Family Heritage:
August 6th, 2008With the whirlwind of life that can captivate us we must be constantly guarding our family time. Dating my wife and my girls is a priority. We’ve a family mission statement all together. We constantly practice our memory verses together working to apply them to our daily lives. Every Easter we measure the girls’ growth and mark their growth sticks - painted pieces of trim that show their vertical journey in life. This week we did something we’ve never done before so I thought I’d share it. The girls helped me write our Family Song. Most of the words came from them. I gave it a tune on my guitar and we worked all together to make the sentences have the right rhythm and rhyme. Faith calls it all a great big headache on the video. It was an investment but it’s these kinds of investments that build strong families and leave lasting memories. Make some time this week to build special memories with your family. A number of people have responded to my writings like this before sharing their regret for not doing things like this. Realize that it’s never too late even if you’re starting today with your grandchildren!
Our Family Song from Destiny Media on Vimeo.
Future Is Now Update:
August 5th, 2008We prayed over the index cards that people wrote on and turned in after morning prayer this morning. They’ll begin pouring the concrete shortly as these foundational declarations will be under the pour upon which we will stand. Thank God for such a loving and giving church family. I’ve never been more excited about what God’s doing in the people than I am right now. Watching everybody make the shift of really becoming “others-focused” has been an amazing inspiration to me personally. Thank you Destiny for being so awesome!
Addicted To Pleasure And Afraid Of Pain:
August 5th, 2008
There is a difference between a preference and a conviction. Convictions are what you are willing to die for. Everything else is a preference. The tendency of humanity is to migrate toward preferences pursuing an “enhanced” lifestyle. The Message Bible gives us an interesting look at 1 Cor 10:24 “We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well.”
There is nothing wrong with wanting to live well. However if your foremost efforts are to live well you will find yourself malfunctioning in the deepest kind of frustration known to mankind. Our foremost efforts should be to help OTHERS live well. So much of our lives and our faith is based on being addicted to pleasure and afraid of pain. When this is the basis of your guidance system you’ll simply navigate away from the very thing God is trying to use to draw you to others, the pain in their lives.
In my place of prayer this morning the Holy Spirit began ministering to me out of Hebrews 11. So many have gone before us as stepping stones to a generational plan that was bigger than their lives. In a culture where “my rights” are such a focus unless you have a revelation from God you’ll never allow your life to be reduced to the idea of a stepping stone. Living for something bigger than I am is exactly what stretches me into a place of connection with God’s eternal plans in the earth.
Heb 11:24-25 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to endure ill-treatment (being mistreated) with the people of God rather than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. (NAS)
Lord grant us wisdom and revelation to surrender to you and your desires today. May we move from preference to conviction as we choose what things are truly important in our lives, our families and our ministries.
Future Is Now Update:
August 4th, 2008Well the concrete should start pouring in the front Tuesday! We have officially passed inspections with the City on the gym so all is well! The basketball goals arrived this morning and I noticed Sunday morning when I was in there praying that the volleyball stands were positioned in the openings in the floor. How awesome to see this time when it’s all coming together so wonderfully.
When Things Aren’t Going My Way:
August 3rd, 2008
Tracy was pregnant with our first child. Suddenly without any explainable reason we lost the baby. Lexi, our second born, had just been born prematurely weighing in at less than five pounds. Holding her in my arms watching her fight for her life I couldn’t help but ask the question, “Why?” In our first few years of marriage I remember going to bed at night frustrated with my marriage and frustrated with my life desperate thoughts of both divorce and suicide raced through my mind.
For years people have watched my family and my life looking to us for leadership and encouragement in their faith. It would be very unethical for me never to talk about my own struggles. MENTORing people is allowing MEN to TOUR your life. If we only share our successes and cover up our failures we’ll produce a generation that follows us that feel the need to act like they have it all together on the outside and are in complete turmoil on the inside.
The struggles are real! It’s important to read about Abraham’s story and realize that life happened between the verses. To read stories about people in the Bible who received a promise and it came to pass verses or maybe even a few chapters later can remove the perspective of the “meantime” which can be very MEAN time! What kind of struggles did Abraham go through for twenty-five years before seeing his promise come to pass? Probably some of the same struggles you are facing right now as you are wondering why things aren’t going your way.
Paul fills the pages with wisdom and insight in the book of Philippians as he declares revelation after revelation of selfless devotion to God and to God’s generational plan! To live is Christ! To die is gain! The truth is everything is working out and in the long term things are going your way but you must keep your focus and keep your faith to see it through! You are not the only one who has struggled with disappointment with God. Some cave in and some grow up. Which will you be?
