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A really awesome story – myChurch

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Dear friends,

God is real. He is so amazingly real. Please understand that before continuing on this blog.

I have been going to this cool little church for the past couple of months called myChurch. Trendy, huh? It’s been operating out of the Gladstone theatre for the last nine months or so and if you’ve ever been inside the Gladstone you know how cool it is. I’ve never felt so energized after a service like I do when I go to myChurch. I literally leave there every Sunday and start to get excited for NEXT Sunday. myChurch is made up of these really crazy awesome people who bring this first rate worship Sunday after Sunday….after Sunday after Sunday etc. I could rhyme off a list of cool things that have happened to me and around me over the last few months but there is one story in particular I feel like sharing.

A little over 10 weeks ago the myChurch started this fundraising campaign for their morning service called ’20/10′. The goal of this campaign was to raise $20,000 in 10 weeks. I need to mention two things right off the bat. 1. If you’ve ever been part of any church you know how difficult it is two raise $20,000 in a year let alone $20,000 in 10 weeks. 2. Although ALL are welcome, myChurch seems to consist of mostly students who, on any given night, can be seen huddled over their stove making a box of macaroni and cheese for dinner. Needless to say, the $20,000 in 10 weeks seemed like a daunting task. But the Pastor, Caleb Davidson, didn’t think so. Week after week he would get up at the front of the church and proclaim that this was going to get done, that God was going to make it happen. And every time he did that I would get the same feeling of “Oh, God, please let this happen so Caleb isn’t humiliated”.

September 11th was a Sunday and the 10th week in the 20/10 campaign. I remember it well. At the start of the service, before they took the offering, the amount of $$$ they had received for the 20/10 campaign was $9,700. Which, when you do the math, is just slightly less then half. Nonetheless, Caleb got up at the start of the service and said that he believed that $20,000 was the number and that they were going to get reach their goal. God was going to provide for this campaign and there was no convincing Caleb otherwise.

So, Caleb got up at the front of the church and proclaimed that they were going to reach the $20,000 and it was going to happen that night! And, like clockwork, I got that same feeling I have been getting for the last 10 weeks whenever he proclaimed that.

After that, we worshiped, Caleb preached an awesome message and then the we closed with more worship. But before we got to sing our last worship song, Caleb had an announcement to make. With the kick drum playing in the background, Caleb made his way to stage.

September 11th was a Sunday. And that Sunday the offering for the 20/10 campaign was $16,000 bringing the money raised for the 20/10 campaign to approximately $26,000. Instead of getting the feeling of “Oh my God I hope Caleb isn’t humiliated” I got this feeling of pure joy and excitement. I think I described it to Caleb as “It was like the ball dropping at Time Square on New Years Eve”. Thinking about it now, the egg was/is very much on my face and on all of the faces of the people who worried the same thing as me. God said he was going to provide and he did. Sometimes he does it on a small scale and sometimes he does it on a big scale. And every time you think he does it on a big scale, I get the feeling like God says “You think that was big? Wait until you see what I do next!”.

September 11th was a Sunday. I will remember it well.

God is real. He is so amazingly real. And that, to me, is what they call Good News!

peace,

Jimmy

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Categories Editorials, Words with Wisdom
Author JHyde

A God Story Part 2 – Ankles

6 Sep

Warning: This story includes heavy doses of believing in God (or a lack-thereof).

Ladies and gentleman I have been misdiagnosed. As a result of that misdiagnosis I have been walking, awkwardly I might add, around with a boot on my right foot. The boot is designed to make sure my ankle is stationary so that it could heal and I could still walk around on it. However, my ankle was never broken and therefore I did not need the boot.

It went like this, I hurt both my ankles wakeboarding. I went to the walk-in clinic to get them checked out. The doctor told me to go get X-Rays and apparently the X-Rays showed that I had broken my right ankle. So the doctor told me that broken bones take six weeks to heal, gave me a prescription for a walking boot, told me to get re X-ray’d in a couple of weeks, and away I went obviously distraught that I would be seriously limited in my abilities over the next few weeks.

Finally two weeks had passed and I went for a follow up X-Ray on Friday September the 2nd with a raging hope on that I would receive some good news as to the status of my broken bone. The people who took my X-Ray told me to follow up with my family doctor the following week and not the one from the walk-in clinic, where this whole thing began. I was able to meet with my doctor today and apparently my ankle was never broken. It turns out that my right ankle just has an extra bone in it and that was why my ankle looked broken.

So, there I was sitting on the doctors table having just been told that I had been wearing this walking boot for the last two weeks because the doctor at the walk in clinic never bothered to touch my ankle. Any normal person would’ve been pissed. But I’ll tell you something. It was my own damn fault. I deserved to wear that boot. God told me my ankle wasn’t broken from the get go and I neglected to listen to him. The whole thing was my fault.

On my first trip to the doctors office they sat me in a room where I waited for about 15 minutes. I started to get depressed thinking about how my summer was pretty much over and about how I wouldn’t be able to golf, swim, or enjoy the remaining warm days. I was down in the dumps. So, out of desperation I asked God if my ankle was broken. The answer I got back was an emphatic, “No”. With a brighter outlook on things now, I headed to get my X-Rays done. You could imagine my despair when the X-Ray revealed that my ankle was “broken”.

My ankle was never broken. However, I’ve been wearing a boot for the past two weeks because I didn’t believe God when he said as much. God told me when I was sitting on the bed in the clinic that my ankles was not broken and I didn’t listen. Which got me to thinking about how many times have we had the opportunity to believe God but have chosen to walk around with a boot on instead?

