The great adventure

Life is an amazing adventure. I often feel I'm in a situation much like this photo....walking a tightrope, risking it all, to simply get through the day.

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But to be honest, in my attempts to survive the day, I often miss the beauty around me....all that God is doing, all that he has made. I miss it all because I'm just trying to keep my balance and not fall. How can you enjoy all that God is doing when you're just trying to keep your balance? I think the thing I will regret when life is over is that I have focused so much on not falling I miss the wonderful view and amazing adventure.

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I think this is the reality in many lives as I talk to people. They are just trying not to fall off the tightrope they are walking with work, kids, soccer, church, family time, homework, e-mails......and the list goes on. How much we miss when our focus is on keeping our balance.

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But then something happens...the rope is cut:

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The company downsizes and we are laid off.

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Our mate gets sick and we spend the days in hospital.

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A child rebels and suddenly we feel as if we are falling,

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and all our attempts at balance are suddenly meaningless in the light of the present crisis. The truth is that in those moments we most try to avoid we often find a new passion for God, a fresh relationship with him because we can no longer depend on ourselves, we can't do it without him...we need HIM. Once you find yourself at this time in life realize you are about to experience a portion of the great adventure.....you will discover that you wouldn't trade those difficult times for anything because it's in those moments that you find an intimacy in your walk with God.....you will begin to experience the great adventure we will be part of for eternity.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you each

have a wonderful time with family and friends

during this holiday season.

Thankful, part 3

Thanksgiving day is a week away, so I want to take the week leading up to this American holiday to celebrate a few of the things I'm thankful for. I invite you to share your thoughts as well as we give thanks for all that God is and all he has done. This idea of being thankful is a daily practice for many of us, but with a holiday set aside to be thankful this is a great time to talk about all of God's blessings.............
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Part 3- I'm thankful that I can talk to God and he listens.

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One of the great invitations of the bible is for us to talk to God. We call it prayer, but it's very simply an invitation to come and visit with the creator. He invites us to talk to him anywhere, anytime about anything and he tells us he hears and listens. I'm thankful for a God who cares and listens.

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The world is a very lonely place at times. I see so many who are alone with no one who seems to care for them, but God does. Whether you are rich beyond your wildest dreams or homeless and sleeping under a bridge God cares about you and listens when you call. This week is a great time to simply talk to God and thank him. Don't wait for the prayer of thanks on Thursday, but talk to him often. He hears, he cares and he answers prayer.

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I'm so thankful that we have a God who listens when we call.

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Reference Rainbow

"When Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, Germany, sent Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. student Chris Harrison a list of 63,779 cross-references between the Bible's 1,189 chapters, the two became enthralled with elegantly showing the interconnected nature of Scripture. Each bar along the horizontal axis represents a chapter, with the length determined by the number of verses. (Books alternate in color between white and light gray.) Colors represent the distance between references. Graphic by Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University."

"This article first appeared in November 22, 2008 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today International, Carol Stream, IL 60188."

You can view the article on their web site here.

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Thankful, part 2

Thanksgiving day is a week away, so I want to take the week leading up to this American holiday to celebrate a few of the things I'm thankful for. I invite you to share your thoughts as well as we give thanks for all that God is and all he has done. This idea of being thankful is a daily practice for many of us, but with a holiday set aside to be thankful this is a great time to talk about all of God's blessings.............

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Part 2- I'm thankful that God loves me.

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John 3:16 "This is how much God loved Mike: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life." (THE MESSAGE edited by Mike)

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One of the things we don't know about God is how he looks at us, how he feels about us. We don't know that unless he tells us. This short verse, the most familiar in the bible, tells me how God views me. Note that this verse was spoken by Jesus (God the son) himself. In other words he said, "I want you to know how much the father and I love you....we love you so much that we decided to give the most valuable gift imaginable to demonstrate that love, we decided to give ME (Jesus)." Jesus loved the Father so much that he obeyed and came, and he loved me so much that he died to save me....as I unpack this idea I get overwhelmed by how big God's love is for me. It's more than I can even imagine.
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Being loved without qualification, without expectation gives me a comfort, a peace, a hope that changes how I view God, myself and the world around me. I am loved not for what I have done, not for how I look, not for my money, not for my brains....I'm loved because God loves me.....that's it. What an amazing blessing, and I've only just shared with you a few drops from the ocean of his love for us. It's so much more than we can even understand. We are loved by the one who made us, and it's shown in his son who became a man and died for our sins.

