OK, so let's say you take your friend to Starbucks, to talk to them about how God can help them with their marital problems. As the two of you are getting into a good dialog, you see this on the side of your friend's cup:

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55564

Do you,

A) Ignore it

B) Integrate it into the discussion

C) Change the conversation to be about the cup

D) Throw the cup down on the floor and begin jumping up and down on it saying "die, evil cup, die!!"

Personally I'm unhappy with Starbucks for including this cup in their collection, but I would still follow the Holy Spirit right into a Starbucks any time ... and buy something that doesn't come in a cup.

I think our best response to this as a christian is to continue to explain to people why we are convinced that God is not a figment of our imagination and how he has been the answer to so many problems we have brought to him ... i.e. continue to spread the answer to the cups question. It's not a bad question. The enemy asks people this question all the time, but in private, so I'm not sure printing the question on the side of a coffee cup is going to work out real well for him, because it rallies those of us who have experienced the real answer.

Let's just make sure it rallies us to the right cause ... spreading the answer .... hello? The most powerful answers are those that satisfy difficult questions.

The GoKart has returned, but without the usual asphalt defacing tire squealing engine screaming fanfare, as the new engine, clutch and brakes will require about 500 miles of very feathered and prescribed treatment to insure a proper “settling in” of all the components.

Actually all new engines (and new cars) “require” this but few people do it on purpose. However, it is similar to city driving by a conservative driver, so many people unintentionally do it right.

It is not at all similar to my normal driving so I do it on purpose …. if at all.  

Here's what the engine looks like installed.

It is SO difficult to keep the RPM’s under 4000 and the throttle below 30% ! So yesterday I added up the cost of all the new components and labor, and printed it in large letters and keep it stuck beside the tach.  (OK, not really … I just keep it stuck in my head).

Only 7 days until the dragon trip ! Gotta go, I've got a lot of driving to do before then.

I came across a book the other day. The title was, are you ready for this,

“What got you here, won’t get you there.”

And I thought, wow, that’s just like my life.

See I was born really smart, and talented. And then my parents, God bless ‘em, as hard as it was, taught me to work hard and be persistent, too. And for a while, just a while, it really seemed like I could solve any problem if I was smart enough and worked hard enough at it.

And then along came relationship problems.

Now at first, you know, I figured it wasn’t me, it was them. You know. I was pretty sure the first couple of friends and significant others and such that went south were just too stupid to recognize a good thing when they had it. But after #25 or so I started to notice these patterns that started to look like maybe it didn’t matter how smart I was, or how hard I worked at it, I just wasn’t very good at loving people.

And then this one day I messed up on two really important relationships I really didn’t want to mess up, in a really bad way. And that was it. I couldn’t take it any more. I was ready. I was ready to admit that I don’t have what it takes to really love anyone, but I want to. I want to bad. Because nothing in this world feels as good as giving real love, and nothing feels quite as bad as screwing somebody over when you wanted to do them right.

So I called out to God, who I was just barely getting to know, and He gave me the exact words I needed in that moment: “God, from now on, YOU love people through me. I don’t want to do it my way any more. I screw it up. Totally. But I see you can do it right.”

Within two weeks things started to go a lot better. But sorry, folks, forget about happily ever after. Fast forward, years later it was someone else’s turn to screw up royally and let me down. And then on top of that they just started treating me like dirt. And so I went back to God and said, how am I supposed to deal with this? What do you want me to do? I can’t take this! And he just gave me love, just gave me love, for someone who wasn’t earning it, wasn’t deserving it … and He just loved that person through me … and it changed their life, and if you’ve ever seen anything like that, you already know it changed my life too.

So I’m just here to tell you today, what got you here, won’t get you there. Take the same stuff, and make it bigger, better, faster, smarter, richer, more educated, you can supercharge it or plug it into the 220V dryer socket if you want to, it’s just going to blow up bigger or burn out faster. Why? Why? Because it’s the wrong stuff.

But if you let God heal you, if you let him transform you into who he designed you to be, if you let him love you and let him love other people through you with his kind of love … that’ll get you there.