So, hear I sit with a boot on my ankle that I don’t need because I didn’t believe and I am asking you that if you get a chance to believe God todaybelieve him…no matter what the X-Rays tell you!

peace,

Jimmy

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Categories Words with Wisdom
Author JHyde

A story about God

26 Aug

What your about to read will include a heavy dose of God. There will be talking about, praising, and all around good vibrations of God in the coming words. So, if you don’t want to be complicit in the glorification of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit then stop reading now…

The reflection, which is the basis for this entry, began last night. For about a month my brother hounded me to read ‘Shake Hands with the Devil’ by Romeo Dallaire. It is the accounts of Lt. Dallaire’s time in Rwanda and how humanity basically allowed 800,000 Rwandans to be slaughtered in a few weeks. I am 30 pages in and I can feel the frustration rise with every flip of the page. Anyway, I was reading the preface and at the end of it was this chilling paragraph:

“After one of my many presentations following my return from Rwanda, a Canadian Forces padre asked me how, after all I had seen and experienced, I could still believe in God. I answered that I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God. Peux ce que veux. Allons-y.” LGen Romeo Dallaire – July 2003

I had to pause a second to let what I had just read to sink in. He knew God existed because he met the devil.

How lucky are we, as Canadians, that we have the privilege to wake up in this beautiful country every morning. We wake every morning and go to work without every wondering if we will make it back home to see our families. We can do, basically, whatever we want. We get to go to school, have coffee with friends, swim in our rivers, eat our fresh food, etc. People in Rwanda didn’t , and probably still don’t, get to do any of that stuff. How come we Canadians are so lucky to be Canadians? What makes us so special that we get to live in a safe and beautiful country? It’s not really that fair, is it? I’ll answer those questions with a story of my own:

When I was building my house I fell into a bit of a depression. It was a good solid 3 month depression. I would wake up every morning, stroll over to my house, which at that point was still under construction, and think, “Why am I so fortunate? How come I get to have this amazing house? I didn’t really do anything to deserve it.” And from that I fell into a bit of a spiral. Every day I would think the same thing about my house. It almost felt wrong for me to be in the position to have something so great. Instead of what I was going to live in, I felt like I deserved something much less….say a shack in the woods or something. Every day I would tell God how guilty I felt that I was getting something so extravagant. Then, one day, God sent me a message. I love those. It’s hard to understand if you’re not a believer but every now and again something will happen in your life that only God will have been able to do. Lucky me, this particular day I experienced one of those moments. I was in the drive-through for CIBC bank, about to deposit my pay cheque. I was in my usual funk of feeling guilty about my sweet house and telling God that I didn’t deserve it, that I actually deserved a shack in the woods. So, there I was waiting in my car to deposit my pay-cheque, feeling like garbage, and I looked ahead to the car ahead of me in line and the license plate read, “BEGRTFUL”. I’m still a bit stunned. A vanity license plate had just changed my life. I snapped out of my funk and at that moment I thanked God for all I had received, and was about to receive. That, despite not deserving any of it, I was thankful that my situation had allowed me to build something great. It was a God moment. It was something that happened and the only explanation was, “God did it”. It wasn’t a burning bush or virgin birth. It was a vanity plate. But it was still God.

By now you’ve probably figured out this is a blog about grace. How, despite falling short and being undeserving, God still loves you. He loves you so much that he sent his one and only son to die for you. That is Grace, my friends. So thank God for living in Canada. Thank God for allowing you to go to work, swim, eat, drink, and live. Then ask yourself how we can use what God has given us to help people in places like Rwanda, Pakistan, Libya, the Congo, etc. instead of feeling bad about being given so much and them so little.

Here’s some good news: God loves you, a lot!

peace,

Jimmy

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Categories Editorials, Words with Wisdom
Author JHyde

Bullied Like Me

3 Jun

I’ve added a new blog to the blog roll on the side of my blog……blog. This one by my good bud, and very funny comedian, Rams. Usually, Rams likes making people laugh because he’s good at it. However, ‘Bullied Like Me’ is about Rams experiences about getting bullied as far back as he can remember. Also something pretty cool about this blog is that Rams encourages other people to send in their “getting bullied” stories so it’s not just a one man show. Think of it as blog therapy. If you’d like to share your story with Rams, and all of Rams faithful followers, send your stories to bulliedlikeme@gmail.com.

Bullied Like Me

peace,

Jimmy

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Categories Randoms, Words with Wisdom
Author JHyde

O.B.L is O.U.T

2 May

Like many of you, I awoke to the bomb shell that Osama Bin Laden was killed in a raid yesterday night. When I heard this news, I was bit shocked. I was shocked for two reason. 1. The ten year man hunt for him was over. 2. I thought he was supposed to be hiding out in a cave somewhere not hauled up in a mansion.

Another thing that I found interesting, but not shocking, was the reaction of other people around the world. It was straight up jubilant. There were people partying in the streets, gathering at the white house in DC, and over all excitement that this man was killed. But I felt weird. I felt weird that people were so happy over a man dying. Yes, he did horrible, terrible, disgusting things to his own countrymen and to the world but I still can’t feel happy over a man’s death.

Then another thought popped up. ”How am I supposed to view this event as a Christian?” Am I supposed to be happy that the world was rid of such evil or should I feel down that everyone is so jacked up over getting this revenge. So, I did what any curious Christian would do and emailed my Pastor, Pastor Gord. What up Gord! Gord kind of set me straight and sent me to this blog about this exact thing. I won’t even attempt to explain it but y’all should go here and check out “Red Letter Christians – Whose Death does God cheer?“

As Christians, we tend to think to approach things with an attitude like, “It’s either option A or option B.” And so often God’s answer is option C.

peace,

Jimmy