Be aware of the what in the road!?

If your saying, "Is that an elephant lying dead in the road" then you you be correct. I found this story on the Fox News web site, and thought it was just amazing. You can read the whole story here. Then it got me thinking, this elephant in the road is sometimes like how we find the sin in our lives. We're going along in life, things seems to be going just fine, then WHAM! We run head on into a sin that we know shouldn't be there, and actually we wouldn't even expect it to be there but it's there and it has to be dealt with! I'll be honest, I've had this problem and for me it was pride. I never really thought of myself as being prideful, but then WHAM! It hit like a ton of bricks, and I didn't realize I was dealing with this sin until it showed up rather unexpectedly.
As a youth leader at my church, and this would apply to any leader, pride is something that has to always be kept in check. We can never have an attitude that we have arrived or know it all because of the size church we lead, number of people we've lead to Christ, conferences we're asked to speak at etc.
What we should have and need is confidence. In the book of Acts when the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit they began preaching and teaching the gospel with boldness. Of course this is the same Holy Spirit we're filled with today when we give our life to Christ, or Christ saves us (if your a Calvinist). Either way where filled with the Holy Spirit and given the boldness to preach the gospel.
The only leader that's ever come along and can think he has arrived is Jesus. Yet pride nor any other sin never entered his life. He preached and taught with boldness and confidence but it was always wrapped with with humility.
What about you, is there a sin in your life that you need to take care of? It's good examine yourself from time to time.If we are at least aware of the fact we have certain sin problem, we can take the necessary steps to avoid hitting it. A sin problem can quickly turn into a huge sin problem, then WHAM! On a positive note however, with Jesus' help all sin can eventually become roadkill.

Scripture, keepin it real!

The last six weeks have been great for me as far as my Bible study is concerned. As you may or may not know from a previous post, I use the Inductive Bible Study Method when studying scripture. Over the last six weeks I've been studying through the book of Galatians, and if your familiar with Galatians you'll know that there is six chapters in it. Every week I started a new chapter and spent the whole week studying that chapter, man it was awesome.
What was also very interesting as well as humbling, was how much my own life as well as many other Christians lives resembled the churches of Galatia. We have heard the gospel, yet we allow stupid things to creep in and after a while we see these stupid things as part of the gospel. This was the case with the churches of Galatia. Paul took these churches to task for this and he also spends much of the book reminding them of what Christ has done for them and how that only through faith in Jesus can our sin and our lives be justified before God.
Like the church it's not until someone lovingly corrects us that we repent of our sin and begin seeing the gospel for what it really is and for what it really says.
What about you? Have you ever ever found yourselves adding something to the gospel that was never there? I know I have, although stupid, I'll give you an example. I thought for a long time that because the Bible calls our bodies the temple of God in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 , I figured that smoking was a huge sin. While smoking is stupid, unattractive and very unhealthy, it's not a sin. It wasn't until I actually read it in context and saw it for what it was truly saying that I realize my error. Those verses in 1 Corinthians in context are talking about sexual immorality.
Many of the reasons, as was mine, that people have a wrong perspective of the Bible is because they were incorrectly taught what the Bible says and were never taught how to correctly study the Bible for themselves. I'm sure my parents were well intentioned in telling me that smoking was a sin, but they should have just said it was stupid and left it at that.
Let me encourage you to take time and study the Bible, don't rush through it but absorb all that it has to say in it's right context.

Go Figure!

I don't care what Forrest Gump says, life is not like a box of chocolates, it more like a Rubik's Cube! With a box of chocolates you at least know your going to get something good regardless what you pick! However when it comes to a Rubik's cube it takes many twists and turns to get it figured out, then when you think you see how it's going to work out, you find you were way off. Such is life!
In my last post I told how I was just super busy with work and I was, until this week. I went from working fifty or better hours to this week where I barley have worked twenty! That is sort of the way it has gone at my shop for the last six years I've worked there. It used to totally freak me out and fill me with worry every time I would get way down in hours and have no work on the horizon.Over the last six years though, God really has taught me to rely on him and to not put so much weight in my paychecks. 2 Timothy 1:7 says that God has not given us a spirit of fear. While I'm a little scared of the unknown, I'm totally at peace knowing that God is in control and that He will work everything out for my good and His glory.
So how about you, do you often find yourself worrying about things? Things that you have no control over anyways? I challenge you to give it over to God let him work it out. I can tell you from experience, it works out better that way!

Slow down or get out paced

Man, it's been way to long sine I've posted. Life just gets so busy at times, it really sucks when you don't have time to do the things you really want to do. All summer long I've been working 55-65 hours a week, working out 3-4 times a week, running 4 times a week to stay in shape for the three 5k races I ran. Not to mention my involvement in church being a father and husband and all the everyday stuff that requires my attention. Thankfully work has slowed down some, but it has been replaced with school work. Yep as if my my life was not busy enough, two yeas ago I decided to go back to school to get a degree in tooling and manufacturing technologies. Seven years ago I received my journeyman's card in injection molding, but in the manufacturing world these days, that's not enough.
So all that to say, in all of my busyness I unfortunately have dropped the ball in other areas of life. While I still pray daily and read the my Bible, the quality of that time has gone south. So I challenge you and myself to not let the things that matter in life to take a back seat to all the busyness that we involve ourselves in. This would include our service in church as well. To many of us serve in our churches so much that we tend to neglect time with our families or our own personal time with Jesus.
If all this sounds like you, slow down reconnect with Jesus, and family. I know I need too.

