Post Title. 04/18/2012
 
ARE YOU COVERED UP?

- Psalm  130:1 -
“Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord.” (NKJV)

“Help, God—the bottom has fallen out of my life! Master, hear my cry for help!” (The Message)

Have you ever been in over your head? Overwhelmed with life, overtaken by painful circumstances, or just felt like your life was over, period? There are some things we will experience in life that we just can’t overlook, get over, or turn over without help. In my own life I have discovered that there truly are some things that ONLY GOD can do.  The journey with my wife through cancer in 2008 and the loss of her grandmother and my mother that same year was overwhelming to say the least. The recent loss of my wife’s mother to cancer once again took us to a place of grief, loss and vulnerability. Once again, the longer you live, the more you will discover that there are some things that ONLY GOD can do for you.

The book of Psalms is an extremely emotional book. Many times the writer reveals the deepest feelings of his heart, moving from being greatly perplexed to great confidence in God. One minute agony and the next minute ecstasy! In Psalm 130 we find a desperate plea for help and intervention from a desperate man.

“Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord.” 

The cry is for help saying, “The bottom has fallen out of my life.” The place he was in was so deep that no man could save him. Only God.

In Psalm 69, David cries out to God from the deep mire, a place where deep waters had covered him. He cries out that God would not let him sink in the deep water and not let the deep swallow him up. His plea was raw, real and from a helpless place. It was a plea from a man knowing he would not survive this without God moving on his behalf. So he turns all his attention toward heaven and cries out to God for assistance. He abandons all confidence in the flesh and calls upon the Lord. What he discovers is that God is more than able and willing to come to his rescue. In verse 5 we find that he has resolved to put his hope in God’s word and His promises. He reminds himself that God knows what He is doing and that He is still in control.

Psalm 106:9 reminds us what God did for Israel at the Red Sea. They were in a place where their options had run out with the Red Sea in front of them and Pharaoh’s army behind them. David writes that, “You led them through the depths.” Do you see that? Even when they couldn’t see a way out or a way through, he was there and led them through to a safe place. It’s just another continual and constant reminder that when we are overcome with questions, doubts, fears and life, He is the over-comer! The deepest places of despair are merely shallow pools of potential for God to reveal his faithfulness.

Maybe you are overcome today with concern for your marriage, your child, your health, your finances, or your future. If so, cry out to God from your deep place of brokenness today. He specializes in making the impossible possible and leading us through places in life we never thought we would make it through. Never forget that our greatest obstacle in life becomes God’s greatest opportunity to show you His great power and faithfulness.
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My Tribute 02/02/2012
 
_I am writing today from a place of great gratitude and brokenness.  A woman that I love dearly has been committed to hospice care.  I sat by her bedside this week and looked at her small frame of a body that is still filled with giant faith in God. Cancer has weakened her body, but has never touched her confidence in the Lord.  Her spirit is resilient and her faith unwavering that her life is in His hands and His plans are best.  I stand with her in prayer that God is able to heal and restore at a single word.  Sometimes, He chooses the ultimate healing, and we will rest in His strength and peace if this is His plans for her.

She told me recently that the first time I walked into church as a skinny, blonde haired, sixteen-year-old, the Lord spoke to her.  She had no idea that I was not a church kid and my entire family unsaved. The Lord told her that He had His hand on my life and that He has assigned me to her, that she should pray over me. That was 30 years ago, and she has prayed for me everyday since.  She has been the single greatest encourager of anyone in my life.  In moments of distress and discouragement, I would pick up the phone or go by for a visit. This lady prays, and when she prays, heaven hears and God moves. 

She stood as a rock during my wife's cancer and my mother's death. She has been here during my transition from 25 years of student ministry to planting a new church. As I think about the many God moments in my life that served as a catalyst for a new season or new momentum, the hand prints of her prayers for me are so visible. She has deeply and profoundly impacted my life like no one else ever has.

