Easter was awesome!

Easter is coming...

My friend, Stephen Bonner, sent this to me on Monday and I was very encouraged by it.  Easter is going to be exactly what God wants it to be… but yet I still have small “freak-out” moments as we are preparing for it… This short devotional helped me remember… God’s got it under control and will use us to glorify himself.

FROM “Today’s Turning Point” with Dr. David Jeremiah.

Jesus lived a Spartan life--at least during His three years of ministry. Yes, He came from a home in Nazareth, but His ministry years are best characterized by Matthew 8:20: ". . . the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." His was a life of dependence on His Father--we never see Him packing a bag when He left to journey from one place to another. In the human realm, an example of dependence we might more easily identify with is Gideon.

Gideon was a simple farmer who God called to drive the Midianites out of Israel. When Gideon rallied an army of 32,000 men, God first reduced it down to 10,000, then to 300--and equipped them only with torches and trumpets. Marching against the innumerable Midiantes, ("as numerous as locusts"; Judges 6:5) with 300 men would have seemed like madness to Gideon--and to us. But Gideon learned that victory comes from the Lord, not from human strength or resources.

As the saying goes, God plus one equals a majority. If you are facing a formidable challenge, don't be discouraged by a lack of resources. Be encouraged by the presence and promises of God.



“We never test the resources of God until we attempt the impossible.” 
F. B. Meyer

The revival starts with me...

adapted from a blog from Jimmy Proulx...

Have you ever been to a revival service?  From what I have seen they are a great way to fire up a community but I must say this… I do not thing that true revival can be scheduled on a calendar. To me, a revival is not a series of church services that take place in a church building over a period of four or five days. Revival can come out of the meetings but are not the meetings themselves.

God tells Ezekiel in Ezekiel 37 to prophesy to the dry bones. Verse 5 says, “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.”

Revival has everything to do with life.

There are hearts in every church that are cold, hard, callous, resentful, bitter, guilt ridden, dry, and lifeless. Outside a move of Jesus upon those people, those people will not come to a state of conviction and repentance. This is a problem that can only be fixed by the prayers of intercession and supplication.

To pray for revival, means praying for change. The change has to start with the person doing the praying. For revival to take place in my community, that person should be me. For revival to take place in a church, community, city, state, etc., it has to start with prayer. I mean real prayer. Not your average minute and a half blanket prayer that you pray to cover your whole life for the day. This goes way deeper.

Prayer changes the person praying. Deep prayer causes you to understand that outside God doing work in your church or community, change will never come.

When true revival comes, it comes with the force of a tsunami. It brings with it the thunder and lightening of conviction and repentance. People will fall on their faces before God to confess and repent of sin in their lives. Lost people will come to know Jesus. People will have a hunger for the Word of God. People will want to become passionate, devoted disciples of Jesus.

The change that revival brings is uncomfortable. Real revival will reach inside you and destroy everything. You will be wrecked with a deeper understanding of the gospel and a more passionate relationship with Jesus. You will be purged of known sin. Your life, as you know it, will change to become more conformed to the image of Christ. The very act of this change is gut wrenching. When revival punches a person in their soul, it begins to remove layers of pain, baggage, guilt, sin and whatever else it needs to bulldoze to get that person in right standing with God.

Many people pray for revival. Many people pray for change. They want things to change as long as it is them that does not have to change. You cannot have one apart from the other.

Jeremiah says that the heart is deceitful above all else and desperately sick. I know that the closer I come to being conformed to Christ’s image, the more He reveals to me that is in me that needs redeeming.

Do you see? It is my thoughts, my heart, my plans, my desires, my actions, my relationships, my passions, my life that needs to be changed. I need more of God’s redeeming love, grace, and mercy to wreck me. I need to pray Romans 12:1-2 constantly that I may be both a living sacrifice and have my mind transformed by the infallible, inerrant, powerful, purging sword; God’s Holy Word.

When I change, my family changes.  When I change, the church changes.

For a country to be revived, a state has to be revived.
For a state to be revived, a city has to be revived.
For a city to be revived, a church has to be revived.
For my church to be revived, I must be revived.

Revival starts with me.

 

Celebrating new life!

Sorry for the long delay but I would love for you to see this!

What is important?

I sat on Sunday night in disgust of the way the Packers played.  A team that is 15-1 in the regular season comes away one and done in the post season.  How does that happen?  I started looking at the stats to answer that question… THREE fumbles (should have been four but the refs were gracious)… FOUR sacks given up (one of which was a ½ second from being a touchdown)… EIGHT dropped balls (a handful of those that could have been a Touchdown and another few that would have kept the Pack from punting)… and without having to go any further, that right there summed up the loss.

I stewed on that (as if it were me actually losing and I had say in how to fix it).  I lost sleep on Sunday night.  I woke up Monday with it still on my mind and turned on the radio in the car only to hear Mike and Mike (ESPN Radio) discussing all that went wrong.  I headed across town to attend the Baptist Convention of New Mexico’s Executive Board Meeting to get hit in the face with another statistic… and this one helped me remember what is important.