CrossCurrents and Living Waters are designed to help you learn about and start on that very journey right there.

You know I think if Jesus himself took on bodily form one more time and walked through our ‘hood and asked us “you need anything?” I think most of us, most of the time, would say “no, no, I’ve got it under control, I’m good, I’m good.” But not all of us. There’s a few of us are ready for some help with a relationship or two, even if it’s just a skeleton we hid up in the attic years ago, somehow, today, we’re ready. If that’s you then come on. I’ll be there with you, and I mean with you in spirit and intention, because I may be teaching or leading a small group or worship or whatever and maybe not at the same crosscurrents or living waters you go to, but still I learn something about myself and God and how to love others better, every time I go no matter what I’m there for. So if that’s you then like I said. C’mon. I’ll be there with you in one form or another because I can’t get enough of it.

Crosscurrents, by the way, the 8 or 9 week flavor, is like a lake, in comparison to Living Waters, the 26 week flavor, which is like the ocean. Some people are ready for a quick trip across the lake; others are ready for an ocean voyage. Some want to try the trip across the lake before the ocean voyage. You know where you are.

http://hosting.dynamis.net/tomsplace/engine-replacement/index.php

(Click the link above to view the pictures). Pictures of the old-engine flaws revealed start halfway down the page. Check out how the combustion gases being pushed over into the water jacket left a brown "burn" trail. Busted!  Seeing this helps me get my sanity back.

Oh yeah. I stopped smoking yesterday too. Wha?? I was having 2 to 8 cigs a night, almost never smoking during the day. Decided that was too much too often. Getting the news about my engine, 2 hours later, was rough, but I held out. I figured cigarettes won't fix my car problem - or any of my other problems, or make me feel any better about any of it either. Neither would a beer so I didn't have one of those either. Y'all please pray this sticks. If I smoked every night I'd die early.

Those of you who have seen me out and about in the last few weeks have noticed I'm not driving my red Spyder; I've been driving a rent car of one kind or another (most recently a Prius, which I've enjoyed ... on one level, anyway).

Reason being: my car has been overheating and I left it at an extremely mechanically capable friend's house (the same guy who did the engine swap for me) to figure out why. His conclusion after several other logical angles was that the head gasket needed to be replaced. But, he came down with the flu and couldn't do the job any time soon. So, he sent me over to a friend of his who is another extremely mechanically capable guy (professionally, in this case). Friend #2 goes to do the head gasket replacement and calls me: my engine block is warped in a bad way, and damaged internally in other ways, and the engine head is warped too. (Probably, this was already the case when I bought it used over the internet, but since it ran great, I didn't worry about it ... until I started getting overheating problems from combustion gasses being slowly but surely forced into the cooling stream).

So the bad news is now I have a car with 6 months of payments left, not driveable, not sellable, needing about $1900 of parts and $1500 of labor.

The good news is, friend #1 is giving me an engine head that he has on hand and using his Toyota discount to purchase my engine block. Otherwise the numbers above would be at least $1000 more. I can scrape together the money (and pay for it all year), all the parts and labor can be done over the next 10 days or so, so then I can get out of my rent car, go on my trip to the dragon with my buddy Randall, and henceforth have a reliable car to drive for the forseeable future.

Sometimes you just gotta bite the rope while they dig the bullet out of your arm.

Word to the wise out of all this. If you buy a used engine over the internet, (1) use disposable money or get a 30 day guarantee, and (2) have the inside of the engine inspected by someone you trust (this will probably cost a little extra) before you put it in the car.

What's the driving force behind a disgruntled old hippie?

"Sour power."

Hah hah.

Happy Monday.

Well that wasn't too hard.

Very slow accelleration. 25MPH max on city streets. 50MPH max on the freeway. Hazards on most of the day so people would know to go around me. Lots of these folks behind me ...

But I did it. My route was Greenpark to Meyerpark, Meyerpark to The Heights, The Heights to The Medical Center, The Medical Center back to Greenpark. The last leg was the most challenging. Lots of freeway "hills" brought my mileage down from the 61.8 to 60.8 I ended up on as shown below.