Mike Alstott Football Camp
Here are some of my thoughts today:
It did my heart well to see Connor running around, having a good time at the camp. His team won the Superbowl of minigames they played. I live my athletic aspirations through him. There’s nothing better than seeing him run down a ball carrier that has a good lead on him and there’s nothing worse than seeing him not try on a play. I totally get into both! I whooping it up when he does good and I’m pushing to try harder when he doesn’t do so good. He has a lot of potential and I want to see him succeed in whatever he does!
They had coaches from Perdue, Nevada, and some local heroes out there working with over 300 hundred young people. Matt Grothe, quarterback for THE USF BULLS was there helping out with the kids. Connor got a picture with him.
I say people cause there were girls out there with the guys running routes and making plays! I think that’s awesome! It reminded me of when I coached a flag football team. I had one girl on my team and she worked harder and hussled more than most of the boys.
Mike Alstott is probably my most favorite Buccaneer of all time. It was cool to see him in person. I just couldn’t stand in the sun for another hour to get his autograph.
You know how rear view mirrors have that sticker on them that says objects may appear smaller? That was kinda my thought when I first saw him. He is shorter than me and since he wasn’t wearing all those pads, he looked a lot smaller than I remember watching him on tv. He wasn’t out of shape though. He looked like he could put on the pads and lock up with a linebacker! I’m gonna miss seeing him out there on the field on Sundays.
Good Times
One of His
Courage (Friday Night Source Group)
Are you ready to take life to the next level? Nothing in life comes easy. It takes courage to take your life, relationships, and career to the next level. Are you ready?
This is what we will be talking about Friday Night at 7pm at our house. We encourage you to bring your favorite covered dish to share. If you need more info, give me or Dawn a call, or you can email me at either oneofhis73@yahoo.com or dawn@mycfan.com.
See You Then,
One of His ( Kevin)
Source Group Friday Night
Hi Everyone,
It’s that time again. I am so glad! I missed having source group last time. Had fun on vacation though. We will be cranking it up this Friday night at 7:00pm. Don’t miss it!
Sometimes It’s hard to post on the same week as Source Group, don’t want to give away too much stuff. Do not fret, I will be posting very soon. Maybe today!
One of His (Kevin)
Thanks George Carlin
In the news today, it’s reported that comedian George Carlin died of heart failure. My condolences go out to his family. It’s terrible when you lose those you love and care for.
As a Christ-Follower, I wanted to tell him thanks. I know many that go to church would probably say “Thanks for what? He was someone who regularly made it part of his routine to ridcule Christians and Christianity. He made a lot of money at our expense! He’s probably rotting in hell right now!”
I am not here to talk about his eternal resting place. God alone will decide that. I heard a couple of his routines. Irreverant does not begin to describe the things he talked about. Many of the things he had to say were at least intelligently crafted. He wasn’t just some moron running his mouth. He questioned God’s existance, the necessity of the church, and many other things in his routines. Unfortunately, many of his confrontations with Christ-Followers were with people who were passionate about their faith, but had no intelligent argument for the questions he had. He ate them for breakfast.
I thank him because many Christ-Followers don’t really understand what they believe, and when someone has an argument or question, they either have no answer or throw out some religious pablum that simply conveys their ignorance. The religious cliches and methods of evangelism that people used in the 70′s and 80′s are not going to mean a hill of beans in today’s culture. We must be prepared to be the church, we should conduct ourselves with a passion for our faith, but we must also do this in an intelligent fashion.
2Ti 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
People these days are asking tough questions. We need to have answers for these questions. We need to study His Word so that even if we don’t have an answer they will receive, at least they can respect the fact that is an intelligent, thought out answer. This may bring more questions and more opportunites to share what and why you believe.
Thanks George, even if you didn’t believe. You have made a point that I hope other Christ-Followers will take to heart and learn from.
One of His (Kevin)
The “In-Between” Days
Everybody has them. You just feel like you are going through the motions. Nothing appears to be going on. You can’t see yourself getting any closer to where you want to be. You think to yourself “Is anything going on?” “How Long?!!!”
