One Month To Live: Day 6

Have I said lately how much I love my job?

Towards the end of 2008, Pastor Carl started talking about offering me a full-time position at CrossPoint.  I was out-of-my-mind excited about it.  Any time it was brought up, a big smile would come over my face.  I couldn’t wait until the time would actually come.  I would have been fine with remaining a volunteer, but to get to do this for a living was the dream of a lifetime.

Then the day came when Pastor Carl asked me to a meeting and the official job offer was made.  The moment I had waited for had finally come.  He offered me a full-time position to be on staff at my favorite church.  My reaction: stomach in knots!

Fear crept in.  Something I had wanted for so long had finally come and yet I was scared, really fearful.  I knew this is what I had really wanted and felt like God was calling me to, but now that it was real, I was frozen.  It was definitely a “monkey bar” moment.  But I took the step and don’t regret it for a moment.  Now the times I have to go out on stage are still tough.  My stomach gets in knots and my palms get sweaty. But each time it gets a little easier.  With the first step on stage, I’m letting go and God is catching me.

That’s just a couple moments for me.  There are other times in my life where I just hang on for dear life, not trusting enough to let go.  What’s God calling you to do?  What is the thing you would do if you knew God would bless it?  That’s your call to greatness.  Trust God to catch you. He won’t let you fall.

One Month To Live: Day 2

Day 2 Roller Coaster

There are a couple places I have traveled that have been tremendous “God moments” for me. The first was on a cruise in 2008. My wife and I had an oceanview cabin. For those of you who may not know exactly what that is: it’s a room that has a window so you can see the ocean. On this particular ship, the view came with a window seat where you could actually sit and watch the waves. While watching the land disappear and nothing but blue waters surround me, I realized how small I was in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. At that moment, even though I was on a 80,000 ton ship with 2,000 other people, God was in control of that entire body of water on which we were sailing. He held it in the palm of His hand. The ocean is so vast, but how much bigger is God who holds that in place?  It made me feel pretty insignificant, but made me consider the sheer majesty of God.

I love to travel to the mountains. As I’ve gotten older, I love fall and changing colors of the leaves. We usually take a trip on the parkway or to Tennessee to just marvel at what God does to nature during that time of the year. As you approach the mountains, they seem huge. But once you get on top it changes your perception. The other mountains don’t seem near as big once you’re looking down at them. It was in that moment that God reminded me He created those mountains. His hand carved them. As big as those mountains may seem, how much bigger He is to have created them. And if His hand can carve those wonderful landscapes, He can also handle whatever situation comes our way.

I think about those two instances when I read Day 2 of OMTL. Saul and David had two different perceptions regarding the same problem. Saul looked at how enormous Goliath is while David looked at how big his God is. One saw only certain defeat while the other saw certain victory.

This is a tough chapter for me, right off the bat. Chapter 1 was very inspiring, then Chapter 2 hits pretty close to home. I think there’s a reason God speaks to me through those situations above. Fear can get the best of me at times. Some regrets I have in life came out of being controlled by fear. As I consider how I would live if I knew the next 30 days would be my last, I think fear would no longer control me. Doing what needs to be done and saying what needs to be said would be the only concern.

So as we consider the clarifying question: “If you knew you had one month to live, how would you live your life?” My prayer is that we focus on the God who controls the heavens and the earth in the palm of His hand. The old Sunday School song is so simple but so very true: He does have the whole world in His hand and there’s not a thing that takes Him by surprise or beyond His control. He never promised things would be easy, but He did promise that He would never leave us to face life alone.

Daddy Days Part 2

God has taught me so much through my daughter.  He speaks to me through our relationship has father-child and also through her childlike faith.

I’m loving our daddy-daughter days so far.  I’m already planning ahead what we’re going to do each week.  I think I look forward to it as much as she does.

Also on Monday, Sheridan and I visited Mabry Mill.  My family went there a lot when I was a kid so it was always fun for me to go.  And now I enjoy going with my family, if for nothing more than the nostalgia.  While there, Sheridan was talking about how much fun we were having as we walked hand in hand and I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me.  It caught me off guard at first.  “Don’t make these special days like how some people view my church.  Be careful not to give her one day a week and ignore her the other six.”

I love our daddy-daughter days each week because we are doing things that are fun.  Nikki and I have purposefully cut back in a few areas of the budget so we can put money aside to do some fun things with Sheridan this summer.  I know me.  If we just stayed home, we would end up in front of the tv, not really spending quality time together.  So I am being purposeful about the time together 1 day each week.  However, that could very easily become a token day to make myself feel good that I’m spending time with her.  And sadly so many people view church each week the same way.

