Todays Video Blog!

Happy Thursday!

I got so carried away with yesterdays message, that I forgot to tell you guys something VERY important! Yesterday was a HUGE DAY for Emily and I! February 17 ring a bell? Come on you guys… some Chuck and Emily trivia!!

Ok, I’ll just go ahead and tell you. On February 17, 1991 @ 10:45pm, Emily and I invited Jesus into our marriage, our home, and every single small and big part of our lives! This happened 19 years ago, yesterday… so happy SPIRITUAL birthday to us!

Instead of me trying to tell the story from memory, let me give you a FUN clip from my coming book, Make Me A Legend! It’s taken from the middle of chapter 8, Get a Dream!

Eventually, those high winds of passion and romance would blow over us young and restless kids one more time! Just after my High School graduation, Emily came begging for me to take her back! (ha ha-hey, this is MY book Emily! If you want to tell your version, write your own book! lol) Really, the sparks of attraction were flying… and we were sweltering for each other!

Time had been cruel and we both carried way too much emotional baggage back into this tender, rekindled, volatile fling! We did some things unmarried people are not supposed to do and ‘somehow’ Emily became pregnant! She was only seventeen, and I was just turning nineteen… and we were having a baby!

So we were married in my Grandparents back yard, standing on top of an old creek bridge on August 11, 1990… and we lived happily ever after! Well, not exactly… because neither of us had been to rock bottom yet. And little did we know just how close from disaster we really were! It wouldn’t be long now; we were falling out of love and into hate… sliding into the divorce of no return at breakneck speeds!

With Emily having to move from Richmond to finish out her senior year (with child)… in a new town, while going to hair school at nights and working as an apprentice hairstylist, and making time for all the doctors appointments, and cooking dinner and everything else that goes with having your own home… and then me having to find ‘jobs’ paying enough money to support my new family… the pressure was unbelievable!

So the honeymoon didn’t last long… and just before our first Christmas, tears were falling, love was lost, and we were looking for the fastest way out! Emily got an attorney and we were going our separate ways. Neither of us really wanted to be apart, we just couldn’t find a way to end the fighting.

During those days, I remember watching Little House on the Prairie and thinking, “If we could just get a little religion in our home, maybe we could work things out.” Looking back now, I know it was God who planted these thoughts. He was reaching out to both us in so many ways… and we were just about to reach back!

There were three primary forces impacting us positively at that time. First was a group of kind and loving volunteers at the local Pregnancy Help Center. After the free pregnancy test, a girl named Amy gave Emily a free Bible and started sending handwritten letters of encouragements to both of us.

Then there was our bold redneck neighbor Dale… the guy who smothered us with his great big Jesus smile every time our paths intersected. Dales niceness was so profound, I actually wondered if the guy was on feminine hormone pills!

Besides Amy and Dale, there was one old high school buddy of mine… he really made the difference! Just as soon as my heart started opening up, Kevin is the first person I thought to call! I had not forgotten that unexpected September day when Kevin first came into school claiming he “found Jesus” at a summer youth camp. None of Kevin’s friends were happy about his apparent experience. I’m betting I was the unhappiest! In fact, I did everything I could to lure Kevin off that straight line he walked so well.

Here I was just two years later, pitifully humbled… and on the phone begging for Kevin to show me the way! Thank God he stood his ground in high school and did not weaken in the face of all that peer pressure. Thank God for people like Kevin, who willingly forfeit friends and reputation and everything else-to live their faith right out in the open for all of us to see. It was about one month into my near divorce experience, while on the telephone with Kevin that Emily and I welcomed Jesus into our hearts! It was the night of February 17, 1991. 10:45pm EST to be exact!

We we’re so excited that night! Emily was on one phone and I was on the other, both sporting our puffy wet cheeks. I remember when we got off the phone, she ran from the bedroom and I met her from the living room… and we hugged for what seemed like hours, crying in each other’s arms!

Our experience was the real thing! At last, when it seemed as if there was no help for us, God dived headfirst into our blazing inferno, scooped us up in his loving arms, and blasted us out the other side of rock bottom. What new confidence had that night, knowing that our lives had finally taken a turn in the right direction!

That’s a small piece of our amazing story…

Here’s a video that best expresses my heart at this moment! Love you all!!

