Poor Noah
We just arrived back home after a great 24 hours in Waxahachie, TX. When we got home I noticed that our dog Noah was a little sluggish. As my son and I were playing the wii, I noticed that Noah had thrown up a little. I quickly took him outside as I proceeded to clean up the tiny bit of his doggy vomit. I went to let him back in the house. No sooner had I shut the door after him when I heard my son begin to shout, “Noah did diarrhea!” As I turned, there it was. A few puddles on my kitchen floor.
As went to clean up the new mess that Noah had made, I noticed some long spaghetti like things in his stool. My wife to Noah to the doggy hospital where he was diagnosed with roundworms. My dog is sick!
They told us that we can expect to see many, many more worms in the next couple of days. Oh Lord! I already lost my dinner when I had to clean his mess. Help me Lord these next few days as Noah gets de-wormed.
Just thought I’d share what we came home to after an awesome 24 hours at SAGU!
Every Consecrated Thing Is Blessed By God!
As the new year approached, like many people, I began to seek God for His direction and guidance for my life and ministry in this new year. In my times of prayer I felt as if God was asking me to consecrate this year to Him. As I began to wrestle with this thought, this is what God revealed to me.
To consecrate something means to separate it for God’s use and for His service. In the scriptures we find many things that were consecrated, set apart for God’s use. We see how Aaron and his sons were consecrated to God. Samuel as a child had been consecrated to the Lord. Even things like bread and lampstands were consecrated. But in Leviticus 25 we see that even a year can be consecrated. It is possible to set aside an entire year to dedicate it to God’s service.
I began to think about the widow in 1 Kings who was about to cook her last piece of bread so that she and her son could eat and then die. There was a great famine in the land. Entire families were being wiped out because there was absolutely no food to be found. This widow had just a tiny bit of oil and flour left. Just enough to make a small piece of bread for her and her son. Then the prophet Elijah says to her, “Go and do as you have planned. But first, make some bread for me.” He said to her that if she would obey, that her flour and oil would not run out or run dry. If she would just obey, God would bless her even though everyone around her was suffering. This woman obeyed. She gave the little bit that she had. She “consecrated” to God, separated it for His use and for His service. When she did that, God blessed her. Her flour never ran out and the oil jar never ran dry.
Then I thought about that time that Jesus had been ministering to a crowed of about 15,000 people all day long. When the evening came the disciples came to Jesus and said that he needed to dismiss the people and let them go. They were hungry and they needed to go into the villages and towns to get some food. Jesus turned and told his disciples to feed the multitudes themselves. The came to Jesus and said that all they had were 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Then Jesus said something that was an invitation to enter into the supernatural. Jesus said, “bring it to me.” The disciples had these loaves of bread and fish for themselves. It was to be their dinner. But Jesus asked them to bring to Him the little that they had. When the disciples brought to Jesus what they have, the Bible says that Jesus lifted the bread toward heaven and blessed it. Jesus could not and did not bless that food until it had been consecrated, set apart and dedicated to him.
Then I realized what God was wanting to tell me. Every consecrated thing is blessed by God. Whatever we sincerely separate and dedicate to God for His use and for His service, God will bless it. So if we would just choose to consecrate this new year to God, this year will be blessed. God will make us productive accomplishing much more that if we were just living this year for ourselves. When we consecrate something to God, He blesses it and multiplies it and does great and powerful things with it.
This is what I desire for 2009. To dedicate my year to God like never before. To surrender my plans, dreams, ambitions and to just pursue God’s. And as I consecrate my year to Him, I believe He will bless and make my year the most productive and the most blessed year of my life. I encourage you to do likewise. Let’s see what God can do if we just choose to consecrate our year and our lives to Him.
The Big Picture
1 Corinthians 13:9-12
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
NIV
One of the greatest challenges that my wife and I are facing with our kids is getting them to eat a variety of food and getting them to eat food that is healthy. If it’s not pizza, chicken nuggets or mac and cheese, they basically will not eat it. They will literally sit at the table for 2 hours straight and not eat the food. Well, this past Thursday, my wife cooked dinner and prepared a somewhat balanced meal. My son, Isaiah, sat at the table for about an hour and ate maybe 3 bites of the food. The next day, we went to Cracker Barrel. We ordered him grilled chicken, some carrots and apples. Again, the plate was left practically untouched.
