George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

General Thanksgiving

By the PRESIDENT of the United States Of America

A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affirm THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of the States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the final and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish Constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions;-- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our federal and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wife, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us); and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Source: The Massachusetts Centinel, Wednesday, October 14, 1789

Ethics Check

OK, it’s time to get down to some serious writing again!

I had a wake up call today from my boss. In a nutshell my boss told me that he had some concerns about my ethics. When your trying to live for Jesus and someone calls you on the carpet and wants to have a talk with you about your ethics you’d better pay attention. In my case I had strayed a little bit farther from the middle then I should have. In fact I was farther left of center then I even realized.

Today’s talk brought back to me the fact that when we drift off of center of where God wants us we normally do not drift a whole bunch at one time. Rather when we drift we do it a little at a time. A smidgen here, a little bit there, and so forth. The problem is that when we don’t crawl back up on the proverbial altar and get back in the center of where God wants us on a very regular basis it doesn’t take long and we can really be going the wrong way.

That’s what happened to me, I started getting a little bit off of center little by little and the next thing you know my boss is having an ethics talk with me. The good news is that I wasn’t having ethics problems with my customers be dishonest or anything. The bad news is that I was having ethics problems in the way I was treating my fellow employees. I know where I got off center.

There are a couple of guys I work with that have basically zero morals and I let their behavior affect me. One of the guys sells quite a few cars and he will do whatever he can to get your customer away from you. If your headed for a customer he will take off running and cut you off to get to the customer first. He will then tell you that he is exempt from the rules because he sells so many cars. My problem is that I let this guy get under my skin and that was wrong of me.

I had to take a step back today and reexamine where I’m at. I had to once again to make the decision that I’m going to let God fight my battles for me. I was wrong to try and pay back this guy for what he did to me. Like I said, my battle belongs to God. 1 Peter 3:9 says “Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it.”

The lesson learned today: Don’t repay evil with evil, rather do what’s right in the sight of God and he will bless you.

Be Blessed!!!

BIG SCOTT

RUN! RUN! RUN!

Wow, I can’t believe it! It’s been almost six weeks since my last blog update. Things have been going by at warp speed for the past month or so. With work I’ve been in training every morning, Monday through Friday for the past month. Then add to that I alternate working until either 7:30 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. every other night! When you’re working 65+ hours during the week you don’t have much time left to blog or much anything else for that matter!

This past month I’ve been fighting to get sales. All throughout the month I kept wondering if I was doing something to make God angry at me. Day after day I kept missing sale after sale. I was really starting to get desperate. One thing that became apparent to me though was that it wasn’t just me, I found out that everyone else at our dealership wasn’t doing very well either. In fact, car sales were way down city wide last month for some reason.

Looking back on the month I figured out that God probably wasn’t angry with me. In fact I finished the month tied for second place for the total number of cars sold. I finished the month on a high note selling two cars on the last day of the month. I plan on using this momentum to start this next month off on a high note.

Training should be over after this week and I’ll see if I can’t start getting back to writing some of my more witty blogs!

Be Blessed!

BIG SCOTT

Landing In The Job God Had For Me

Wow! Once again it’s been a bit since I been able to get a new blog up! For once I really believe that I’m where God wants me to be! For a lack of faith I thought that God wanted me out on the road driving truck but it didn’t take long for God to close that door on me! In fact I really got backed into a corner and was running out of options in regards to work options that I had.

I really didn’t want to go back selling cars again. I guess the biggest reason was once again my lack of faith. At first I really had doubts that I would be able to do well at selling cars again. I really started feeling God tugging on my heart and so I somewhat reluctantly opened my heart to the leading of the Holy Spirit. I really started feeling in my heart that God wanted me to get back into the car business again.

I went back down to Trinity Motors where I sold cars for a couple of years and talked to my old boss and good friend Jerry Thomas to see if he had any suggestions and referrals for me. Sometimes when you’re not sure about something it can sure pay off in big dividends to seek advice from a Christian brother or sister. Especially one that knows you and can encourage you!

