NO TRANSLATION REQUIRED

If you cross the border in Brownsville, Texas and drive south another ten hours or so, you can find a remote village in the state of Vera Cruz called Oviedo. Stepping into this rural community is like going back through time. I had the privilege of spending five days there last week on a mission to bring food and hope to some of the most beautiful people on the planet. This week’s confession of highly-caffeinated Christian comes brewing with an introduction to one of those people who made a lasting impact on my life.

MARBLES AND MONKEYS
I stayed in a little mud house complete with chickens, a dog named Canika (Marble), and a cat named Chongo (Monkey). The water came from a well and the food from an oven made of mud. We ground up corn through a hand cranked grinder for tortillas and had our fair share of several of those chickens in the house. It was an amazing week of slowly passing days and powerful nights in church services. I've been in remote villages throughout the world and this one seemed little different from any in India or east Africa and only ten hours south of Texas.

The simple and carefree people here seemed totally oblivious to the turmoil their nation is in right now. The conversations I heard in Matamoras of politics, kidnappings and corruption were nowhere to be heard in Oviedo. The old women talk about men, the young men talked about girls and everybody talked about the weather. There are places still left in this world where life is uncomplicated and slower. I love those places. It was five full days of seeing a side of life most of us have forgotten.

Since my preaching gigs were at night I spent the days trying to help around the house where I could. Mr. Jimenez had only a few possessions of any value he had acquired in his 75 years and his bed was one, which he gave to me for the week. So when he was doing work I wanted to help him. He didn’t really work hard but he stayed busy all day long, telling me stories I couldn’t understand and smiling the whole time. I laughed as if I knew what the heck he was talking about and he laughed because I was laughing.

CORN-FED GRINGO
I had arrived on Monday after a flight to McAllen and a long drive in the very back of a Ford Expedition with seven other missionaries. Only two spoke any English and I ran out of Spanish words within the first twenty minutes of the trip. That’s about the time I lost all feeling in my legs. When we arrived I promptly went into a coma and Tuesday I woke up to the sound of that grinding corn I was telling you about. My zoo breath was out of control and my hair looked liked Don King had a seizure.

When I stumbled out of my little sleeping place, scattering chickens along the way, I nearly bumped right into a young lady name Maria Ella. She was grinding corn and greeting me as I made an adventurous trip to the bano out back. She was just being her, doing what she does every day. She gets up in the morning and begins a route of doing things for the elderly in her village. She doesn’t get paid but you would never know it. She takes it upon herself to spend more than ten hours a days with various old people doing chores and being an incredible help. This is her ministry and she is 16 years old.

As the week went by I spent many hours with this amazing young lady. She never stops smiling and never stops working. She sings while she works and says funny things that make the old folks laugh. They kiss on her a lot and she hugs Mrs. Jimenez as if they were family. I was so impressed with her I began telling her about my sixteen year old son. “He’s single and a lot better looking than me,” I promised.

Her little brown face would turn bright red but all I could see was smile. What a selfless, amazing little girl she is. I was convicted all week and my heart just broke over how selfish I can be. Maria Ella preached a powerful sermon to me without ever speaking a word I could understand.

WHAT JESUS DOES
On the last night there, we had a conversation through a translator. “I see you taking care of everybody but who takes care of you?” I asked. Big tears ran down her face as she explained how she had fallen down a well several years ago and broken her hip. Her mom had taken a bus to the hospital she was recovering in and tragically died when the bus went off the side of a mountain. For four years, this little girl had lived without a single person in the house of her family.

“I know God loves me”, she said smiling through tears. “I go to see her again someday.”

I would never have dreamed this little girl had a body full of pain and a heart broken with tragedy. I was shocked to learn she was orphaned and alone. How could somebody with so little to work with, work so hard to make a difference in so many others lives? I knew the answer because I could see Him through every atom in her little body…JESUS.

I made it across the border and home in time for my Sunday sermon at Open Door. But I didn’t preach half as powerful a message as the life of precious Maria Ella.

Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.
St. Francis of Assisi

Maria Ella & The Brewer

NO TRANSLATION REQUIRED

If you cross the border in Brownsville, Texas and drive south another ten hours or so, you can find a remote village in the state of Vera Cruz called Oviedo. Stepping into this rural community is like going back through time. I had the privilege of spending five days there last week on a mission to bring food and hope to some of the most beautiful people on the planet. This week’s confession of highly-caffeinated Christian comes brewing with an introduction to one of those people who made a lasting impact on my life.

MARBLES AND MONKEYS
I stayed in a little mud house complete with chickens, a dog named Canika (Marble), and a cat named Chongo (Monkey). The water came from a well and the food from an oven made of mud. We ground up corn through a hand cranked grinder for tortillas and had our fair share of several of those chickens in the house. It was an amazing week of slowly passing days and powerful nights in church services. I've been in remote villages throughout the world and this one seemed little different from any in India or east Africa and only ten hours south of Texas.

The simple and carefree people here seemed totally oblivious to the turmoil their nation is in right now. The conversations I heard in Matamoras of politics, kidnappings and corruption were nowhere to be heard in Oviedo. The old women talk about men, the young men talked about girls and everybody talked about the weather. There are places still left in this world where life is uncomplicated and slower. I love those places. It was five full days of seeing a side of life most of us have forgotten.

Since my preaching gigs were at night I spent the days trying to help around the house where I could. Mr. Jimenez had only a few possessions of any value he had acquired in his 75 years and his bed was one, which he gave to me for the week. So when he was doing work I wanted to help him. He didn’t really work hard but he stayed busy all day long, telling me stories I couldn’t understand and smiling the whole time. I laughed as if I knew what the heck he was talking about and he laughed because I was laughing.

CORN-FED GRINGO
I had arrived on Monday after a flight to McAllen and a long drive in the very back of a Ford Expedition with seven other missionaries. Only two spoke any English and I ran out of Spanish words within the first twenty minutes of the trip. That’s about the time I lost all feeling in my legs. When we arrived I promptly went into a coma and Tuesday I woke up to the sound of that grinding corn I was telling you about. My zoo breath was out of control and my hair looked liked Don King had a seizure.

When I stumbled out of my little sleeping place, scattering chickens along the way, I nearly bumped right into a young lady name Maria Ella. She was grinding corn and greeting me as I made an adventurous trip to the bano out back. She was just being her, doing what she does every day. She gets up in the morning and begins a route of doing things for the elderly in her village. She doesn’t get paid but you would never know it. She takes it upon herself to spend more than ten hours a days with various old people doing chores and being an incredible help. This is her ministry and she is 16 years old.

As the week went by I spent many hours with this amazing young lady. She never stops smiling and never stops working. She sings while she works and says funny things that make the old folks laugh. They kiss on her a lot and she hugs Mrs. Jimenez as if they were family. I was so impressed with her I began telling her about my sixteen year old son. “He’s single and a lot better looking than me,” I promised.

Her little brown face would turn bright red but all I could see was smile. What a selfless, amazing little girl she is. I was convicted all week and my heart just broke over how selfish I can be. Maria Ella preached a powerful sermon to me without ever speaking a word I could understand.

WHAT JESUS DOES
On the last night there, we had a conversation through a translator. “I see you taking care of everybody but who takes care of you?” I asked. Big tears ran down her face as she explained how she had fallen down a well several years ago and broken her hip. Her mom had taken a bus to the hospital she was recovering in and tragically died when the bus went off the side of a mountain. For four years, this little girl had lived without a single person in the house of her family.

“I know God loves me”, she said smiling through tears. “I go to see her again someday.”

I would never have dreamed this little girl had a body full of pain and a heart broken with tragedy. I was shocked to learn she was orphaned and alone. How could somebody with so little to work with, work so hard to make a difference in so many others lives? I knew the answer because I could see Him through every atom in her little body…JESUS.