I can see that if this is not corrected in my son, later on in life it can pose problems for him. First of all, it is for his bennefit that he learns to eat a variety of food and not just the few things that he likes right now. Secondly, if he doesn’t learn to eat his vegetables now, it can pose health problems to him in the future. So my wife and I decided to ground him from playing his WII and from any snacks. Because we love him so much, we want to correct these habbits and teach him how to eat properly. Well after Cracker Barrel, we went home, and gathered as a family in the living room to watch a movie. As the movie was beginning, I went and made a bag of popcorn. Since my son had been grounded for not eating his dinner two nights in a row, he was not able to eat any popcorn. When he realized this, he proceeded to cry, beg, throw a fit and whine.
You see, he didn’t understand that he couldn’t eat that popcorn because I wanted to teach him. He didn’t understand that I fear what can happen to him in the future if he doesn’t break these habbits now. He didn’t understand that the reason that he was grounded was because Mom and Dad truly love him and are trying to do what is best for him. He didn’t comprehend any of that. All he knew at that moment was that the rest of the family could eat popcorn and he couldn’t. All he knew was that I was the worst dad in all the world. I was the meanest and the most unfair. See, he was thinking and reasoning as a child. I remember thinking those same thoughts about my parents. But now as a man with my own children, I undersand why they did what they did and I understand why they said “no” when they did. And today, I thank them for it.
In our lives, we often can not see the BIG picture that God sees. We wonder why we go through certain experiences and we ask how God could allow certain things to happen to us. But we only see partially and we don’t understand fully. God sees all things and he understands what we can not. What we must do is to hold on to faith. Have faith that God knows what we do not and through it all, God is at work in us. Even if we don’t understand. Even if we don’t know the why’s for the how come’s, trust that God is in control and that in His big picture, even the most difficult moments will make sense and God will somehow use them for our good.
From Visitation To Habitation
There is no doubt that there are moments/seasons when God begins to really deal with an individual or church. There are often seasons where it seems as if God is visiting us in a special way. As a matter of fact, we often use those exact words in moments of blessing or in times where the presence of God is being felt and sensed in an unusual way during times of prayer and corporate worship. You will often hear pastors or worship leaders or other people say, “God is visiting us!” But as I have contemplated these words, I have become convinced that as great as a visitation from God is, it is not his will to only visit us but He desires to make us His habitation.
In scripture we find that God visited this planet, through His son Jesus Christ. He was sent with a great mission and this mission had many aspects. He was to reveal the Father to humanity. He was to reveal what true love is. He was to show us how to live for God and serve as our ultimate example. He was to redeem us and reconcile us to the father. But there was another aspect to Christ’s mission that we often overlook. John 16:7 says, “But I tell you the truth: it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” Jesus himself said that it was better for us that he leave so that the Holy Spirit would come.
Christ was on earth for only 33 years. And out of those 33 years only 31/2 of those years were spent in public ministry. This was only a visitation. God visited this planet through His son. But it was only a visitation. What does all this mean? One aspect of why Christ visited earth was to prepare the way for the Holy Spirit and the work that He does. Not that the Holy Spirit was greater than Christ (for they are both God) but through the Holy Spirit the limitations that Christ had because of his human nature would now be removed. Christ was limited to being at one place at a given time. Now the Holy Spirit would not be limited by space or time. He is everywhere at every time. Christ could only visit people. Such as the time that He visited Mary and Martha, Zacchaeus, Lazarus, the woman at the well, and countless others. These people’s lives were completely transformed by a visit from God the Son. Imagine what would happen when God the Spirit would come not to visit them, but to dwell within them.
John 14:16-17 – “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you.”
How did Christ prepare the way for the Holy Spirit? Christ left his word and his example. Now the Holy Spirit would take that word and bring conviction to the hearts of unbelievers (Jn. 16:8). Now the Holy Spirit would remind us of everything that Christ said and would teach us all things (Jn. 14:26). Christ told us and showed us how to serve God and live for Him, now the Holy Spirit would empower and enable us to do it (Acts 1:8). In the same way that Christ’s visitation to this world and to individuals during his earthly ministry prepared the way for the Spirit’s habitation, so those special moments of visitation in your life are to prepare you for a greater relationship with God and the habitation of His Spirit in you. But beware. We must not allow what happened to God’s people, the Jews, during His last visitation to happen to us during this visitation.