As I sat in the meeting, Dr Joe Bunce told us about a possible upcoming partnership with the country of Kenya in Africa and the Southern Baptist Convention of Kenya’s Houses of Hope.  Here are the stats that stood out to me from that meeting… Kenya, a country the size of Texas, has 40 million people living in it (census 2009).  Of those 40 million, SEVEN MILLION of them are orphaned children who have lost their parents to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  Do you realize that that is more people than the metro area of Phoenix Arizona… that is over three times more people than the ENTIRE state of New Mexico!  SEVEN MILLION orphans.  SEVEN MILLION!!!  (And I was worried about the Packers sloppy play keeping them out of the Super Bowl)

The reason for the ministry of Houses of Hope is to take James 1:27 and put it into practice… “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.”  For $400, Houses of Hope builds a house, takes a widow from the area, places her in the house, and put a number of orphans in the house as well – teaches them basic life skills, helps with planting a garden at the house, and a number of other things.

I love sports.  I am a big fan of the Packers (NFL), the Diamondbacks (MLB), the Coyotes (NHL), and Suns (NBA).  I love college sports as well.  It amazes me how wrapped up I can get in my teams performance and how excited or disappointed I can be because of it.  I was heartbroken on Sunday night… but why?  Is it really that important and life changing if “my team” wins or loses?  When the Pack won the Super Bowl last year, did I see any royalties for being a fan?  Did I get to be a part of the parade or go to the White House… and an even better question… did it make any difference in my life (or anybody’s) a year later?  Teams win and teams lose and then it all starts over again next year.

The stats that matter are outside of sports and many times outside of us.  People are dying because they lack proper nutrition, proper medication, and proper protection from insects in their area… and what are we doing about it?

We live in a generation that has plenty and is doing little about distributing it.  We need to focus on what is important and if something is going to break our heart, lets throw the football and baseball aside, and be heartbroken by the fact that 7,000,000 Kenyan kids are orphaned (and those stats don’t get reset at the beginning of next season).

Websites to look at…   Reject Apathy - Houses of Hope does not have a website up yet but there are many other organizations that are connected with them... so just Google "Houses of Hope Kenya" to see more.

Its about time... again.

This week, Christy and I were sitting and watching some old home videos we had taken back when Camden was 2 and 3 years old.   It amazed us how much we had all changed over the last eight years… and what was just a funny, was to also see some our friends in those videos that we still see and how they have changed as well.  Each day we get older… our kids grow up and we are one step closer to eternity.  How are you investing your time?

Matthew 16:25 – Jesus said…

“If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.  But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”

The possibility of losing their lives was very real for the disciples as well as for Jesus.  Read discipleship implies real commitment.  It means pledging our whole existence to His service.  If we try to save our physical life from death, pain, or discomfort, we may risk losing our true eternal life.  If we protect ourselves from pain and discomfort, we begin to die spiritually and emotionally.  Our lives turn inward and we lose our intended purpose.  When we give our lives in service to Christ, however, we discover the real purpose for living.

As you read Paragon's “book for the month” Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado, I hope you will be challenged to understand you ONLY have one life… do something with it.  Don’t be that person that grinds through life and dies without ever asking "why does God have ME here."

I guess it can all be summed up with this quote from the classic 80’s movie… Ferris Bueller’s Day Off…  when Matthew Broderick’s character (Ferris Bueller) says

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

TIME

It has been over a month since my last entry on this blog.  I started thinking… why?  Why has it been so long since my last post?  It wasn’t for a lack of things to talk about…

I mean – thanksgiving fell during the blogging sabbatical and there is always plenty to discuss when it comes to us giving thanks. 

There was also the big snow storm that came and then froze.  I could have written about how the snow is so clean and makes everything look great until humans get there hands in the mix and dirty it up and make everything look gross (sounds similar to God cleaning us up… you know what I mean). 

There was also the cold that came with that storm and how ungrateful I can be when I have a warm house to sleep in and money to pay the heating bill for the month.  I realized that fact when I went out to my car that I parked outside and my water bottle from the day before was frozen solid.  (Some family probably slept in their car the night before because they didn’t have the aforementioned items).  A bit of a reality check… definitely could have blogged on that.

So why has it been so long since my last post?  It boils down to an excuse so many of us have yet really isn’t true.  “I just didn’t have the time” or a better phrase this time of year is “I’m just too busy.”

I’ll be honest with you – I hate it when people use the excuse they don’t have time – or they ran out of time or anything do to with being too busy.  In all reality… we all have the same amount of time, and blaming the fact that we didn’t get it done because “I didn’t have the time” really is a nice way of saying – it wasn’t a priority (or it really wasn’t important to me) so I didn’t get it done.

Think about it for a second… if it is important enough, we will find the time to do it won’t we?  If a famous actor or your favorite sports athlete called and wanted to stop by for a meal and hang out with you, you would not be too busy.  If you were offered a chance to do something fun that you may never get the opportunity to do ever again, you would definitely rearrange your schedule.   Time is an unusual thing.  We all get the same amount – we have to spend it all – we don’t really “save” it – and it really does make a difference how and where we invest it.

On New Year’s many of us will make a resolution or two – something to do with weight or addictions or health… but I would challenge you to begin to think about how you spend your time.  Over the last year, how much time did you waste?  How do we keep from doing that again this year?  How many times did you put off something until tomorrow assuming tomorrow was going to come?

Our time is valuable – spend it and invest it wisely!

Paul tells us this very thing in the book of Ephesians… chapter 5:15-17 (NAS)

¹⁵ Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, ¹⁶ making the most of your time, because the days are evil. ¹⁷ So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

We will talk more about the management of our time on Sunday, January 1.  We would love to have you there.