I fight with these thoughts. Most people do. I’ve coming to realize that we find many of our answers if we ask ourselves the right questions. We may not always have the ability to change the world around us but we can change the way we look at things. Here are a few I ask myself:
1) Is there anything I can do right now to prepare for where I want to go? Most folks cop-out of the question. They say “not really”. If you want a promotion at work, you have the opportuity to improve your skills while you wait. You can get a book on communication and learn how to communicate more effectively so when you get to be a boss, you don’t get fired because you don’t know how to talk to your employees. You can get books or take classes on how to be a leader. You can request to crosstrain in other areas so you get a bigger picture of the company you work for.
2) Does anyone care about what I am going through? Besides Jesus, the answer is probably “no”. Those around you, most likely your family, is wondering when you are going to snap out of it. You think this harsh, ask them. You can put your family through endless misery as you feel sorry for yourself. They want you to be happy. This question makes you responsible for your happiness. Too many people blame their misfortune or where they are in life on someone else. With the help of God, start being your own solution.
3) How long do you plan on moping about this? This is the question I ask myself when I have gone days in this mindset. Everyone processes their feelings differently. Some people take more time than others to understand why they feel how they feel. It took time to be able to think of my mom after she died and not cry. It took some time when a friend wronged me and I was able to truly forgive in my heart. These experiences are understandable. You know what? Life has to move on. It’s hard, it’s not fair, bad things happen but what are you going to do? There is a world that needs what you have to offer.
God is trying to get you to a better place. You can cooperate and speed up the process and see the in-between days as a preparation for better things to come or you can feel sorry for yourself and guarantee your permanent residence in in-between land.
2 Corinthians 3:18
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
I hate to tell you this but once you have attained to what you have striving for sooo long to get to, there’s more. There is another in-between place. God is never through with you. God has even greater things in store for you. How far you will get in this life will depend on your attitude. Let’s see how high we can go instead of where we can hover.
Vacation was Great!
Let me get this out of the way: “Don’t take your kids to Vegas!”
Alright, now that I got that out of the way, we has a good time in Vegas. Unless you are going to shell out lots of money for cabs and buses, prepare to walk! Bring a decent pair of walking shoes! You have to walk through the hotels. They are amazing architecturally and stinking huge! My favorite hotel to go into was New York New York. It looked liked New York City inside of the hotel! They had various shops,stores and restaurants in the “city”. They even had a roller coaster on the hotel! (I will post a blog with some of the pics I took.)
At the Venetian hotel, you have to go to the wax museum. If all of those wax statues are life size, then most of Hollywood is pretty short! Lol! But in all fairness, I am 6’4″. It was fun posing with the statues.
The water show at the Bellagio hotel was awesome! They did a water show to “Proud to be an American”. It was extraordinary! There was a “street preacher” with a loud speaker telling people they are going to hell during the show (bad timing dude). I am all for sharing my faith, but screaming at people during a song like that is just bad timing and taste and makes you look like a whacko more than some of the folks you see on the strip.
Every hotel has it’s own theme. Caesar’s Palace was done up on the full Roman theme. You had statues of the Roman gods all over, beautiful fountains, and ceilings done like the Sistene Chapel. Like most of the hotels on the strip, they had probably one of the, if not the biggest shopping mall of the hotels. If you have a million sitting around, you might be able to afford to shop in some of the shops! Lol!
My favorite part of trip wasn’t even in Vegas. The trip to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon was awesome! Being from Florida and spending most of your life in a state that is flat, to go through the mountains to see the dam (which is huge!) and come to such an awesome site as the Grand Canyon is, is breathtaking! It just didn’t look real! My brain wanted to think it was an illusion until I saw a couple of condors swoop into the canyon to ride on the updrafts coming out of the canyon! It looked like all the pictures I had seen in books and then some. I really would like to go back and do the hiking and rafting thing. You have to go at least once to see it. God’s creation is amazing!