Jerry was great! I was really uplifted and Jerry really energized me again by reminding me just how really blessed I am by Jesus in my ability to sell cars. Jerry reminded me that I was one of the best that he had ever met. Jerry and I talked for a bit and Jerry reminded me how much fun I had when we were really busting cars out! Another thing that Jerry told me was that I needed to work with a dealership that had a big inventory because I could move a lot of cars!

Jerry then referred me to go talk with Kelvin at Mike Stephen Kia/Carbanc just a block up from Trinity Motors. Jerry really felt that Kelvin and I would be a good match. It must have been leading of the Holy Spirit because Kelvin and I immediately hit it off!

I went in and met with Kelvin and gave Kelvin my resume. Kelvin interviewed me and liked what I had to say and hired me on the spot! I guess I should say here that I really liked what Kelvin had to say too. One stipulation that I had made to not only to myself but to God was that I would not work for a dealership that sought to do things that I felt were ungodly.

Going in I knew a little bit about Carbanc as one of my close Christian friends was at Carbanc for a few years and one of the sales people that is now at Carbanc is a devoted, Christian Sister. One thing I found out in my interview is that Carbanc is not there to take advantage of people that have credit problems or are hurting in some other way, rather we are there to help these people. I came out of my interview stoked! I knew that I was where God wanted me!

I’ve been at Carbanc now for a week and I’ve already had the opportunity to help out a couple of single mom’s who needed a quality, dependable, vehicle. When a single mom or some other person comes in needing a good, dependable vehicle and I can help them out and we don’t rip their head off price wise or we don’t just try to stick them in any old vehicle that may or may not have a myriad of problems I feel good.

When at the end of the day I can go home to my wife and family, lay down at night and sleep comfortable knowing I’ve done something good to help someone out and I know that I’ve done right in God’s eyes then I know I’m doing what God has called me to do! What a good feeling! Another great thing that I am able to do is follow the vision that God has given to me. I am able to pursue my ministry goals and keep moving forward with my goal of preaching the good news that is Jesus Christ.

Oh, by the way, here comes the unabashed plug…

If anyone is needing or knows someone who needs a good, used car, truck, van, or SUV, or would like a new KIA or Mitsubishi, come on down and see me at KIA Carbanc at the corner of 31st Street South and Broadway or give me a call at 316-522-3435! I can work with anyone and get them bank financing! Come see me!

Advertisement over!!!

Be Blessed!

BIG SCOTT

Our Home Makeover!

What a day we had around our house on Saturday!  We were the recipients of a little bit of home makeover.  We had people here from Home Depot, the Wichita Police Department, and the Wichita Fire Department.  Click here to read about the story in Sunday’s Wichita Eagle Newspaper!

Thanks to the above mentioned people we’ve got new carpet in our home, an alarm system to let us know if Andrew tries to run off, and we also got one of our doors and three of our windows fixed!  What a blessing this was!  I’ll see if I can’t get more up about this later!

Be Blessed!  I Know We Are!  Hehehe!!!

BIG SCOTT

20 Seconds!

I just read something that caught my eye.  According to Wharton Business College (U Penn) the average adult attention span is just 20 seconds!  20 seconds, wow, that’s short!  What Wharton is telling us is that if don’t have someone’s attention locked in just 20 seconds that we’ve lost them.  Let’s see, we’re coming up on about 20 seconds into this blog right now.  Are you still with me?  Do I have your attention now?

Emails are no exception.  According to the website MarketingSherpa.com emails are only open an average of 15-20 seconds too.  If you’re reading this blog at this point, two things have happened.  First, I held your attention span long enough in the email I sent out notifying you about this blog, and secondly, I held your attention long enough to get past the first 20 seconds.  How am I doing so far?  I guess the real measure will be is if I hold anyone’s attention long enough in this blog for them to email me back and let me know that I held their attention long enough to do that!

