God started working on me a long time ago, and He has done some amazing things in my life of almost forty years, but in the last month, He has really started to change my heart, life, perception and outlook! I have always loved Jesus! Even before I entered into a personal relationship with Him. When I was just a young boy – I loved Him! But I am finding that the older I get, the more life experience allows me to see all that Jesus has gotten me through and is getting me through –growing me all along the way! This hindsight which provides insight motivates me to love Him more than I ever have before. I guess when I was young I took a lot on faith and for granted, but now after I have lived in a real and growing relationship with Christ for a while, I have discovered and actually had the opportunity to prove that His love, power, forgiveness and restoration are true! When I first entered into a relationship with Christ, I wanted to tell everybody, everywhere about what Jesus had just done for me by coming into my heart and forgiving me of all of my sins! As we grow in our relationship, I think we get used to the being forgiven and we may even take for granted His presence and work in our lives, but hopefully we don’t stay there! Hopefully, one day when things are not going as we think they should—we will open up our Bible—His Words and read about Him and how awesome He is! And hopefully that will stir up some old feelings that cause us to do more than love! Hopefully that will stir up some feelings that cause us in our love to do some totally crazy and unexplainable things for His glory! Love will make you do some crazy things! And that’s one of the things that is so cool about love! When was the last time you allowed your love for the One who loved you with such an incredible love to cause you to be crazy for Him? I am not sure how many years I have left! I hope that it’s a bunch, but if it’s not that’s okay! I just want to take whatever years I have left and be a freak for Jesus! I want my life here on this earth to be radically different for and because of Him! In the days ahead, I hope that people will talk about me! I hope they will say I am crazy, that I’ve lost my mind, because the truth is: I have not lost my mind, but I have found my heart and it belongs to Jesus and that changes everything! Please join me this month as we pursue a closer walk and relationship with Jesus. He will Baptize Us Into Craziness! Enable us to send Temptation Into A Tail-Spin! Give us lives that Preach With Passion! Continue to Call Us Into Insanity! And take us on a Healing Head Trip! It is my prayer that He will help each of us to become a little more of a freak for Him! Let’s grow in our faithfulness and get people talking about the crazy people that are willing to give their all for Jesus and His glory! I love Him and I love you and hope we can become freaks for Him! God Bless & Freak Out!
Monthly Archives: August 2007
A Great Time With God!
This past Thursday evening through Friday morning, I had the opportunity to spend some real meaningful time with the Lord. I did not get to far away from home, but I got far enough that I did not have any of the usual distractions! During this time – God took me back to when I first began to understand and deal with His call upon my life to serve Him as a Minister of the Gospel. It was great to travel back to that time and remember the fear and the faith that was walking me through it! God reminded me of some things about His calling upon my life!
He reminded me that I speak representing the very voice of God Himself! Every time I open my mouth something could and should happen. I have a choice to make – I can communicate with my mouth or with my heart. I decided to go back and find my heart! It’s not that I’ve lost it, it is really still where it has always been. I have just recently discovered that years of serving in ministry has caused it to be covered over and coated with a lot of well intentioned, but misinformed and inappropriate agendas that were provided by some of my brothers and sisters in Christ!
God has chosen through the foolishness of preaching to confound the wise and to save the world. God has blessed me with a calling to preach His Word! I represent Him because I know Him and He knows me and somewhere a long the way, He put something in me that He wanted to use to share Him during this time and at this place! I don’t know what I would do, if I could not preach and teach about our amazing God and the incredible blessings that come from having and growing in a real relationship with Him!
It would be a great tragedy to have bottled up inside of yourself a message from the Creator and Sustainer of life and not be able to get that out. I am thankful to God for His calling and for giving me the gifts to fulfill His calling upon my life! I am thankful for Northwood and Ridgewood Partnership and the opportunities that they afford me to do the thing that God has called and gifted me to do! I am thankful for my family who support me, my brothers and sisters in Christ who encourage me and for any and every occasion that I have to share the amazing truths of an amazing God who has an amazing plan for our lives!