I will touch on some of the spiritual aspects of what I experienced in another post. I just wanted to talk about the trip some from a tourist stand-point.
More to come,
One of His (Kevin)
My First Airplane Ride
Yes I know, everyone in the known universe has been on a plane before. However, until this date, I had never been on one. There are some things that I am just getting to do at this point in my life. Better late than never, right?
Well, I was nervous at first. Here we are crammed in this small plane like a bunch of sardines, you can barely move anyway. Then we taxi what seemed like a half an hour, all the while I have a death grip on my armrest. Then came the take-off. I was nervous for about 5 seconds, then I realize how cool this is! We get off the ground and start making about 5 turns while going ballistic, heading out over the Gulf of Mexico. It seemed like it took about 15 to 20 minutes to get to cruising altitude. Then when we get there, it almost sounded like the engine shut down cause it got a lot quieter.
I took pictures of and saw some amazing sights. It is so amazing being over the clouds! I’ve always existed and lived my life under these clouds and now I am flying thousands of feet over these clouds! It is definitely awe-inspiring scene! Here are some pictures of us flying over the Gulf of Mexico.
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- Arizona Crater
Ok, this was really neat. Now for a not-so-neat thing: turbulence. When we were over the Gulf, there was an occasional bump feeling every so often. However, I think Texas did not like us flying over it! I’m serious! We started dropping and jolting around in that small plane like the air over Texas had a vendetta or something. The pilot gets on the speaker and he calmly says” I apologize but we will be experiencing some bad weather for at least the next 200 miles. Please remain seated and make sure your seatbelts are securely fastened.” Ok, I’m crammed in a packed sardine can, cruising at an altitude of 30,000 feet, going hundreds of miles per hour, getting batted around like a ping pong ball. Where do you think I am going? Perhaps a leisurely stroll to the lavatory or perhaps to the attendant’s station to request some peanuts? If the attendants are not getting up, I aint goin nowhere! This turbulence lasted for at least a half an hour! NO JOKE! The guy sitting in the row with my wife has been making the same trip for 20 years and he never experienced turbulence like that before! I thought “Of course, It’s my first plane ride, it has to be a doozy!”
Well, once we finally got through the turbulence, we finally made it over Arizona and started seeing some beautiful sites! I haven’t traveled out west before. I saw the deserts in Arizona. We flew by the meteor crater in Arizona. Got a good picture of it from the plane.
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It was amazing to see the mountains from such a high vantage point. You could see ancient riverbeds and the different colors of the minerals in the sand from he runoff of the mountains. Beautiful.
So, we are about an hour before we get to Vegas and they begin descending from 30,000 feet. I’m so glad my wife was with me to tell me what would start happening. I might have thought the plane was stalling! The closer you get to the ground, the more they do that stalling thing, the more it makes you drop rather quickly. Didn’t quite enjoy the landing. (except for the being on solid ground part) The landing at Vegas and the final landing at Tampa were rough. The landing on our hop from Vegas to Houston on the way back was smooth.
Sooooo.. I survived my first plane ride, followed by my second and third and didn’t even need the meds I bought for possible air sickness! Yeah! Flying sure beats driving, thats for sure!
I will talk about my vacation in my next post.
One of His (Kevin)
Going on Vacation!
Hi!
I am so excited! I am going on vacation this week! Wooohooo! My sweetheart and I are heading to Vegas! I am most excited about the tour of the Grand Canyon! It is one of those things that you have to see at least once before you die. Did I mention I AM SOOOO EXCITED?!
I may even blog while I am there (if I have an internet connection at the hotel). I know it sounds nuts to do that while you are on vacation but when you see things as majestic as the Grand Canyon, I may get inspired. Maybe I will post some pics (we’ll see).
Stay tuned…
Did I mention how excited I was? Oh yeah, I did!!!! LOL!!!
One of His (Kevin)
GO STORM!!
