Here is the Ichthus 2009 promo video. Anyone want to go with me?
Archive - January, 2009
One Life – The Inner Life
Joe talked about the Inner Life on Saturday at VCC. Our Inner Life keys into our intimacy with God. These are some of my notes and insights.
Have you ever seen a need in your church and jumped at the chance to start up a new ministry? Often this is how things get started. After you get the ball rolling, you realize that you cannot do it on your own, so you begin recruiting a community to support your vision. Down the road everything kind of falls apart and you realize it is because the foundation of your ministry was not built with God’s support, but on your strength alone.
The right way to go is to begin with intimacy with God. Your community should form around God and then He will give you a vision for a ministy. At this point, everything is in line and you have solid foundation to work with.
Prophets in the Bible are equivalent to Jedis.
When God sent Samuel to anoint the new King of Israel, Samuel met each one of the sons of Jesse. The older sons all had qualities that made them look like they were born to be kings, but that was not who God had selected. Samuel finally met David, the smallest, youngest, and weakest of all of the children. This is who God had selected to be the next King of Israel. God knew the heart of David and that is what was most important. It was all about the condition of his heart, not his strength, knowlege, or his ninja skills.
Jesus talks about the heart
- The state of our heart determines how we respond to God’s message. Luke 8:15
- A hard heart prevents us from knowing God. Matthew 13:14-15
- We can say and do all of the right things, but our hearts are still far from God. Mark 7:6-7 It is not about the stuff you do.
- Good hearts = Good people. Bad hearts = Bad people. Luke 6:45
- Our treasures form our heart. Matthew 6:20-22
- Loving God with our whole heart is the best thing we can do. Matthew 22:36-37
How can I change my heart? I can’t so stop trying. You can’t help you. But Jesus can give you water that will flow from your heart and this will fix your heart.
Jesus is alive and in our hearts, so why is our hearts still messed up?
Because we don’t always believe that we are with him.
Are you listening to your heart?
Just want to be with Jesus everyday.
Create some space in your life, heart, mind for God.
Learning From The Bible – Luke 17:3
I was reading through Luke 17 today and came across verse 3 and something struck me when Jesus said,
“So watch yourselves! If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive.” (NLT)
The word ‘believer’ jumped all in my face. I checked a couple other versions and saw that they used ‘brother’ and ‘friend.’ I have read this many times in different versions, but for some reason today I had to stop and ponder it. I realized that Jesus was only talking about rebuking other believers, but not non-believers. This teaching is not something hard for me, but it reminded me of something that really bugs me sometimes.
I find that many times Christians get a bad rap because of other Christians. A while back I was inspired to not refer to myself as a Christian, but as a follower of Jesus because of the connotation that comes with the word, ‘Christian.’ On a regular basis, I witness Christians getting confrontational and will rebuke non-believers for their behavior and actions in an attempt to somehow turn them or convince them to believe in Jesus.
In all of my experience dealing with non-believers, this never seems to get very far except to increase tempers and blood pressures. It also makes the previously established relationship uncomfortable. The non-believer seems to get further away from my belief and it makes it harder for the next person to try to share Jesus with them. A non-believer is going to operate under a different set of rules than a believer will and it makes it very hard to argue with them.
Jesus wants us to rebuke those who already believe for their sins and reconcile with them. Most importantly the verse teaches us to forgive each other.
As for dealing with non-believers in the correct fashion I believe that we should always do our best to model the grace that Jesus extends to those who are far from him.
The Older I Get
2009 is the year that I move into my 30′s and I wanted to extend an invitation for you to join me at a monster birthday bash the weekend of Feb 21st. I consider many of you my friends even if we have not met in person. I wanted to invite all of my friends to this party including all of you online. We are planning a whole weekend of open house type events to celebrate this year and give everyone a chance to drop by and enjoy some good food and fun. It would really be cool to have a chance to meet you if you are in the Cincinnati area on that weekend. If you would like to come, please leave a comment and I will get in touch with you via email with all of the details.
One Life – The Physical Life
Dave spoke last week on the Physical Life. I should have written this earlier in the week when it was all very fresh in my mind, so I am just going to share some of the notes that I took and try to piece it all together.
Dave read the store ‘Frog And Toad Together’
“Without God, what makes things beautiful?” This could get you to think for a while and maybe even deserves its own blog post and discussion.
Jesus established the new covenant where God takes up residence inside our bodies physically.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (The Message)
Our bodies are a sacred place because God dwells there.
Managers of this world look for performance out of their employees. They manage for performance. The toughest thing to manage is ourselves. How is my personal performance looking right now?
If I don’t take care of myself and my basic health, won’t that hinder how God is using me?
SLEEP – DIET – WATER – EXERCISE
I generally fail in all of these areas right now.
God created us. he knows how we are designed to function.
Psalm 139: 13-18 (NLT)
The best possible insurance policy is to take care of myself.
3 John 1:2 (NLT)
3 Day Weekend And The War on Clutter
I am going through blogging withdrawal because I have not posted anything in the past 4 days. It has been a very productive and busy 4 days though, so I can forgive myself for not making time to share out my thoughts. Don’t worry though, there is plenty to come.
It was a 3 Day weekend for me having Monday off for Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday. Friday we went to our Small Group. It seems that we have not met with them in a long time. It will be interesting to see the direction our group takes this year.
Saturday we played with our new web cam and talked to Faith’s parents on Skype. The kids loved being able to see Nana, Grandpa, and the doggies on the computer and talk to them. We also declared war on clutter in our house. We para trooped into our laundry room to establish a safe zone from which we will be able to coordinate our attacks on the clutter strongholds. It will be a long campaign and pulling out is not an option for us.
Sunday we went to a birthday party for my mom and had a good time visiting with family. Ephriam, K.C., and Luke all had a great time playing together.
Monday, the War on Clutter continued as we went on the offensive with a shock and awe attack. We sent the kids into the play area of the basement to spread more clutter while we were able to declutter the back corner. We then feigned retreat for lunch and put the kids down for a nap. The clutter regime seemed to think that they were holding ground pretty well until I sent in some bunker busters and cleaned up all of the toys and extra boxes. While the clutter was realing from the sneak attack I was able to rearrange a lot of furniture because there is now floorspace. We are now establishing control of these areas in an atempt to keep these areas clutter free.
This is a major victory for us, but there is still a long way to go. So that was kind of how my weekend went and why I have not had much time for blogging.
Tale of Despereaux
We took the kids to see the Tale of Despereaux at the movie theater while we were in Louisville. It was their first trip to a real movie theater and they were really good. Ephriam is our child that hums whenever he is eating something. We can hear him in the other room if he finds food and starts chewing on it. He sat in his chair at the theater and ate his popcorn without humming because he was so fascinated with the big screen. He never once tried to get up or move and was quiet for the most part aside from asking for more to drink. Faith even dumped her drink on half of his seat and he didn’t flinch.
K.C. fell asleep about 30 minutes into the movie so she was very quiet. Nana really enjoyed holding K.C. while she napped. She slept for a good while, but woke up towards the end. She is our motormouth child and talked through the rest of the movie, but was not disruptive. At one point she yelled at the screen, “GO Despereaux, GO!!!! Save the princess!!!!” She was so funny talking to the movie. And she didn’t stop talking about how Despereaux saved the princess after the movie was over.
They had a blast. It is nice to know that we can take them to the theater without too much trouble. I am looking forward to taking them back to see more movies in the future.