Devotional Thoughts

22 01 2009

Here are a few thoughts from my Bible journey as I look back over my journal.

2 Chronicles 26:5 — SO important to seek God’s guidance in our decsions.

2 Chronicles 26:16 — We MUST remember where our success comes from in life.  It can be so easy to become proud in our successes when it is GOD who gives it all.

2 Chronicles 30:12 — I just wrote in my journal.  “Lord, if you can give a NATION one heart, give our churches one heart to obey our mission.”

Ezra 7:6b — MAN this seems to be a common theme through Kings, Chronicles and now Ezra.  God has REALLY been driving this home to me.  WE NEED GOD’S GRACIOUS HAND UPON US!  Without HIS blessing, approval and presence EVERYTHING is meaningless.

Nehemiah 1:11 and 2:1-5 — Nehemiah didn’t give up when his prayer wasn’t answered immediately.  It took around SIX months for God to give Nehemiah what he asked for.  But when God moved, Nehemiah was ready.  It shows (between the lines) that Nehemiah was probably continuing to pray and seek God on his request REGULARLY, if not daily.  So that when God acted Nehemiah could respond.

Learning,

Jeff


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From A Four Year Old?

20 01 2009

Maybe we can learn a little from a four year old.  The simplicity.  The innocence.  The unbiased and pure attitude of a four year old.  I got home from work today and wanted to see some of what the news was saying about the whole inauguration.  Mariah (5) told me all about watching it and talking about President Obama today it school.  Makalah (4) knew all about the back yard that our new president has from some school material she received.  Mariah was VERY proud to know that he is the FIRST president that isn’t white.  (interesting how she put that.  Not just the first black president, but the first one NOT white)  Then when I mentioned our evening devotions and prayer time Makalah said “I want to pray for Arack Obama (yes, no “B” in the name for her)”.  We talked some more about how cool it was to see the new president inaugurated.  Again the fact that he wasn’t white.  Mariah at one point said “His daughters are so lucky.  I want to live in the White House.”  We got to our devotion time and Makalah had her turn to pray.  She simply prayed “Dear Jesus.  Thank you for President Arack Obama.  I pray they would have good rest and good dreams (she prays that every time).  I pray you would protect them.  In Jesus name, Amen!”

Know what I realized?  7,5, and 4 years old.  Not ONE snide comment.  Not ONE complaint.  Not ONE “end of the world” scenario.  Not ONE “I can’t believe He is president!”  She prayed for him.  Huh.  I wonder if we can learn from that?   The first person she wanted to pray for at prayer time was our President.  It didn’t matter that he was black or white.  Republican or democrat.  Pro-Choice or Pro-Life.   Bail out or no bail out.  She prayed!  She prayed!  Did you get that?  SHE PRAYED!  I think we can learn from that.

From a four year old,

Jeff


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Categories : Discipleship, Family, Personal

Removing Cats

20 01 2009

Now, I’m all for getting rid of cats, don’t get me wrong.  But I read a Yahoo! news story about cats that got me thinking about leadership.  You can read it HERE.  (The first couple paragraphs is all you need)

Many times in leadership your knee jerk reaction to “issues” is NOT the correct one.  I know that a LOT of the time, your initial “GUT” reaction ends up being the right one.  But I’ve seen in my own leadership, and in others, times when I have removed the cats out of a spontaneous reaction to an issue, only to cause BIGGER issues.

Here in this news story, the cats were causing issues with the seabirds.  Well, of course we have to protect the seabirds, but did the leaders really think this through?  In removing the cats, which they perceived was the so called ‘problem’, they created MORE and BIGGER problems than they were ready to handle.  The rabbit population exploded and caused, what they called, “environmental devastation”.

It just made me think.  Before we start removing cats, make sure we think it all the way through.  In our office, we call it “whiteboarding”.  Whether it’s starting something, removing something, solving something or “dealing with issues”, we try and think it all the way through.  We have definitely had our share of “removing cat” moments though.  Times when we/I decided something then said “Maybe we should have thought this all the way through”.

I don’t want to remove cats at the expense of causing devestation.

Learning,

Jeff


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Categories : Element Church, Leadership, Personal, Updates

Other Revolutionaries?

19 01 2009

Revolutionary = Challenging the status quo

(Just off the top of my head.  Who else?)

Bible:  Jeremiah; Nehemiah; Esther; WOW, read 1 Samuel 23:8-23; Deborah (Cool story in Judges 4); Caleb and Joshua (Holy cow.  Two out of thousands who wanted to follow God into the Promise Land;  The Apostle Paul; Stephen (first martyr); Peter

Christian History:  Martin Luther; John Wesley; Billy Graham; George Whitfield; (Man the list could go on)

Political:  I’m not touching that one.

