Two Things for 2011

Here’s a brief (I hope) post on what I’m learning lately. Up front let me put out this disclaimer: I don’t have it all figured out. As I’ve always said on my blog: I process the best through writing. So this is me working through what God is showing me but I am not approaching “getting it” yet.

1. Faith doesn’t grow until you walk through fire. I don’t know of an instance in the Bible where someone was stretched while in their comfort zone. The times that God showed up was when people trusted God, stepped out of their comfort zone and then God showed up.

Just a couple of examples:

• Moses going face-to-face with Pharoah
• Daniel in the lion’s den
• Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace
• Israelites going through the Red Sea
• Nehemiah rebuilding the wall
• Peter walking on water
• Jesus facing the cross

In all of those situations, each was facing uncertainty, opposition and, I’m sure, at least a little fear. But they trusted God to do what He said he would do.

Compare those to the rich young ruler who asked Jesus what he should do, Jesus laid out a challenge and the young man walked away. He came face to face with his next step but he turned away. What an opportunity wasted.

God never promises to take us around problems (all though I’m sure there are things He protects us from everyday that we’ll never know about) but He does promise to never leave us or forsake us. If we trust and follow Him, He promised He’ll bring the victory for us.

If I had to name my One Thing to claim for 2011 it’s this: “for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9) and have the faith and trust to go outside my comfort zone.

2. Something else I can see God working through is how I view my marriage. For many years now, God has taught me a lot about my relationship with Him through my daughter. I’ve learned so much about my relationship with Him by how I interact with Sheridan. It’s been an amazing time of learning and only makes me love her more and draw closer to Him at the same time.

But I can see a new season coming where God teaches about my relationship with Christ through my marriage. I’m reading Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas and the whole focus of the book is that marriage can be a spiritual discipline that can draw us closer to Christ. It’s not about having a “happy” marriage (although that is definitely a byproduct), it’s about having a marriage where two people are wholly devoted to Christ.

There are certainly opportunities to learn about grace and forgiveness and dealing with our own shortcomings in marriage. How quick are we to ask God to forgive us when at the same time we can’t even forgive our spouse? It’s a challenging book, that’s for sure. I’m halfway through and I’ve already had a couple of opportunities to put some of the teaching to use…but I have to admit at times I resorted to my usual (human) tendencies. I still have a long ways to go.

But it’s a great book for anyone who wants to grow in their relationship with Christ and their spouse. It will change how you view your marriage and raise the bar on the responsibility we have as followers of Christ.

Learn By Listening

Simpletons only learn the hard way; but the wise learn by listening. Proverbs 21:11 MSG

The leader has to have all the answers.

That’s a leadership myth I used to believe. In fact, it scared me to death and kept me from leading for many years. I thought the only way people would follow is if I had all the answers (and I knew I did not have them).

Funny thing is: that’s exactly opposite of what people want. People want someone who will allow them to give feedback and make other suggestions. Most people won’t follow a know-it-all.

The leadership truth: Someone has to ultimately make the decision. But the wisest decisions are made after listening to others.

4 Steps To Making More Wise Decisions:

1) Surround yourself with people smarter than you – don’t be the smartest person you know. Get people around you that love Jesus, love you, and not afraid to push back.

2) Ask questions – when you’re surrounded with smart people, ask them questions. Pick their brains. That’s what they are there for. They want to be included in the decision-making process.

3) Listen – After you ask questions, actually listen to what they are saying. This falls on the leader. The leader has to be open to learning from others.

Obviously, that is from a team-oriented situation.

4) The greatest person a leader can listen to is the Holy Spirit. Like Perry Noble says:

“Leadership is listening to God and doing what He says.”

There’s no way to make wise decisions without hearing from God. Sometimes He’ll make it clear to us through the Holy Spirit or scripture, but other times He’ll use those around us to help in our decision-making process (as described above). Without consulting Him, we may get lucky every now and then, but usually we end up learning the hard way just like the verse says.

