Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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DAD’S day

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When is a good dad great?

On fathers day, I wanted to look at and understand the complexities of a good father vs a great father. 

A good father loves

A great father loves

A good father says “I love you”

A great father says “I love you”

A good father provides

A great father provides

A good father supports

A great father supports

A good father is present

A great father is present

A good father is a positive role model

A great father is a positive role model

A good father is a friend to his kids

A great father is a great friend to his kids

All in all, there are many principles to be followed in these statements, and none of them are bad, they are all levels of good fathering…

Dr Google says :

The key difference [between a good and great father] lies in the level of active engagement and the depth of the relationship with their children. 

The world is measured by the world, and basically the difference is found in the “degree of goodness” a father has for his kids. 

“A good father is good to his kids and a great father is gooder to his kids”

But the bible sees it very differently… The bible says “fathers” with no distinction between “good” and “great”. So what does it mean to be a father in the bible? Here are a few key illustrations from scripture:

raising them in the Lord’s instruction

 guiding children towards a right path

 righteous and wise, highlighting the impact of a father’s example

 leading with reverence for God

You can clearly see the Bible has turned the relationship of

“father / child”

to

“father/God, child/God, father/child”

and does not talk about the child and father without God, a great father is a three way relationship putting God at the center and father/child on each side.

“father/GOD/child”

If you want to be a good father, be good to your kids, if you want to be a great father, be gooder to your kids but if you want to be the father you are called to be… put God in that relationship first and always point back to God. 

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

If you think you are a good father, God says you are actually evil (by comparison or actually evil by human standards, it matters not). “evil” and you still make good choices for your kids…

A godly father should be our goal, not a good father and not a great father. We should be friendly, not friends. We should be models, not peers. We should be God focused, not person focused. Take back the role of father today and serve your children well, teach them in the ways of the Lord first. 

May God richly bless your sacrificial service to your family today as you discover God’s sacrificial service to you. 

Special side note: There are a group of men that give extra, not all are “GOOD” but remember the “step fathers” who make a decision every day to be a father to a child that usually rejects that man daily, remember those men that “step in” as a father…

C

Success in failure

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As we sat deep in the woods overlooking the ravine, a twig snaps, leaves crunch and out steps the largest buck I have ever seen, It had to score around 350, perfectly balanced and a body that easily hit 290 lbs. The most majestic buck I have ever seen! I coached my son: as we gazed upon the monster… “slowly” I whispered. He slowly raised his shotgun filled with a finely tuned sabot round, dead eye! Can’t miss! Once in a lifetime! Taking Aim, he breathes in, holds for a moment and slowly releases his breath… his first ever White tail is about to drop on the spot. He gently squeezed the trigger, not jerking a bit, steady and true, just like we practiced. And then in an instance, it’s over, I woke up in the comfort of my bed realizing it was a dream. I never had the opportunity to watch my sons succeed in deer hunting, at least not like in my dream. 

Years later I sit and remember the feeling they shared as they all found success in failure. Learning how to fail is a much better lesson than dropping the big one first time out. Failure is by far a better way to learn than success. But sometimes we need a little success to have the motivation to fail. I remember my first time hunting, I was 18, in winter Wisconsin. So many good and bad things about that trip. Rolled a friend’s fathers truck, over drinking and shot a monster 12 point… I still have that mount. Never a day goes by where I don’t see that mount and remember the person I was, and the things I did… Success? Perhaps… Failure? MOST CERTAINLY!!  

I don’t dwell on my mistakes like I used to, after all, that was 40 years ago. I have grown a lot from that fate filled day. I respect people more and I don’t drink or do drugs anymore… Instead, I have turned my life over to doing GOD’S will and not my own… ohh I’m still in there, waiting to screw things up and learn a new or previously learned lesson… there is no end to my failures, but I look at things different now, I can see the hand of God leading me, and when I let go of that hand, I can hear the still calm voice of my Lord say: “Charlie, I am” and once again I reach out to the everlasting Father that has kept me alive to this day. 

My life? HA, I’m on borrowed time! I think back to the movies of a man that gives his life to servanthood because another man saved his life. So now, he gives his life to serving that man in a debt of gratitude.  A debt he can not repay! Debts we can not actually conceive in its fullness. A debt I gladly turn over to serve the one that saved me… and yet, we forget!

Eventually these three boys learned to love hunting and found success on their own timeline, and learned the lessons they needed to learn. Years later Sam and Al joined my family… The only one I never got to share in hunting success was Sam… we went out a few times but I don’t think he was ever truly interested in woodsy stuff. I took Al out hunting porcupines one year. He was successful in how he stood there as I pulled the trigger, no flinching, screaming and no freaking out. I kept him focused on the object and he found success in my pulling the trigger… incase You don’t know, balloon pops are Als biggest phobia, and it’s a major deal to have him out hunting. 

I am thankful God has a use for me. That keeps me motivated! Much like the success he gave me in hunting for the first time. In this, I could teach life lessons to 5 boys, and many more if we count Boy Scouts. I wonder how all my Boys Scouts are doing today, are they successful because of my failures? I sure hope so!!

Have a blessed day today, tomorrow I bring 5 fat hogs into the slaughter house to be processed into food for our family and friends. I STILL HAVE A HOG IF YOU ARE INTERESTED.

