understanding

The more I understand, the more I love. The more I get to know and understand who Jesus is and His amazing love for me, how can I not help but to love Him more. With others, as I hear their stories and see their perspective, I am also able to love them at a deeper level. Whether I connect with their pain or their joy, that understanding helps me love them in a deeper way. Thus, the more I understand, the more I love.

Bible reading experience

So my oldest son Kaden can't sleep the other night and I told him to read his Bible for a while. I walked in about 10 minutes later and asked what he was reading about. He was in the OT and said he was reading about a woman who sacrificed her kids and was going to have to walk around naked and something about she was a prostitute.. WOW...I said...uh...hmm....hey let's get you reading in the book of Matthew about the stories of Jesus. I had to laugh.

carpenter ants

Today, I get a call from my wife telling me there is a swarm of ants in our house surrounding one of the baseboards down stairs. I bought some spray and we took care of them. But, we are also seeing a few dead carpenter ants here and there. After researching we have learned that they are much tougher to kill. They only come out at night and never move in large packs. Carpenter ants are also very destructive as they eat the wood in your home and can do some serious damage if left alone. The good thing is they reproduce slowly. The key in removing them is to find the main colony which is usually outside and can be up to 200 yards away. What is in our house is a satellite colony.
In other words, what we are seeing is not the root of the problem, but a symptom. If we find and deal with the root of the problem, the symptoms will go away. The same is true in life.

path

If you stay on the path you are currently on, in 5 years from now, will you have grown in your love for God and others, or farther away? The responsibility for the outcome of this question in my own life, lies squarely on my shoulders. My love for God and others is my responsibility.

Fathers

It's amazing the responsibility that God has given to Fathers. I'm looking at my kids and beginning to understand the enormity of my role in their lives. A big portion of their confidence, security, self-esteem and outlook on life, comes from me. They look to me for love, discipline and to tell them WHO THEY ARE. The best thing I can try to relay is WHOSE THEY ARE. They are God's Children, created special and for a purpose. I want them to walk with Jesus early. "Knowing who you are in God produces security and security produces confidence." (Banning Liebsher)

guided life

How much of our lives do we truly allow the Holy Spirit to guide? I would love to see the percentage on that for my life. I desire for it to be 100%, but I know it is not. I believe that being guided by the Spirit of God all comes down to surrender. I think many times we will surrender certain areas of our lives to God, but not others. We may be trying to totally surrender to God in the area of our spiritual lives, but then don't ever even ask for wisdom in our business decisions. The problem is, we all live holistic lives where everything overlaps to form who we are. The goal is to surrender our entire lives to God, in order to live a fully guided life.

10-15%

I heard a quote a while back that continues to drive me to remained focused. It said, "Only 10-15% of ministers that graduate from Bible College will finish in ministry well. There are so many pitfalls, serious spiritual attacks and temptations sent by the enemy on Christian leaders to take them out. My mind was brought back to this quote today after hearing of another minister that I respected who fell morally. Personally, I want to continually look at all God has blessed me with that I have to lose. I want to live with some healthy "fear" of what I have to lose. A minister who failed morally said it best when asked when he fell out of love with Jesus in order to commit this sin. He said, "I never fell out of love with Jesus, I fell out of fear of Him." In my head, that says it best. I personally want to have a healthy balance of love and fear for God.

Holy Spirit

This is our final week of a 4 week series on the Holy Spirit. This week we are talking about being "filled" or "baptized" in the Holy Spirit. It is through salvation that Holy Spirit enters our lives and through baptism in the Holy Spirit that His power is released through our lives. It is sad that this point of the "baptism in the Holy Spirit" has brought dissension rather than unity among churches and denominations. My take is this; if it's in the Bible and God never changes and He said I could have something from HIM....I want it. I want all of Jesus that I can have and I will purse Him with all that I have.

preparation

Today, we are meeting for some more planning about our small groups. Our "Community Groups" are the glue where people connect with God, others and to our church. We are implementing a brand new structure for the Fall and are excited about where this is going. I believe it will take C3 to the next level. It's all about leading people to LifeChange!

wrestling

Believe it or not, I was the 8th grade, 95lb county champ in wrestling. (Of course I normally don't mention that, for some unknown reason there was no one else in my weight bracket.) I still have the sweet medal I proudly display in my rarely seen basement. But wrestling is a tiring sport that challenges your stamina. Wrestling makes you stronger and increases your endurance. That is why I love wrestling with God and His Word. I love it when God challenges me and my thinking and I am forced to wrestle in my prayer and thinking. I may walk away limping, but I am blessed for it, because I am now walking closer with Jesus. Are you wrestling?

love

"Love is the power that can transform the world."
The problem is, we only extend it to the people we know. What would happen if everyone would extend love to everyone? IT could be anything from letting someone "in" on a long traffic line, to holding the door for someone to lending a hand when needed. I am going to try this week to go out of my way to show love not just to those I know, but those I don't....because love has the power to transform the world.

IF

Francis Chan was right on when he said, "If the Spirit of God is really living inside of us, then we should be doing things no one else is doing and if the Spirit of God is really living inside of us, we should not be doing the things that everyone else is doing."

We can talk all we want, profess a whole bunch of stuff, but the proof is in our lives. Proof like how we treat our family, how we react and how we think and act toward other people. If we are followers of Jesus Christ, then we have a certain measure of the Holy Spirit in our lives. That measure is in direct proportion to our level of surrender. What measure of the Holy Spirit is in your life....and would your family and those who know you agree with your answer?

lowest point

We have had a lot of ponding on our parking lot, especially after a big rain. We are blessed to have a guy in the church with a bulldozer who is moving some dirt around for us. The goal is to create a lower point right off the back of our parking lot in order to hold the water in the grass instead of on the blacktop. We know that water always flows to the lowest spot by following the path of least resistance.
I have found this is true in life as well. Negativity always flows to the lowest point and ponds there. If a person is always negative, negativity has a way of finding them and staying with them. If a person is positive, they keep moving forward to higher ground. There are times a positive person may get wet, but it will only be for a season. What kind of person are you?

roots and fruit

My wife and a friend spent 6 hours in our new flower bed digging up bushes last week. They had pulled out several smaller ones and then were about to attempt to pull out some large tree-like bushes that were 7ft tall. I had run home for a few minutes and said I doubted they could do it. They tried for a long time before relenting and calling for a friend with a truck to pull them out.
The problem was that the roots were in too deep. I have heard that the general rule is, what you see above the ground is pretty close to what is buried under the ground. When it comes to our spiritual lives, we better have as much root under the ground as we do fruit above the ground. If we don't, it is just a matter of time before the tree of our lives come crashing to the ground. Our roots of spiritual disciplines and integrity, must be able to hold the weight of our Calling and giftings.