Dream Big, Live Bold, and Make the Difference!

Chuck

The Donate Link, Facebook, Twitter, Make me a Legend, Destiny Family Center, You Tube

Todays Video Blog!

Happy Tuesday!

Yesterday, I wrote page 334 in my book, Make Me A Legend! Only 25 pages to go and we’ll be on way to the editing and publishing phases! 360 Word Document pages should translate into approximately 250 book pages… the perfect size! I’m writing at a rate of 4-5 pages per day right now… should be finished by the end of next week, definitely ahead of my March 15th goal!

No kidding… my eyes water 10-15 times a day, just thinking about the profound series of events getting ready to unfold for my friends and me!

Yesterday I worked on my final chapter, Untame Yourself… here’s a very sloppy clip, about the making of Gods greatest legend! It’s a lead-in to my final few pages: the wild is calling!

For 40 years, Moses existed as a regular guy with the perfect, average life! Fourty years of hard labor & living in the sandy cocoon of Midians desert wilderness… the untaming of Egypt’s Prince! God worked on him and worked on him, and even though Moses must have went about the routines of his meager daily existence unmindful to what was happening… he just had to know, deep in his heart, that God would return for him again someday!

During those four long decades, when it would seem as if Moses had been forgotten, God was doing his greatest work! None of this time was lost time, for God was creating his greatest legend of all time! 40 years, of uprooting, tearing down, destroying, and overthrowing every weak and vulnerable place in Moses! 40 years of welding and banging and forging into creation, Gods epic reprisal… the LEGEND MOSES, Gods vengeance on the destroyer of his beloved children!

When the time was right! On that day of no turning back! The restored instinctive Monster nature of Moses heard a howling on the distant hills! Perhaps, when the time is right you and I will hear it too… the call of the wild! Aaaooooooowwwwwwwww!

Have you ever felt like this before? Like you’re a could-have-been legend, sitting exhausted on a trash pile of wasted decades?

Then, you MUST know deep inside your heart… God WILL return for you again someday! When the time is right! After the welding and banging and forging into creation… on that day of no turning back! God will come for you!

We’re all made for something GREAT. We all try hard and fail miserably. And as long as we are still ALIVE, then there is still a reason for our unique existence! We have a heavenly calling, a divine purpose… an eternal destiny! We’re all called to rescue somebody…

Perhaps, when the time is right, that restored instinctive Monster nature within YOU and I, will hear a howling on the distant hills!

Perhaps that time is now!

Aaaaooooooooowwwwwwww! Moses, Moses… I have heard the cries of my people… and I am sending you…

There you have it! Encouragement for the seemingly forgotten ones! I just finished praying for you all… have a most triumphant day!

Dream Big, Live Bold, and Make the Difference!

Chuck

The Donate Link, Facebook, Twitter, Make me a Legend, Destiny Family Center, You Tube

Todays Video Blog!

Happy Monday!

Had an excellent weekend, excellent Sunday… how about you guys? Would love to hear about it!

I don’t want to get weird on you guys, but I was on Fox News dot com this morning and noticed the following advertisement. Why am I posting this random image and what the big deal with this Nation Wide Insurance advertisement?

Well, first because: society seldom uses the term “in the wilderness”… and second because: I wrote and spoke about moving away from the middle ground of the wilderness yesterday! Talk about the bizarrest confirmation of all time! Just thought you guys might get a kick out of this!

Very cool story!

Speaking of confirmations… well, as you read on Saturdays blog: I had a most triumphant writing week, laid down something like 27 pages of the best material I’ve ever written! The last thing I wrote about on Saturday… came from the final chapter of the book, Untame Yourself!

I read some of it to my assistant, Kristin Via… and we both agreed that I had pushed the envelope WAY TOO FAR… maybe the most INTENSE and PROVOCATIVE literature I’ve read in my life! So intense, it felt like my book was turning into the manifesto of a revolution!

In fear of isolating myself from some of the mainstream folks in our nation and world, I sought to tone it back… and it was like my arms and fingers FROZE UP SOLID… I could not make a single change! For to do so, would directly violate the purpose of that chapter.

