“There is just news, there is no good or bad.”

I suppose it’s true and it isn’t, but it all depends on how we choose to look at it. Sometimes news can be motivating, good or bad. Sometimes it can be depressing, good or bad. SOMETIMES news causes us to doubt or question or struggle with who we are even if we were sure of all those things BEFORE we got the news.

What’s the point of news? Anymore nowadays when we think about the word we immediately conjure up images of “The News.” Meaning, “the media.” In reality these two things are very different. Personal news that influences us and news that is told only to spread gossip and make a buck contrast heavily. I’ll close this random thought on saying just as important as the news we spread or choose to spread, is probably how we choose to respond to different news we are delivered.

“The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; then go down to a man’s inmost parts.” Proverbs 18:8

Today we take a look at Ruth. As in Ruth from the Book of Ruth. Like Book of Eli only Book of Ruth instead. Get it? ANYWAY, Ruth was a Midianite woman, who was married to a Hebrew man. Her mother-in-law Naomi underwent a terrible time where she lost her husband and eventually both sons (one of which was Ruth’s husband) and was essentially STRANDED in a foreign land with no family and no way out. Here’s a look at how Ruth responded when her mother-in-law suggests that she should stay in Midian and start over. Her sister-in-law washes out almost immediately, but Ruth’s got something to say about it:

“16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. your people will be my peopple and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” Ruth 1:16-18

Holy SMOKES! Talk about commitment. Remember the context here… Ruth is NOT a Hebrew. She is a Midianite from the land of Midian. This means she is fully intent on leaving EVERYTHING that is familiar, everything she’s known her whole life so that she can be near and take care of the only living relative on her husband’s side. Honestly, how many of us will make a move like that for our in-laws? Actually, how many of us would make a commitment like that for our own blood?

Ruth, as evidenced by her actions and her decision at that point in time, is another perfect example of how our faithfulness in just a simple act or decision to GOYD can lead to a monumental blessing or part in history. Flip back to Ruth 4:17 with me really quick would you?

“17 The women living there said, ‘Naomi has a son.’ And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.”

YES you are reading that correctly! Because of Ruth’s faithfulness she met Boaz. Because of her marriage to Boaz they had a son. And because Ruth refused to leave her mother-in-law without a family, without a home, and without care, Ruth became the great grandmother to THE King David. “The Man after God’s own Heart.” What TINY act of faithfulness do you need to execute by Getting off Your Donkey today that could have massive results for the Kingdom?

Well, here’s where I get a little extra motivation… :)

Fortunately, thanks t0 the advances in technology I’m able to video my messages in HD (High Def… try to keep up) and do playback while I’m preaching downstairs in the the worship center. It essentially allows me to be in 2 places at one time which is a great asset to continuing in a series and keeping continuity going in the youth ministry.

Last week I said that I would touch on a high point from each of the 4 parts in our GOYD (get off your donkey) series we’ve been doing with the teens. Sunday marked the completion of that series, so this week I’ll take a moment to touch on each of the weeks and what we looked at in its simplest form.

Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the most powerful king in the most powerful kingdom of that time. The Hebrew people had been trapped in captivity in Babylon/Persia for approximately 140 years when Nehemiah felt God tug at his heart to return to Jerusalem and re-fortify the city’s walls. His life as we find it is the perfect example of someone living in comfort… he’s the cupbearer to the king, living in the palace, and as evidenced in the beginning of Chapter 2 he has gained the trust and respect of the king enough to speak to him directly. So much so that when Artaxerxes sees that he is distraught, he asks what is wrong. And here’s the kicker, the point many of us reach and never take action with. It says in Nehemiah 2:2-3:

“… I was very much afraid, BUT I said to the king…”

Did you catch that? “I was afraid, BUT…” Most of us don’t get past our fear do we? Nehemiah had a lot to be afraid of: the king himself (whom the Persians regarded as deity), fear of failure, fear of the danger he could encounter on his path. Bottom line, he had a lot to be afraid of and worry about.