Leaders are learners. And the Bible says we can learn a lot just by listening.  This is definitely something I’m praying over for God to help me and you become a better leader.

What Insanity Is Teaching Me About God Pt. 2

Continuing my post from yesterday.

When Insanity really amps up and its time to go harder and faster, the camera gets right up in the face of Shaun T (the instructor) and he pushes you and encourages. He says:

Keep pushing! I’m right here with you. You gotta dig deeper and keep pushing.

Shaun is really good at firing you up and encouraging the cast working out with him on the video as well as talking to those doing the video at home. But it’s just a recording. He’s not in the same room with me. I can just turn him off at anytime.

Thankfully, God is not like that. He is with us all the time.

…for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. (Deut 31:6)

And Jesus has given us our calling and promises to be with us always.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)

While I can’t just call up Shaun T and ask him a health or workout question, I can speak to God and have direct access to the Holy Spirit to guide me in even bigger decisions. That’s huge! Think about it: a follower of Christ has direct access to God’s wisdom through the Holy Spirit. He’s always available to give the answers we need.

And while Shaun T can’t do the workouts for us, there are times when God has to do the work for us because we physically cannot. He wants us to do that.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7)

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)

That’s amazing to me that God wants us to give the burden, the stress, the tough times, the demanding times to Him and let Him take care of it for us. As much as a fitness instructor wants to push us to be stronger and get better, our results depend on how much we put into it. In our Christian walk, much of what happens depends on how much we give to God and allow Him to work.

When I workout, I need to go harder for better results. All the faith in the world will not make my heart get stronger, keep me from gaining weight or make my strength increase. That won’t happen without work.

But in following Christ, I’m learning I need to do less and let God do more. Greater faith will open doors for God to do greater things.

And without faith it is impossible to please God… (Hebrews 11:6)

So maybe you’re feeling like there’s something impossible for you today. Maybe you feel like quitting. Maybe you feel all alone. God wants you to know that it’s in these times that you need to put the weight on Him and allow Him to carry it for you.

It’s through our weakness that He really works. Paul writes:

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

 

What Insanity Is Teaching Me About God – Pt. 1

I’m in my fourth week of the Insanity workout. Man, is it a killer! Whoever named it named it correctly. I’ve never worked out like this before. It’s a killer 40 minutes of cardio and it’s still just as tough as the first week but I can feel my body is able to push a little more…just a little more.

During today’s workout, I heard Shaun T say something I haven’t caught the other times I did this particular workout.

“I’m not trying to hurt you. Just trying to make you better.”

Right there in the middle of working out, I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me: that’s exactly God’s plan for us. When the tough times come, God’s not trying to hurt us, He just wants to make us stronger. In the book of James it says:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-3)

James says it: testing your faith produces perseverance. Perseverance is “enduring in the face of obstacles, discouragement, or difficulties”. In these four weeks of Insanity so far, I’ve felt like quiting. Honestly, almost daily I have to make myself get out of bed at 5:30am to workout. And in the middle, when I’m tired and sweating, I ask myself: “why do I do this to myself?” But once I do workout, I feel so much better afterwards because I was pushed to my limits and stretched my physical abilities.

I feel the same way through a trial. I want to quit. I ask: “why me?”. I get discouraged. Sometimes it’s tough to face another day because you just know what’s coming. But once you get through it and see how God worked, I can see the benefits or what God taught me through it. He pushes me to my limits and stretches my faith. And while it doesn’t insulate us from the next trial, it does give us a little boost to get through it.

So today, God wants you to know, no matter your circumstances – He’s not trying to hurt you, He’s just trying to make you stronger.

Part 2 tomorrow

Spiritual Gifts And Passion

I used to think those who are most successful are so because they made a choice to be passionate.

I believe passion plays a big part in the equation (and it is a choice) but now I’ve tweaked that idea a little:

The most successful people are those who know their gifts and are passionate about fully utilizing them for God’s Kingdom.

Some of the most frustrated people are those working outside of their giftedness. It’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole. It’s difficult to be passionate about something at which you’re not gifted. It’s tiring. You’ll burn out. It just won’t work.