Think about some of the revolutionary names that pop in your head.  Many of them KILLED for their advances.  But for SO MANY…we couldn’t be Christians in the United States without.  Read Hebrews 11:32-40 So many un-named revolutionaries.

Say what you want about political activists and social reformers.  JUST take the revolutionary people of Christian history.  It amazes me.  God takes average, ordinary, everyday people and flips the stinkin’ world upside down.


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Categories : Discipleship, Element Church, Leadership, Updates

Revolutionary

19 01 2009

I’m taking the Lead Team through a new book called “Transformissional Coaching”.  I’m halfway through and it has been eyeopening for me.  It’s about raising up next generation leaders.  Coaching the leaders within your organization.  It is co-written by the man who coached me through our church planting process.

Today is Martin Luther King Day.  And while I do not claim to no much about history, even recent history, that well.  I surely don’t claim to know a whole lot about the early civil rights movement or even Dr. King himself.  But from the little I do know, it is OBVIOUS that Dr. King had something revolutionary in him.  His speech at the Lincoln Memorial is something that will ALWAYS be a part of our countries framework, and whether you agree or disagree you cannot argue that his leadership and influence literally changed the course of our country forever. If you have never seen or listened to Dr. King’s speech I’ve posted it below and highly encourage you to watch it.

Then I read something in Transformissional Coaching that struck me.  It is a quote from Francis Schaeffer.  Schaeffer is credited with helping spark a return to political activism among Protestant evangelicals and fundamentalists in the 1970′s.  Looking ahead to the changes of the coming political, spiritual and evangelical landscape he said:  “One of the greatest injusticies we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative.  Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary.  To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservation means standing in the flow of the status quo, and the status quo n longer belongs to us.  If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.”

WOW!  WE NEED REVOLUTIONARIES!  Look at the Bible.  Look at the people God chose to change history.  THEY WERE ALL REVOLUTIONARIES OF THEIR DAY!  Noah built a stinkin’ boat the size of conneticut when no one knew what boats were.  David faced a Giant with a slingshot when the mightiest of warriors wouldn’t with a sword.  Elijah took on the ENTIRE priesthood of baal on Mt. Carmel.  John the Baptist wore animal skins and ate locusts while preaching REPENT!  And Jesus…Oh Jesus was the most revolutionary of all.  He stood in the face of the most religious elite, WHO, were living the status quo.  Jesus, took EVERYTHING to a new level.  What did they do?  They killed him!

So, on this Martin Luther King Day.  I challenge us.  What will it take for US to be revolutionary?

Thinking,

Jeff


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Categories : Discipleship, Element Church, Leadership

Pigs Fly?

18 01 2009

Did anyone see pigs flying lately?  The hot place freeze over?  Cubs win a World Series?  Denver become an NFL team?  Arizona in the Super Bowl?  (Oh, that one happened)  Why you ask?  BECAUSE THE GENERAL HAD TWO POSTS IN THREE DAYS!  Yeah, I’m that shocked too.  So much shock that it’s taken me a week to give him some link love.  LOL Love ya bro!

Check them out HERE.


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Sunday Rumination (1-18-09)

18 01 2009

Wow, I am wiped.  It’s been a long day.  As soon as we were done at church a group of us guys drove down to Denver to go to ESPN Zone for some amazing food and football.  We were celebrating a close friend of mines birthday.  I think it should be the beginning of reuglar “MAN DAY” outings.  It definitely made for  a long day though as I thin we were ALL very tired when we got back.  It was another awesome day today at Element.  Here are my Ruminations.

— I spoke specifically on the issue of sin today.  In our series, we’re talking about the pursuit of the perfect day, and I don’t know how you can talk about that WITHOUT bringing up the issue of sin.  It was less about specific “sins” (because there are so many) and more about the tactics/gameplan our enemy uses to get us to be ensnared by sin.  Proverbs 7 was the text and it is such a PERFECT picture of the lure and trap of sin.

— 8 people came forward today during an altar call, releasing to God some sin issues in their life.  One couple came forward 2nd service but around 20 people raised their hand for prayer saying they were dealing with and needed to release some specific sin issues.  MAN, I love seeing people open up and seek God’s redemptive hand.

— I shared an email of one young man from our church today.  It was a year ago he came to my office for some counseling.  He was dealing with some pretty deep sexual sin.  He shared how now, for the past year he has been SET FREE from those addictions.  How he can stand in victory through Jesus.  Then his closing words get me everytime.  “Jesus truly does save to the uttermost”  WOW!  I told him today, “I hope you realize how encouraging it is for a pastor to see it WORK in someone.”  God’s grace truly does save to the uttermost.

