Last Week’s Weight – 268.8 lbs.

This Week’s Weight – 267.6 lbs.

Total Weight Loss Since Jan 1st – 11.8 lbs.

It was a miracle weigh in day this morning.  I have been battling all week and my weight has been up all week.  But this morning I was down 1.2 lbs from last week.  I think that I have had issues getting my metabolism back on track after being sick last week because I have been following the rules, but not dropping.  But today the scale went in a good direction.  Hopefully this means that I am back on track.

Do you ever feel like it has become so complicated to follow Jesus? Sometimes my head spins with all that I am trying to do. I am trying to be a good spiritual leader to my family. I volunteer at church. I try to live a life that reflects Jesus to my neighbors, coworkers, and others that I encounter in my daily activities. I take time to study the Bible and pray each day as I try maintain a solid relationship with God.

I look at all of this and realize that it is a lot of work. I don’t remember it being this much work when I decided to follow Jesus. It was easier then somehow. Is it because I am out of step somewhere? Is it because I have a lot more on my plate now than I did back then? Maybe my priorities are out of whack. These are some questions I have wrestled with a little lately and thought that I would share.

I found some old journals of mine from several years ago where I have documented my journey of following Jesus. The words came alive to me as I read, bringing back memories of some great times with God. My notes from church services jumped out at me reminding me of things that I learned a long time ago. I began to wonder if I was still following much of what I learned early on. It all just seemed so simple.

I am feeling the need to simplify things in my life. I am not sure how to go about that just yet, but I have a lot of ideas. The biggest obstacle seems to be time. I always find myself saying or thinking, “If we just get to this or past that, then we will be in good shape.” I have been thinking this way too much lately and have to find a way to overcome that road block.

These are some thoughts that spilled out of me today and I thought I would throw them out to see if anyone can relate.

Last Week’s Weight – 268.4 lbs.

This Week’s Weight – 268.8 lbs.

Total Weight Loss Since Jan 1st – 10.6 lbs.

I can’t complain about weigh in this week.  I spent most of last weekend not tracking and ignoring my diet when the whole family was in Gatlinburg for the weekend.  I think though that I paid for it this week.  I had a stomach bug for a few days and now I am fighting off a cold.  It has been a rough week with no meal planning and getting back into my good eating habits.  I have found myself wanting to snack a lot this week and my throat has been scratchy so I am always wanting to eat or drink something to make it feel better.  I fully expected to come back from my vacation up in weight and I am ok with .4 lbs.  I will be back on track here soon and I expect the weight to keep coming off.

Saw this article on CrunchGear.

A human interest story, brought to us by the fine people at KGO-TV in San Francisco. It goes something like this: a woman had saved up for a very long time to buy an Apple iPad. So goes into an Apple Store, tells the clerk that she’d like to buy an iPad, then whips out the requisite $600. Six-hundred in cash, mind you. Then the Apple clerk drops a bombshell: sorry, but we don’t accept cash here.

For the complete article click here.

So for those of us operating on a cash only way of life trying to reduce debt the Dave Ramsey way, I guess we will not be shopping at the Apple Store.  Okay, so I use my debit card and that would probably work fine, but not taking cash is just weird.

I spent a lot of time this past weekend looking at these.

I really enjoyed the break, but now my kids and I are all home sick today.  I won’t post pictures of that.  More to come about my unplugged weekend later.

I spent my summer after Young Life Camp learning how to follow Jesus everyday instead of just on Sundays and when I needed help with something. I spent a lot of time becoming more familiar with the Bible and praying more often then I had before. I still had the opportunity to hang out with many of my YL friends that summer before moving into the dorms at The University of Cincinnati.

College was definitely put my new found love of Jesus to the test. Fortunately there were plenty of opportunities to meet and hang out with other Christians on campus. When I got to campus, I became a hunter for Christians because I knew that I needed to find a community to plug into that would help me to continue following Jesus. Within the first couple of weeks I had no idea that a mountain bike would be the reason that I would meet one of my best friends and future best man in my wedding.

I signed up and went to all of the campus ministry things I could find. I was still going to the Catholic church at the time and found one near campus that also had a student ministry program that was pretty cool. This was by far my favorite Catholic church that I ever was a part of because the church was aware that students were a big part of their audience and ran church in such a way that we felt like we were part of the community. I made a few friends at that church, but mostly connected with guys in my dormitory.

I plugged in pretty quickly to a small group through Navigators and it was in that group that I met a group of guys that I am still very close with. Navs gave away a mountain bike at their first meeting of the year and my soon to be friend only went to that meeting to win the bike. He ended up joining the same small group as me and we quickly became good friends. We both attended the Catholic church and had an insatiable fanaticism for UC basketball. I also made a few other friends in the dorms. My roommate and I were civil, but did not socialize together. He was an atheist and pretty much ignored me. I can’t complain though because he was a good roommate as far as sharing the space and keeping things clean. We just were not destined to be much more than acquaintances.