Back to my opening paragraph: Losing our first child was difficult but now, years later, we have a special annual tradition where we put a special glass angel ornament on the Christmas tree together celebrating that Faith & Lexi will meet their big brother one day in heaven – I believe he was a boy. Today Lexi is a healthy girl who has been given something of a fighting spirit having gone through what she faced as an infant. She didn’t need an angry father holding her when she was fighting. She needed a loving father who was broken before God filled with faith and fill with fight to see her through! Tracy and I still today work on struggles in our marriage as any good marriage does. We have come so far from those days of what seemed to be devastatingly injurious times in both of our lives. Today we’re stronger because of it all and we thank God for all He has done and continues to do in our lives.
Keep the focus. Keep the Faith. Even when things don’t seem to be going your way they are! Rom 8:28 That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. (Message)
Explore. Dream. Discover.
August 1st, 2008
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sale away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain
Future Is Now Update:
July 30th, 2008
The Fire marshal inspection set up for this Friday. The welder will finish up all welding on stairs tomorrow. The painter is working on getting them painted between now and end of week. Next Monday the roof and wall panels on the stairs will be installed at which time David will call for his final inspection anticipated to be the middle of next week. We are on task for school to proceed in the new gym facility for the school year!
We have a verbal commitment that our Title Insurance is no longer held up. We are believing that we have broken through on this matter and will keep you posted. We are supposed to receive paperwork within 24 hours on this matter which means there will be no delays in getting the front building built. The extent of our finances will simply build the building and not finish it out having spent $3.3 mill + the $200k we had in savings for expansion. We are trusting God for all of it to be done and God does have a good plan in motion…
The Devastation Of Obesity:
July 30th, 2008Our health is a very precious commodity in our lives. A resource that God has given us to use for His purposes and it’s very specifically tied into our financial well-being. A new study in the journal Health Services Research reveals that the extra Medicare cost associated with overweight elderly people could place a significant financial burden on tax payers, costing up to hundreds of billions of dollars across the entire current Medicare population. The article’s findings show that treating the health needs of an overweight or obese elderly person will cost Medicare 6 to 17 percent more over a lifetime than treating an elderly person with a healthy weight. The authors used a measure of weight that takes into account a person’s height, known as the body mass index and looked at total costs from Medicare alone for individuals covered from age 65 until death. The extra demands made of the healthcare system by overweight and obese elderly amounts to Medicare’s spending on average an extra $15,000 on overweight elderly individuals and an extra $26,000 on obese individuals. “Our research provides valuable information for why the public and health policy makers need to pay attention to the financial burden of health care for overweight Americans besides it’s being just a health issue,” Professor Zhou Yang at
Gold, Girls & Horses:
July 29th, 2008
The mandate to the kings over God’s people aligns itself with so much in Scripture. Deut 17:16-20 says don’t take too much gold, too many girls and too many horses. Guard against the lust for money, sex & power. Joseph went into the pit, Pottipher’s house and prison. In the pit he lost his wealth as it was there where he would be retrieved and sold into slavery no longer having any wealth of his own. In Pottipher’s house he faced sexual temptations and then in prison he accessed powerful people who went on and forgot about him. We all want to stand next to Pharaoh in the next level of our lives but are will willing to face being stripped of these three areas in life? Notice this same progression in 1 John 2 which speaks of all that the world has to offer:
1 John 2:16 or all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
If The Reward Is Your Motive You’ve Missed The Mark:
July 28th, 2008We’ve all heard Jeremiah 29:11 and how God has great plans for us. The truth is that God’s plans would blow us away if we were told. Dale Gentry just called me from Nairobi. Yesterday he spent over an hour with the President of Burundi, his family and his staff praying and prophesying. Jean said, “One word from God can change a Nation!” In Dale’s most difficult days of struggle he never knew what he was fighting for. You have no idea what you are fighting for. There are divine appointments and amazing opportunities on the other side of your struggles! God doesn’t want to get you there by sharing all of the opportunities because he doesn’t want our passion for his plans to exceed our passion for him. Give yourself fully to Him today. Understand that every temptation you face is the enemy’s attempt to rob you from things that you would never exchange for that moment of temptation. The key, however, is to devote yourself to the very love of God and knowing him in very intimate and personal ways. This is what God wants from his people. The reward will be amazing yet when the reward becomes your motive you’ve missed the point.