It’s Champion League Final Day

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks house hunting… so today I will hopefully have my mind taken off it for at least 90 minutes. In honor of the occasion enjoy the best action from the competition.

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Why would you not want to be Irish?

Some quotes I’m pondering

What looks like resistence is often a lack of clarity. -Dan Heath

To influence behviors, we need to meet people where they live. -Dan Heath

How do you build an army (of supporters)? you start with the Generals. Jake Mckee

Change

Blogged before on the issue of change and have to admit that my life in many respects has become about managing change (personally and helping others manage change). It was Erwin McManus who once said, “we serve the changeless God of change.” God doesn’t change – He’s the same yesterday, today and forever. He’s the Rock, the Fortress, the Strongtower. However everything around Him changes. He changes lives, culture changes, the seasons change, the world has changed, take a quick look at church history and you’ll recognize that He’s constantly changing His church.

Changing something, changes perspective. And I think its perspective that often fuels our resistance (passive or active) to change. Our perspective, mindset, or disposition toward something doesn’t change on it’s own. Something in our surroundings, our circumstances changes, it creates conflict (oftentimes internal that spills out) and the result is growth. We’re stretch not just to see the new thing, but why the new thing was put in place – the bigger issue.

A great example might be a church that changes how it’s weekend services work. Perhaps its been done a certain way for a long time, and never because that’s just the way it’s always been done. When it was first instituted years ago it was for a reason – to build disciples, to teach people to pray more, to go to deeper depth or higher heights in worship. All good reasons. But perhaps over time a leadership recognizes that church isn’t just for church people, but for everyone including those who are faraway from God. That team realizes that Jesus came to seek and save those who where faraway from God and His church should do the same. They begin to change how a weekend experience works, maybe it’s lights, media, songs and style of worship (the values remain the same, but the methodology changes). While those are symptoms of change that oftentimes produces conflict, the real change started at the point of recognizing that church isn’t for the believer only, but for those outside of faith – that in relevant, faith-filled environments they might embark on the same journey. While that’s where the change began, it ends with a perspective at an the individual level that allows people to engage… it’s growth. It’s change.

Are you a but satisfier?

Becoming a great apologist…

It’s Your Love

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.