Archive - June, 2009

Color of Life

This weekend has been the beginning of something amazing.  We have been painting, cleaning and preparing for our new office space.  I have never really realized how much work goes into making a space your own.  We have been very busy doing this working till the late hours of the night, but it has been a great time for our team to get to know one another.

cimg2117I personally love painting.  To me it is so much fun to see a room transformed by color.  You can quickly turn an old out of date space into a hip and modern office with just a touch of color.  Underneath the paint it might be pretty nasty but just covering it up changes everything.  I like to think of paint as the attitude for the space.  It can be dark, mild, bold or happy.   Our lives are very much the same.  People look at the outside to determine a lot about you.  They decide based on appearance or as I would like to say our attitude to determine what they think about us.  How we paint the outside of our lives makes a big difference to others.  How often we smile, how we respond to circumstances, our outlook on life, or how we communicate verbally paints a picture for others.

What kind of picture in life are you painting?

Are you bringing joy and hope to others?

The great thing about life is that everyday we get to choose the color scheme of our life.  Remember that your attitude determines your altitude in life. Let’s be a people that soar so when others see, they stand in awe amazed at the beauty of God inside of us.

On a side note, we were blessed to be given some desks to put in our new office space.  We are traveling to Ft. Myers in the morning to pick them up.  Can’t wait to get this place furnished and done so we can start using it for some functions.  I am telling you that God is up to GREATER THINGS in Ft. Lauderdale.  Please be praying for us as we begin having informational meetings coming up next week.  We are believing that God is going to bring us an unbelievable team that is going to build His church.

Brain Fart

Do you ever just have one of those brain fart moments in life.  This morning Wayne and I were out delivering donuts and bagels to the Coconut Creek police force and to Monarch High school as a way of saying thanks for all that they do for our community.  So of course as you are giving something away expectantly to someone they would ask who it is from.  This is where everything went wrong for me.  I have been on staff at an amazing church in Bradenton called Bayside Community Church, so when they asked where we were from of course I would tell them Coastal but instead said Bayside. I know that names aren’t important for recognition because it is about making Jesus famous but if they would like to say thanks, they are going to have a hard time finding Bayside.

d31Outreach was great this morning anyways.  It is always great to bless others to be a blessing.  There response always is so genuine and appreciative, in fact most of the time they don’t know how to react.  Why is it that when someone else does something helpful or gives us something that it blows us away?  Jesus told us that “He did not come to be served but to serve others by dying on the cross.”  You would think that if we embodied Christ words that we would all be use to people serving and doing things for us.  Makes me wonder a lot of times why we want the deeper things of God when we don’t embrace the simple.

Are you living out Jesus words to serve others by GIVING?

What are you doing with your TIME, TALENT and TREASURE in life?

Are you living for yourself and what you can get or for God and what you can give?

I love what Winston Churchill said “We make a living by what we get and we make a life by what we give.”

Plans are Changing

office-spaceI am just always amazed at how God works things out.  Planting a church has been the hardest, most challenging and trying thing I have ever done in my life.  The funny part about that statement is that we are just in the process of planting the church and haven’t even done our first service.  In the midst of all of this chaos in life God always seems to show up in profound ways like I never thought he would.

Today I went to go look at an office space that was potentially going to be given to us for the church to use.  I was excited but a little apprehensive because it wasn’t officially ours.  As I met with the management guy who was showing me the space he turned and handed me the key and said “Here you go.”  I was blown away as he drove off leaving me standing there with the key to our new office.

I love it when God blesses us to be a blessing to others.  The whole reason we need an office is so that we can have a headquarters for all of the team gatherings, storage of equipment, place to coordinate all of our outreaches and a central location for our staff so we could work together under one roof.  This was an unexpected and unplanned opportunity that presented itself.  Our plan was to do all of this out of our home, but God had other plans.

Proverbs 19:21 “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it’s the LORD’s purpose that will prevail.”

See, you and I can have all kinds of great plans and ideas but if Gods got another way, what do our plans matter.  I had a plan of working out of our house as the main place for Coastal Community Church but God had a totally different plan.  We were not planning for the additional cost of utilities, office furniture, and the upkeep of a meeting space.   I have found that where there is a vision from God that there is always provision.  So now we are looking at an additional $20,000 for our budget we did not plan.  I am standing on the fact today that “it’s the LORD’s purpose that will prevail.”

What is your plan that is turning out differently than you anticipated?

Are you trusting today that it’s the Lord’s purpose that will prevail, or are you trying to be in control?

Will you trust with us that God will provide for us in this area.  I know that God is up to GREATER THINGS in Ft. Lauderdale.

Crisis

I was thinking about some of the greatest achievements that I have had in my life today.  The thing about most of the things that I have achieved in life is that they aren’t really great things.  They are really just things that I endured in life.  In fact I started to think about all of the great men and women in history, how their stories are not stories of good times but of crisis.  The thing that is amazing about history is that you are not remembered by what you achieved but by what you endured.

crisis-managment-photo1Crisis is a thing most of us try to avoid like the plague.  When crisis comes our way we run as fast as we can go.  The reality is that crisis is the fuel that propels change, growth and success in our life.  Crisis don’t come in our lives to destroy our faith but to expose it. Instead of running from crisis, we should run to it.  Often times our crisis is the opportunity we have been looking for in life, we just have to endure it.  We should embrace it as an opportunity for each one of us to achieve the Greater Things that God has is store for you and I.  It is the way we grow our faith and trust in God.  In our crisis we truly find out if we have faith.  See a faith that is tested by crisis is a faith that can be trusted. By running from the crisis, we are saying that we don’t trust God but are looking at our own ability.  In and of ourselves we will always fail, but with God we can do Greater Things.

What crisis are you currently facing?

  • What do you need to run to instead of from to achieve victory in your life?
  • Who are you trusting in, yourself or God?

What Are Friends For?

Shayla and I had a going away party yesterday afternoon thrown by our friends from Bayside Community Church.  It was great to just hang out and catch up on life.  I love all the friends I have.  I believe that I am who I am today because of the friends in my life.  I like what Hebrews 10:24 says

“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.”

I believe that great friends motivate you to grow in your love for God and one another, while also helping you grow in serving others.  It is hard to leave friends like that.  As I was driving home to Ft. Lauderdale I kept thinking back to an old Boyz II Men song that says:

sailing1How do I say goodbye to what we had?
The good times that made us laugh
Outweigh the bad.

I thought wed get to see forever
But forevers gone away
Its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

I dont know where this road
Is going to lead
All I know is where we’ve been
And what we’ve been through.

If we get to see tomorrow
I hope its worth all the wait
Its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

And Ill take with me the memories
To be my sunshine after the rain
Its so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.

It really is hard to say goodbye to all the good times, memories, successes, and tough times that I got to go through with my friends but at the same point all of those experiences that I got to have with them make me who I am today.  My parents always told me that who I would hang around with is who I would be like in 5 years.

I just want to thank all of you who have been my friends for what you have done for my life.  You have invested time, energy, resources, wisdom, laughs, and tears into making me the man I have become.  Words can never express my appreciation to you all you.  You are the most amazing friends a person could ask for.

So let me ask you, “Who are your friends?  Do they encourage you and motivate you to do great things in your life?”

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