Tony Wheeler dot Net

Life, Love and other Mysteries…..

I was reminiscing the other day about the old days. I must admit that I am quite sentimental at times…I was dialoging with a very good friend about how my friend Curtis (see links to Cross Pointe Christian and the “McG’s” blog on the right) used to just hang out and talk about life, love and other mysteries. I think at the time we didn’t realize how important those conversations were in our lives, at least I didn’t. Curtis has been one of my best friends for the better part of the last decade…sharing in my life’s struggles and victories, but mostly just being supportive of whatever I chose to do with myself, always encouraging. Obviously, if said activities are detrimental to my health and life, he wouldn’t encourage them. I called Curtis the other day and ended the message with “I miss you, man.” I felt a little, well, gay, just because I was being sappy toward another guy. But I think that part of the Brotherhood of Christ is just that. Curtis probably knows more about me than anyone on this planet, my bads and goods…He just knows who I am. I think often times modern men lose this intimacy out of fear. I have many close friends, many of whom I would share a lot with, but probably only a couple that I can share everything with.

The reason why I am thinking about this really is out of my own current situation. This is one of the times in my life where I need to be vulnerable and talk about life, love and other mysteries with my brothers. Some interesting developments are taking place in my life that I would not in a million years have imagined would be taking place. If you have been reading this blog (all 3 entries, including this one) you will remember reading about the Wild Goose Chase. This chase is just being further solidified in my life. I cannot express enough to God about how thankful I am in this moment. I have begun a romance of sorts and am quite excited about what the future may hold. It is kind of difficult for me to allow myself to be open to being vulnerable to a woman due to past experiences. The last relationship that I had dissolved due to my emotional distance. I was unable to allow myself to be in the relationship in my heart. But I am glad that this time around hasn’t been that way. I was thinking about this the other week and how God hardened hearts of people throughout the Bible…I am thinking that it was for my own good that I was emotionally detached. This may all be more than you ever wanted to know about me….but thanks for reading!

On a side note….if you or your church is looking to sponsor a missionary, take a look at these two fine young men:

Jeff and Jaime Bristow, Missionaries to Kenya

Mioche and Rosie Rock, Missionaries to Haiti

On another side note….if you would like to get up-to-date feeds of this blog you should download Mozilla Firefox

This is a browser that will take the place of Internet Explorer or whatever you are using…it allows live bookmarks, like the one for this blog. Firefox also allows a lot of other cool stuff, like opening windows in tabs. Best of all, IT IS FREE!!!

I gotta say, Today was a good day….

If you can guess what song that line is from, you get a prize. Seriously.

I wanted to blog about Church. Today I went to Journey Church, aka “The Church at the Movies”. (if you wanna read more, check out the links to the right, Pastor Rich’s blog is there as well.) A few days ago I checked out the Journey website and saw that they have been going through the 40 Days of Purpose campaign, much to my chagrin. The church that I went to when I first moved to Orlando (about 2 years ago as of right now) went through this back when it all came out, so I was kinda like, “Man, isn’t this old news yet?” (RICH — If you are reading this, take no offense, please keep reading! haha) So we went to church today and Rich announced that this was the final Sunday of the campaign and that today would be a Celebration service for the time that was spent in community and discovery of purpose. I still was a bit hesitant to be there, but man am I glad I was. Several members of the community shared about their experience during the campaign. I had sort of forgotten how powerful testimony is. I have always been one to really enjoy and be encouraged by people sharing what God is doing in their lives. Let me tell you, today was a glimpse of what Church is about. Read on….

The very definition of Church to me has changed quite dramatically over the past few years. Growing up Church was a place that we went to. Church has now become something that I am, that we are. In the past few years I have been to Church gatherings in several movie theaters, The Mall of America, a High School, the 2nd worst neighborhood in Cincy, a mega-church and several “normal” Church buildings. A smattering of humanity in all of them, but probably the “best” one was the one in Cincy. The mixture of “normal” Church folks, ex-cons, ex-drug addicts, seminary students, etc was just amazing. That day truly changed my view of Church. Lately, I have been listening to many sermons from across the country and further solidified my thoughts. A.) Church is not a place that we go, it is something we are. B) Church gatherings are not a place for perfect people, Church gatherings are ICUs for spiritually sick people. These should be places that people are accepted no matter where they are at with God. I don’t ever want to be apart of a community that doesn’t reach out to people where they are at. That is what Jesus did. He could have easily spent all his time with some high and mighty folks, but he spent his time with tax collectors and sinners. C.) I am glad that there are communities all around the country and world that are getting these ideas.

To close…Thanks, Rich, for the testimonies today. They did my heart well, even though my heart wasn’t feelin it at first. Be certain that we will be back…I am out of town next weekend though.

The name of this blog is “the misadventures of a beautiful letdown.” The Beautiful Letdown is a song by Switchfoot. Such an excellent song and sums up quite nicely my thoughts….I’ll leave you all with a snippet from that song.

“We are a beautiful letdown
Painfully uncool
The church of the dropouts
The losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools
What a beautiful letdown
Are we salt in the wound
Hey, let us sing one true tune”

Just trying to see if this thing is on….didn’t like the error message I got before!~