This afternoon Kathy and I leave for New Zealand to launch the two January '10 World Race Squads.  Starting today we have 265 World Racers on the field.  There are racers in Eastern and Southern Africa, South East Asia, and now in the "land down under".

We will do some last minute training of coaches and squad leaders.  We'll sit in on team debriefs as we set the standard for community living.  We'll worship, pray, activate, and teach.  It will be a jammed packed few days.  And it will end as all other launches do, in hugs and tears while another 110 Fire Breathing World Changers are commissioned.

Here is the outline of what we'll be teaching this week.  It's a series I taught as we transitioned our home church more than a year ago.  It's a message that all of us Christ followers need to live.

What You'll Need on the Road Ahead:

                  The Presence of God – We all understand about God's omnipresence, but there is a distinct difference between that and His manifest presence.  We need to know how to cultivate the presence of God in our lives through: the word, His voice, worship, and our walk.

                  Willingness to Change – Most people hate change and Christians seem to struggle with this more than most.  My favorite verse about change is found in Deuteronomy 6:23.  Moses is reminding the Children of Israel "God (often) has to take us out to bring us in".  In order to get to the next step of our journey the previous step has to end.  This is the heart and the vision for the World Race.

                  A Positive Attitude – It is said that your attitude at the beginning of a task directly impacts your ability to complete the task.  On the Race attitudes are to kept in check and in fact expected to improve each step of the way.

                  A Limited Amount of Emotional Baggage – From the first day of training camp, through the entire year, and then at final debrief we will do everything we can to facilitate each participant's freedom from their past.  Salvation isn't so much an event as an ongoing walk to the complete freedom made available in Christ.

                  Traveling Companions – We need people in our lives.  We weren't built to do life alone.  We challenge the racers to create an environment for healthy teams.  We have four core values for team life: teams must be safe, they must be a place of preference, they must be a place of high consideration, and they must be a place of high courage.  These values will directly impact the health of a racer's future family as well.

Pray for us as we travel, for the squads who are launching, and pray for the following leaders.

         Dave & Bernadette Fredriksz – Coaches

         Roger & Rozy McCormick – Coaches

         Robby Riggs – Squad Leader

         Tara Stephenson – Squad Leader

         Mark Schandel – Squad Leader

         Kyla Cornelius – Squad Leader

For about 10 days now all three of our sons have been home.  We have had a great time together.  Our days are filled with reading, emails, debating the issues of the day, and watching movies.  Our evenings are mostly spent with extended family and friends laughing and reminiscing.  I'm not a real fan of the holidays normally, but this year has been awesome – no travel, no hurriedness, just time together.

One evening the five of us watched the 25^th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  We were glued to the TV for four hours as we sang along with our favorite artists.  There they were Stevie, James, Ozzie, Bruce, and many others singing their greatest hits!  We love the sound of the guitar, we appreciate the slapping and thumping of the bass, and of course we admire a really good rock ballad.  We are by anyone's definition a rock-n-roll family.

All this time together with our sons and the reminiscing with others has really gotten me thinking about the legacy I want to leave.  I think this issue of legacy is also being stirred by the fact that I'll be 50 in about 7 weeks.  Not trying to be morbid, I just really want to be intentional regarding what I leave our sons.  I can tell you this, there won't be a lot of money, but I hope there will be lots of great stories and funny memories.

So this is my list, it isn't complete by any stretch, but it's a good start.  I want to leave my sons:

 A committed love for one woman

 A strong commitment to family

 A heart that's driven by vision and inner voice

 The ability to push hard when the heat and pressure are on

 The ability to laugh when the heat and pressure ease off

 An overwhelming grace for people who are different

 An inquiring mind that doesn't settle for easy already found answers

 A sharp mind that understands context and remembers the fatal mistakes of the past (as to not repeat them)

 A deep desire and love for Jesus

 An extreme patience with His church

 An increasing openness to the Spirit

 And of course, a love for rock and roll...

This is part two of the mistakes I made in marriage.  Part one I posted on 12/23/09.  I've included the links to the audio files so you can listen to the message as well.

