There is a mission field in each of our lives.
Where is …or what is yours?

Is it in your thought life…
where no one sees, but you know.

Is it in your marriage….
where your wife feels it but does not express it??

Is it in your prayer life that gets moved to the front of the priority list only when a need becomes urgent?

 

There is a mission field in each of our lives…which needs an outside influence to come close and minister to us.

 

Some people go to other places and “missionary” to the visible needs in those locations…to feed people, to spread the Gospel…to heal diseases through prayer and medicine.

The fields we see across the country or around the world are visible and these places have advocates to reveal the need and they call out for missionaries to come.

 

There are missionaries who have mission fields in their own lives …. in need of ministry.

 

There are people who you will see today…..you may live with them, work with them, you may have given birth to them….. you will have contact today with souls who have a mission field to which you can “missionary”.

 

There maybe no advocate calling out to you. There may be no visible cry for help…..but you will see the mission field if you are “in their business”.

If you will be aware,
If you will ask questions,
If you care enough to be interested,
to turn aside from the direction you are headed and notice the eyes of the person in front of you or hear their voice.

 

You will notice the mission field in their life.

 

In your own life…
are you telling anyone about the mission field within you which needs attention??

You may need to be your own advocate and announce to someone the present need within you.

If those around you are attentive enough to notice and have hearts to hear… your Spiritual advocate will move them to get involved.

 

Have you felt our Spiritual advocate prompting you to a mission field in someone’s life ….someone you saw yesterday?

Someone you will have interaction with today?

 

If you receive that prompting…
it’s more vital to respond positively and get immediately involved in that
mission field than it is to get on a plane and go across a continent to minister there…..because it’s right in front of you and the Advocate has prompted you to  immediate action.

There is a mission field in each of us.

It’s a hole we need filled.
It’s help we need in some certain area.

Let it be known.

A mission field cannot be a missionary to itself.

 

Terry
July 2016

 

Today…
As we celebrate Freedom and all that is included within it…

May you as a servant of God…
choose to indenture yourself to Christ and His Work.

Paul spoke often of being free to do whatever.

Yet he wrote more often of being a bondservant to His Lord.

As we are free in our lives and in our country
may we choose to be indentured to
The One Who paid for our longer lasting freedom.

 

Terry
July 4, 2016

 

A devotional I read today puts it perfectly.

I see many of you already doing this.
And doing it well.
I admire you for doing it.

You are doing well at a position I have never been in.

Raising your children.

I have assisted in raising stepchildren…
but I was never their father.

I was not the major influence.

You are.

Never allow anything, outside your wife, to interfere with that.

Your children need YOU.

The devotional spoke of how teenage boys do not do well in counseling.

It’s because they needed and need their Fathers.

I have heard this before…. odds are great that if a father doesn’t discipline his son, the state will most likely have to at some point.

Love them.
Discipline them.
For if you truly love them…
you will discipline them…
it’s an element of love.

Give them quantity of time.
Quality time makes no sense to a child.
They need quantity. Large quantities.

 

Quality time is rationalization by a lazy parent.

 

Treasure and train those who call you “Daddy”.

Understand what a blessing it must be to hear that word.

It’s a 20 year task and a lifelong responsibility.

Love them.
Lead them.
Guide them.
Instruct then.
Discipline them.
Be consistent in front of them.
Know they hear, remember, learn and act out everything you do and say.

Great rewards follow great effort.

 

Terry

July 2016

 

 

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He seemed to be about 6’4 to all of us. He seemed to never miss a shot. He walked the halls of Rosemont Junior High School in 1965 and 1966 with every young basketball players eyes following every move he made.

He had been undefeated in his first year at another school, came to Rosemont and won every game in his first year. He was a ninth grade basketball coach…yet to us he was as big as Phil Jackson was with the Bulls and Lakers.

We hung on every word he spoke.
And when he said to my friend,
Ricky Ford, who was a “Troy Aikman” in the eighth grade, that Ricky had caused him to lose his first game ever as a Coach…we all took it as though Moses had thrown the tablets down and broke them because of us.

After lunch each day everyone would walk out onto an open area next to the track just outside the Wood/Metal Shop area until 5th period started.

Coach White would walk out sometimes and literally hold court among us.

One day he came up to our group and began talking with us.
He looked at me and said,
“Terry, give me your hand.”

I lifted up my right hand to him, he took it in his two hands and in front of Ricky Ford, Eric Johnson, Rudy Lambert, Sherman Lee and Don Warren…
he began lifting my hand by my middle finger with his hand, and releasing it.

He did this three times.

As my wrist would flop down he again lift up my hand and let my wrist drop my hand.

He looked around the group.

As he held my hand still in the air,
he looked at me and said…
” Guys ….this is a shooters wrist.
It’s an NBA shooters wrist.”

That was said to me in the Fall of 1967 and I remember it as clearly as these keys I am now touching. I can tell you the sun was bright that day and we all looked at him with awe as he walked back toward the Gym.

