Last Friday evening our family had the privilege to go to a musical up in Grand Blanc Michigan, which is right near Flint Michigan. One of the sons of the family we are staying with was in it. It was entitled “Our Flag Was Still There,” it was a patriotic musical. There was a Children’s choir, adult choir, and some power point video presentations. Over all it was pretty good.
It was put on by the local character council, which teaches character apart from the Bible, so that they can go into public schools and teach. In there program booklet they had pages with character qualities such as, honesty, kindness, courage, ect.. After the whole deal I was over herd some one say in visiting that they loved the program booklet with all the character qualities and that could change the country, oh, and that it was nice that they slipped a little faith into the musical.
Faith and a living relationship in the almighty God is what give sinful people as myself the grace and strength to live out the character of Christ in my own life. You can teach character apart from Christ, but it will only end in frustration. For just like trying to hold your arms above your heart, most any person can do it for a time, but the flesh gets tired and I do not care how strong you may be, your arms will tire and come down after enough time. Apart from the Holy spirit at work in ones life, one my be able to be good for a time. Then the flesh tires and trying to “be good” becomes, or ends in a frustrating cycle of continual failed attempts to “be good.”
Lets get this straight, I have nothing against having accountability partners, other than you can fool a person, you can’t fool God. So lets do accountability partners. look at the story of Moses and when he kept his hands up, the children of Israel would prevail. So when Moses hands get tiered what did he do, he got should we say, accountability partners to hold his hands up, and that worked for the time being, but even with that, when the battle was over his hands came down. Of our own power, no matter what we try or resolve, there is no way to be a good person as defined in God’s law,(Rom 7:9-12) even in the from of character qualities.
The only way one can be a “good person” is being crucified with Christ. (Gal 2:19-20) Back to this analogy of holding up your arms. The thief that was crucified with Jesus, who believed. When he died his arms were still up, and he had a new life in Christ. In that new life in Christ is the grace to live lives that are honest, kind, full of courage. (Rom 6:4-11) When you think about it, as people we are incapable of being a good person. We must be surrendered to Christ and let him live through us. Therefore any goodness in me is not me, it is Christ, in his goodness. When I blow it, that is me.
But lets just say humans had the power to be good people of their own will power. Christ gave the commandment to go and make disciples, not good people, that will follow. The devil has nothing against good morals. It is Jesus he is opposed to. We may be able to have lots of good people that are still lost and going to hell.
What better reason to live for. To live and share with others the way of escape, and of the new life in Christ, undisputable evidence that God is real and true to his word.

Here is my story untold about spilling milk. Now I can tell this one because it happened years ago, ok so it was only four years ago. We like whole milk straight from the farm and with so many of us we get it in five gallon buckets from a dairy close by. so I was on the way back from the dairy with two five gallon buckets of milk and I took a turn to fast and well, one of the buckets tipped over in the back of the pickup and the lid pop off and all five gallons of milk spilled all over the pickup bed. As I begin to lament over it my brother Andrew, who always seems to have the right thing say pipes in, "its no use crying over spilled milk". Although I haven’t had a problem with spilling milk at the table, as one of my friends, (I’ll not say who, If you know him, you will probably know who I am talking about.) That’s cause I figured I spilled my share of milk all at one time.

Well, today I put up Christmas lights. What, Christmas lights already? You my think I am really ahead of the game. The fact is that we are leaving Tuesday and will be gone till December 5th and the lights at the park will be open by then. So we had to have them up before we left. The big tree down at the park get a little taller every year and in another year or two our 55ft boom truck is not going to be able to reach the top of the tree. It’s a big tree alright. We just did 2/3 of the front side and put on 1,125 of the C9 7watt light bulbs. That’s well over 7500 watts of power just to light the tree. What else have I been up to? Well this past weekend I got checked out in a Cessna 182 and got my high performance endorsement. For those of you wondering what a high performance endorsement is or means. It means that an instructor gave me training, and singed off that I am competent to fly a airplane with more than 200 rated horse power. We were going to fly to North Dakota but snow moved in up there, so we couldn’t go. I know have just over 216hrs of 250 needed for the commercial license.
A verse for the day Lamentations 3:24-26 The Lord is my portion saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The Lord is good to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.