Marriage Mistakes (part one) - audio file

Marriage Mistakes (part two) - audio file

The 10 Mistakes I made in Marriage (continued)

6. I didn't know what love meant to Kathy

- I, like most men, am a fixer; so I thought love meant I was supposed to fix everything for Kathy

- She didn't want me to fix things for her, she wanted me to listen to her; that concept is still often too fresh for me

- Kathy desires – time, settledness, and peace; when I promote those things, I am speaking love to her

- Good Books about our uniqueness:

Gary Chapman – Five Love Languages

Marcus Buckingham – Discover Your Strengths

Cindy Tobias – The way they Work

- My role is to love and communicate love over any thing else

7. I was never trained in the use of Money

- Money is one of the top three issues debated in all of our homes

- Money is such a huge issue, but very few pastors ever teach about it (I wonder if that's because they don't understand it either)

- Bankruptcy rates are on the rise and with it the number of failed marriages

- Top things I've learned about money:

Delay gratification

Budget

Give

Save

Delay gratification

8. I waited too long to stop making Judgments

- Jesus warned that if we judge (criticize) that we could expect to receive the very same amount, veracity, and lethalness back into our own lives

- I was too critical of other people's families and I found out that it affected our lives more than it did theirs

- There is something even worse than a judgment it's called a vow.  Ever noticed that when you criticize another person (like your parent) and then end your criticism with "I would never do that" that you usually end up doing it?

- Stop Making Judgments and Vows Right Now – it just may save your marriage!

9. I confused my role as a Parent

- I have already written about this at length and will share very soon the notes from my message "The Ten Mistakes I made as a Father"

- Let me share two common mistakes that many parents make regularly:

         They think their job is to be their child's friend

         They think their job is to get their child friends

- These mistakes are driven by the parents' own skewed self image (please see # 5 above)

10. I spent too much time on Right and Wrong thinking

- Like Eve in the garden, I kept eating from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" rather than the "tree of life"

- I often found myself battling to be "right" inside our marriage and home.  And by golly, I was often "right", in fact I was often "dead right"

- Christians, especially, feel that they must be right all the time.  They hate to admit they maybe are wrong or partially informed.  In fact, it drives me nuts to think that most evangelicals call their political choice "the right"

- I can guarantee I will write more on this topic in the future

- Let me close by saying that when I stopped caring about who was right, Kathy and I started to live in more peace....

This is intended to be a conversation not a message, so please respond.  These are really just talking points, not completed thoughts.

I've made a lot more mistakes than just 10; thank God love covers a multitude of sins & mistakes.

The intended audience: people dating, engaged, married, looking to be married, currently have children, currently thinking about children, or have children in any one of these stages of life.

To start with here's what I recommend to couples wanting to get married: be together at least one year, get premarital counseling including some sort of an assessment, on purpose pick a fight about: money, children, extended families, and holidays

1. I was in a Hurry

- "All things are beautiful in His time"

- Timing is so important, but I was always in a hurry to get to where I was going next

- I kept pressing the relationship to next level, b/c of my fear of rejection.  That often put too much pressure on Kathy

- Our Bad Examples – we both got too serious way too young (both 17 years old), got married before college was done (not smart), big expensive house purchased in our third year of marriage (very dumb)

- The Ramifications - created debt and driveness in our family

2. I was looking for the OK rather than the Blessing

- Kathy's parents had concerns, but we kept pushing forward

- Biblical examples indicate that a parental blessing is normal and should be expected

- If it takes a little longer to get the blessing, wait for it

- This one mistake caused confusion in our home as Kathy was caught between two authorities, b/c she never really felt released by her parents

- It Caused unnecessary tension in my relationship with her

- It Caused unnecessary tension between her parents and us

3. I minimized the impact of Family of Origin

- In Exodus we are taught that blessing and iniquities get passed down

- Each family has differing personalities, coping skills, interacting styles, & lots of individualized baggage

- No one ever talked to us about generational curses and iniquities, so our young family became a weird blending of some terrible habits

- Example of differences in family styles - my family was loud, argumentative, and sarcastic – Kathy's family was quite, never teased, never argued, nor debated

- Our families' handled money, extended family, holidays, and conflict in total different ways – we were confused!

4. I misunderstood my Role

- According to Paul in Ephesians I'm to love my wife as Christ loved the Church

- My job is to protect, provide, accept, and influence by trustworthiness

- In my parents' home it was often a battle to see who was in charge, so I wanted to make sure I was the authority in my home.  I often pushed my weight and my will around

- Let me tell you something I've had to learn - "If you have to keep reminding people you're in charge, you're really not"

- Now Kathy wasn't perfect either, because at home she had learned the art of passive- aggressive responses

5. I Looked for Kathy to meet all my Needs

- "Thou shall have no other gods before me"

- No, I wasn't really trying to make Kathy a god, it's just that I had some really big problems with my value & identity

- Kathy was neither gifted nor responsible to fix these issues

- My Mom told me about a year before she died something that she'd had to learn – "I could never put on your father a need that was supposed to be met by God; it was unfair to him, to me, and to God"

- As both Kathy and I began to look to the Father for our value & identity we developed an awesome, ever-growing, deeply fulfilling relationship with each other

I have this question that keeps ratting through my brain.  It's a question that we as parents must answer.  Folks, it's time to check on what motivates our parental decisions. So here it goes – "Who's Our Daddy?"