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Today I'm thankful that God loves me.

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born to be blind

Being a motorcyclist myself I wondered where this video was going. It's very cute and I thought you would enjoy it.

Thankful, part 1

Thanksgiving day is a week away, so I want to take the week leading up to this American holiday to celebrate a few of the things I'm thankful for. I invite you to share your thoughts as well as we give thanks for all that God is and all he has done. This idea of being thankful is a daily practice for many of us, but with a holiday set aside to be thankful this is a great time to talk about all of God's blessings.

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Part 1- I'm thankful that God is good.

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Psa 73:1 A Psalm of Asaph. Surely God is good to Israel, To those who are pure in heart!

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In his book, Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer wrote,

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"That God is good is taught or implied on every page of the Bible and must be received as an article of faith as impregnable as the throne of God. It is a foundation stone for all sound thought about God and is necessary to moral sanity. To allow that God could be other than good is to deny the validity of all thought and end ill the negation of every moral judgment. If God is not good, then there can be no distinction between kindness and cruelty, and heaven can be hell and hell, heaven. The goodness of God is the drive behind all the blessings He daily bestows upon us."us."

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For me, this is a foundational truth of Christianity. For us to have a good God is an amazing insight into the very core of our faith. Unlike many religions that put the burden on man to please and appease an angry god, our God is good and loves us. It's his goodness that invites us to approach him. His goodness is at the very core of all our theology- because he is good he made us, because he is good he sustains us, because he is good he saved us, because he is good and is always good I can approach him without fear. To say that God is good brings great peace to fearful hearts and great comfort to the broken and downcast. It's his goodness that engulfs all he has made. It's his goodness that is revealed in all that Jesus did and said. It's his goodness seen in the cross. It's his goodness that raised Jesus from the dead, and ultimately it's his goodness that will oversee the final judgment of each one of us.

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Later in his chapter on the goodness of God, A.W. Tozer wrote, "Always God's goodness is the ground of our expectation." By his own words he has told us he is good and that he never changes. It's his amazing goodness that I'm thankful for today. As many have said, almost to the point that we lose it's importance, God is good....ALL the time. Forever the God who made us demonstrates that at the very heart of his nature is an ultimate goodness that I want to be close to...that I want to emulate....that I want others to experience.

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Today I'm thankful that God is good.

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Hangin' with celebrities

I live in a strange place. I live in a community where a number of nationally known Christian leaders live....people you would know if I told you their names. This morning I'm at a coffee shop we all frequent, and several of them have come in, and stopped by my table to say "Hi, Mike, how's it going?" We are all friends because of the ministry and because we run into each other so often. The interesting thing for these comments is not that I know them, but that they are just normal guys following God, serving him...it just happens they are very popular and very visible, but they all have feet of clay just like you and I do. We all struggle with life, kids, money and all the other stuff. They just have the added problem of being nationally known. I know we live in a "celebrity culture" but that's not what God's interested in...he's interested in our focus, worship and adoration being directed towards HIM, not towards a man or woman. I heard a message this week by Francis Chan in which he described a group of girls coming up to him after he spoke at a retreat to tell him that they liked him best of all the speakers at the retreat. In the message he admitted that his first response was to be flattered, and then it hit him....if they are focused on me they aren't focused on God, and he had to repent of his pride...of his sin of enjoying the glory meant for God. After all these years in life and ministry I have met and known many people of note, but the ones I think of most fondly are those who don't like the spotlight, but would rather focus the attention on Christ. Truthfully, when we are done with this life the only "celebrity" will be God himself and all the lights will be turned on him. I long for the day when he gets all the glory both in heaven and on earth....what a day that will be....

Rev 5:13 And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, "To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever."

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Finally, some honesty!

An Australian company recently entered the overcrowded bottled water market knowing that it would be hard to stand out, so they chose the honesty route- it's just bottled water and here's another one.

I love their approach and the product. In the battle for the "water dollar" they would get mine. I just thought their approach was funny and well done....I know I would buy it!

Don't read this book!

Don't read this book.....unless you want to really be challenged in your walk with God. Francis shares his own passion for God and a life lived based on the word of God.

