Michael Joe Harvell

Do you ever get frustrated? I get frustrated when things or people do not work the way that I think that they should.  I tend to be a person that takes on life by praying, seeking God and then moving forward according to what I believe is His leading.  Moving forward in that way causes me to have a certain expectation about how things should turn out.  When things fail to turn out as I think they should – it is very frustrating!

I will sometimes get stuck in my frustration for a short period of time. I don’t like getting stuck in frustration and so I usually at some point will start to “process” what do I need to do to make things work the way I think they should?  This usually will help reveal to me:  Is the issue me, someone else or something else?  Sometimes when I think it is others and begin to process, I discover that it is me.  Sometimes when I think it is me and begin the process, I discover that it is others. This is the first step in determining where we need to go next to move out of our frustration and into right direction.

Frustration does not have to be a bad thing. Frustration is a reality in life.  Live long enough, really care and you will experience frustration.  You get to make the choice about what you will do with frustration and what you will allow frustration to do with you.  We can grow from it or die a slow death from it!  I hope to talk a little more about this tomorrow and help us to make the choice to grow from it!

This post is based on the introduction of my message last night at FOCUS!

Power is attractive and alluring! Most of us believe in God and we believe that He is powerful and so we are attracted to Him.  We think that if we can in some way figure out how to make His power work on our behalf, then we will have it made.

When you stop and think about it for just a minute – it is really amazing to think about the things that will motivate a person to pray. When a woman learns that her husband is interested in another woman – she will pray.  When a man learns that he is about to lose his job – he will pray.  When a student is about to take a test – they will pray.  When a child wants something that they cannot have – they pray!  When we get to the place where we have exhausted our resources, then we will make and take the time talk with God in the hope that we might manipulate Him to do what we cannot.

These acts of manipulation can best be viewed as religion. And it is sad but true that most of the people in our world today have religion, but not relationship. Religion is the human attempt to harness or manipulate the power of God!  Our lives are always under a constant threat and we want power to be able to stand up to and against those threats.  We know that even when life is good, it is never completely safe and so we try to utilize the one power source that we know of – GOD!

The thing that we need to understand is that God cannot be and is not going to be manipulated. But we don’t need to manipulate God, because God already has our best interest at heart.  God loves you and has a plan for your life! That is more than just a catchy little phrase.  It is truth – God’s truth that flows out of His mouth, through His Word and into and through our lives!

Lay your religion down and stop trying to manipulate God! Pick up a real and meaningful relationship and trust God to work as He sees fit on your behalf.  Follow Him and be obedient to what He teaches in His Word and He will use even the bad for good in your life as you love Him!

We need to raise our standards! This is a thought that I have been wrestling with for the past couple of weeks and I am not so sure that we can raise what we don’t have.  I think that somewhere along the path of living life that a lot of us have forgotten about, thrown out or just left somewhere on the side of the road – our standards.  Standards that were passed on to us half-hearted by our parents are standards that will not even exists in our children’s lives.  Now I am not talking about rules and regulations that are set up by man to make him feel better about himself.  I am talking about living life by a better plan and for a higher purpose than just checking off another day.

Take a moment to think about your life! Are you where you want to be?  Are you where God created and gifted you to be?  Are you doing what you enjoy and the things that bring fulfillment to your spirit?  Are you doing the things that God created and gifted you to do?  Now whichever way you answer these questions – now answer this one:  Is there any room for improvement? Can you do it better?  How can you raise your standards so that God gets more glory and you get more blessing?

Answer this question with whatever change is needed in you life and daily living and you will be amazed at the difference that it will make almost immediately! Start working to raise your standards at home, work and everywhere that life may take you.  Remember:  God has given you this life as a gift and what you do with this life is your gift back to Him.  Give Him your very best!  G3!  (GIVE GOD GLORY!)

Ministers have a lot of different jobs. One of the jobs that we have as ministers is to teach, motivate and encourage faithfulness.  I have noticed that it is getting harder and harder to help people get their lives to a place of consistent and growing faithfulness.  We talk a good game, but we usually come up way short of where we need to be.

