It’s been a tough and amazing season all at once, but one thing is for sure, the sense of God’s amazing love and grace is overwhelming. The truth of Philippians 4 has become a living, breathing reality for me recently…
12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
Verse 13 is probably one of the most misquoted verses in Scripture, so often taken completely out of context. I can’t go out an bench press 325lbs this morning because I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. But I can learn to live in a way that is independent of my circumstances, I can learn to not be controlled by the situations and challenges that I might face, but rather live in a place of absolute dependence up the One who is in control. In this passage Paul is borrowing language from the Stoic Philosophers of the day to show us how Christ uses the circumstances and situations we face each and every day to initiate us into this path and life of complete dependence upon Him. I can only face life, and do the things that are in front of me, through His strength, by drawing upon Him, my source of strength. It’s a life of dependence, not divorced from circumstances, but recognizing that those circumstance are being used by God as an opportunity to engage with His way of viewing and walking through life. It’s why Paul said this in Philippians 3:
7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
So back to God’s love… that’s where we started. Read this from Prodigal John last week and I think it sums it up well. “God doesn’t need me. He loves me.” You see He is God. He is complete. He doesn’t need my additions. Because of His passionate love for each one of us He welcomes us into this partnership, better said a relationship, of dependence upon Him.
So click on the video below, close your eyes and make a commitment today to allow yourself to depend upon Him. It’s His love.
My wife often accuses me this time of the year of getting philosophical and reflective… and maybe I do (after all its the end of the year and I get one year older). As I was looking back on 2008 I was struck by God’s incredible faithfulness and blessings on our life. Some highlights from 08:
An incredible week of prayer and fasting in January and so many promises both personally and corporately to our church
10 days in Ireland in February with my family.
An awesome trip to Kansas to serve a church there.
The opportunity to visit many wonderful friends and family in Portland.
A great staff retreat in June… I work on one incredible team.
A first ever visit and game in the right field bleachers of Yankee Stadium.
One unbelievable week in Disney winning an evening in the castle. Can’t tell you how much we felt God love and pleasure as a family.
Riding Big Thunder Mountain with Aidan, Sophie and Madeline (Mads was just crazy funny).
The opportunity to meet Mark Batterson (his book is part of the reason we ended up here in Albany).
The opportunity to spend a couple of days with my wife in Montreal to celebrate our 13th anniversary. I can’t tell you how much I couldn’t do life without her.
Having the opportunity to go to the Catalyst Conference (a dream came true).
50 Thanksgiving food boxes to families in our community
The opportunity to go to Soldier Field and watch the Packers play the Bears in the coldest game ever played there (-12).
An incredible Christmas season… in a little over two weeks across all three campuses we gave over $60,000 to local and global charities. Incredible generosity!
I’m filled with gratitude when I look back at 2008. This year has not been without its disappointmentsand failures, but I can’t tell you how blessed I feel. God is good all the time. I don’t know what 2009 has in store my I know that I’m going after God with everything I’ve got.
We did it. We survived the coldest game ever played at soldier field (and all without any hunting outer garments). -12F (-24C for my friends in the UK). Great game, lots of tradition and a fight song that made it feel a little more like a college game (it might also be that we were in the cussing bears season ticket holder section with Packers stuff on). Great experience and a great stadium.
Made it on to our final flight after they sold our seats because they “assumed” we wouldn’t make it from Chicago. We’d only been sitting in the airport for five hours. So much for airline security and the ability to track customers. We held the plane ransom, actually just refused to get off (managed to delay it a further 15 minutes – I guess that my 15 minutes of fame (at least the passengers on flight 3178) and they finally offered someone a free ticket. No way I was flying to Boston, then Albany on the eve of Christmas eve, having been waiting all day in DC. I was amazed at how quickly The US Airways staff blamed their supervisor and didn’t work to alay my concerns as a customer. It was first blame and then think about problem solving without any compensation for the affected customer. Not a great reflection on the culture the company seems to be creating. Anyhow finally home and glad for the whole experience.
It’s been a crazy week… but one I’ve been getting a ton accomplished in. Gotta love that. Hate spinning my wheels. As many of you know I like technology and communication stuff… stumbled across this little video over here. Incredible statistics when you think about it. How might that impact you and the church?
Over the past couple of weeks the Lord has had me reviewing some of the incredible things He’s been doing at Cornerstone… It’s left me awestruck at His greatness and proud of the folks that call Cornerstone home. On a given weekend there are generally between 220-240 adults and around 100 kids of those 220+ adults 149 jumped into small groups this fall (that doesn’t include any of our students in GC and our small groups for 1st-6th graders).
There are over 145 people serving on at least a monthly basis in the church. All kinds of new volunteers dreaming up new ways to serve and make a difference. I’ve also had the opportunity to hear some incredible stories of service to others in our community take place through our small groups, not to mentioned the 50 families in our community served with turkey and all the trimmings to make sure they had a Thanksgiving dinner. And now as we head into Christmas the church is rallying to support Love146, Smile Train, Living Water, Hope of Life and provide socks and shoes for orphans in Mexico.
I have to tell you that it’s so humbling to be a part of such a great group of people stepping up and out to make a different. Cornerstone I’m proud of you!
It’s been so long that my wordpress account didn’t even recognize me. Been one crazy couple of months… which would probably make it a crazy couple of months as opposed to one. Lots of stuff going on with church, our Christmas series, some leadership training and preaching a little more frequently.
Let’s see… since we last talked I’ve become the proud parent of a new mac book pro along with the CS4 Master Suite. Love both (but not more than my wife or kids). Spent the last couple of evenings (and early mornings) working on Christmas cards for our lead volunteers to write meaningful thought to their teams for Christmas (pretty stoked that we have 147 folks volunteering on a regular basis), along with our family Chirstmas card (oh the suspense is killing you I’m sure). I had considered doing some sort of electronic card see as most of my communication takes place via, blogs, facebook, email, twitter etc. Maybe next year (but an interesting thought to consider how communication has changed).
Looking forward to going to Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Sunday evening with my good friend, Brian!
I serve as the campus pastor at Cornerstone in Albany, NY. While I'm the campus pastor, I'm not immune to an occasional "oops should I have said that?". Cornerstone doesn't pay for or approve this message. My thoughts are my thoughts, but don't let that scare you.