How much farther does this 20 second window reach?  According to the website TechCareers.com if the average job recruiter that is reviewing your resume does find something that catches his/her attention in the first 15-20 seconds your resume will probably not get much more review.  On the Quintessential Careers website (www.quintcareers.com) Katherine Hansen says in her article The Scoop on Resume Length: How Many Pages Should Your Resume Be? “Given that employers screen resumes for between 2.5 and 20 seconds, a resume must quickly capture the reader's interest.”  Once again, here comes the wow factor.  Wow, your future is in the hand of someone who gives you your first evaluation in 20 seconds or less!

Quoting Nancy Tierney from the website UnconditionalConfidence.com where she is discussing the art of business networking “The truth is that when someone asks you that question (What do you do?), you’ve got about 20 seconds to answer, spark their curiosity, initiate a conversation and create a connection. In 20 seconds, you need to be immediately interesting and captivating while communicating the huge scope of what you have to offer. No wonder we feel pressured and on the spot!”  How many times have you heard that you’ve only got one chance to make a first impression?  Now we here that we’ve only got 20 seconds to make that first impression!

Is our world moving at such a rapid pace now that we humans are now programmed to not focus on something more then 20 seconds?  Ever wonder why when you’re sitting at home, kicking back on the ole’ sofa, enjoying a nice mellow movie and all of a sudden, whammy, you get blasted with a loud, blaring commercial?  Advertisers know that if they don’t get you’re attention in 20 seconds they’re just wasting they’re commercial time.  A prime example of this would be the current Wendy’s commercial where a guy is eating a Spicy Chicken Sandwich behind a screen and right at 20 seconds into the commercial, ka-boom!  The guy explodes.  Time some of those commercials like that sometime and you’ll find that between 15 and 20 seconds something happens to get your attention.

So what can we Christians learn from this?  We’ve got 20 seconds or less to get someone’s attention with the endless truth.  When we present the Gospel to someone, i.e. witnessing, we need to have our act together and come out on fire.  The two techniques that I use that most definitely have the 20 second hook is either Bill Faye’s Share Jesus Without Fear or Kirk Cameron/Ray Comfort’s Way of the Master which is available online a www.WayOfTheMaster.com.

So how did I do?  Did I hold your attention all of the way through this blog?  Did I hook you within 20 seconds?  Just remember we’ve only got 20 seconds, the length of time it took for you to read this paragraph.

Be Blessed!

BIG SCOTT

The Moon Shines Bright!

Here we go again!  Here’s a story that I wrote for my American Literature class in college.  We had to write about something that happened to us that was not good but turned out to be funny.  I hope you get a kick out of it!

Be Blessed!

BIG SCOTT

It was November 1976, I was in the Eighth Grade, and it was the opening game of the Ingalls Junior High basketball season.  I was the starting center.  The game started off great for me as I controlled the tip-off and as we went down court I broke through the key with the ball, shot, missed, rebounded my own shot, shot again and scored.  This was a great way to start the season, or so I thought.

It wasn’t long after that we had the same play set up again but this time the ball got loose and as I dove for the loose ball on the floor I heard it, a great big, loud, rip!  I had just blown out my basketball uniform shorts!  To make matters worse I had only a jock strap on under my shorts!  As I stood to my feet I heard the crowd roaring with laughter!  Was I ever embarrassed!  

I looked over at our coach who was trying his darnedest not to bust a gut to loud laughing and he just signaled me to the dressing room.  I left the floor to hoots and hollers.  I can only imagine how red my face was.  Looking back I’m really surprised that I was traumatized for life over what had just happened!
     
I was so shocked over what had just happened that I just went back to the locker room, switched to my practice shorts and came back out.  When I came out the coach put me right back in.  As I went in all I could hear was shouts such as “Hey Scott, check your shorts!” or someone saying loudly “RIP!”  It took me a bit to get back into the game, but I stood firm and I wound up having a pretty good game.
     
I guess you could call this one of those character building events in your life.  I don’t know what else you would call it!  Even now, thirty years later, I can still look back at that one event and laugh about it.  You know, that on event became one of the highlights of my Junior High years.  What started out as one of the most traumatic events of when I was in school wound up being one of the most hilarious!