Like so many giants in God's kingdom, her name will never be in lights. Her life has been one of simplicity and deep faith.  A simple faith that God is everything He says that He is, that He is love and He is able. That living a life of loving God, family and others is the kind of life worthy of living.  She has done that and done that well. Her strong faith has passed down to her only daughter, the woman I stand beside and love, my wife. Her love for Jesus and His presence has passed down to my beautiful daughters and loves of my life, Amber and McKenzie. I think I see some of her already in my seven month old granddaughter.  Everly loves to talk, or at least what she thinks is talking.  She gets it honest.  Thanks mamaw, Wilma.  Your faith was one passed down from your mother, Granny E.  Granny E touched God when she prayed, and the touch of God has been on your life ever since.

I have had over twenty-seven years of ministry in my life, and it started when you obediently prayed. Thousands of children and youth have come to know Christ and now others still come.  Just this past Sunday, more came.  A man running from God, a young woman who had been far from God.  Heaven's population keeps growing, and your reward just gets greater! I am sure that God raised you up for such a time and season as this.

I love you Wilma Miller. You are an amazing woman, a wife, a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and my mother-in-law. I can't imagine life without you here, but trust God fully that He knows what is best for you.  I can't imagine anyone wanting you more than us, except Jesus himself. You have been best friends since you were a small girl and have talked with each other daily. You have  loved to worship Him and worship Him you will.
My prayer is that He will give you a little more time here to worship Him with us, to share some more experiences with us. If not, then know that we are resting in the Jesus you led us to and the Jesus whose grace is sufficient even now.  Doug is closer to Jesus than he has ever been and is an amazing father-in-law. You see, your prayers have been answered in so many ways and still continue to bear fruit!

I love you, and words cannot express what you mean to me.  I can't imagine the size of the crown you will wear, the very one you will humbly place at His feet.  I seem to hear the Lord say, "well done, good and faithful servant!" Your faith has been great and your reward will be great. Only Jesus is perfect and only His blood has redeemed us, but your life has been exemplary and your walk impeccable.  May His perfect will be done here on earth as it is in heaven, in your life and ours.  No one could ever love you the way He does, but we are a close second, and that is the honest truth. We love you.

I was your prayer assignment 30 years ago, you are mine today.  From a hotel room in San Francisco, I pray for the peace of His presence in your life today in Richmond, Kentucky. He knows you by name, He knows where you are and He is faithful who has promised.  Thank you, Wilma for loving me and caring for a kid who others saw nothing in.  Thank you for eyes of faith that could see what happens when prayer intersects with faith and gives God room to work.  Thank you for believing in the Jesus in me and His plans and purposes for my life.  I know today His plans for your life are best and His eternal reward will be even better.
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_Week #1 Players First:

The Kentucky Wildcats basketball program is like no other in the nation, accumulating the most wins of any other collegiate basketball team in history. The Wildcats have a storied program with numerous national championships, final four appearances and SEC titles. Living only five minutes from Rupp Arena is incredible fun for a lifelong fan of the “Blue and White.” If you want to visit the arena with the most wins and tradition in College Basketball then bypass the Dean Dome or Cameron Indoor Stadium and come on to the Bluegrass to Rupp Arena. The energy and excitement fueled by championship banners hanging from every rafter reminds fans that this is a place where winning is expected.

It’s this expectation of winning that has created a challenging environment for coaches who lead the Cats. While one coach may be a great at the x’s and o’s, another may be best at recruiting. Fortunately, at this time Kentucky has both wrapped up in Coach John Calipari. Love him or hate him the guy is a winner and brings the best talent to the universities where he coaches. Coach Cal does a lot of things well, but when the dust clears…he is a winner.