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Don't read this book....unless you intend to really pursue God and a life lived out from the word. I will tell you in advance that this book will convict and challenge you. If you want to live a safe Christian life and not be challenged for more then don't even buy this book.

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BUT, if you are passionate about God and your life for him then this is a must read. In fact, I think this may become one of the classics of the future.

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I loved the book, and am challenged by it. By all means get this book and read it. Then share with me you thoughts.

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(In case you can't read the title the book is Crazy love by Francis Chan. I got a copy at my local Christian bookstore.)

35 years ago today

35 years ago today I met a beautiful young lady who really caught my attention. She had just trusted Christ as her savior, and soon we were talking often about faith, the bible and everything else. We have been holding hands, walking together and talking about the Lord ever since. God is good and I am blessed!

Difficult days

Yesterday we had to make a difficult announcement in church- we had to let two of our great staff members go because of the tough economic days we are in right now. It doesn't make it any easier that other churches have had to do the same thing, but it is a reality that people are giving less to the church and that has affected what we must do....it has affected these two families.
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I know that God will provide for each of us, and he does, but choices like these are really hard to make because they affect the lives of people you work with. This same thing is happening in our business culture as well. The economy is in a downturn and things are tough. People are scared. Times like this are great for Christians because we are forced to stop trusting ourselves and really trust God.
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Trusting God....what an interesting thing in a person's life. It doesn't happen for most of us until we are forced into it by our situations, and then we will get on our knees and ask for help. It's the very place we should be all the time, but in our culture we are so self reliant it takes a time like this to make us God dependent. I wish we were more dependent on him than we are, but our society has created a culture that is so self reliant they rarely ever pray because they can take care of things themselves, thank you very much. And yet, that asking for our daily bread is the very kind of dependent life God wants us to live. How many have done that in recent years? How many have asked, "Lord, would you provide what we need for food today?" Instead, in most homes in America the cry goes out, "Mom, what's for dinner?" We are indeed blessed, or are we? We have so much we don't need to ask for God's provision. We have missed the opportunity to see God work in our daily supply. Bart Simpson's prayer for dinner is the prayer of our day, "Lord, thanks for nuthin'. We bought all this stuff ourselves."
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But now, in this time, there is a sense again of our need for him. So, in the midst of difficult days I'm excited to see what God will do in our lives. It will be great to once again see faith and dependence on God for all we need become part of our lives. I love a short passage in Proverbs, it speaks to this very thing. Let me close these thoughts with those two verses:
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Pro 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own

understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.

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Don't tell anyone....

Can I share a funny story with you? Oh, and don't tell anyone....it's just between you and me, ok? Last week one of the guys in our church saw me late Thursday evening...we had a meeting with a family in the church and he was there...and he said, "Oh, Mike, I work with a newspaper in our area on a regular article written by pastors. The pastor who was supposed to write this month backed out at the last minute. Could you write something for the newspaper? It has to be 300 words and the deadline is tomorrow noon. Could you do something?" And I replied, "sure, no problem." So when I got home at 10 pm that night I pulled out my old blog pieces and found one for this time of the year. With about 5 minutes of rewriting it was ready and I sent it to him by e-mail. I didn't know if they did anything with the piece until last night when one of our ladies in the church told me, "Oh, I read your article in the paper and I really liked it." And then, someone gave me a copy of the paper as well. It's funny, but these little times to share our lives together have been a real help to me in more ways than I realized....but don't tell anyone, ok?

What I'm reading now....

I just got a copy of a book by Francis Chan. My wife, Joye, is reading it and loves it, so I got a copy to read it myself. I knew about Francis from a video he did a few years ago. He's a pastor in California and has a passion for God. I am just getting started, but will keep you updated and give you a review when I'm done.

The body of Christ

I saw this photo and immediately thought about the body of Christ....the church....OUR church. I love the way our church works together to meet the needs of the body. Our ladies cook meals for those in need, help one another, pray for one another and our men will gather to mow a lawn, fix a roof, or help a family with things they can't do alone....for no other reason than the love of God working through them. When you see the love of God flowing through a group of believers it's a place you want to be. I'm glad I'm part of a church family like this. There's nothing more exciting that caring for one another for no other reason than we are loved by God and invited to imitate his love and share it with others.

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(Here's a story that shows what the church should look like to those around us.)