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ONE THING

January 22, 2011 in Personal, Random Thoughts with 1 Comment

A new year is always a great opportunity to make some changes in your life.  Every year it is so easy to get into the habit of putting together a list of things that you want to change in your life.  I don’t think this is the most effective way to make a change.  With a list if you fail at one or two items all of a sudden you give up on all the items on the list and you end up living the same life you lived the year before.  I am all about choosing ONE THING to change each year and working on that.

I know what your thinking, “One thing?  Are you crazy?  My life will never be any different if I only choose one thing.”  I know that is what you think but I believe that if we change one thing a year, over ten year we have changed ten things in our lives for the better that stuck.  If we only have to focus on being successful at ONE THING it is so much easier to walk out that plan than working on twenty plans.

I think that this year we need to make a choice to change ONE THING in our lives and work that ONE THING the entire year and see how much success we have over a period of time rather than trying to fix everything at once.

TRIALS

September 24, 2010 in Personal, Random Thoughts with 1 Comment

This season of life has been one of the most intense, stressful, but growing parts of my life.  I am not the biggest fan in the world of trials but I am finding that without them, I DON’T GROW.

Without friction in our lives it is hard to get the ruff edges off.  I worked construction all growing up and when you want to deliver the final product to the customer, you want it to be smooth with no ruff edges. You don’t want them to slide their hand on a railing and get a splinter, that would be a very bad thing.  No you want everything to be perfect.  So what you do is you get the wood into place and then you sand it like crazy, back and forth, back and forth until it is smooth and ready to be used for what it was intended.  God is doing the same thing in our lives so many times.  He is taking out the sand paper of life(trials) and going back and forth, back and forth to smooth out the ruff areas of our lives so we can be used for his glory and purpose.  The problem is that most of us don’t like the trials.  So instead of enduring the pain, we run from the pain and wonder why we are not doing something great in our lives.  We have got to go through the trials to become the man or woman that God wants us to become.

I want to encourage you today to look for the hope in the trial, not the trial itself.  In the end you will come out looking more and more like your intended purpose.

Looking for our heart!

June 9, 2010 in Random Thoughts with 0 Comments

Sometimes God just messes with you.  I was talking with a guy the other morning who was telling me about some things that God has been asking him to do but because of the timing, his fear and ability to trust he has not stepped out and walked in obedience towards what God wants for his life.  The interesting thing is that this gentleman is one of the most faithful, devoted, godly men that I know in our church.  He is passionate about God and is fired up to do good.  The interesting thing about all this is that so many times we judge the outside to determine holiness.  By all outside measuring tools this guy is holy but even with all of the outside appearances, God still wants more.  He doesn’t just want our outward appearances but more than anything He wants our heart.  Whatever takes priority in our heart, that is where He wants to be.

So over the last couple of weeks I have been stirred up by a passage of scripture from Matthew 5 that is all about this very thing.  It has just been messing with me personally and also stirring up a message in my heart.  Sometimes you just have to let some things marinade inside of you before it is ready to be given to everyone else to digest.  I think that I am going to share this next weekend, June 20th.  You are not going to want to miss the weekends service as we continue in our series Vintage Jesus, talking about The Man, The Myths, and The Reality.  I hope that you are enjoying this series as much as I am and letting go of some of the preconceived ideas that we have about Jesus and what he said.

I look forward to seeing you this upcoming weekend.

Broken Things

March 17, 2010 in Personal, Random Thoughts with 1 Comment

I thought that this was a pretty unique picture.  How often do you see broken pottery as art.  But not only is the pottery broken but it is all broken in the exact same spot.

This got me thinking that we are all broken in life but not all broken in the same place.  You hurt, pain and experiences you have had are not the same as mine.  While I may be able to sympathize, I will truly never understand your brokenness.  The interesting thing about brokenness is that it allows the weak areas of our lives to be influenced by the power of the almighty. The Bible tells us that “when we are weak that He is strong.”  Unless there is something that is broken in your life, then the Lord cannot show himself strong.

A lot of times we try to hide our brokenness.  We see it as a flaw or weakness.  Really our brokenness is a piece of art, unique in its own way.  Nobody likes to be broken, but unless we are broken God cannot mend together the pieces of our life to make us the masterpiece He intended us to be.

How are you broken?  Or maybe a better question is “What needs to be broken in your life so God can make a masterpiece out of it?”

Confessions of a Pastor-Part 4

February 18, 2010 in Personal, Random Thoughts with 1 Comment

One of the things that I have struggled a lot with in life is the fact that I don’t have a lot of formal education.  I always have this bit of a chip on my shoulder because of it.  I feel like I have to work a lot harder to prove myself because I don’t have a piece of paper that says I endured school.  The question that I fear internally the most is the question of,  “What qualifies you to be a pastor?”

I did attend an institute of ministry called Rhema Bible Training Center in Tulsa, Ok. but did not finish.  I got hired by a church after my first year and never returned to finish up my degree.  Because I don’t have a degree I have always felt like a less than and that I didn’t know enough.  The real problem with this thinking is that I have always felt like I have had to make up my inadequacies by outworking everyone else.  I told my pastor and mentor Randy Bezet one day that a lot of people are smarter, better looking, more educated and have more potential but it is really hard to beat someone in life who doesn’t sleep.  I have made it my mission to outwork anyone and by doing that I can beat anyone.  The thing that you don’t realize when you outwork everyone is that you truly sacrifice other areas of your life.

I would say that there have been times that I have had an affair on my wife.  It was never with a person but with my work.  There were times when I loved my job more than I loved her.  There were times that I would sacrifice for the church but would not budge for her.  All because of my insecurity in feeling less than I would hurt the one person who thought I was a more than.

I am totally not qualified by peoples standards to be a pastor of a church, but I am qualified by God’s.  That is the thing that I had to learn.  I had to learn that he was the one that called, qualified, and equipped not some person or institution.  I had to learn that my greatest and first ministry started first and foremost in my home with my wife, who is my partner.  I am so thankful for an amazing woman that I get to do life with everyday who I love more than life itself.

God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

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