Every morning I get up early and go for a walk on the beach.  For the past several mornings, I have had an elderly African American man that has walked by me and every morning as he makes his way up and down the beach he greets everyone that he passes with a hearty and healthy “GOOD MORNING & GOD BLESS YOU!”  After we exchanged encouragement to each other and praise to God this morning, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said simply:  “Every moment of every day YOU decide to live POSITIVE or NEGATIVE!”  Every moment of every day, regardless of what is happening in my life, I get to make the choice of how I am going to respond!  I like to think that I am generally a pretty positive person, but I am many times swayed by the world that I live in and the sway often pulls me toward the negative!  I am going to do all that I can in the days a head, with the rest of my life to try and live POSITIVE!

I think the positive life comes when I truly trust in God with all of my heart and ignore my own understanding.  I need to acknowledge Him in all my ways and in everything that I do and know that He is making my paths straight!  (Proverbs 3:5-6)  I pray that God will help me to live this POSITIVE life, I ask that you would help to encourage me to live the POSITIVE life!  I believe that my POSITIVE life will make a difference for others!

This morning I was sitting outside at the pic-nic table having the first part of my Quiet Time!  I typically spend some time sitting down with my open Bible, an open journal and an open heart and mind!  I use this time to just listen and hear whatever it is that God wants to tell me!  This morning as I was having this time of listening for God’s voice through His Word – someone walked right up and started to ask me questions!  I was in a private place, trying to have a private time with God!  All signs should have alerted anyone that happened to pass by – that this guy must really be into the Bible and should not be disturbed!  But I was disturbed and I was disturbed that I was disturbed!  I think the thing that really got me was the fact that the person that did the disturbing should have known better.  They claim to be a Christian and they have heard me speak of the importance of a Quiet Time.  My Quiet Time is an appointment with God – I do not answer the door, the phone or nothing!  I work to give God my undivided, complete and total attention!

The thing that disturbed me at first was that I was interrupted!  The thing that really disturbed me, the more I that I thought about it was that the person that did the disturbing claims to be a Christian, yet had no idea of what I was doing or how important it was!  At the very least, they should have realized that I was studying my Bible and yet they felt that it was okay to come up and pursue a conversation!  (And the bad thing was – it was a conversation about nothing!)  The really disturbing part is this:  There are many people in our world today – in our churches today, that do not have any idea what it means to have a real, meaningful and growing relationship with Christ.  At best they think they have insurance to get out of Hell and into Heaven!  If Heaven and Hell is the best that we get out of our relationship with Christ, it is still more than enough to motivate us to pursue God!

Jesus died for me, what I could not do for myself, He did for me!  My life belongs to Him!  He and He alone is worthy of my praise and I want to meet Him at the beginning of every day, because I can think of no greater way to begin my day!  I love Jesus and I love you, let’s all get closer to Him in the moments and days ahead!

I know – I have not posted in a while and some of you think I should post something every day!  I promise I am going to try and do better!  I have been working really hard for the past several weeks on getting Northwood’s new web site planned and organized and I am happy to report that we are now full swing in the process of building the site – it is going to be a super tool for reaching out to our community and world!

We left a little early for our trip, so Joy and I could visit with the Stewarts!  Erin is doing great – she was and is even more now one of God’s miracles!  Philip and Kay are great and I am so proud of the way that they are dealing with all of the challenges.  Joy and I got the chance to take them out for dinner and we spent a couple of hours just praising God and enjoying sweet fellowship!  I also want to say here – how proud I am of our Northwood Family for all of the love, support and prayers that they have shared with and for the Stewart family.

I have has some very special times with the Lord over the past several days!  I have had the opportunity to spend a little over an hour every day in prayer and then another hour or so, just listening through His Word!  It has been hard to not work on sermons or strategy, but I have pushed myself to stay focused on nothing but God and my relationship with Him!

The first big thing that God has made clear for me is:  It is not our job to grow the church, it is our job to grow ourselves and each other!  I have spent to much energy on trying to grow the church.  In the days ahead I hope to invest my life in growing myself and others!  I hope that you will join me, because I know that God has great things in store!

By the way – I survived my first Sunday not preaching!  I enjoyed the church that we visited and appreciated the message.  I did miss Northwood big time!  Gracie actually missed Northwood more than anyone – she spent the first twenty minutes of worship with one of the saddest faces I have ever seen!  Her thought:  “Any church that is not our church is just different!”  She’s got a very good point!

Pray for me and my family – that God will bless us with some sweet family time together!  That I will hear from God and acquire His wisdom and knowledge, and that someones life might be changed because of meeting me and my family!  I Love You!  God Bless & Press On!