That’s why knowing your spiritual gifts is so important. If you still haven’t taken the assessment, you can take it here. Carve out about 15 minutes to go through it and learn a lot about yourself and how God has gifted you to serve. Get your results and then get involved using those gifts.

How we do church

Read this passage by Seth Godin from his book Linchpin:

Factory workers were trained to follow directions, support the system and get paid what they’re worth. Then the factory fell apart.

Today, it’s artists who are making an impact, while factory workers struggle.

The future belongs to chefs, not cooks or bottle washers. It’s easy to buy a cookbook (a book of directions to follow) but very difficult to find a chef book.

Replace factory with churches: same idea. It’s the churches that are making new connections to the same, original, never-changing Gospel that are making an impact.

For years, it’s been church as usual for most people. That’s easy. It’s comfortable. And it’s what we’re used to. But slowly, culture changed but no one told the church.

Now the church is trying to catch up. The churches and leaders who dare to ask “is there another way?” are the ones making an impact. I know that’s what lead Nikki and I to a very interesting lunch meeting with Carl and Kim back in 2007. I asked to meet with them because I had this feeling that there was something else out there. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that “church” as I knew it couldn’t be the only “right” way. Little did I know they were asking the same questions. I can take you to that very same restaurant and the very booth where we had the conversation and the light came on for me.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I would never say there is a right way and a wrong way to do church…and that’s the idea! Some would say you can’t play loud music or mainstream songs, or wear jeans and t-shirts, meet in a school, use a translation other than KJV, etc. etc. The point I’m getting at is that we have to look outside our preferences and look at those who we’re not reaching. Churches are declining because the focus as become about protecting programs or preferences and not about reaching people far from God.

The great commission is not about keeping those you have, it’s about reaching people for Christ. As Craig Groeschel so plainly put it: “To reach people on one is reaching, we have to do things no one else is doing.”

Again, it’s not about methods. One day in the near future, we’ll have to change the way we started out doing church at CrossPoint. If we don’t, we’ll be the next church stuck in “how we’ve always done it”. But right now we’re trying to be who God has called us to be and reach those God has called us to reach because it’s all about leading others to become fully devoted followers of Christ. That’s our mission: to go outside our four walls, not to preserve what’s within our walls.

Knowing the mind of God

At CrossPoint, we’re in the middle of the series The Ghost. I came across this passage this morning:

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. (1 Corinthians 2:11-13)

Did you catch that? No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, which is another name for the Holy Spirit.

But here’s the kicker, if you’re a Christ-follwer, you have the Holy Spirit living within you. God gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can understand Him. It’s a gift to help us. He teaches, He guides, He comforts and is completely aligned with God. And whatever He leads and whereever He leads is according to God’s plan for you.

I don’t know about you, but that’s really freeing for me. To think that God would send someone to help me understand Him better. He doesn’t want it to be difficult, but He also doesn’t promise it will be easy. But He wants to keep it simple to know…if we’ll listen.

Failure Is Not Fatal (Thoughts From Catalyst)

I really enjoy reading Seth Godin. I’ve written about him before. If you remember, Seth is not a professing believer and his audience is not necessarily the church, but anyone who likes big ideas and challenging leadership principles.

It was a privilege to get to hear him speak at this year’s Catalyst conference. It made me ready to read his latest book, Linchpin, even more. Here’s one (of the many ideas) Seth discussed at the conference.

The first time you bake cupcakes, you follow the recipe. And the cupcakes are good.

The second time, you get better at following the recipe and they turn out really good.

The third time, you might improvise and screw up.

Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can.

At this point, by the fifth or sixth time, some people improvise successfully and actually learn to bake. In the process they learn this: cupcake failure is not fatal.

That seems so elementary. Of course nothing really bad happens if you try something new but fail on a batch of cupcakes. But in today’s world, leaders can become paralyzed due to fear of failure or more so, as Seth wrote about in his book Tribes, the fear of criticism. That in itself can cause us to stop baking altogether instead of whipping up another batch of cupcakes.