Christ in His word declares that He came for the Jew first, then for the gentile. In other words the purpose for His visitation was primarily for the Jewish people. But something happened. While Jesus visited with them, they did not realize the hour of thier visitiation (Lk. 19:44). Ultimately, the Jewish people as a whole have missed out on the habitation of God’s Spirit in thier lives all because they failed to realize, recognize, honor and respond to Christ’s visitaion. We must not allow this to happen to us. We must acknowledge that we have been in the presence of the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, sovereign and eternal God. We must honor Him and worship Him in the manner in which He’s worthy of. We must respond to His call and move at His command. For if we fail to do these things, it will be said of us, “God was not able to make Robert his habitation for he knew not the time of his visitation.”
I have made up my mind. I will not be swayed. I choose to allow God to make my life, my heart, my family, my ministry and my church His habitation.
A Pleasant Surprise
Today I got a pleasant surprise. While I was out at lunch I received a phone call. It was a great friend that I’ve known since childhood but hadn’t seen in almost a year. While we’ve known each other since we were only about four or five years old and grew up together, we kind of lost touch for a while. I met up with him and we sat in my office for about 2 1/2 hours. During that time, we talked and shared about what was going on in our lives and in ministry and I realized that this was a friendship that I truely cherished. Not because of what I can gain from our friendship, but because of the great memories and because of the great ties that we have.
I was amazing that even after almost an entire year of not really seeing each other or talking to each other, we just picked up as if we had spoken every day for the past year. We were able to share openly and honestly and we were able to encourage each other. I am ashamed that I haven’t kept up with our friendship and that I haven’t made a greater effort to maintain our relationship but have decided not to allow that to happen again. Friends are too important and relationships with good people are becoming too rare these days to just let them pass and not work at them.
To my life long friend, thank you for surprising me with your presence today and I look forward to more frequent conversations and times of fellowship.
I’m curious, what do you appreciate most about your relationships and about your greatest friends?
Yasmin’s Song
My precious daughter just came up to me and asked if I’d like to hear the song she wrote earlier today. Of course I couldn’t resist hearing it so she gave me a sheet of paper that she had written on and this is what it said:
“Sometimes I am scared. You help me through that. Sometimes I lie. You forgive me. I will lie and I will be scared sometimes even though you are with me. So now I tell you thank you. So now I shout thank you. I know I should not lie. I know I should not be scared. I know. I know I should not lie. I know I should not be scared. Sometimes I am scared. You help me through that. Sometimes I lie. You forgive me. I will lie and I will be scared sometimes even though you are with me. So now I tell you thank you. So now I shout thank you. I know I should not lie. I know I should not be scared. Sometimes I am scared. You help me through that. Sometimes I hurt people and I am sorry. You do forgive me. I know.”
I am amazed that these words, this prayer, this song came from my daughter’s heart. I am so proud of her, but I am so pleased that she knows and understands that God loves her and that he forgives her. What an amazing thing to know.
When God Uses Your Kids To Show You Something About Yourself!
So today I needed to do some work from the house. There are certain programs that I have on my home computer that I needed to use, so I worked part of the day from my home office (better known as my pantry). Some time back my son was given a very nice gift. It is a gift that he enjoys playing with very much, but it is a gift that has made me very nervouse for some time. You see, my son basically destroys almost anything that we give him. I cannot begin to count the number of toys that we have bought him and become broken in the first 2-3 days that he has them. So when he was given this somewhat pricey toy, I had a feeling it wouldn’t last very long. So we repeatedly tell him to be careful. To watch how he plays with it. To take care of it.
But today, as I was working, my daughter walked into the room where I was with this particular toy broken in two. She proceeded to explain how her brother had just broken it and had now locked himself in the restroom to hide from me. I became extremely upset with him for not caring for the gift that was given to him. You see, I knew that it wasn’t just any gift. It wasn’t from the dollar store or from the flea market. Someone thought enough of my son to pay good money for this gift. I was so irritated that I actually went for a drive, but while I drove I began to think.
