Dependency..a dirty word?

Since my last post I have 1. shaved my head, 2. celebrated my 4th child's first birthday and 3. helped to create stars indoors. The latter is for a Christmas dinner theater that Camp is doing in December. Of all 3 things listed, that one has obviously taken the most time out of my life. I've been enjoying it though. It is designed to be an outreach event for the local community. The 2nd on the list has made me feel joyful and old. Joyful to see the personality start forming in my little princess and old because..well...I feel tired. To some you reading, 35 is not old at all. It's all perspective.. When you view yourself as a college student inside, 35 startsfeeling old. My mom noticed that there is gray in my goatee. Of course my bald head doesn't help any which leads to number 1. I decided to shave my head. I'm not sure why but my wife likes it. My kids didn't know what to think, especially David. He's not too keen on change. Anyways, that's the fall excitement for now.

There have been many times I have thought about writing on this blog but my thoughts never seemed coherent enough to put into words. I'm been very much into "redeeming the time" as much as I can so when I do write, I want it to have more meaning than the trivial events of my life. I guess that the thing that's been on my mind the most lately is the subject of relationships. It seems the older we get we value relationships more but at the same time, we tend to close ourselves off. It's quite an oxymoron. Even in ministry, we want to have friends and make an impact on people, but we almost want to do that without investing and the vulnerability. Ministering from the stage can be a safe place because I can sing and leave. Related to this thought, I have also recently been pursuing more of the knowledge of God..the truth of God..the clinical stuff. However, in one of the books I have been reading, Knowledge of the Holy by AW Tozer, he says that all the knowledge in the world will not matter without a relationship as a foundation. Isn't that interesting. I have to be not only vulnerable with people but with God as well. So many times we replace that "God - relationship" with the doing, especially us men. We learn the right answers. We stand strong on principle. We cling to the truths of God. But we are scared and sometimes lazy when it comes to relating to our Abba. (Daddy) That's right. He is my dad. We teach our children from a young age to learn how to be independent. We want them to be able to stand on their own two feet. America applauds this mindset. Dependency is a bad word. It's a weak word. However, as we look at Scripture, the word dependency is of the utmost importance. Yes, that's right. God basically wants to strip our independence away in order to be dependent on Him. We have no idea, most of the time, how much we need God. We even need Him for our own Faith. (Heb 12:1-2) It says that He is the "author" of our faith. The more I grow into manhood, (oh, yes. I'm still growing into it) the more my nature is to not pray and to not be humble. My kids need to see their dad dependent. They need to see him humble. They need to see his weakness.

And they need to see how Great and Dependable his God is.

"Oh we are not as strong as we think we are."
Rich Mullins