Fear of failure or criticism can keep us from moving forward. We think we’ll get in trouble or replaced if we mess up. But the irony of it is we won’t do anything, which will…get us in trouble or replaced.

The question to ask yourself in these moments is this:

Which is worse: I do something and fail or I do absolutely nothing at all?

99.999% of the time the second option is much worse.

Here’s the thing (and I’m talking to myself here): we have a great responsibility. Eternity is in the balance. Souls are at stake. But it’s not up to us to save them. That falls on the Holy Spirit. We just have to be obedient. So when you fail, take what you learned from that attempt and improve on the next one. Be prepared to fail in order to succeed. Thomas Edison has been credited with this quote:

“I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

The only real failure is doing nothing at all.

Know Who You Are (Thoughts From Catalyst)

At  Catalyst, we were fortunate to hear Beth Moore speak. Now, I’ll be honest: I’ve never read Beth Moore or even heard her speak on television. I didn’t really know anything about her except that she writes a lot of books for women and they seem to like her. But I was pretty skeptical about what she was going to share that would apply to me. Boy, was I surprised. Her talk was definitely a highlight for me. God used her to speak to me on fear and insecurity.

There’s so much I could write about from her talk (and I’ll probably write more later) but the one thing I want to hit on now from her talk that made an impact on me was this:

“Know who you are and know who you are not. Know who you want to be when all is said and done.”

1. Know who you are

Know what you stand for and that God created you for a purpose. He has a calling for you and filled with you with the potential to fullfil that mission for your life. Through Him, it’s all possible (Philippines 4:13).

2. Know who you are not

I’m bad for trying to measure up to other people. I’m sure I’m the only one that does that but I try to emulate what others are doing in their walk with Christ. I hear about people who can pray for an hour, I try to do that. Others say you should journal everyday, I try that. Meanwhile, I have not just talked with God about how He wants to converse with me. I’m starting to figure out that a very important part of our walk with Christ is knowing who He has created us not to be. We can usually accomplish more and be more effective by doing less.

I’m not called to walk with Christ like someone else, I’m called to have a personal relationship with Him. He created me. He knows how I’m wired so I need to be me and not someone else.

3. Know who you want to be when all is said and done

It’s like a roadtrip. It takes turn after turn to get to the final destination. You can’t get from Martinsville to Miami without following directions and making multiple turns. And each turn leads to the next. That’s what following Christ is all about: following His directions to a final destination. And the trip goes much smoother when we follow the directions as they are laid out. The directions don’t always keep you from traffic jams or rough roads, but they will lead you where you want to go if you follow them. It’s when we miss a turn or follow our own hunches that things start to get tricky.

The legacy we leave is determined now. The decisions we make now are writing our story, good or bad. And it’s important that we decide how we want the ending to be ahead of time and make decisions  today that will get us to that destination.

Evaluation (Thoughts From Catalyst)

Daniel Pink, a business leader and author, spoke on Thursday about motivation. And he gave some great insight to what drives us or gives us the passion to keep going.

Most of his talk was geared toward the business world but I believe his thoughts can apply to the church as an organization and certainly helps us create our staff culture at CrossPoint. There’s so much good stuff from his talk that I still need to process and work through. And I’m eager to read his book Drive.

But there was one thought I want to work through: I believe evaluation breeds excellence. And Daniel wrapped up his talk with this idea:

“At the end of the day, ask yourself this: ‘was I better today than yesterday?’ When the answer is yes, you can celebrate your accomplishment and roll that momentum into tomorrow. When the answer is no, it gives you a drive to get up in the morning and have a better tomorrow.”

Have you ever asked yourself that? What are you doing today to improve, little by little, over yesterday? What will you read today? What prayers will you pray? Who will you meet? What conversations will you have? What will you practice that will allow you to improve on yesterday’s achievements or failures?

Start asking yourself this question at the end of your day and I believe it will jump start your personal growth in your job, with your family and, most of all, your walk with Christ.