Whatever it Takes!

Hard to believe but it's been 30 years since Lego Man showed up on the scene. For 30 years kids have been playing with Lego's and building castles for Lego Man to protect and spaceships for him to ride in. A lot of creativity and imagination went into building those things and today we as Christians should be using way more creativity than that when it comes to getting people into the church and ministering to them. Yep, we should be using every idea and creative way we can think of to draw people into church so that we may be able to introduce them to Jesus.
I know what many may think, "All the church needs to do is preach Jesus and people will come, we don't need to have flashy lights, loud music, and and lots of technology to get people into church, just Jesus! We don't need to offer anything but Jesus!" To that I say "Are you nuts!!" John 15:18 says "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you." Non-Christians don't want Jesus, that's why they are non-Christians. They have to be told of and see their need for Jesus and know that he is their only hope. It's our job to share the gospel with those around us and use any appropriate method to draw them into church so they can hear the gospel and be ministered to. Even Jesus used different methods to draw a crowd.
Really, Jesus too compelled people to come listen to the gospel. Of course his methods were a bit different. They were timely for the culture he was in. Think about it, there were crowds that followed Jesus, multitudes the Bible tells us, and you can't tell me that everyone that followed Christ was an actual follower of Christ. No way, many followed because they knew he could meet a need of theirs. For some it might have been the need a healing touch, a meal, or a need to reconnect with a loved one that passed away. Whatever it was Jesus was there to meet the needs of people, but why he was meeting their needs, he also taught them about sin, repentance, and their need for a savior.
The mission and the message has not changed, but the means have. For some just preaching Jesus is all it will take, for others it might take years of ministering and showing them the love of Christ before they see their need for him and for others it might just take sweet technology, flashy lights and loud music. Point is, we need to use whatever appropriate means to get the Gospel out to people.

Lesson from the potty seat

Well, it seems like it has taken forever but I think that the time has come to finally say she's got it! My wife and I have been working on potty training with our daughter who turned three a few weeks ago. I thought she would have gotten it months ago, she is a really smart kid, so you can imagine our frustration. Many months ago she did almost have it, but the her brother came along and she decided she was not ready to not be the baby anymore. It took many months of discipline, correcting, and teaching, but in the end she had to decide that she no longer wanted to be the baby and that it was something that she really wanted to do.
Just simply being a dad has helped me to learn a lot more about our heavenly father. For a long time He will continue to correct, teach and discipline his children, really wanting us to learn the lesson he is teaching. Like my daughter, we need to determine the we no longer want to be the baby christian we once were, grow up, and learn the lesson God has for us.
What is it that God is trying to teach you? Are you listening or responding to his teaching or maybe his correction? God's proud of his children when we learn and grow, for many of us, it's time to give in and make our heavenly father proud.

Live it out!

Well, it's been a week since my last post, and man, has it been a busy week! Work has been crazy all summer, between 55 and 60 hours a week all summer long, and this past weekend we had our annual youth retreat. We did call it "Wilderness Weekend" but over the years it has been becoming much less of a wilderness experience and more of a general "church camp" type event. So this year we finally changed the name to "Re:Fuel".....I like it!
We named it Re:Fuel because that is what we're attempting to do do our students before the new school year begins. Just like last year it took place at Son-Life camp down in Wayland,MI. It's a small camp, but serves our purposes very well. Not to mention it's not to far out of town.
Anyways, the weekend was filled with a ton of fun as well as some awesome challenges from Gods word.
Our theme for the weekend was "Inside Out" and we challenged our students to live out their faith for all to see.We had four different speakers over the weekend, and God spoke through each one of them. First up was one of our youth leaders, Matt Lane. Matt spoke out of Psalms 19 and really challenged the students to really meditate on the scriptures and that our heart saturates our soul with what we are meditating on. It was an awesome talk.
Second was another of our youth staff, Scott Charles. Oh wait, hey that's me. I spoke out of James 1. I challenged the students to look into Gods mirror, the scriptures, and see if they are reflecting Jesus. To allow the scriptures to show them what they look like and to show them what they need to become. The scriptures as well as our faith will call us to action, either to change something about ourselves, or to serves others.
Our third speaker for the weekend was our churches new singles pastor, Jared Moore. Jared spoke out of Mathew 15. He challenged the students to not practice religion like the scribes and pharisees of Jesus day, but to have a deep well rooted relationship with Christ.
Last to speak was Jimmy Mahaney, our churches youth pastor. Jimmy also spoke out of Mathew 15 and challenged the students to take responsibility for their own hearts and to guard their hearts against sin.
God really moved in the hearts of our students this past weekend and in this youth leaders heart as well. I think a lot of times when we as leaders teach, God lays it on our hearts because it's a message he wants to get into our hearts as well. I know that was the case for me. To those of you reading this that are leaders, be very open to what Gods wants to say through you. He maybe just wanting to say it too you.
Obviously I could go on more about the talks this past weekend as well as all the fun we had, but there is a three year old standing next to me wanting to play the Memory Game......gotta go!