I made it across the border and home in time for my Sunday sermon at Open Door. But I didn’t preach half as powerful a message as the life of precious Maria Ella.

Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.
St. Francis of Assisi

Maria Ella & The Brewer

The Pursuit of Happiness

The pathway to personal joy is often blocked by terrible circumstance and detoured by colossal failure, but living life means going after it. Even the founding fathers of our country knew that happiness is something we have to chase after, which is why they wrote about our God-given right; not to happiness -but rather the pursuit of it.

I think God blesses pursuit. God loves it when we go after things. I can’t tell you how many times the money showed up after I started trying to make a trip happen or I connected to the right people after I started working on a project. A lot of the pieces we need to make something work will not fall into place until after we are already committed to the outcome.

God is funny like that and I love it. So when it comes to happiness, we have to be committed to it before we actually get good at it. I think the founding fathers nailed it in penning the pursuit part of that sentence. If you want to be miserable then just sit and hope something good happens. As sure as shooting, you’ll end up bitter that nothing did. But if you really want to live life to the fullest then you have chase after your highest potential.

Proverbs 13:12 says
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.

What if you could be happy? What if you hated your situation but still loved your life?

The Good News is you can! It’s that kind of paradox that successful Christians have been living in for 2000 years. Learning to love your life is one of the greatest benefits of real Kingdom living. The pursuit of happiness is all about learning to love the life God has trusted you with.

The Happy Meal

One of the biggest reasons we fail to really see the tangible promises of God fulfilled in our lives is simply because we won’t get off of our blessed assurance. Were just not motivated enough to really go after things. I also think one of the greatest reasons so many of us are not happy is because we don’t take responsibility for being happy.

The attitude I see so much of today, and its poison to our society, seems to be “If I’m not happy, its your fault.”

According to Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California at Riverside, research shows only 10% of our well-being is determined by circumstances, while 40% is a matter of intentional activity. The bottom line? Happiness is a choice we are responsible for. Commit to living a better life, and chances are - you will.

This point, here, is a lesson that all of us need to be reminded of. The circumstances that are beyond our control have little to do with our being happy. Every day, as we wake up with zoo breath to an irritating buzzer, we need to purpose to be happy this day.

Psalms 118:24, “This is the day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Contact the Brewer @ www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com

Almost Nearly but Not Quite Hardly

A couple of years ago, I was in London England for some teaching and band gigs. One of the great things about going to London is the opportunity to dive head first into their train and subway system to get around town.

For a guy from Joshua Texas, it’s still a thrill to try and navigate through their multi-level, underground, concrete cave system. I wouldn’t want to do it every day but its fun every now and then.

So I’m running to get to the door before it closes and within ten feet, it shuts all the way and a moment later, takes off while I am still standing on the dock. An old man who had also failed to catch the subway poked me with his cane and said something rather brilliant. “The thing about trains”, he said in a heavy British accent, “is if you only miss it by a second -you still miss it.” He tipped his hat and walked away while I tried to process what he said.

Yes there are lots of things in life where almost doesn’t count at all.

So several years later, last week in fact, I find myself in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Truckee, California and I was thinking about what that old man had said.

Horse Shoes and Hand Grenades

Just west of Truckee is a beautiful lake known today as Donner Lake and just beside it is a mountain and a pass with the same name of Donner. I was stomping around out there knowing this was the place where the famous Donner party camped out through the winter of 1846-47.

In case you don’t know it, the Donner party was a group of pioneers that got stuck there in bad weather for six months. The disaster of the Donner party rocked our nation the way the Hindenburg crash and Mount Saint Helens would later on.

Basically what happened is they rested for five days near present day Reno before attempting to summit and by the time they went to go over the pass, it was impossible. The snows had come early that year and a record 26 feet of snow fell upon those pioneers as they scrambled for pitiful shelter. Four months later most were dead and some had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.

I stood on the very spot where several of those families had camped out. It broke my heart because when you look west you can actually see the pass, the last hill they had to get over before reaching California. For six months they looked up and saw nothing but snow. Oh If they had just gotten there a little bit earlier.