An unedited clip from that chapter:

This is our nation-this is our world! Our youngest generations have never seen a better way! They are born into the earth during a time of unprecedented Christian repression; oblivious to the fact that this is not how their forefathers wanted things to turn out! They hear us talk of yesterday’s awakenings like we’ve crafted the fairy tale of something that can never really be.

Today’s kids can hardly understand why it is not natural for a man to marry another man. Or what is wrong with sex before marriage. Or what’s the big deal with using drugs and still claiming a heartfelt relationship with God. They live in a world without boundaries, a world lacking a moral compass and a spiritual conviction… a world when self is god and anything that feels right is perfect.

Up until now, you and I have reasoned: that to revolt would be far too costly. So we’ve chained our passions and toned our standards down… we’ve silenced the John the Baptist voices among us. We’ve chosen rather, to coexist in unevangelistic compromise with Islam and the other false religions of our era.

We’re cowering in the face of radical liberal agendas. We’re tolerating the immoralities of our day, increasingly vexed in our righteous souls as we switch through the channels on our televisions and move about in public places… somehow, we just know that tomorrows better world is a very real possibility, but we just don’t see how… because we have become the minority voice!

Give me a sign!

So I finished up Saturday, writing a segment from the life of Samson: the original hulk! And I prayed, “God, if this chapter is far too radical, please give me a sign. If you’re smiling on it, and if you are giving me these goose pimples and teary eyes… then confirm it in some strange way!”

I woke up Sunday morning at 4:45am, got up and gathered my belonging to head for the office. Emily leaves the television on all night long, every night. Before bed every night, she presets a bunch of channels for the entire night.

So, when I woke @ 4:45am Sunday morning… the television in our bedroom was on some kiddy channel… and it was airing a bible cartoon! Anybody wanna guess which Bible character? It was a cartoon of SAMSON!

Talk about a strange approval! I remember looking at the TV and chills shot across my body… and I thought to myself, “What are the chances of this HAPPENING!”

Thought you might like to hear this goofy story of mine.

The bigger the impact of a potential action, the more confirmation we should seek. There are many ways to seek Gods direction for a potential action. The bigger the decision, the more of the confirmations I seek out. Here at the Destiny Campus of Life Christian University, we teach about developing your own confirmation system.

Here’s a sloppy version of my personal confirmation system!

• Prayer: We must develop the ability to listen, hear, and follow the voice of God in our lives. Jesus promised, “My sheep LISTEN to my voice; I know them, and they follow me!”
• Peace or the absence of Peace: Philippians 4:6-7 promises that the peace of God will RULE in our hearts. That word rule is the same word we would use to describe an UMPIRE in baseball. What does the UMPIRE do? He shouts, SAFE or OUT or FOUL BALL, etc. So I pay attention to my heart AS I AM IN COMMUNION with God.
• Gods Word: according to 2Timothy 3:16, the Bible is PROFITABLE for all things! God never leads contrary to his written word. Many times, if we are reading our Bibles often (as we really should be), God will reveal his will to us through the repetition of certain principles, through our thoughts concerning certain verses… by arresting our attention as we read and listen to our Bibles.
• Wise Councel: If my intended course of action is really from the voice of God, then it will be able to withstand the scrutiny of wise councel. Psalm 33:11 talks about how the councel of the Lord will STAND! In earlier years, I surrounded myself with people who always told me what I wanted to hear. Today, I surround myself with people who are: truthful, bold, but not controlling… compassionate, passionate, teachable themselves… people who are not afraid to INFORM me with a strong opinion, and then still humble enough to let me make my own final decision.
• Supernatural: dreams, visions, angels, and prophecies.
• Circumstances: open doors, closing doors… this one is dangerous, because we do not want to be tossed all over the place by good and bad circumstances. The Apostle Paul talked about a WIDE DOOR of opportunity OPENING UP IN FRONT OF HIM… and he went through it! There were other times when he did not go through what SEEMED to be an open door. Not all good things are God things.

Thats about it for today… I almost feel as if I’ve given my readers INFORMATION overload. Sorry, I just got carried away! I pray todays blog adds tremendous value to your amazing lives… I love you all so very much!

Dream Big, Live Bold, and Make the Difference!

Chuck

The Donate Link, Facebook, Twitter, Make me a Legend, Destiny Family Center, You Tube