BUT. But he went forward anyway. When it really came down to the NITTY GRITTY (think Nacho Libre), Nehemiah jumped off his donkey and he moved forward in faith. He did it with courage, he did it through prayer (Vs. 4-5), and he did it by going through with his commitment once he was off his donkey.

So I ask today, what is your “DONKEY?”

****Talk/Discussion Sheets we call “Sticky Notes” can be found for all of the Get Off Your Donkey Messages, HERE.

Our challenge with the students has been looking specifically on WHAT their donkey is. How do they hide from opportunities to let their light shine, and what type of comfort and security are they relying on that are hindering them from being who God intends for them to be. I’ll go out of my way here in the next week or so to post an entry from each of the 4 messages. This is a preaching series I’ve been waiting for a year to preach and it’s spoken to me as much as the teens as I knew it would. VERY cool practical examples about stepping out of your comfort zone and living your faith for all to see.

I know people that will say they’re not interested in leading or being a leader. The simple truth is though, you’re an influencer whether you like it or not. Unless you can find a way to entirely avoid all civilization for your entire life, you’ll end up influencing someone. It’s up to us to decide whether that’s going to be a positive or a negative thing.

We can choose to be proactive in moving forward and deciding for ourselves how we’ll influence others, in a way that will build them up and improve on the space around us, or not giving a rip about anyone but ourselves, in which case the world will explode and we’ll all die a horrible flaming death. Okay, well that last part probably isn’t physically possible, but still. It makes me think…

Fortunately for my friends and family who follow ericebbinghaus.com I’ve decided to try and untangle my thoughts by writing down everything that’s been at odds in my mind the past 6 weeks or so. This BARELY scratches the surface, but you get the idea.

So what are these thoughts? Here’s a sample of how broad and random they are:

• We’ve got a new baby coming/here. I wonder how I can love her as much as I already love Ruthi?
• Bahhh, all this moving, baby, youth conference, sleep loss, family visiting, superman impersonating has me WAY behind on scheduling at the church.
• I wonder if any teens will want to go see “THOR” with me when it hits midnight tomorrow night?
• We got Osama bin Laden, huh? Awesome, FINALLY! Wait, should I be excited? I’m a Christian, I’m supposed to crave peace and not take delight in ANYONE dying without knowing Jesus. But didn’t he kill thousands and thousands of people? Isn’t it a good thing that he won’t kill any more? We saved more lives by reaping justice on evil… right? Right? War is dumb. But what about protecting the unprotected and giving THEM an opportunity to find God? Isn’t it a good thing to protect them so they have that right and not let someone who would choose to take it away do so? Hasn’t OBL forfeited the right to his own life by choosing to end the lives of others? Dangit. Now I’m more confused.
• Bacon should be it’s own food group.
• Need to get Ruthi enrolled in Kindergarten. She’s already obviously a genius, maybe we should be thinking college instead?
• Need to mow the lawn, errr, the dirt, errr, the dandelions.
• Need to change the oil in Brandi’s car. Dumb, why did I decide to do this myself all the time!
• Pay the rent! Pay the rent! Pay the rent!
• Man I could go for some bacon right now.
• Glad to see the Cardinals turning around. If we could just work on the late inning pitching woes, I feel like hitting will continue to come around. Well, except maybe for Albert, the $300 million question mark. What a joke.
• Do I smell bacon? I wonder what’s for dinner.
• Sure hope the baby let’s me get to bed BEFORE 4:30am tonight/this morning. Wait, how much do I have to do? Will I be up anyway?
• Gas prices = dumb.
• Man my wife is hot. I mean VERY attractive. How is it possible she was REALLY pregnant just over 3 weeks ago?
• My hair’s getting long again. I wonder who the lucky winner will be this week in the telling me, “YOU NEED A HAIR CUT” sweepstakes?
• I really need some new jeans. Nice jeans. Jeans that fit my “curvy” figure (yes I know how that sounds). Too bad any quality jeans cost like half a pay check.
• Chester’s bacon treats SMELL good enough for me to try out.
• Summer’s almost here. We need to finish our Highway schedule. Finally doing the “Get off your Donkey” series, but NOW I need to plan the next 6 months worth of preaching. LORD HELP ME!
• I need to get out and shoot again.
• Everyone says how beautiful Eva is. Then they tell me she looks like me, OR this is what you would look like if you were a girl. What do you say to that?
• I wonder what the ballistic coefficient of a 17 grain 17 caliber bullet is? Can’t be great, but man does it cut the wind.
• Is Jesus proud of me? Can I do better?
• We need more volunteers upstairs in our teen ministry. Adults who aren’t AFRAID of students. Who should I ask this week?
• I love my family. How am I this blessed?
• Is someone cooking bacon?
• My truck isn’t noisy enough is it? Seems like it’s time to cut off the mufflers and weld a Magnaflow on.
• I preached on Nehemiah as an intro to the new series this past Sunday. Easily one of my favorites in a long time and I wasn’t very prepared for it.
• My iPhone is on its last leg. Do I use the upgrade and sell it while I can still get something out of it or try and eek it out to the iPhone 5? Also, You know what would be awesome? If I could organize my brain into little neatly clustered folders like my iPhone.
• I need to do Sticky Notes from yesterday’s message. Poop. How did I forget to do that? (side note: If you want to see the study notes aka “Sticky Notes” from my messages every Sunday you can do so HERE.
• I wish I could tell all of my students AT ONCE how much I love and care for them. Please don’t make stupid decisions you’ll regret. And if you do, learn from them. Love Jesus, don’t be dumb.
• Is it payday yet? Time for me to battle my arch-nemesis again… BILLS!
• Chester killed another rabbit in the back yard. Whoops.
• Mmmmm I smell bacon.