My family and I had the opportunity to go to see a Tampa Bay Storm game tonight! It was sooo much fun! Thanks Stephanie! The Storm beat the mess out of the Orlando Predators. (In case there are people who don’t know what sport these teams are playing, it is the Arena Football League) The kids were dancing around all jacked up on cotton candy. They really got into it! There’s nothing better than when you can do something together that everyone can enjoy! Going to bed now. Have to be at church by 7am. Peace.
One of His
What Will You Do?
Well, I had some business I had to attend to that didn’t afford me the opportunity to blog yesterday. It was a tough situation and it’s not over yet. When I faced with this situation, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy and in some ways would be scary. I left after my initial meeting about it with my stomach in knots.
I had a choice to make on how I would react to the situation. I was initially very upset and distraught about it, but I had a choice to make.
I can brood on it and really work my blood pressure through the roof. I could think about every negative outcome to this situation. OR I could get up, shrug off the mood I was in and go to worship team practice in faith that God is big enough to handle the situation. I’m sure if you were to ask anyone there last night they wouldn’t even know what kind of a day it was!
I know folks that have a personal crisis every day. They are fine one minute and ready to commit suicide the next. God does not want us to live our lives this way. He does not want us to deny we have problems but He DOES want us to acknowledge His faithfulness and His goodness, DESPITE the situation. The scriptures tell us many times that we will go through trials and tribulations. They also tell us that God will be with us in these situations with us.
When things come at us out of nowhere, we have to make a decision. Once you get through the initial shock, how will act from that point? Will you declare His goodness, or will you let depression, despair, and fear take control?
You can go through tough times with a smile on your face. You don’t have to live in constant defeat every day of your life. Have faith. God is with you. I’m sure you can look back on some time in your life and you can see how He got you through a tough situation. Many times He brings us through and we didn’t even realize it. The pain you felt is gone. The constant nagging of that issue in your head isn’t nagging you anymore. Many times you don’t even realize what God has done. Think back and I’m sure your eyes will be opened. I have had this happen before. Our source group had been praying for jobs for some of the folks going. By the time we met again, a couple of those people had found jobs! God moved and He showed me how He does things and we don’t even realize it! (we also need to give Him some hearty praise for answering our prayers)
God is moving even when we can’t see it. Make the choice to trust and not despair and watch Him move in your life. It’s not easy. You may have to resist the urge to despair more than once. Know that He is with you and you will be surprised when that situation is just another testimony of His grace to share with someone else.
One of His (Kevin)
After Your Heart
I drive my wife nuts sometimes, well maybe a little more than that. We both love music big time, but I will hear a song that hits a chord with me and I have to listen to it over and over and over and over. I will listen to it till I hate it.
I was listening to Phil Wickham’s album “Cannons” and he has this song “After Your Heart” on it that just hit me in the chest. Check out these words and I hope you get it:
Phil Wickham – After Your Heart
From the album Cannons
Phil Wickham – After Your Heart
From the album – Phil WickhamCan I have your attention
What are we starting here
Just look around you the answer is clear
Listen, listen
and hear the coming sound
All of the children are singing it loud
Let’s be the revolution
That lives for hold nothing back, nothing back
Chorus
We’re after Your heart, after Your heart
All of the walls now are breaking apart
Live like we see it love like we mean it
This is the start we’re after Your heart
Start the ascension
Begin the holy climb
Up to where heaven and the earth collide
Bring your affection
All that you have inside
Enter the kingdom and become alive
Love with no condition
It lives for holding nothing back, nothing back
Chorus
Oh lets go higher and higher
Hear the song of the free
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Lift your soul join with the choir
Sing the song, let it ring
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
We’re after Your heart never going to stop until we reach You
I will leave the words to speak for themselves.
One of His (Kevin)
Thank You
I just realized I have been posting in this blog for over 6 months now! I am stunned by the amount of hits it has received. I would like to thank those faithful readers that check it on a daily basis and those of you who check it out every once in a while. I appreciate you taking the time to let me share my life and life that God has put in me with you. If something strikes a chord in your heart, please don’t be shy, post a comment or send me an email to: oneofhis73@yahoo.com.