God Bless, Charlie.

So LAZY! A cold winter’s day.

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Short update, Jess has a cast on from a slip on the ice and a fractured wrist, She is doing her best to help out around the adventures of “Livinghazzardously”

Al has bacterial Pneumonia, and will be home this week.

I have pig, chicken, and dog care. Snow Plowing/shoveling duties. Cooking, dishes and laundry. Installations of heating equipment, no heat calls and servicing furnaces. Plow truck is dead in the driveway at minus 9 degrees… The list is interesting BUT God provides for us just what we need, when we need it… it’s an exercise in faith. I’m tired, but so glad I have everything I need to be able to provide for my family. 

Let’s take a tour of my cold winters bleak… 

I am a bit of a Tim Taylor kind of guy, I call it being “lazy”… I think the guy that fills his leaky tire everyday before he goes to work is less lazy than the guy that fixes the tire as soon as possible…. Why?  Simple, the guy that constantly fills the tire, day after day after day works much harder and for more hours than the guy that fixes the tire and doesn’t have to fill the tire more than once… I am told that I’m not lazy, what do you think? 

My pigs require water, the chickens require water too… in the mid winters bleak this becomes a serious challenge, you need water that doesn’t freeze, or you fill the water every day, sometimes three times a day. ENTER CHARLIE, THE LAZY! I really don’t want to go out three times a day, or even once a day, I’m way too lazy for that! So I sit and think of ways to make the water systems I have work better.

The first try was a “Drinking Post” that worked great until I discovered the water table is too high and it wont drain to prevent freezing. I tried adding a small fan powered heater, and a few modifications (what I mean is a bunch of mods) … NOPE, don’t buy this unless you live in a warm climate and have clean critters! The drain plugs up from pig food from the mouths of pigs and it freezes, freezes and freezes… The company was so unapologetic, they made the sale and now I’m on my own… money spent, gone forever, when will I learn my lesson and not try gimmicks, no matter how good the seem to be?

Another attempt was to simply add a heater to a tank of water that the pigs can get into from the top. That was my first step, it worked “OK”. but the water evaporates and is consumed pretty fast. If you know anything about pigs, they drink a lot of water and can’t reach over the top of a tank to access the water, so I was filling everyday, remember, I am lazy, I don’t want to go fill water every day…  

So my pursuit of becoming the laziest farmer continues!

I got a tank made for pigs, a tank designed for pigs! It has a valve that keeps a lower dish full of water and fills it from a large heated tank that is integrated. That works better from the perspective of volume (it’s a week’s worth of water) and keeping the tank clean (the pigs only drink out of the lower bowl and not the tank… ) but it too has a downside, heating the tank wont keep the lower bowl from building ice. Now what! Reptile heating pads are only for dry locations, I can fabricate a heater to attach to the bottom of the bowl but I am concerned the pigs’ curiosity will kill them or at least hurt them from a shock…

MINI FOUNTAIN PUMP! What a great idea Charlie, add a mini fountain pump to the bowl, a few holes drilled in the right locations, run some tubing from the pump back into the tank, add a line to circulate the bowl!  VIOLA! HEATED WATER, CIRCULATED INTO THE BOWL… my best invention to date, lets see if I can get a patent on this, well first, how long will this hair brained idea actually last?

My next invention? How can I provide pig feed via a WIFI app? Jess sits and gives me praise for my inventions, many work really well, but the water for pigs and chickens have been my biggest challenge to date. Maybe going with no chickens can be next, but have you seen egg prices?

I stop and think on days like this, how many different ways does Satan try to get us to do what he wants, gimmicks, laziness, no-self-control… I think of all the lies told to us by the media, big networks and platforms… Satan loves chaos and infighting, he loves to see the Church divided on things God has clearly spoken… Satan loves to see friendships forsaken, families destroyed and lies believed. 

We need to be so careful to not forsake the ones we love because of a misunderstanding or as I like to put it…. PRIDE. I can think of no sin that does not start with pride, it’s either blatantly prideful or it’s subtle. Either way, God has already revealed all truth, we become prideful when we reject HIS truth for the truth we prefer… either way, I can’t see any sin without some element of pride. 

The spirit of pride will convince a person they are right, or that somebody else is wrong… regardless of truth… I have heard both sides in politics lately, both sides are demanding they alone hold the truth, both sides are fully convinced there is no rational opposition… I have one thing to say on this, listen carefully:

You can not have two opposing views of the same concept in the same relation and both be correct… but they can actually both be wrong! 

I like numbers, they can’t lie, they can be manipulated by words, but they can not lie or be wrong. There is literally only one truth claim that is actually the reflection of reality, but there can be many truth claims that are not a reflection of reality… let that sink in! 

There is Truth! “Truth (big “T”) is reality as seen by GOD”.

There is truth. “truth (little “t”) is not reality but rather it is opinion as seen by the father of lies”

I hope as this “SUPER BOWL” Sunday progresses, we can see more truth and less lies. I pray this nation sees healing, I pray God will be glorified this day and the eyes of the blind can see. I pray for you my friends! 

May God bless you this day and may your team be the one that glories God..