To those who have read some of my blog posts, you know that I’ve been renewed in my faith and it has deeply affected my life in every aspect. So much so, that I’ve been compelled to write a few blog posts about some of the great things that God has done in my life. It dawned on me this morning (pun intended) as I drove to the office that it has been one year since I first walked into LifeGate Church in Villa Rica and met some of the people who would help change my life. It has been one awesome and eventful year and I don’t think any of it would have happened had I not found a home that was welcoming, safe, and lead by people who are genuine in their love of the Lord and their love for His church.
I’ve grown more as a man, husband, father, and friend in this past year than any other span of time in my life and that is because of His Word, the teaching of the Pastors at LifeGate, and the people God has put into my life. I have seen long-lost friendships renewed, a marriage brought back from the edge of divorce, and a life once thought ordinary shown to be nothing less than extraordinary. My eyes were opened to all of the blessings in my life that I had never seen for their true worth; for what really matters. I was broken, lost, and chasing after things in life that had no value other than the value popular culture places on them, but all of that has changed now.
A few weeks back, I wrote a blog about how my marriage has changed over the course of this past year and one of my friends at church, after reading it, commented that he thought Pastor Tony’s Wednesday Night message mirrored some of the points I made in my blog and that maybe Pastor T had read my blog and somehow infused some of those points into his message. He made the same point to me in front of Pastor T that Sunday after the service and I didn’t realize it at that moment, but on the ride home, I realized that the inverse of his comments were true. It wasn’t my blog post thoughts and musing coming out of Pastor T, it was his teaching of the Word permeating my life and manifesting itself in so many aspects of my life that it was coming out of me through my blog posts. I looked back at some of my older blogs and right there in plain text were the sayings, concepts, and teachings of Pastor Tony in every one of them. All of them straight from the Word; packaged for me to understand, use, and apply to my life. As I reflected this morning, I was thankful that God showed me to that church lead by Pastor Tony and Pastor Sheryll; He knew the type of people and the type of leaders that I needed to shake me off my path and return me to the path that leads to the life He intended for me. I like to walk up to Pastor T and say to him, “If I haven’t told you in a while, Thank You”, to which, he usually just thanks me back; I guess some things don’t require a bunch of explanation.
More than any one person at LifeGate, I have spent more time with Matt Shaffer than anyone else and I think there has been divine intention in that as well. Matt is a quirky guy whose mind is always going in a hundred different directions at a thousand miles an hour. It is the cut of his snowflake, most assuredly. He is an exceptionally talented musician and musicians are typically wired a little differently than I find myself to be, but there is not a more loving person on the planet, I am sure. Matt loves people unconditionally and without reservation. When Matt meets you and talks to you for the first time, he already loves and cares about you and will just pour that love out onto you like a 3 year old at his first attempt at putting syrup on his own stack on pancakes. For someone like me, that was a whole new experience. I didn’t know how to handle it and I assumed it was just a façade; nobody just loves other people they just met like that, are you kidding me, c’mon. When I first started playing with the Worship Team Matt (and his wonderful wife) lead, I was apprehensive because I was afraid to get a “behind the scenes” look at them, the church, and the Pastors. I was afraid that once I got a look behind the curtain, that I would see how the gears meshed and discover all that glitters is not gold. And man, I was watching to, like a hawk, waiting for them to slip up, let their hair down, and talk bad about someone on the worship team or a church member, to gossip about “so and so”, for the Pastors to be mean and demanding when the lights went off and the microphones went silent, but it never came. Not once, not even a little, not even a “gray” area. What, are you kidding me? Nope, it never came and resigned myself to the fact that these people were walkers of the talk and they do so without effort. A football coach famously once said at a postgame interview when referring to the other team, “They ARE who we thought they were.” Yes they are. They are people who exceeded my understanding of what it means to be genuine and Godly. I love Matt. I love his quirkiness and everything that makes him the man that I draw so much inspiration from. When people talk about wanting to emulate others, wanting to have some of what “they” got, I think of Matt Shaffer and how he loves and treats people. At Thursday night rehearsal when the sheet music from Planning Center is in the key of A and we jump into the first song and everyone but me is in Bb, I smile and laugh, not out of frustration, but because I love the guy and I know when he walks over to me and asks, “Are you playing because I can’t hear you in my “ears’”, that I’m going to say “Yeah” even when I’m not playing at all!
There are so many inspiring people in my life now, that it truly is God sent. I was “chatting” with a friend on Facebook late last night and it just struck me how God has put all of these people in my life to help me on this journey and that if we accept Him, we will never be alone in this walk. It is akin to bowling when they put those inflatable bumpers in the gutters; no matter how erratic we are in our walk, God has lined our path with the people we need to steer us back on course. I am thankful for all the bumpers in the gutters; I need them often. I’m thankful for Cheri who teaches me not to be afraid of falling down, but to be fearful of not having the faith to stand back up, to know that doing it on my own is a losing proposition, and that it’s in the tiniest pieces of Grace that God shows you that you are His favorite. I’m thankful that my wife didn’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and that I’m learning to be a better husband by being surrounded by men who have great marriages. I’m thankful for great leaders that God has put in place at LifeGate for it is their leadership that has put all of these people in place to build this great foundation and change people’s lives. On those tough days, just know that what you do, does, in fact, change people’s lives forever. I would be remiss not to thank all of those people for what they have done for me, my wife, and our family over the past year; you gained a two-fingered tone deaf bass player with no natural sense of rhythm and I gained a whole new life. I win. As Abi would say, “Go Jesus”. So, if I haven’t told you lately, Thank You All.
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