I am glad you are along for the ride! I believe God is going to do some things in the coming months that is going to blow my mind, and He’s going to blow your minds too! You haven’t seen anything yet! It’s gonna be crazy! You’ll see!
One of His (Kevin)
Marriage: Not For the Faint of Heart Part 2
Hi Everyone, last week I started a series about marriage. I gave a couple of marriage myths to you. These are preconceived notions by one or both parties in a relationship or marriage. I wanted to share another one with you.
3) Disagreements (the nice way of saying arguing) is a sign of a bad relationship.
I could not “disagree” with this more. I agree that arguing all the time is not healthy. When your communication is nothing more than trying to discredit your spouse all the time, you need to seek help from a counselor. When you have 2 people who feel strongly about the same issue on opposing sides, this is not “bad”. Communicating one’s differences in a constructive manner can be difficult sometimes. Listening to your spouse can be difficult as well. Our point of view can give us tunnel hearing so that we can’t hear what is really being said. Sometimes, understanding is what is being sought in an argument, not a winner. You can win an argument and come out as the loser. Here are some ways to gauge if the “disagreement” is going too far:
a) Talking over each other. Communication is a two way street. When someone is talking, be quiet. On the flip side be ready to listen when it’s the other person’s turn. If you can’t, then it’s time to step away and cool down.
b) Never, I mean NEVER use the “d” word (divorce) as leverage in an argument. EVER!! Don’t even let the word formulate in your mind or on your lips. Some words are not easily taken backand take years to heal from.
C) Any talk of removing limbs, appendages, sterilization, assisted suicide, or naming your spouse after any unsightly body part is a sign of going too far! Lol!
Disagreements are a given in any relationship. I love my wife tremendously and we still have things that we disagree on. There are times when you may have to agree to disagree about certain things. As much as you may want to persuade your spouse to see things your way, you have to respect that their opinion is valid even if you feel it is not the “right” opinion. If there is an issue that must be resolved that is endangers your family and relationship, seek a competant counselor. They can give you more tools to work through complex issues that may take some time to work on.
Marriage is work. Love one another. Forgive one another. God loved and forgave you.
One of His (Kevin)
Weekend in Review
Well, I helped my mother-in-law move Saturday afternoon. Didn’t get back home till like 12:30am. Body is like sore! Ow!
Got up at 6:00am and had to stop and get an Amp Energy Drink before getting to the church. 5 hours sleep don’t cut it for me much anymore.
Had a great Illuminate Group meeting! Talking about vision is always exciting!
Worship was powerful!
It’s awesome when God confirms His Word out of the mouth of 2 or more people!
The energy crash after drinking an Amp drink wears off stinks!
Not very happy to see Kyle Busch win another NASCAR race. BOOOOOO!!
A friend stopped by who needed and ear to bend for a bit.
Played a little X-Box with Connor. I am better than him at LA Rush! Still need more practice at HALO though.
Excited to see my honey getting into this blogging stuff. I expect to see some powerful stuff come out of her blogs!
Great weekend overall. It went by WAY TOO QUICK! I vote for another 3 day weekend!
Oh well, I hope God blows your socks off this week! I pray that you will get a revelation of His love for you! If He does, I would love to hear about it! Leave a comment or send me an email to oneofhis73@yahoo.com.
God Bless
One of His (Kevin)
Friday Night Source Group
Had a great time talking about being still before God. We can be so busy in our lives that our busyness can become a prison that traps us and keeps us from hearing from God. We talked about how important it is to hear from God so we can move on and into all that God has for our lives, our families, and our ministries. We must be ready to move into those things when God is speaking to us. We talked about having a journal or even a blog that you can write things down when God is speaking so you can meditate on those things.
If you didn’t come you were missed. If you would like to come to a source group meeting, you can email me at oneofhis73@yahoo.com or my wife at dawn@mycfan.com. We would love to have you. We meet every other Friday night at 7pm, at our house. We eat, fellowship, and share with each other what God has laid on our hearts. It’s an awesome time. Got another post to write so let me close this one.
One of His (Kevin)