I hope you will find some special time with God this week and allow it to change your heart and life!
You Are Something!
God is good! And when I stop and take a moment to think about it – I can’t help but realize that God has been so good to me! He really is – so much better than I could ever dream that I deserve! I love serving Him as a pastor of His Church! There are days that the politics will threaten to make you crazy, but even with all of the mess that we people can make of a good thing – God is still in control and still manages to accomplish amazing things for His glory and our blessing!
I believe that Northwood has ahead of it – it’s greatest days of ministry and community impact. I just can’t wait to see what God is going to do next! A few weeks ago I was preaching from Acts 2:44-47 (one of my favorite scriptures) It’s where about three thousand where added to the church that day, because they had received the Word! It then goes on the tell us that those that made up the church – devoted themselves to the Apostles teaching and fellowship! The result was that everyone kept feeling a sense of awe, as many wonders and signs continued to take place! The Believers were together and had all things in common, so they started to look out for each other an take care of one another’s needs. They loved being together, they loved giving God the praise, they had the favor of God and the people and they grew everyday!
This is a beautiful picture of the church – working as it could and as it should. A picture of the church without all of the junk of personal politics! This is a picture of fellowship – people coming together with all of their differences because of the great thing that we have in common – our relationship with Christ!
Our relationship with Christ allows us and even motivates us to have relationship and ongoing fellowship with each other! When we allow God to bring us together and keep us together, we will get past ourselves, our small agendas and personal politics. When we get past that stuff, we can really enjoy God, each others and the difference that Church can and should make! I am glad that I have a realtionship with God, because that means that I can have a relationship with you! And you really are something special!
I Just Can’t Get Over Jesus!
Jesus is my Savior! He came into my life and made it count for something! It’s absolutely amazing that Jesus would save me, not because of righteous works that I do, but because of His mercy! (Titus 3:5) I mean, when I really stop and think about the fact that Jesus loves me, forgives me and restores me – I just can’t get over it!
I still to this day do not know what He saw in me! I’m not down on myself, in fact, I kinda like myself. But I know that I am not anywhere near as good, cool or smart as I like to think I am. Jesus does not focus on what I am – His focus is on what and who I can be!
I can’t understand how He could love me! I like to think of myself as a pretty lovable dude, but the truth is: I can be very unlovable! I don’t get out of bed in the morning – clean, smooth and charming! Jesus sees me when I am dirty, rough and disgusting and He still loves me! Jesus does not look at my failures and flaws – Jesus looks at my potential and appreciates me for me and all that I can be with Him!
I won’t ever be able to repay Him! When I think about all that Jesus has done for me – I will never be able to repay Him! I can never live good enough, long enough to even come close to giving back to Jesus all that He has given to me! He saved me, not because of what I had done, not because of what I had not done. He saved me – simply because He loves me and has an amazing plan for my life! My salvation and right relationship are not based in any way on me, but all on Him and His mercy!
Because of His mercy – I don’t get what I deserve! Because of His grace – I get what I don’t deserve! Jesus made it possible for me to be reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit. I just can’t get over it and I hope I never do!
RECHARGE!
I am not really good at vacations! I love what I do and I have always said that doing ministry is my work and my hobby! I have a calling and when I am ministering, I am fulfilling that thing that I was called to do! Usually when I have taken time to go on vacation – I spend most of the time thinking about what I am going to do in ministry when I get back! Most of my vacations have been trips away from where I live physically, but everything pretty much stayed the same mentally and spiritually!
But things have changed! Joy and I bought a travel trailer and took our girls on our first ever camping experience! It was the best vacation I have ever been on! It was the best vacation I have ever been on because I saw this experience as making an investment in myself and my family. The travel trailer forced me to slow down! When you are pulling a 30 foot trailer behind your vehicle – your racing days are over! On the ride there I was forced to slow down and enjoy the ride, and I was able to focus on family, conversation, music, scenery and whatever caught my fancy! We will get there when we get there!