I used to be a Sunday morning Christian.  I used to show up at church each week like I was doing God a favor.  I gave Him 90 minutes each week then went about the rest of my week feeling like I was doing just fine on my own.  It wasn’t until I started serving in ministry that I realized the importance of church and then the importance of a daily walk with Christ.  Through that, Jesus became relevant to me and I found out how much I needed him to get me through each day.

So my next step is to invest time each day with Sheridan to build our relationship with each other. What’s your next step in your family?  Is there someone in which you need to invest purposeful, quality time?  What about your personal relationship with Christ?  Where are you with him?  What’s the next step God is calling you to take for Him?

Mid-Week Update

An eventful week so far.  Work has been slammed.  I’ve been helping with re-organizing some workspaces.  At the end of the day, It’s nice to be able to see progress being made.  I love being a change agent and I was able to help be part of the solution over the last few days.  It’s very satisfying.

I’ve been working really hard on things for CrossPoint as well.  We’re going away as a Leadership Team on Friday and Saturday.  So I’m getting everything ready for Sunday ahead of time.  I’m really excited about the trip.  I’m praying that God will allow us to dream big and get some things accomplished during our short retreat.  And, just as important: that we have fun together.  That is a crucial part of being a team: enjoying being together.  And I don’t think that will be a problem with this group.

Last night I finished reading Wild Goose Chase.  I could write pages and pages on the final cage: fear.  But I won’t get into those details as God continues to stretch me and really mess with me on the subject.  I will write this: I feel as if I’ve hit a crosspoint in my life on this (pun intended).  Have I made my fear bigger than my God?  When faced with a choice, I tend to not do something because of what bad might happen.  All this time I’ve missed out on what good God can do through it.  I don’t know what it all means, but I do know that God is still working on me and right now he’s taking a hammer and chisel to my pre-conceived notions about myself.  Who knows me better than my Creator?

Last night I also started Visioneering by Andy Stanley.  It will go right along with our current series at CrossPoint: Life Development Plan.  God has a vision for me.  That’s amazing to me.

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  – Ephesians 2:10

God created me with a vision to do a specific thing or things for Him.  Too often we think we aren’t qualified.  And the thing is: He’s already equipped us to fill that vision.  We just need to step up and do them.  As I read in my study through Nehemiah, we should always pray.  But there comes a time to get up and actually get to work to make the vision a reality.  I’m asking God that the next five weeks at CrossPoint as well as my reading through Visioneering will continue to drill this principle home.

Assumptions

Continuing in a discussion on Wild Goose Chase by Mark Batterson.

Another cage some find themselves in is the cage of assumptions.  An assumption is something unproven we’ve believed or understood about ourselves for so long that we now accept as fact.  I’ve wrote before about how I often times feel like Moses.  Moses was big on assumptions.  God (who created Moses) spoke directly to Moses to give him the project of leading the Israelites to the Promise Land.  Yet, Moses begain telling God exactly why he could not do it.  How funny is that? The created telling the Creator, “You just don’t know…” Moses used assumptions he had made about himself as excuses with God.

What’s sad is that I’ve done that myself.  I’ve been in ministry for close to 7 years.  Those seven years have been spent behind the camera and I always joked that God put me behind the camera because I didn’t belong in front of it.  That grew from a joke to something accepted as fact.  But lately God has been poking at that assumption within my spirit (even before I knew about spiritual assumptions).  I’ve been getting unsettled with myself about this.  First I read the chapter on the cage of assumptions then I found out about a new Andy Stanley Leadership podcast.  The first episode? Yep, you guessed it: assumptions.

Then, this morning I was listening to Big Daddy Weave‘s latest album What Life Would Be Like and the title track came on (which I’ve listened to many times before on my ipod and on the radio) but the words finally connected with me because God had this very topic on my mind:

What if you could see yourself thru another pair of eyes
What if you could hear the truth
Instead of old familiar lies
What if you could feel inside
The power of the hand that made the universe You’d realize

That He made the lame walk and the dumb talk
And He opened blinded eyes to see
That the sun rises on His time
Yet He knows our deepest desperate need
And the world waits while His heart aches
To realize the dream
I wonder what life would be like if we let Jesus live thru you and me

Too many old familiar lies.  This is something I’m wrestling with.  I don’t have the answers but I do know I made a commitment in last night’s creative meeting.  I’m stepping out, slowly but surely.  Like Peter, I’m scared but I just don’t want to look down (or into the camera).

Are there assumptions you have about yourself or your church that really aren’t true?