Recently he shared five core beliefs that drive his coaching efforts, and brings the best out of his young players.  I will be breaking each of these down over the next five weeks and sharing some principles that I feel is great stuff for church leadership teams who have a desire to be the best they can be for the cause of Christ.  Let’s start first with the belief. An essential for success on the court is an atmosphere that puts players first. Coach Cal shared this recently in an interview, “It starts with the players. What it truly means is creating a family atmosphere. Like our own children who come first in our lives, they understand that we love them, and that we’re not afraid of them, but we respect them and we have a job, which is to get them to learn and grow. It’s that kind of culture we seek to create, a culture that puts players first.”

I can’t imagine a healthier environment for players to grow and develop in than one where the players feel valued and at the same time challenged to grow as individuals for the good of the team. In that setting, no one is sacrificed for the sake of the program but instead serve as individual catalysts that only enhance and enrich the program. The need that must first be addressed is the individual health and growth of our team for the greater good of the team’s goals. Have we created an environment where individual leaders are growing emotionally, physically, relationally and above all spiritually? If not, then this must be a priority entering a brand new year that will surely bring about a brand new set of opportunities and challenges.

Pray over your team, plan for ways to help them grow individually and produce places and moments for this to happen. Winners are attracted to places where there is a winning tradition and it starts with getting your players healthy individually and letting them know you value them enough to do so!
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_ Luke 2:14 NLT
"Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased."

The radiant display of the nativity scene is visible on lawns, in homes, and churches during the Christmas season. Joseph and Mary, barnyard animals, shepherds and heaven's gift to humanity, baby Jesus, all wrapped up in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Angels sing, wise men wonder, Herod panics and the world will never be the same. If you thought that his birth created a stir and controversy, then read what happens thirty years later after being baptized by John in the river Jordan. The birth of Christ Jesus changed everything!

Luke records the words of the angels who announced his birth, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on the earth to those with whom God is pleased.”  There is a promise of peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased. It is an impossible endeavor to please God in our own strength, efforts and deeds. There is no amount of righteous acts that we can perform outside of Christ that will bring pleasure to the heart of God. It’s not about what we do, but what has been done for us!

Yet, there is one thing that the Bible tells us that without, we cannot please him. This is the very thing that is central to our salvation and the key to our experiencing the fullness of Christ in our lives. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that, “without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that comes to God must believe that he is, and that he rewards those that diligently seek him.” It is simple faith and trust in him that brings the greatest pleasure to the heart of God. A faith and assurance that he is the only way to salvation, and that he is good and faithful in all that he promised.

Jesus came so that all human effort to appease God would stop and that through faith in him alone we would experience true life. You will never bring greater glory to God with your life than when you fully trust him with your life. So let us reflect on his faithfulness to us this year and enter a new year with renewed faith and confidence in the one who is “faithful and true.” Let our faith in him reveal to the others around us, that there is peace in turbulent times for those who will simply trust him.

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One Request 10/13/2011
 
I have one request, dear friends: Pray for me. Pray strenuously with me and for me-to God the Father, through the power of our Master Jesus, through the love of the Holy Spirit- that I will be delivered from the lion’s den of unbelievers in Judea. Romans 15: 30-31 (MSG)

Did you hear it? This is a simple request from a guy who knows that he is a marked man. Paul had been reflecting on what God had done through his life while spreading the Gospel in Northern Greece. In fact, the word that he used for spreading was more like trailblazing! I love it!  A man full of faith and adventure who loved Jesus more than his own life. A man who is now stepping into a new season and the next place the Lord was positioning him. In this new season he would experience greater persecution and opposition than ever before, even from his own countrymen.

He made his need very clear and simple:  pray for me. What could be done that would be more powerful and effective for Paul than to pray for him? It’s obvious he wasn’t calling upon them for a bedtime prayer while yawning their way through calling out his name before the Lord. Pray strenuously for me that through the intervention of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I will be delivered.

This was his one request!