—  634 today.  1st service was down but 2nd was full.

— MAN, the worship band nailed it today.  The set was PERFECT!  While Adam knew the subject I’d be preaching on, he didn’t know any specifics of my message.  Yet somehow, some of the lyrics in the songs were spot on, almost word for word what was said in my sermon…Somehow right?  I LOVE when in the midst of different planning and preparing God just orchestrates it all together.  LOVE IT!

—   The band was tight today.  God’s Spirit was evident through the worship and TOTALLY set up the message.

—  Amazing Grace gets me EVERY time.  ESPECIALLY with the added chorus from Chris Tomlin “My chains are gone I’ve been set free”.  Just SO THANKFUL for the freedom in Christ.

— Adam’s song “The One Who Loves Me” is so KILLER.  I’ve loved it since he introduced it.  I love the fact that we can incorporate original music.  There is something special about singing music that was written as part of your church.  Specific to who we are, where we are at and what we need to hear.

— Met some new people today.  Always enjoy that.

— The message really seemed to hit home with some people.

—  GO CARDINALS!  Love the story of Kurt Warner and will cheer for him all the time.  He also said some GREAT words following the game.  Even if people don’t like it.

—  I’m not a huge NFL fan so was glad to see a couple of good games today.

—  Man, my mind is shot.  Got some very cool stuff we’re doing at Lead Team tomorrow.  Excited for that.  I’m gonna shut er’ down.

Following Christ,

Jeff


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Categories : Church Planting, Element Church, Sunday Rumination, Updates

Fusion

16 01 2009

WOW!  Andy is doing an incredible job leading our two youth ministries.  I spoke on Tuesday night to our Varsity (high school) group.  Andy is doing a series on some real life issues (ethics, money, sex, dating).  He asked me to speak on finances.  I am not the leader in money management by any means, but have definitely learned from my mistakes.  I DO believe 100% in some concepts of money management from Scripture.  Tithing and generostiy.  I was able to share with the teens some stuff that if they start now, will save them much hardache in the future.  Andy had 28 JV students Wednesday, and 20 varsity students on Tuesday.  I can’t wait for him to dedicate ALL his time to youth.  Great things are coming for our students.  Here are some pics I took of the evening.  I think they thought I was kinda weird wanting to take their pictures.


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Family Night

16 01 2009

Wednesday night is family night around our house.  We typically play games.  We didn’t know if we could take playing Famiy Crainum (with a 4 year old) another week, so we gave the kids a choice.  Stay home and have soup and play a game.  Or go out to eat and go to the video arcade.  (We tricked them)  Of course it was video arcade and eating out.  It was a fun time out as the fam.  Here are a few pics of the evening.  (Jonah lost video games because he lied to us about something before we left)


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Categories : Family, Pictures

Devotional Thoughts

15 01 2009

Here are some thoughts from my quiet time with God and where I’m at in my Bible reading.

1 Chronicles 11:9 — I want that said of me.  NOT that I became more and more powerful, but that God was with me.  THAT should be our goal.  That people would know “God is with us”.

Wanna know the purpose of worship.  Read 1 Chronicles 16:4.  Hmm.  I didn’t see where it had ANYTHING to do with me.  My comfort.  My likes.  My dislikes.  Not my choice of instruments.  Not my choice of songs.  To invoke God’s blessing.  Give thanks.  And praise the Lord.  If worship becomes about me, NONE OF THOSE HAPPEN!

From the devotional I was reading “To seek God does not narrow one’s life, but brings it to the highest level possible of fulfillment”.

1 Chronicles 29:14 — We need to ALWAYS have this attitude.  I think sometimes we get kinda proud about what WE can offer God.  I’ve come to learn, I can offering Him NOTHING other than what He gave me or allowed me to give.

1 Chronicles 29:17 — Does He find integrity in yours?

2 Chronicles 6:40 — This was a prayer over the new Temple.  AMEN!  May it be so for us as well.

2 Chronicles 16:9 — We typically think God is looking for those who aren’t committed.  (And I think He does) But it says He is searching to strengthen those whose hearts are FULLY committed to Him.  So would He find my heart in His search?

2 Chronicles 18:13 — Should be the prayer of EVERY pastor.

2 Chronicles 19:6b — This should also be our prayer.  It is written to “judges” in Israel.  But applies to ALL of us.  You do not PREACH…PARENT…WORK…SERVE…SING…to please people, but the Lord.

2 Chronicles 20:20 — How do you stand firm?  BELIEVE

Still learning,

Jeff


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Categories : Discipleship, Element Church, Personal

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