Kyle AtkinsBio: I'm a simple man, a little part of a bigger plan
Author Archives: Kyle
Ohana
Many of us remember the cute little movie that came out in 2002 about a mutant alien who crash landed in Hawaii. The little guy, Stitch, is found by a loving young girl who begins to take care of him. Through the comedy that we find in their adventures, one thing seems to be directly under the surface. The idea of family.
After seeing that movie, one thing that has always stuck with me is when the conflict is rising, Lilo tells Stitch a new word, Ohana. When he asks what it means she replies:
Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.
Recently I have been thinking more about family and how much it has been forsaken. Maybe this comes from hearing friends talk about how they don’t want a relationship with their family or watching families all over the place be torn apart. I think that it is time for a change. And this change starts with us.
I find that most Christians don’t have a problem with loving others. We actually try to one up each other all the time by being more loving. Because it is easy. On the other hand, it can become hard to love our family – both biological and our family of believers. We have to do life with each member of our family every day sometimes. We have a past with them, we remember the times they hurt us and the times we have hurt them. We take that hurt and shield ourselves to only love them as much as it is comfortable. This is where we make the mistake. We begin to put more stock in loving others but we fail to love the people closest to us. Because our families are broken and have hurt us, it makes showing love to them hard. This flows into how we love our brothers and sisters in Christ. It matters most that we learn how to love those who are closest.
We all have an idea of what family should look like. Maybe some of you reading this blog think your family is messed up, and maybe they are. Maybe some of you come from a great family, but there is no depth. So what is family?
Again, we have to go back to something that Stitch says later in the movie. It gives me an added perspective on family, and I think it captures most of our family lives as well:
This is my family. I found it, all on my own. Is little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.
When was the last time that you thought that about your family? Maybe we need to understand that even though these people are family, we are still broken. We still have issues. We still mess up. And above all, we still need love – usually more than the people that we usually show love to.
Fairly often in conversation about family, people ask how do you do it. There isn’t a special word or a way that you instantly fix your family. My family is great and I love each of them more than others may ever understand, but it was tough work to get to this great family unit. It starts with placing God at the center. Walking through trials, going through stuff that is just ucky and nasty. We had to do life together in the worst times so that the good times actually meant something. But at the center of it all, love and grace run throughout our family. We fail, sometimes in the same area more than we ever want to admit. But family has become a safe place for us to be real. We don’t allow elephants, we talk about issues and have hard conversations, we do crazy things, we don’t have it all down. We probably never will. But we have our family.
Your relationship with your family is probably the most important relationships that you will ever have. If you want to know how you are doing with your relationship with God and how you will do in relationship with others, look at how you are doing with your family. By this, I don’t mean look at how your family acts with you, but how you act with your family. How do you show love to them?
Sometimes we feel like our parents can’t understand us. They really do, but sometimes they don’t know how to show us or maybe even love us in the way we need. But then again, sometimes we do the same thing don’t we? The difference is that we are learning how to do things differently, and sometimes change is harder for others than it is for us.
As a 20something, you have the ability to change your family. But it doesn’t start with making them different, it starts by changing yourself. Practically, this means stepping up and showing more love. Taking time out of your day to be involved in each of their lives. Praying for them daily (have you ever noticed it is impossible to be upset at someone who you constantly pray for?) and doing things to show them love. It sometimes can take a 20something dawning on the skin of Christ each morning and shining light at home to make things different. Is the problem with you? Maybe, maybe not. That isn’t for me to say. But can you make things different? Yes – by being different. By being the person who God has called you to be to the people who should be the most important to you.
Fight for family and they will fight for you. Love family, and over time they will love you. But remember, love isn’t just a word. It means action. It means becoming vulnerable, it means not being reactive, it means loving in any situation. How you do family now will not stop when you move out, but it will be the same way you do family when you have one.
Lets start loving those closest to us with the love that we show to everyone else and bring back Ohana into our culture. It is our time to make the change, are you with us?
