don’t have the radio control). The kids know many Christian songs and call the station Dad’s radio station. At some point, I don’t know when, my wife started listening daily. The impact this constant reminder has had in my life and in the life of my family is immeasurable.

The enemy uses so many resources in this world to distract us from God and God’s plan for our lives through other music, TV, movies and news that we all need something to bring us back to God. I was just thinking at church recently ‘I remember when I would only spend about an hour a week focusing on God in worship’…..I imagine my life would be very different today if I was still only giving God about an hour a week. That means I would be spending way too much time worrying about things I can’t control, working too much trying to climb the corporate ladder, feeling rejected and dejected when things didn’t go my way.

Hearing the messages of faith through Christian music every day for me has been an essential way to stay focused on what really matters…..how I treat others and how I can serve God in our community. I encourage you to find your source of inspiration to stay focused on God each day. It will probably be trying something new but give it a shot and see what God has planned for you.

Peace to you.

Mission Trip Day 5 – Open The Eyes of Our Hearts Lord

July 24, 2013 / mcalcagno / 1 Comment

We all spend so much time in our daily life worrying about this and that or scurrying here and there. All the while the single greatest command God gave is “Love one another”…..I spent time tonight experiencing an Immersion into the city with three incredible youth from our church. The assignment…we were given $8 and a mass transit pass total for the four of us to eat and get around a specific neighborhood. We were to find dinner somehow some way and as we walked through the neighborhood we were encouraged to talk with people to learn about the city. Tonight we didn’t necessarily “follow” the path suggested for us and because of that the holy spirit was able to guide us and lead us to a woman I will call Mary.

We encountered Mary sitting on a camp chair on the sidewalk in the middle of an affluent neighborhood…..we stopped and talked to her about the city and how things have changed in her life. She told us she has been homeless since the war ended, which war we don’t know. She explained how she had been beaten by people in order to steal her things and her food. She told us about her friends in the neighborhood and she even told us what areas of the city to avoid for our safety! Imagine a woman who has been living on the streets and suffering worried about our safety. We should all consider being so generous. The youth had decided that we should find some food and share our meal with Mary. Again, we had $8 to buy our meal. The only place we found was a drug store and for a total of $6.91 we bought a package of buns, a packet of deli turkey meat, a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale (Mary’s request) and a large bag of chips. We returned to Mary. The four of us each had a bun with some turkey on it and everything else, including more buns and turkey we gave to Mary. We asked her if she would pray with us and she agreed and provided the names of others we should include in our prayer. Eventually we needed to be returning from our assignment so we said goodbye to Mary and began the journey back.

Through our entire time with Mary the one thing I can’t get out of my mind is the reactions and facial expressions of the hundreds of people passing by while we spent our time chatting and eating with Mary. So many of them looked so surprised or shocked and how sad is that…..it makes me realize we all need to do a better job of opening the eyes of our hearts to the people in our world that need our help, myself included. We can’t help them all but our little group spent a wonderful evening talking and sharing a meal with a woman that the world around her has no idea even exists. Help us Lord, help us see the Mary’s of our broken world.

Peace.

Leaving For a Mission Trip Today

July 20, 2013 / mcalcagno / Leave a comment

I am heading out with a few other adults and 20 or so senior high youth from our church today to go and serve others in need. We are hitting the road driving to a city much larger than our own but it could be any city, including our own, that has people in need. Our bible verses surrounding us for this trip come from Luke 10:1-12…

“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house’. If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick that are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’ But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near. I tell you it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”

I have come to understand that the only way we can grow in our spiritual life is to try new things and challenge ourselves regarding faith. There was a time in my life that a mission trip was the last thing on my mind and yet that probably means God was the last thing on my mind as well. I am glad that times have changed…

I pray for our group on the trip that we can all grow in faith and grow closer to God and that all people we encounter will see the love of God through our actions.

I will post as often as I can as we go to share my thoughts and reflections…Peace to you.

Trying to Live With Balance

July 18, 2013July 20, 2013 / mcalcagno / Leave a comment

Reflecting on different times in life I realize the moments that have the most peace and contentment are the times when I was restoring some balance in life. It seems we all have at least four key elements of life that can get out of balance and when they do, chaos is more than willing to show up.

I believe these four key elements revolve around the following…

Physical Life = Time focused on health and physical fitness

Emotional Life = Time with friends and family

Mental Life = Time spent reading or learning something or having an interesting discussion

Spiritual Life = Time spent in worship or prayer or feeding our faith

Now many times these elements overlap, which is great but it can also be deceiving. Many people live with any of these three out of four areas of life getting plenty of time and attention. Eventually that one area of your life that has been put aside will creep up and show itself and we just don’t know how or when.

Imagine carrying a yoke (a wooden frame that fits your shoulders) that has four buckets of water hanging off it, two buckets on each side. While you carry this load, as long as the four buckets have an equal amount of water it is easier to stand and move forward. If one bucket has less than the other three you could still maintain balance with extra effort on your part but moving forward would be very slow. You could also try to put less in one bucket on each side to help balance but as you move along you will not have enough to share with others to help them balance. Thankfully, our heavenly father knows us and knows we struggle with this balance. He sent his Son into the world to save us from our sins. In the bible in the Gospel of Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus says:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden in light.”

I encourage you to look for ways to achieve balance in your life by examining which bucket(s) you have the least water in and begin to fill them with time.

I pray that you are blessed on your faith journey today.

Attitude and Perspective

July 15, 2013 / mcalcagno / 2 Comments

The above picture taken by my wife shows four very important people in the history of our country. They chose some incredible ways to respond to adversity and trouble in the world they lived in.

Today I want to share a poem by Charles Swindoll that sums up everything I could ever share about what everybody should focus their energy on while living in this world…

Attitude

by Charles Swindoll

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company … a church … a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude … I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you … we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Indeed…we are all in charge of our Attitude towards every situation in life. Life is not all about what happens to us…it is all about how we choose to respond to what has occurred in our lives. How will you choose to respond?

Peace to you and yours.