I have discovered that everybody is faithful to something.  The challenge for the minister is to help people to be faithful to the right something or a better way of putting it would be:  To help people be faithful to the right someone!

Faithfulness does not just happen! Faithfulness takes work – hard work!  Each of us should take some time to think about the faithfulness that Jesus has expressed to us.  Think about the fact that Jesus gave His life so that we might have life!  Does He deserve our faithfulness?  Could we grow in our faithfulness to and for Him?  You bet we could and you know that we should!  Let His faithfulness to you motivate you to be faithful to Him!

As children most of us learned a simple and powerful little song – Jesus Loves Me! It says:  “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”  Little ones to Him belong, we are weak, but He is strong!”  ”Yes – Jesus loves me!”  ”Yes – Jesus loves me!”  ”Yes – Jesus loves me, for the Bible tells me so!”

Jesus does love you and me and because of this amazing love – He deserves our faithfulness! Remember:  Faithfulness does not just happen!  It is going to take hard work on your part, but if you will give yourself to that work and purpose, it will make more of a difference than you could ever dream or realize!  What can you do right now in this moment that will help you to be more faithful to Jesus?  Now – Do it!

I am pretty active with the use of Twitter, Facebook and mjharvell.com. There are a lot of people that are critical of the internet and there are a lot of things about the internet that can be dangerous, but there are also a lot of things that can be good!

Let’s start with Twitter! Twitter allows the people that use it to share a message about what they are up to or thinking in 140 characters or less.  You get to select who you will follow and anyone that wants to – can make the choice to follow you.  I am following a lot of different ministers, some church members and a handful of professional people.  And I am being followed by a small assortment of different people.  I can use my phone to get a quick glance at what is going on in people’s days or I can use my computer to catch up on what everyone is up to.   Many times it will give me a thought that opens up all kinds of doors for the Holy Spirit to speak and minister into my life.  The other neat thing about Twitter is that if you don’t have the internet on your phone you can have updates sent from the people that you are interested in sent via text messaging!  Everything is out in the open for everyone to see, so this is a pretty safe way of sharing who you are and what you are up to.

Let’s Look At Facebook! My Twitter updates my Facebook and is also posted on my blog page!  Facebook allows you to connect with family and friends and have an ongoing and without end conversation.  Once you start Facebook you begin to find and be found by friends and once you are accepted or accept a person as a friend, you can see their post about what they are up to and they can see your post about what you are up to.  I have found it to be very useful for facilitating conversations and for sharing information about life and needs that we might have that we would like for others to lift up in prayer!

My blog page – mjharvell.com is a place for me to expound on some of the things that God is teaching me. I try to write articles that will encourage and motivate people to live as Christ Followers!  I have people that follow me on Twitter, are my friend on Facebook and take the time to read my blog from all around the world.  It is amazing how all of these gifts allow us to remove time and space and have almost immediate contact and connection.

People can and will use these things for evil, but you and I can make the choice to use these things for good! I encourage you to check out Twitter, Facebook and Mjharvell.com – and figure out how God can use them to bless you and allow you to use them to bless others!

What Goes Up!

Most of the people that I know in life want it their way! Most of us grew up when “Burger King” promised that you could come in and order however you wanted and they would prepare it “Your Way!”  When we were just babies we wanted our way and we would cry, jump up and down, and even bang our head against the wall to get our way!  Now that we have grown up – we still want our way and we are determined to get it one way or another!

But I want to challenge you to stop and think for just a moment today! Is there a better way than “YOUR WAY?”  For those of us that are Christ Followers, we know that there is a better way than our way and we know that our way only gets in the way of the better way that our Creator has for us, but still we battle to get our way!

God has a way for your life and it is probably much different than the way that you think you want or deserve. God’s way is to take you to a place of growing, fulfillment and blessing.  God’s way is to use the bad stuff of life for your good as you trust Him, yield to His way and love Him.

If you knew that there was a better way than your way – would you take it? God has a better way, but we have to be willing to give up our way to grab a hold of His way.  It is not easy!  In fact it is a continuous, moment by moment, never ending struggle!  But it is a struggle worth our enduring!