“Love is hard. If it isn’t hard, you are not doing it right”
Kyle
Reject Apathy
Recently one of my favorite magazines launched their new print edition of a website called Reject Apathy. The logo is awesome and the site is full of things that make us aware of what is going on in the rest of the world. A look outside our ivory towers and high rise apartments. The vision was launched by the creator of Relevant after a trip overseas where he got to see first hand what was going on in other nations.
The idea of apathy has entered my mind for a while now, thinking of how much this applies to our generation. I know that even I am apathetic more than I want to be in areas that should matter more, so know that I write this post not only with you in mind, but with me as well. We are all in this together, but I think we have a problem. But it is a problem that a bunch of 20somethings can change.
lack of feeling or emotion : impassiveness : lack of interest or concern : indifference~ Apathy
Reading that definition, I think it properly describes many people around us. We have become a generation that accepts everything and stands for nothing. We get excited about causes but we never actually do anything. Instead, our generation is categorized by being a give me generation. We are all about ourselves, something which I have written about before. I think it stems from a lot of areas, apathy being one of them.
Apathy is like a disease. We never intended to become apathetic, but over time our small symptoms went untreated. We began to buy into the idea that there was nothing outside of these walls. Or maybe we know there is more out there, we just don’t care enough to leave our couches and our warm beds. Instead of producing leaders, our generation produces followers. We don’t want to step out of our comfort zone. And I think this is something that we must change.
The problem with change is that before we can begin teaching others how to break out of this problem of apathy, we have to do it ourselves. But I don’t want to just say hey, we need to change and leave it at that. We can do practical things to help break this apathy that we are under so that we can become leaders of this generation (and in some ways, we already are). Your choice is do you want to continue living in apathy for the things around us or do you want to join us. Both decisions will cost you, it just depends on what you want the cost to be.
For those of you that want to break out, I think one of the ways we can start breaking out and leading is by figuring out where we have been standing silent for to long. This means practically to take some time in prayer and ask God to reveal his heart to you. It may take some time for you to reach the place where you can see it, but be bold in asking God to open your eyes. When our heart begins to fuse with God’s, we find that being apathetic is no longer an option – because we find that being one with God’s heart is so much better.
We have to become a generation that seeks the heart of God, but that isn’t enough. Once you experience the heart of God, you begin to realize that you are now responsible. I heard it said that God uses people to answer prayers – what if you have been, in your apathy, not allowing God to use you in that way? We are responsible to start taking a stand in love for the things that we should be doing – and that doesn’t mean that we have to start going against everything that is not of God – I think it means that we should be taking stands and loving others. Instead of arguing over who is right or wrong, we should start to love. Radically. Unconditionally. But more than that, actually live it.
To the outcast, we should be the ones who love on them. To the hurting, we should be the uplifters. To the broken, we should come along side them in our own brokenness so that we can help restore them. To the followers, we should emerge to lead them along the path that God has called all of us to walk. You see, I think most people are afraid to step up because they don’t “know” if God has made them for whatever it is – but if there is one thing I know about God, its that he uses us for his plan as long as our hearts are in the right place. He is our source, our power, our success. When we reject apathy, we can live a life on fire for God.
I want to continue this discussion in my next post – on ways that we can practically begin to be different. We can’t do this on our own brothers and sisters. Not only do we need God, but we need community. We need each other to help walk this road. I am honored by the men and women in my life that model this idea of rejecting apathy – I want to do this journey with you.
Spend time in prayer for one another. Take some time off of Facebook and just enjoy the peace that comes from God the Father. Invite the Holy Spirit to indwell you.
With our knowledge of this problem, I feel as if we as a generation are responsible for stepping up and reclaiming our values. It is our time – are you going to continue how you are living, or will you reject apathy so you can experience all that God has for you?
In love and prayer,
Kyle
This life is not about me
One of my favorite bands is Anberlin. They have a unique sound and lyrics that capture my heart each time that I hear them. Somehow they manage to take me deeper than most of the other bands that I listen to and I can’t help but slip into worship during their songs. Off of their album “New Surrender” the band has a song that I think should be the anthem of our generation.
Don’t wanna leave this world, knowing I’ve lived in vain.