I somehow believe that Paul knew the power of faithful, fervent, intervening prayer and the difference it makes in the life of Christ followers. It was through prayer and prayer alone that he would be delivered from his adversaries and enemies. So his one request was this: pray for me.  This was a praying man calling upon a praying people to ramp up the intensity of their prayers over his life and ministry. He was at the tip of the spear in the early church movement, and because of this there was a bullseye on his back.  So, Paul asks his dear friends to strenuously pray for him.

The next time someone asks for you to pray for them, the next time someone comes to you with a real need in their life and asks for you to pray, remember, they are asking for you to join with them and invite the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit into their situation. I think Paul believed that someone would fervently pray for him and only through prayer would he be delivered. This is key.  Your prayer over someone’s life could be the very one that moves God mightily on their behalf. It may be a simple request, but one that invites you to be part of God’s activity defeating darkness and bringing the light of Jesus to our world. It’s one request that we can all do, one request that God will surely honor!

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Green Hope! 09/27/2011
 
I have a favorite restaurant that I visit often in Lexington that features healthy food with most items on the menu from local farmers. They pride themselves with their investment in local produce and livestock from the Bluegrass. They are very health conscious and environment friendly with signage everywhere encouraging you to “Go Green!”  Going Green is more than a fad in America. For many it’s become an obsession. Save the planet, Go Green! This has become the new model for those who appreciate a healthy lifestyle and a healthy world to raise our kids in.

Today, I was reading in Romans 15:13 from the Message Bible and saw this. Paul writes:

 Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with Hope!

Some of my favorite words like joy, peace and hope all wrapped into one single verse. Do you find it interesting that Paul describes the type of hope that we should be brimming over with as green hope? A hope that is alive, healthy, growing and producing life! That’s the kind of hope that I want at a much deeper level in my life and the kind of hope that I want to be produced in the lives of people at bridgeCHURCH.

I am completely aware that this is a difficult time for our nation and our world. We have a global economic crisis, tension and strife between nations and ethnic groups, and even an elevation of natural disaster and catastrophe. Who can have hope, let alone a fresh and expectant hope today? I hear you, feel you, get you and even understand your struggle to wrap your mind around this truth. However, let me encourage you with this single thought. The power to live with green hope does not rest in our own strength and ability, but is being produced in us by the presence of the Holy Spirit! The Bible declares that each day we are being filled with the life giving energy of the Holy Spirit that is producing in us this kind of hope! I feel like stepping away from the keyboard and rejoicing in the Lord, who daily is empowering me and equipping me with GREEN HOPE!

Whatever you are facing today, struggling with, going through or experiencing in life, my prayer is that the God who loves your more passionately than I can ever describe will fill you with a hope that is fresh and alive today. How can we rejoice and expect good things to happen to us in a world filled with anxiety and despair? The answer is simply this, when it comes to our hope in Christ, Go Green!

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I think I am stating the obvious when I say that we cannot do life alone. In fact, life was never intended to be done alone. Every successful season of my life has been because of a dedicated individual effort and the assistance of one or more people influencing me to be my best. I cannot imagine how limited I would be trying to accomplish great things for God in my life without the assistance of others. Simply put, I cannot succeed in life on my own.

This is true for all of us today, especially when life gets tough. Too often we get weary from shouldering burdens and problems in life by ourselves. We eventually collapse in exhaustion and emotional fatigue under the weight of it all. Could it be that the burden was not intended to be so heavy and the weight of life so pressing as it currently is? Could it be that you are carrying a weight meant for two in your limited individual strength?

Jesus tells us to come to him when we are weak and burdened down. To learn of him, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. The audience understood this word picture, being familiar with oxen and the yoke. They knew that oxen only labored in pairs, never alone. They shared the burden and the weight together. No farmer would have ever tried to plow a field with a single ox shouldering a yoke that was meant for two.

Let me ask this question: Are you carrying a weight today in your own strength? Is the load getting heavy and the weight becoming increasingly unbearable? The weight of a troubled marriage, financial stress, physical limitations or sickness, relational or emotional pain? If so, then why not try it the way Jesus encourages us to. Come to him with all of the burdens of life and give them to him. Begin to learn of him and by all means take his yoke, the kind where he walks with you and shares the load, and discover that life can actually be much easier and our burdens lighter. Your will never be stronger than when you admit your weaknesses and confess your need for his help and assistance.