I made friends who were Christians and continued to be challenged and grow in my pursuit of living life following Jesus. I also made friends who were not believers and I made them aware that I was, and wanted to try to share that with them. I think that every new believer gets overly excited about what they have learned and wants everyone to experience the same thing. Sometimes there is a problem with that when you have no clue how to share that with other people. And then you can’t answer their questions and it can cause you to be discouraged or doubt what you believe. My faith never really waivered because of that, but I did find myself compromising a lot in order to get closer to non-believers. It was easy to try new things at college with the many new freedoms that I had. I won’t go into detail here because it would make this post really long and my mom reads my blog, but let’s just say that I did some things that I was not really proud of. I never questioned God, but I did question myself and all of the hypocrisy that I saw in myself.

To be continued.

Read My Story Part 1 Here.

Last Week’s Weight – 268.6 lbs.

This Week’s Weight – 268.4 lbs.

Total Weight Loss Since Jan 1st – 11 lbs.

I am posting this early because I am unplugging from everything for a few days and will not be able to post this on Friday as usual.  Remember to tune into your regularly scheduled program next week.

I am back down the .2 lbs that I was up from the week before.  Probably could be a little more by Friday, but I  will go with what I got.  Sorry for the short update.  More next week.

I have been planning for a while to take some time off and completely unplug.  That time will begin tonight or tomorrow.  It will be difficult for me at first, but I plan on really enjoying it for a long weekend.  I will have a couple of scheduled posts to go up I hope, and I will be doing my weekly weigh in early.  There will be no Twitter, no Facebook, and no Email.  So I apologize in advance if I do not respond to you until the end of the weekend.

This is the first time that I have willingly unplugged completely.  I am sure that the Internet will get along just fine without me for a few days.  I am hoping to have cool stuff to share when I plug back in.

When is the last time you willingly completely unplugged for a few days?

I think I am on a kick this week about online social networking.  I am on Twitter and Facebook.  I obviously blog.  I am always trying to find new ways to keep up with my online social life.  I try new apps when they come out.  Unfortunately I do not have a cell phone that does apps, so I have not had the privilege of playing with mobile apps so much.  I do have updates come to me via text message and also see my email on my phone.  But for the most part, I keep up via the web.

So what are you using to keep up with your online social networks?

Are you and/or your church investing in online social networking? What is that you ask? Is there an app for that? Are you hip to the the Twit? Maybe you are trying to figure out what your face has to do with a book. Am I confusing you yet? If you are, then you will probably stop reading this now because you don’t care or you want to choke me so you will keep reading in an effort to restrain yourself.

If Facebook, Twitter, Internet, and all of these new fangled technologies make your head spin, you are not alone. But if you don’t do something about it soon, you will be.

Ok, so maybe you have heard of this stuff, but you’re the Senior Pastor and you don’t have time to learn all of these crazy new technologies. I believe that you can’t afford not to learn them. Only 10 years ago or maybe less than that people still exchanged phone numbers for contacting each other. We used to have all of the important numbers memorized because we dialed them a lot. Now we don’t know any numbers except for our own because we don’t dial numbers anymore. We click on the profile in our cell phone and tell it to call cousin Vinny. Now when you meet someone you exchange names and tell them that you can find me on Facebook.

Today, events are advertised, planned, and virally spread because of Twitter, Facebook, and other web technologies. I can keep in touch with most of my friends from college a decade ago because of the Internet. I can share the chaos that I call my life with family and friends so that they don’t miss out on the latest crazy dance that my kids decided to make up. My kids get to see their nana and grandpa once a week even though they live 6 hours away because we can do a video conference on the laptop. I have friends that I have never met and there are hundreds of people who pray for things if I ask and I have never shook their hand.

The craziest part about all of it, is that it is free. It doesn’t cost you a dime to share the goodness and connect with the world of online social networking. It only costs you a little time and effort. If you setup the accounts and do nothing with them, then you probably think they are worthless. It is worthless if you don’t participate. Are you getting in the game, or are you going to be a spectator for the rest of your life?

I think that churches should be taking advantage of all that is out there.  Why wouldn’t you invest in a new medium of communication that doesn’t cost anything?  Do you think that it would be easier for missionaries on another planet to teach aliens English so that they could share the Bible with them or to have a miraculously translated copy to hand out to them?  Okay, so maybe it isn’t quite the same, but I see the Internet as a missionary field and it is quickly becoming so mainstream that you would be crazy not to take a look at it right now.

So what are you going to do about it?

Now realizing that if you are reading my blog, then you probably know all about this and agree with me. Maybe you have played with it personally, but never thought about how you could use it for your church or organization. It’s a free investment. What have you got to lose? But if you are just figuring all of this stuff out and want some help taking the leap into a world where you can really engage and connect with your tribe, just ask and I will be of any help that I can.

Thank you for letting me rant a little today.

Things that didn’t make the cut:

Are you facebooking for Jesus?
The word on the street has become the tweet.
Friends is no longer limited to Monica and Chandler.