I should say that struggling to gather my thoughts or pinpoint the direction of an idea or challenging thinking patterns don’t scare me, rather than get me a little bit excited for what could potentially happen as a result of those paths my mind takes me down. Fortunately and unfortunately my mind generally doesn’t let me rest when there is a lot on it, which usually leads to forced strategic organization as well as productivity to allow my burdened brain to rest.

Lucky for you I left out any part about weird dreams I had while we were in the hospital after Eva was born. Remind me sometime and I’ll tell you about the soldier with cheesecake for a head.

Enough said though. Comments?

Anyone else have problems stringing several coherent thoughts together at once? In the “new” world of Twitter with 140 character limits to our posts it seems that stringing together coherent thoughts beyond a couple sentences is getting harder and harder to do. The fortunate thing is, it seems like when I take the time to actually FORCE myself to sit down and meander through thoughts until they become distinguishable and joined, I have a good time with it and can do some hefty damage.

In comes the difficult part. Breaking the ice. Being willing to overcome the block social media has imposed on us to do something great that takes time to develop and think out is half the battle. I’ve posted on this before, but one of my favorite college professors who would give us productivity tips would always say, “The hardest part of any assignment is simply starting it.” He was right too. Every time I procrastinated, dreaded something, or just stressed about a project it all seemed to melt away when I would force myself to get it going. Then you know what happened? I ENJOYED IT! Being productive and accomplishing tasks and moving forward is a greatly satisfying thing. All procrastination and temperamental thinking does is make us more frustrated and temperamental.

So today, do yourself a favor. Ditch the 140 character limit on your life and DO IT!

He hadn’t done anything wrong, wasn’t being punished, and still his life ended just like that. Would you do anything differently if you really took took heart the truth of how fragile life is and how fast it can be taken away? Good or bad these things happen, we don’t know who, when or why, just that no matter what, God is in control…

^“14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” James 4:14

What I mean is TODAY is a great thing. THIS MOMENT is something that will last even after it’s gone as long as we remember to pay attention to it while it’s here. NOW only lasts for a moment then it’s gone. Don’t miss out on the “NOW” because you’re looking so hard at the “WHEN.”

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34