Let me describe some parental dysfunctions that are leading me to ask this question.  We are too often afraid to speak up regarding our children's friends, activities, and even their character.  Why?  Because, first and foremost we want our kids to like us.   It makes us feel good, even fulfilled when our children like us.  But is that what our parenting goal should be, to get our kids to like us?

The other major reason we often ignore their issues is because we want them to be liked.  There's this sickness we have as parents, it's as if our rejection is healed by our kids' acceptance.  This often causes us to push them too hard at sports, academics, and social activities.  Here are some lies we've believed: them fitting in is us fitting in; them being popular is us being popular; them being liked is us being liked; them being successful is us being successful.

So we ignore things we should address and battle anyone who challenges his or her character.  Why?  Because if they are rejected we are rejected.  We have our value and identity tied up in our children being liked and liking us.  On those rare occasions that both those "likes" happen at the same time, all seems right with our world and our identity feels secured.

Are our children supposed to be the source of our value and identity?   Doesn't that sound backward?  Isn't our value and identity to come from first our earthly fathers and then our Heavenly Father?  And isn't our children's value and identity to come from the same sources?

Our value being sourced by our kids is way too much pressure for them.  No wonder stress related diseases are on the increase for children 18 and younger.  No wonder adolescent addiction rates are on the rise.  Our children are being forced to parent at too young an age.

Come on parents, let's step up here and take back our role.   Lets love, encourage, comfort, set boundaries.  Lets be more objective!  Let them try, let them succeed, let them fail, let them be forced to work on their issues, let them find their own paths.

Twelve years ago yesterday I lost my dad, Donald Hindes.  He had been struggling with major chronic illness for more than a decade.  Although he was only 67 it was actually a relief to know that he was done battling his own body.

Donald was a tough dude!  He believed three things about raising children: corporal punishment was necessary, ADHD was a diagnosis for the undisciplined, and a spanking worked as well as Ritalin.  Let me tell you, as a kid, I regularly needed something.  I would have preferred the pill, but that wasn't what Don was prescribing.

Donald was also a tender man.  He knew how to cry, to provide, to love, and to ask forgiveness.  Because of his anger, he got really good at the latter.

He and I had an interesting relationship.  Both stubborn, we often locked horns.  I'm pretty sure that I wore him out with my constant talking, questions, and activity.  I know he wore me out with his attitude that "children are to be seen and not heard".  It was a match made in heaven...

My dad is the one who launched me into adulthood.  I went through a rite of passage to become a man, that passage lead straight through my father.  I started battling for my independence from him early on.  There were two pivotal moments that let me know my dad considered me an adult.  I want to share these with you.

At twenty I was a hot shot with all the answers.  My dad and I argued about everything from the weather to politics.  Not really arguing, more of a constant debate.  One day he and I squared off on a topic we often had over the years.  I never liked the tone he used with my mother, so one night I told him to stop or else.  He called my bluff and we tussled.  Not long, not hard, not really violently we just sort of grappled.  We both got one good shot in and both walked away with a dark mark under one eye.

I know in this civilized and sanitized world we live in that there are going to be people who are appalled by this story.  But this story was instrumental in my initiation.  After the battle was over, my dad came to me in tears and apologized.  He promised three things: to treat me like a man, to talk softer to my mother, and that he would never use physical force again to make his point.  Donald Hindes became a man of his word.

We both wore our blackened eyes proudly.  Donald's son was now a man because my dad said he was.  It's not that we never disagreed again, we did and often.  But it normally ended with a laugh and a cup of coffee.  I spent the first twenty years trying to move away from him, I spent the next seventeen trying to understand him.  Over those 37 years I came to really love him.

Another time about two years later, I came into my parents' house and announced that I was just about done with marriage.  The truth is I wasn't getting my way as much as I thought I should and marriage was a lot tougher in real life than it looked on TV.  My mom and dad listened for a few moments to my tirade and then my dad spoke.  He said a lot, because like me he was verbose.  I don't remember everything he said but I do remember the last few words - "You're an adult now, go to your home and work it out"!

Now most would think that I would have felt rejected, but as I pulled out of my parents' driveway I realized He was right.  I was an adult; I could no longer run to him, he after all had initiated me into manhood.  I drove home and did what I had learned from my dad.  That day in tears I apologized to Kathy, I promised to watch my tone and treat her with the tenderness she deserved.  Like Donald Hindes, I have become a man of my word.

I don't recommend this kind of initiation into manhood for every male.  But I do recommend initiation.  Boys need to battle their dad's for independence and dads need to let them win when the moment is right.  Men, don't let our women do all the work here, our sons need us to declare them men and then begin to treat them as such.

Thanks Donald, I love you daddy....