Some say they missed it by only one day. Others argue two or three days but as the old man told me in England, “If you only miss the train by a second, you still miss it.”

The Near Miss

The dictionary’s definition of almost looks like this: Adverb: very nearly; all but. I don’t think there are very many things more frustrating than almost. The Brewer hates almost. This week’s confession of a highly caffeinated Christian comes brewing with a warning label. Be very careful of almost. Do not settle for almost when you can have the real thing.

Sometimes we church leaders will settle for the general ballpark of something and the end result is a disaster like the Donner party. As much as I love having a great band for praise and worship, which we do in our church, musical talent can not be substituted for real worship of the Lord. As much as I love doing huge food outreaches, handing out food without loving the people you’re handing it too is only a near miss. As much as I love the Bible, knowing the 31,171 versus without knowing the heart of the one who wrote it is close but no cigar.

Almost-Christianity is not Christianity at all. If you miss Jesus by a little bit, you still have missed him all together, and that is not party at all.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

The Brewer on site of one of the cabins near Donner Pass California

Contact the Brewer @ www.OpenDoorMinistries.org

Hope Like Heaven

Hope to me is a big deal but not for basic survival. The world is full of functional people, surviving people, who are basically hopeless. I think you have to have hope in order to excel and advance. Hope goes with progression like biscuits and gravy.

I think survival is way overrated and dreams achieved much less celebrated then they should be. One of the major enemies of our progression is the willingness to just survive the day. I don’t want to be a survivor. I want to be an overcomer. I don’t want to barely make it through the day and crawl into bed beat up and dreading the next day. Sometimes surviving stinks.

I want to win the race and walk off my battlefields victoriously. I want to be passionate and full of life. In other words - I want to be full of hope. Hope makes you love life instead of fearing it.

I think Christianity would be a lot more attractive to non-Christians if there weren’t so many lemon faces among us. Instead of singing praises, a lot of us sing Gloom, despair and agony on me from Hee-Haw. Two thousand years ago, Peter seemed to think it was a given that Christians would be noticed for being people outrageously hopeful. He said, “…be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you…” 1 Peter 3:15

One of the greatest side benefits of really walking with God, is you get to learn how to love your life. Oh the Brewer loves to love this life of mine because I can’t stand to be miserable. I hate self-pity and the terrible bondage of misery more than I hate black lickerish and Indian food.

So I guard my hope the way my grandfather used to guard his hidden stash in the cigar box. I wont let myself keep a list of unanswered prayers but I do keep a list of those I’ve seen come to pass. I try not to focus on what I don’t understand and make a really big deal out of whatever revelation I do have.

I figure if I am walking around discouraged, then I’m feeding myself with the wrong stuff. It’s not just my responsibility, but my privilege to be encouraged. I get to be the guy that lives life full of hope. I don’t want to give that up, no mater how many trash dumps I feed people in, orphanages I visit or truckloads of groceries we hand out, I get to be the guy that lives life full of hope.

If wishes were horses…

I recently heard an awesome man of God give his spin on what Hope ought to be. He said, “Hope is not a wish. Hope is the joyful anticipation of good.”

Instead of living life wishing things were different; I want to live a life expecting something good to happen. Why, you ask? Because God is good and wants to do good stuff. It’s really that simple. I partner with God by having hope and being a little ancy for really good things to happen. Turns out, hope is a fun thing to have.

The same man of God also said, “Any area of my life which doesn’t have hope is under the influence of a lie.” Hearing this statement made my baby leap.

Magnifying power
The Biblical term for making a big deal out of something is to magnify something. May God give us all grace to magnify the things that matter and pay less attention to the things that don’t. Jesus loves you and smiles when He thinks about you. There’s great hope in this and hopefully it’s contagious.

Job 36:24
“Remember to magnify His work, of which men have sung”

Contact the Brewer via www.FreshFromTheBrewer.com