Without question, in life, two is better than one! Especially when the other one is Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith!
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One of my favorite things to do after a staff meeting is to join the team at one of the many Orange Leaf locations in Lexington. There is nothing that helps the team come together like healthy yogurt smothered in Snickers, Oreo's, candy sprinkles and hot fudge! In fact, the amazing toppings selection just increased to include crushed waffle cones. Get this, yogurt not in a waffle cone, but a waffle cone in yogurt! I would love to be on the team coming up with these idea's. Can you imagine a low fat chocolate yogurt over pieces of funnel cake and covered in Captain Crunch Peanut Butter cereal, with peanut butter drizzle?

The truth is 90% of the time I opt for the fat free, sugar free yogurt with fresh strawberries and granola. Take my word for it, guilt free and great stuff at the same time. Orange Leaf captures the best of so many worlds in my mind: great atmosphere, great staff and a great dessert with many healthy options. They do a few things that make the experience extra special, but one thing very well; they have great yogurt!

At the center of every great company, team or church is a group of people committed to being great at what they do and they know what that thing is. If you are football team with a great offensive unit, then you play to your strength, offense. If you are a tire company then you become the best at making and marketing quality tires. If you are a church leadership team, then know what God is calling you to be in your city or community and give yourselves to it.

Extra toppings are good, but they are just that, extras. Focus on being great at the main thing and treat everything else as extras. This applies to our family life, careers and churches. Spending some time at the toppings bar is fun, but when I go to Orange Leaf, it's all about the yogurt! The people at Orange Leaf get it and it's obvious when you stand in line at checkout.

We need to get an Orange Leaf attitude when it comes to life and purpose to keep the main things the main things in life. When we do, life is much more simple and the journey is much more sweet than we could ever imagine! I think I will drop by and grab some yogurt on the way home.
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I am currently learning the need in my life for better boundaries, guidelines and an intense approach to personal discipline. Great intentions do not equal great performance or success. In fact, great intentions never usually make it to the phase of application, which is the real key to change in the first place.

The real enemy toward our advancing from a life of great intentions to a life of great success and fulfillment is over commitment. The old adage of being a mile wide and an inch deep describes too many of our lives. Doing a lot of things but not doing a lot of things well. This leads to a deep sense of frustration and eventually a lack of desire in life, a place we call burnout.

Though bad habits are hard go break, they can be broken. One of the most intentional things you will ever do is address the issue of over commitment and a life spinning out of control. A good first step is the "Under and Over Principle." A simple shift in the way you commit and what you commit to. Try this, the next time you are about to make a promise or commit to something, under promise and over deliver.

Can you imagine the diminished level of stress in your life if you apply this strategy? Simply be careful when you choose to make a commitment and be sure to over deliver when you do commit or make a promise. Get the job done earlier, go the extra mile on the project, bring five idea's to the meeting instead of the required three. Strategic things like arriving ten minutes early, staying ten minutes late and helping when everyone else is eager to leave. Leave a trail at the end of the day of a job well done by the Under and Over Principle.

You can do this and you will be better for it. You will have an opportunity within the next twenty four hours, under promise and over deliver!
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Hands and Feet 09/27/2011
 
What opportunities will come your way today to show the love of Jesus to someone? Every day is a brand new gift from God to influence someone by the way you love, serve and live. At the office, on the job, during lunch, in the department store or simply talking with your neighbor. Simple day to day moments that become amazing opportunities to share Christ with others. The Gospel of Jesus is not complex, his way of life is not burdensome or heavy. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30

Let’s help lift the load of someone today and become the hands and feet of Jesus to those in need. Jesus is still the answer and we have the hope of Christ living in us…let’s share that hope today!
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