No time for myself; so sorry, so ashamed.
Don’t wanna leave this life, knowing I’ve barely tried.
Chase down all my dreams that I’ve hid away on the inside.Live; I wanna live on fire.
Die; I wanna burn out brighter.
Brighter than the Northern Lights.
Wanna live to feel the daylight.
The more I live I see, this life’s not about me.~ Anberlin, Burn Out Brighter (Northern Lights)
Incidentally one of the things that has been on my mind lately is about the selfishness of our generation. We are all selfish to a point, no one is immune from it and if you are drop me a line and give me some advice on that. So we have to begin to understand the fact that humans, as people, are selfish.
The most common area of selfishness deals with how we interact with other people. Selfish people usually are inward focused all the time. They feel like their friends are there to serve them. They walk around with an attitude that says that they are entitled to whatever it is that they want. They complain about every little thing that isn’t right in their little world. I’m sure you either know these type of people, are this type of person or have been this type of person in the past. I think that selflessness, which should be the direction we are going, will never be fully obtained. That doesn’t mean we don’t strive for it.
There isn’t any exact way that we can fully overcome selfishness, but there are a few ways that we can practice that make the battle against our flesh a ton easier. I think that it starts with understanding that we are unworthy of anything. We are even unworthy to be living. Most people wonder why God lets bad things happen to good people, but I wonder why do good things happen to anyone. We don’t deserve a bit of anything that we receive. We aren’t entitled, and the God that is allows us the ability to choose if we are going to be about ourselves or him.
We all get caught up in the lies of the world. The “me” syndrome. We have made everything in our own little world about us. But in the end, this life isn’t about us. It is about everyone else but us. We have to learn to view ourselves as meaningless so that God can show us what it is like to truly be selfless. We can’t do it with our own power though, we have to allow God to humble us.
Take a few minutes and count your blessings. I don’t just mean the whole “I’m glad that I have a family” stuff, although those are great blessings. What about the fact that you don’t have to think about breathing, it just happens. You don’t have to tell your hands what to do, they already know. What about the sunrise you caught a glimpse of earlier today, or the cloud that floated by, or maybe even the bird that you saw. What about the fact that you can see? All of these things we take forgranted as a generation. And we miss out on what truly matters.
Lets be honest, it really doesn’t matter what type of car you have, what type of clothes you buy, what things that you do that glorify yourself. No one cares about you because they are all too busy caring about themselves. Now here is where I think we come in, we have to care about everyone else because they don’t care about us. Exactly – we have to love those who don’t even give us the time of day just as much as we do our best friends.
In the end, our lives mean nothing if we are just about ourselves. When Christ said that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, he was trying to show us that we are supposed to be the ones lifting others up, being around for others more, being a better friend, boy/girlfriend, son, daughter, leader, follower, and the list goes on. We have to learn to live our lives in a way that we are always pointing up. That means we don’t get the credit, but we get something even more. We get to know that we are doing what God has called us to do. I have never met anyone who practices this that didn’t get pure joy out of helping someone else. Yes, it means forsaking your needs and wants. It means being more about everyone else and even sometimes neglecting yourself for others. But the payoff is amazing. You become a friend that people want to be around, you become someone who people look up to and admire, not because you are special, but because God is working through your life. And selfless people don’t do things for recognition, because in the end it doesn’t matter.
We are just the candle, we just sit here and allow ourselves to display the light. I would much rather chase after this idea of selflessness than to live a life all about me. There are so many more things outside of your own little world. If you want to learn how to live like Christ, you first have to become all about others. Yes, it is tough, but God will honor you beyond your wildest dreams.
Men and Women, it is time for our generation to rise up and combat this selfishness. The plague of the heart that is going on will kill us. And before you run and start telling others that they have it all wrong, love them first. Show love – it is the best way to overcome selfishness, because loving others is what we were called to do. It is our time to make a change, lets show the world what it really means to follow God by going against the way of the world. It is a battle that we all have to fight, but we get to fight it together in community. Come join the battle that leads to victory in Christ Jesus!
Dive Deep,
Kyle