Why was I so irritated? It’s not like this was the first time he’d done something like this. And then this thought ran across my mind. I am so upset because I desire to give my son good gifts, but I feel like I can’t give him what I would really like to because he won’t properly care for it. I was literally frustrated because I can’t give him what I’d like to give him. If I give him something costly and something good, it won’t last and it will be destroyed. And then, it happened. Again. God spoke.
“Don’t you think I feel the same way about you? There are things that I would love to give you. I even have them stored for you. But I can’t. You don’t know how to care for them yet. If I give them to you now, you’ll destroy them.” WOW! Do I frustrate God in that same way? Are there really great gifts that he desires to give me but can’t? I pray for maturity. That I may become fully mature in Christ. I know that when that truly happens, his blessings and gifts can flow freely into my life. Why? Because when I am mature he can trust that I will properly care for what he gives me.
What are your thoughts?
A Captured Heart
My son Isaiah is celebrating his 5th birthday today. This kid is so amazingly spunky. Needless to say, he has truly captured my heart (as has his sister and his mommy). Weeks back as my wife and I were discussing what to do for his birthday, I had this great idea, so I thought. We would throw him a Texas Longhorns birthday party. He and I are huge horns fans. I was so excited that I began to immediately work on party invitations and we soon passed them out. 
As we began to prepare for this Longhorns birthday party it became extremely difficult to find any type of Longhorns party decorations. I thought about just getting some white and orange decorations (as close an orange as we could find to the UT burnt orange) but I didn’t want to settle for that. My wife and I spent hours online trying to find some place to buy UT party supplies, but couldn’t find anything here in San Antonio.
So Monday morning we woke up, got dressed, got the kids ready and headed out for Austin, TX. We drove about an hour and a half to get to Austin and then drove around the entire city hitting up numerous Party Cities, HEB’s and Wal Marts. We finally ended up at the official UT store on campus and found anything we could possibly imagine. Well, we ended up spending a good amount of money, a lot of time and drained ourselves of energy to get the best decorations that we could possibly get for my sons birthday party.
Then, it occurred to me. I had just gone completely out of my way, totally altered my schedule and dished out way more money than I probably should have. And the reason? All because my son has captured my heart. You see, you don’t mind giving to someone who has captured your heart. As a matter of fact, you desire to give your absolute best to the one who has captured your heart. You will go to great lengths to please whoever that person may be. I couldn’t help but to ask myself if I am giving God my very best. I wonder if there are things that I am not willing to give God. Has He truly captured my heart? Would I completely go out of my way and alter my schedule and even give of my finances just to bring pleasure to Him?
I could never give enough to the one that has captured my heart. What do you think?
Hello world!
Okay, so I’ve enjoyed reading blogs that various people post. I find it fascinating to look into people’s lives and see what happens behind the scenes. I’ve learned that many people are able to express themselves so much better by writing their thoughts and experiences than by orally communicating them. Because of this, people really disclose so much of their true selves through blogging. I think maybe even more so than they might in a face to face encounter. After having spent some time reading through other people’s experiences and thoughts, I have decided to try it for myself. So here it goes!
Who Am I?
My name is Robert Flores. I am a son, a father, a husband, a committed Christian, a pastor and a friend. I try to priortize my life in the following manner: 1. God 2. Family 3. Ministry I don’t always get it right, but I am committed to tyring my hardest to follow this pattern. I am married to my high school sweetheart and my best friend. We have two beautiful children, Isaiah (almost 5) and Yasmin (7), who teach me new things every day. My wife and I have served at a church in San Antonio, TX for 8 years as Youth Pastors/Associate Pastors. We are completely in love with our church and with the people of our community. Together with my wife, we are on this journey of knowing God a little more every day, leading our children as they grow and maturing in our calling and ministry. This is who I am in a nutshell.
Why Blog?
I have decided to blog because I can honestly say that I’ve been encouraged by reading other’s blogs. I find it inspiring to read about the challenges people face and how they choose to confront those challenges. I want this blogging experience to be informative and inspiring. I think most of all, I want whoever reads my blogs to see a real person and a real God. I want to display God for all to see. I want to show the world how God loves us so much that He is concerned and desires to be involved in every aspect of our lives. If God is conerned for an ordinary guy like me, surely He’s concerned for all who may read these posts.
So today, I enter into the fascinating world of blogging where I will share my experiences, thoughts, frustrations, failures and triumphs. I hope you enjoy Rob’s Journey.