I became a very good shooter.

I did not achieve the level he mentioned… but at the moment he spoke those words and for years after I felt like I might.

 

The words we speak to those younger or dependent on us carry 50 years or more of weight and significance.

 

I am still a very good shooter.

I do not play any longer because I do not want to try and do something my mind had committed to memory… but my body might have let slip.

My mind recalls what Coach White said to me often.
I also remember what another Coach once said to me which dripped of doubt and skepticism….but not very often.

What Coach White said has remained
an encouragement …not merely about my ” shooters wrist”….
but combines with other encouragements that have created the confidence that my Creator has allowed me to have.

Speak light.

Whether Bill White actually believed I possessed an NBA “shooters wrist” or not, is irrelevant.
Those words, and others from him,  hit the ears of a group of eighth graders and lifted all of us to a better place.

Of that group, I know three played major college athletics and one preached successfully for many years.

Speak life.

You can cause an effect to be present in a young life and be manifested in a variety of ways for over 50 years. To the positive or to the negative.

It is your choice.

Coach Whites words still resonated within me.

I still see him looking at me in the eyes and speaking.

I still feel his hands lifting up mine.

 

 

Terry
July 2016

 

 

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I am a biased person.

To say that out loud or to state that phrase on national television would immediately label me as intolerant and whatever type of “phobic” anyone could call me.

Webster has defined “bias” as a strong tendency toward an interest. It can be also a simple, consistent leaning toward something. 

Psychology Today magazine defines it as a tendency.

You have biases as well.

Mine are many.
I think vanilla ice cream is the best flavor of any.
I believe Italian food is the best.
Since I was about 12 years old and began playing basketball, I have loved and followed and pulled for The Los Angeles Lakers.
If you, in any way understand that, then you understand why I chose not to wear kelly green. I will not drink from a cup that is kelly green in color.

To me, Gods favorite color is sky blue.
French Toast is the best breakfast food, especially from DEMETRIS. However, I eat it not everyday because I do not desire to look like Jabba the Hut.

My favorite book in Gods Word is The Gospel of John.
I prefer the beach to any other form of vacation.
The Constitution is not an evolving, changing document.
We do not change the holiday celebrated on July 4 because it might be too hot.
Not to equate the two, but the Words inspired by God in His Document to us are good forever and, in fact, there is a warning not to change them or add to / subtract from them.
The Constitution was written by inspired men and it is to be interpreted from what THEY said… not to make up what their hidden meaning was or what modernity feels they meant to say, or what it should say today.

I prefer sunshine to rain.

Up until I met and then married a brown-haired Scottish girl … I thought dark-haired, dark eyed women were my preference.
No longer.
She surpasses every dark-haired female I have ever known.

A bias is a tendency….a preference.

Recent definitions subject to “political correctness”  have added that bias is a negative and that it is a judgement of intolerance toward another way of thinking. 

Sensitivity overload.

We were not created to all wear grey clothes and walk in lock step.

May God help us.

When we are born we are gifted with taste buds in particular areas of the tongue. The connection between those buds and our unique gift of a brain gives rise to what we foods and flavors we favor.

There are “filters” in our brain and talents and gifts placed within us at Conception which lead us to the biases we have. 

Some we grow into.

Some we have from “the jump”.

I hate no one.
I judge no one because they prefer chocolate over vanilla.
I like chocolate… but choose it seldom.
Why not eat the vanilla?

I judge no one because of my individual bias.

I may not agree.

But I will not discount that person or judge that person or be intolerant of that person choosing chocolate, or that they like the Celtics.

 

At the end of every conversation with Muslim, Hindu or Jewish cab drivers, I say the same thing.

I say that my prayer will be that both us will find Real Truth.

Some people demonize those unlike themselves or because the other person prefers blue and orange more than crimson.

That’s small mindedness.
That’s closed mindedness.

One need not judge others because of their preferences.

Because I enjoy the company of one person means not that I am judging or that I dislike, hate or am intolerant of another.

I love the Italian language.
Try to learn it.
Love to hear it spoken.

But I cannot be AS comfortable with the person who speaks only Italian as I can be with someone who speaks English with a tint of a Southern accent.
Because I cannot understand them

I do not hate Italy.
My favorite movie is MOONSTRUCK.
I would go visit Rome, Lake Cuomo or the Amalfi Coast tomorrow.

However, I prefer here.
I understand the language.

Be proud of the biases you possess.
Understand, they are preferences.

Never condemn one because they disagree with or condemn you. Or because they prefer something different than you.
It’s human nature to do that….yet, its in opposition to those Words given us by The Bibles Author.

Respect the biases of others.

Those are not judgements either.
As you consider them, one of their preferences might become one of yours.

Understand though that purple and gold are actually the colors in my family crest. For those without a positive sports bias…those are also the unifirm colors of my favorite team.

So…..

 

Terry Bethea
October 2017

 

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