The most annoying sound in the world

The only reason that I'm writing this post is to help me deal with the most annoying sound that I'm hearing at the moment.

I had to come to the car dealership this morning to get my car looked at because the air condition all of a sudden stopped working. I'm made my way to the waiting room and took a seat closest to the door. There were about four people in the room when I entered. Like most people, I made some space between myself and the others in the room. I noticed that they had remodeled the place and added more seating and gave it a new modern look. I counted eleven seats  in the room with four people including myself.

While I was reading an article on a website a man came through the door and sat right beside me eliminating the space I had created. He then proceeded to eat his breakfast. Now I don't mind people sitting beside me or eating beside me. That's not a big deal. What is a big deal is when someone who is eating beside me has no manners AT ALL. First of all I have auditory issues. Most noise gets under my skin. As he ate I heard every last bite he took while his mouth smacked his food, and smacked his food, and smacked his food. 

I want to say something so bad but I'm going to hold my tongue because I know it will be over soon. 

You may be going through something in your life at this moment where you are extremely aggravated and it's driving you absolutely crazy. Your first reaction may be deal with it in a negative way. Instead, think what you can do in a more positive way to deal with it. When we deal with issues in our life in a negative way we end up making everything worse. 

Crippled by Fear

  It has been a long time since I've posted anything to this blog. I actually transferred this blog to a wordpress blog and kept up with it for awhile but that too faded. Today I thought to myself that I would start trying to blog again because it's very therapeutic for me and it might help someone out who reads it.
 
  Lets fast forward a bit from the last post on this blog, which was sometime in 2009, and let me give you a brief run down of how I am where I am today. The last time that I posted anything here I was serving as the Worship Pastor at Real Life Church in Spring Lake, NC right outside of Fort Bragg. My wife and I felt God moving us out of this ministry and He opened a door for us to go back to our home town in Albemarle when I decided to take a Worship Leader position at NewLife Church in Locust. I served there for about two years and parted ways back in October of 2012. During the last 4 or 5 months of my employment at NewLife I met a guy name Kevin Simmons who was about to plant a new church in Albemarle,NC. We talked regularly and he coached me through some ministry issues I was going through at the time. When October came and I left NewLife Kevin invited me to Vortex Church. Since then I've served as a Worship Leader there on and off.

  Now that you know a little bit of the back story, let me get into the real reason I wanted to start posting again. FEAR. I want to start this new season of blogging on this topic because over the last year and a half I have been overcome with this feeling of fear, worry, and anxiety. While we all deal with a little bit of this at times in our life, some of us at times are crippled by it. What I mean by crippled is that the feeling of fear is so strong that it keeps you from moving where you know you should move.

  I've led worship for over 10 years. During this time I have felt different levels of anxiety because I am not comfortable preforming in front of people. I've always continued to do it because I know that this is what God has called me to do. But here in the last year and a half I have shifted my focus on my fear and I have made it bigger than my God to the point to where it has crippled me to do what I've been called to do.

  This past March, I was told that I had lung cancer. This struck a new kind of fear into me. The first thought I had was, "What am I doing?" What I had realized was that I had been running from God. I have been running from his presence and where He was leading. I found out weeks later that it was not cancer but also that God was trying to get my attention. I realized that He had been trying to get my attention through different events but I was paying Him no attention. He told me to stop running and to keep your eyes on me. Peter only started to sink when he took his eyes of Jesus.

  This post is for the one who is so caught up in fear that they are afraid to move because of what they cant see, or what people may think or what could eventually happen. If God has gifted you with something, use it to bless others, if God is leading you to move a certain way, MOVE. God is bigger than anything we can think or imaging, and that includes your fears.