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Showing posts from September, 2009

40

Last week was a great week. God has been doing so much in my life to stretch me and teach me and transform me into the man he wants me to be! I was reminded of a very powerful reminder in a very simple song. One of my favorites songs of all time is the song "40" by U2. You can watch the video below or click HERE to link to see it on YouTube if you're reading this on Facebook. This song came to mind as I was working through a bunch of stuff over the last few weeks. What I love so much about this song is the fact that it's taken right from the Bible. "40" is just a few verses from Psalm 40, which has become over the years one of my favorite Psalms. What I love most from this Psalm is some incredible reminders on who God is and what he does for me. The psalm opens with "I waited patiently for the Lord". I LOVE THAT! Sure, life is hard sometimes. Sure, sometimes I wish things would go exactly the way that I want. But I know that God hear

Stretch Me. Ruin Me. Heal Me.

Remember January? I do. Every year for the past five years I've been doing the One Year Bible Reading. I've been a little slack on keeping up on the exact date in my One Year Bible... but I have been reading lots of other scriptures to make up for it. So, I won't have read the entire Bible this year like I have the past four years... but I have been doing my regular praying. Every year I come up with a short prayer to start my day with. In this article I shared what my prayer for 2009 was. After reading the book IT by Craig Groeschel I followed his advice and have been praying every day that God would stretch me, ruin me and heal me! And boy oh boy has he ever been doing an awesome job of that! :-) I feel like God has taught me SOOOO much this past year. He's been teaching me so much about following him, about being a husband, about being a father and about being a Pastor. I'm definitely far from perfect (I can hear you're shouts of AMEN from here!) b

Great Day to Geek Out!

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YAAAAYYYY!!! I've been waiting for today for a year. The new video game Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 hits the store today. I LOVED the first one. I thought the game was fantastic, even on the Wii which is no where close to a hard core gaming system. The story was better than pretty much every single Marvel movie that has come out in years! I was hooked on the story from beginning to end! To make Alliance 2 even cooler in my geeky opinion is the fact that it's based on Marvel's Civil War storyline. Civil War was the reason I started reading comic books again after a 12 year absences. To have one of my favorite stories put into one of my favorite video games, is a fanboy dream come true :-) Also today, X-Men Origins: Wolverine comes out on Blu-Ray. Sure. The movie wasn't great. In fact, how Wolvie got his adamantium skeleton and claws and how he lost his memory was just plain dumb. But it was still a pretty fun movie with lots of high points. It's de

Monday is the New Dreaming Day

This week I'm working on a new schedule. Kids going back to school will do that. Also, my awesome, amazing wife started a new job today. So in order to ensure that we have our weekly Date Day together, I'll be taking Thursdays off instead of Monday from now on. Now, on Monday mornings I'm fried. Really fried. Some Mondays, especially after doing everything to get ready for Sunday Celebration, preaching and then our LifeGroup that evening, I feel like my brain has been hit by an angry bus. And because that bus was so angry, it backed up to hit me again :-) I love taking time every single week to pray and dream about what God wants to do. I dream about what God wants to do in my life and my relationship with him. I dream about what God wants to do in my family to stretch us and grow us closer together. I dream about what God wants to do our the church that I pastor so that everyone will continue to grow in their spiritual journey. Monday mornings with a fried brain

Let the Chase Begin!

I'm really pumped for the next six weeks at LifeSpring. Starting this Sunday we'll be studying the book Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson. This book was HUGE in my personal walk with Christ when I read it last November. I had the opportunity to meet Mark at The Sticks conference last year. His talk and this book really put a passion in me to see the Spirit of God really work in my life. I'm excited to preach for the next six weeks on this topic and to have each of our LifeGroups get deeper into the topics in their home meetings. We'll also be providing new Bible study resources in order to help people get into God's Word more in their own private time. It's going to be great!! For me personally, following the Wild Goose hasn't always been easy. In fact, sometimes it's just flat out hard! As a pastor, sometimes hard decisions have to be made. Sometimes people are not going to like you or agree with you. Sometimes you have to have difficult c

Love is Here

This morning I was sitting in my favorite chair, reading my Bible and praying to God and just struck by all the wonderful love that I have in my life. I'm loved by an awesome and holy and just and powerful and all-knowing God. He loves me so much that he would come to this earth and pay the ultimate price to bring me back to him. That is so mind blowing!! I'm loved by an wonderful and fun and caring and godly wife. I still wake up in the morning in shock and awe that such a great woman would be married to me! I'm loved by two great kids! They're caring and thoughtful and funny as can be and bring such joy to my life. I'm loved by great family members. I'm loved by great friends. Sometimes when I'm struggling and stressing out over leading a church and a family it's easy to forget about all this love and only focus on the stresses of life. But love is here! It's all around me ALL THE TIME! This song was playing in the background during my pra

One Prayer 2009 Update

In June, our church partnered with nearly 2000 other churches around the world in One Prayer. This was such a huge blessing to our church to be a part of something so much bigger than ourselves and I'm looking forward to being even more involved with it next year! Just received an awesome email from the One Prayer team with an update on how One Prayer went and an exciting opportunity for pastors who participated in One Prayer. You can check out this announcement by watching this video from Craig Groeschel , Senior Pastor of LifeChurch . tv . I love the idea of the God is... book! In fact, I'll be submitting a chapter for consideration. I'll be using my God is... Jesus message. And who knows, maybe with a LOT of prayer that will be my first work published :) It's so amazing to see what God can do with his church stands together! LOVE IT!!! My most heart felt prayers go out to the guys and gals who came up with this One Prayer idea!