There was some work to getting everything set up, but once the major work was done – we had a lovely week of just being together and enjoying God’s creation all around us. We met some new friends, took in a lot of sunshine, spent a good bit of time on the sand and in the ocean and I got to read without having to be in a hurry! At the end of the week – we all wanted to stay for another week!
The most important thing that I got from this vacation was a RECHARGE! One of the things that the girls liked to do, was go for a ride around the campground on a golf cart. We would ride all day and most of the night, but when we went to bed, we would plug it into a charging system. If at any point we failed to recharge the golf cart – the next day the golf cart would take us nowhere! If a golf cart has to be recharged, the we as people must be recharged too!
You may not be able to get away in a travel trailer anytime soon, but you can recharge! Take some time during a lunch break to get out and away from all of the hustle and bustle and just enjoy what God has created all around you. Take some time to slow down and spend some meaningful time with friends and family – not because you have to, but because you want to! Take and make some time to allow God to recharge you with His energy and Spirit – you’ll be surprised at how much better life can be!
Being Thankful!
We are studying our way through the book of Romans on Wednesday evenings! Last night we took a look at Romans 6:17-19. Verse 17 says: “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were intrusted.” I really like this verse, because it reminds me of some very important things that I need to remember to remember!
First – It reminds me that I need to be thankful to God! Just stop for a minute and try to push all of the distractions of life aside and think (I mean – really think) about all that you have to be thankful for! God has been and is so good to us! He has filled our lives with many miraculous and wonderful blessings. Even the person who has had a tougher life than usual can find things to be thankful for – if we will just take the time to think about it. God allowed me to sleep last night and wake up this morning! God helped me to get out of bed and gave me a breakfast to enjoy and nourish my body. God gave me today to get closer to Him by serving others and making a difference in life. God did not allow anything to happen to me today – that He did not give me the grace and strength to handle. And the list could go on and on and on!
I know that I am living a truly thankful life, when I begin to live my life for Him! When I take the time to think, I also must make some time to thank the one who gave me all of the things to think that I am thankful for! (Read that one again!) Being thankful is more than just saying a word. If I am truly thankful, I will express my thankfulness with the way that I live my life. I will live my life for God by serving others. I do not serve others because of what I can get! I serve others because of what I have already got!
When I really take the time to think about it – I realize I am not near as thankful as I could be or should be! There is so much that God has done and is doing for me! And there is so much that I should have done and be doing for Him! I hope this helps you, because it has sure helped me! In fact – I’ve got to go, because I got some stuff to do for God!!!
Rejoice In Suffering!
By nature – I do my best to avoid pain! In fact, I have told Joy many times that I am not afraid of dying – I just don’t want it to hurt! Last Sunday I shared in a message on ministry that sometime our ministry for God and to others will take us to a place where it costs us. Serving God will not always be convenient and work according to our schedule. Serving God will not always be easy – many times it will require that we give more of ourselves than we had originally planned. But if our service and ministry are really for God, then we can rejoice in any suffering that might come our way!
God is allowing me to learn some of this lesson first hand this week. I am battling some physical problems in the midst of one of our most busy times of ministry as a church. This physical issues are irritating, and a constant reminder that I am not as young as I used t be. But serving God by serving others continues to be the thing that I get out of bed in the morning excited about doing!
Last night I watched as so many of our church members gave of themselves to serve God by serving others. By the end of the night many of us were spent, but we still managed to hang around, joke, kid, laugh and give God the glory! There is still much ministry to do and there will be plenty of suffering to share, but we will continue to: “Proclaim Him… So that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end we labor, struggling with all of His energy, which works so powerfully in us!” Colossians 1:28-29
I look forward to seeing what God is going to teach me and accomplish in my life through the suffering today! Oh just in case you need an up side to suffering, here is one more thought: Have you ever noticed that when you are suffering – you are much more dependent upon God for His strength to get through?
As we depend on Him – He will use us to bless each other and as we bless each other we will find the fulfillment that will encourage, motivate and push us forward! God Bless & Keep It Real!
