Use Them For His Glory

God has given every one of us individual talents and gifts. Some gifts and abilities can be used to help others in a time of need, to do a particular job in order to feed and take care of your family, or just simply to put a smile on someones face. Whatever your talents, gifts or abilities are be sure to use them to bring glory to God. After all, he gave them to you and he can take them away.

Time To get You Thinking

I took Chloe and Peyton to the park this evening and it got me thinking. With fathers day coming up next Sunday, what is our role when it comes to fathers day?

Well, outside of getting a card for your own dad or sending him a text, email or even an e-card, what are we to do? Many would say "It's my day, I'm spending it golfing, fishing, working out in the yard, sleeping or anything else we could do to rid ourselves of any meaningful duties.

I would encourage all dads not to hold this view of fathers day. Instead I would encourage you to think of what is means to be a father, what are our Biblical roles as fathers and how can we better ourselves as fathers when measured up to those biblical standards.

Are you loving and serving your children well? Are you teaching them about Jesus? Are you setting an example for your sons by serving and loving your wife well? Do they see you as one who loves Jesus and the Bible? Do they see you pray? Do you pray with them and for them?

I've ask myself these questions many time lately. Some days I'd grade myself better than others and some days I'd be embarrassed if everyone knew how poorly I've failed. So what about you? What do you struggle with when it come to being a father? What do you do well?

Thankfully we have a heavenly father to be our ultimate example when it comes to these matters!

Christian Men and The Detroit Lions

What do to many Christian men and the Detroit Lions have in common? Sadly, much of the time we stink at the very thing we're supposed to be excelling at.

Week after week and year after year the Detroit Lions practice and it seems most of the time it's an exercise in futility. Nothing changes no matter how hard they train or how well their practice goes. They simply don't get any better.

I don't think that the guys that play for the Lions are dumb. I truly think that they know their plays and they know how to execute them. However when the time comes to put what they know into action, they always drop the ball.

Sadly many Christian men are the same way. We have our playbook, the Bible and I'm assuming for this post that we're reading / studying it. We go through it day after day and year after year and yet nothing changes. We keep struggling with the same sin, our families are still not as spiritually healthy as they should be and all of our relationships are no deeper than a conversation about the weather.

All this to ask the question: Do we really not know our plays or do we not know our opponent as well as we should? What do you think?

Sin: Remove It, Root & All

So, I have or had these 19 pine trees that ran along side my driveway. To be honest I liked having them there. It created a nice buffer between our house and the neighbors. Even tough they were all turning brown and were making a mess of my driveway and surrounding lawn I still liked them. Yes, I was even telling myself "they look pretty good". You might even say that I grew comfortable with them there.

This past Saturday Myself and 6 of my friends cut them all down, chipped up all the branches and pulled out all the stumps. It was a long day and I can't thank my friends enough for helping me out. Now that they're gone there is a refreshing new look to our front lawn. It seems so much bigger and full of new potential.

Many times the sin in our lives can become a lot like my pine trees. Sin makes a mess of our lives and not just ours. It can also effect those that are closest to you. We think the sin we keep struggling with actually isn't so bad. We even can get to the point where we become comfortable with our sin.

We need to get to the point where we realize that the sin that's there is only hindering the potential in our lives. Other people can see it, even when you don't think they can. It might even look like a daunting task to have to deal with the problem all by yourself.

The good news is, you don't have to deal with it on your own. Jesus is always there for us to come to and to lean on, to pray to and give us ability to overcome our sin problems. We can even enlist the help of our good Christian friends to keep us accountable and walk through this journey with us.

Lego My Jesus

Last week a church in Stockholm Sweden unveiled a statue of Jesus that took a year and a half to construct. The statue stands around 5.8ft tall and is made up of nearly 30,000 Lego's! I can't even imagine the planning, time and patience it must have taken to put together something so involved.

After reading this story two things came to mind. First let me say that I don't know anything about this church. I can only assume that they love Jesus, the Bible and are serving their community and Gods leads them to.

With that said, the first thing that came to mind was the idea of building a statue. What kind of statues am I constructing day in and day out? Were all busy but are we so busy that we make statues or gods out of things in our lives. This happens every time we put something else before Jesus and that something then becomes our god. Our time devotion and energy gets poured into that thing and it's eventually what we live for and not Jesus.

This brings me to my second thought. How much time am I investing in Jesus? Am I putting so much of Jesus into my life that people can actually see him take shape in my life? Additionally, what am I doing to help others to develop a lasting, deep meaningful relationship with Jesus?

So think about it. What or who are you devoted to? What or who are you investing in? And finally what are you doing to help others to come into a relationship with Jesus?

Some Thoughts on Mark

Over the last several weeks in our weekly men's Bible study we have been going through the book of Mark. We just finished Mark chapter six, so we will be in Mark for some time to come.
So far there have been many things that have struck home with me, but there seems to be a few things that constantly come up.
First is that Jesus and his disciples worked and served like crazy sometime without even time to eat. However after the work at hand was done they would try to get away to rest and prepare for the next go around. I say try to get away because even when they did arrive to the destination of rest, there was always a multitude of people waiting to be taught, healed or looking for something to eat.
Secondly, Jesus, no matter how much he ministered to people and no matter how tired he was, he was always moved with compassion on the crowed that gathered around him. It's almost as though he can't not serve people.
The last observation has to do with the disciples. They just didn't get it! No matter how many people Jesus fed, healed, or even raised from the dead his disciple still did not understand who Jesus was. Often Jesus did get on their cases for not getting this. Their lack of faith hindered them from being and doing all Jesus had for them.
Take a few minutes and read the first six chapters of the book of Mark, look for these and other observations and think about how they might apply to you.

In Our Place, For Our Sins

The death of Christ and what he accomplished on the cross should always be on the minds of those of us that call ourselves Christians. The fact the Jesus died in our place for our sins and that in him we have redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7), is something we should never get over. Sadly many Christians only think of the atoning work of Jesus on or in the days leading up to Easter. Daily we sin and daily we need to be asking for and repenting of that sin. Thankfully the blood of Jesus was enough to cover all the sins of man and his one time death on the cross did just that.
The video below was put out by Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA last year leading up to their Good Friday services. It's a short but powerful video of the innocent death of Jesus.