In the very next moment – consider and make the choice to live God’s way! And try to do that with as many moments as you can today and at the end of the day – you will be glad you did!

Money, Money, Money, Money!

What would you do if someone walked up and handed you an envelope with $1000.00 in cash? This has not happened to me or to anyone that I know of, but I had the thought this morning and thought that it would be a cool thing to think about.

Now think about it and be really honest. Don’t try to be spiritual just because you are reading a pastor’s blog.  Really think about it and try to figure out what you would do.  I do not know what the right or wrong answer is!  I think that the right answer for every person is probably different – depending on where God has you and where you have yourself.

I know that if I am being very honest – what I should do and what I would actually do are probably two very different things. And this got me to thinking about how much more work I need to do to make sure that my life is lining up with God’s will!  I hope it helps you to think about it and I encourage you to post your thoughts to help us all think through it!

Give Me A Hand!

“The only thing harder than waiting on God is wishing that you had!” I don’t know who said it, but they sure hit the nail on the head!  They say that hindsight is 20/20 and as I look back on my life, it is so easy for me to see how – so many times I cheated myself out of the big stuff of God because I could not or would not wait on Him to do His thing!

God has gifted us with amazing abilities and it is crazy what we can do in our own strength and power, but when you stop and think about how small what we can accomplish is compared to the awesome big stuff of God, then you know that you need to get out of His way and let the Creator and Sustainer work!

Take a moment today to think about what not waiting has cost you and let that serve as motivation to wait on God! Some people rush into a relationship – wait and make sure that it is the relationship that God has for you.  Some people just can’t wait to jump into a new job or business venture and before you know it you are busted, broke and beat up!  Some will walk right into a sin because it feels good for the moment and not even give one thought about what it is going to cost them or their family in the long run.

God has a plan! It’s God’s plan that you need to wait on!  Trust Him and He will unfold His plan into your life and you will be glad that He did!

Muddy Hands & A White T Shirt!

God has a plan for your life and He wants you to know it! Most of us believe that God has a plan for our life or at least we hope that God has a plan for our life.  Most of us at some time or another have thought about it.  But the truth is:  It just all seems to hard and mysterious to try and figure out.  And often while we are trying to figure out and understand God’s plan, we have family and friends who are all to happy to share the two cents worth, which often just seems to muddy the waters!

Here is what you need to know about God’s plan for your life! He will never force His plan on you!  He will never tell you one thing and then change it all around – just to have an “I got cha!” moment.  God wants you to know His plan and He is walking step by step with you through this life to try and help you understand, accept and live according to His plan.  If you really want to know His plan – He will reveal it to you.

One of the first and great ways that God reveals His plan for our lives is through communication. God communicates with His children through prayer and His Word.  Make sure that you have carved some time out of your schedule today to pray, that is to talk with and listen to God.  And make sure that before you put your head on your pillow to go to sleep tonight that you have opened up your Bible and read about God and His faithfulness.  Take these steps and you will be on your way to discovering God’s plan for your life!

What do you think are the top three spiritual priorities of your life? I would really like to know what and where you are in your journey.  What is it that God has taught or is teaching you?  I know that most people have some spiritual priorities.

These spiritual priorities are the things that get your attention when nothing else does. What are yours?  I am going to use this question to try and have a little running dialogue blog, so I will be sharing a little more about my top three as I respond to your comments.  I am not sure that there is a right or wrong answer here – it all kinda depends on where God has you and what God is teaching you, so don’t be afraid to share honestly!

By the way my top three right now as of this moment are: 1.) Quiet Time – which consist of prayer and Scripture meditation, application and journaling.  2.) Study through reading and listening to other teachers/preachers!  3.) Discipleship – sharing what I know with others to try and facilitate growth in their personal relationship with Christ.  I have a few others that are on my radar screen and may be coming into the top three – they are Scripture memory, personal witness and more focused discipleship!

Please help me out with this one – what are your top three spiritual priorities and why?