Walking After Midnight

(The title... well it's a Garth Brooks song, and it felt cool to put it up there).


Over the last 3 or 4 months God has really been shaking things up in my life. It's really hard to explain.  After reading the bible through in 90 days, God began to reveal some incredible things to me about who He is, and what He might be calling me to do.

As I read the story of Moses and that of Abraham, Isaiah, Jonah and the disciples, I strongly felt God communicating to me that maybe it was a time to listen and make a leap of faith that would be uncomfortable for me.

My prayer was: "God if You want me to do this, I will, but I need You to blow me away with what You are going to do, or I'm not going."

Probably not the most faith filled prayer.  Let's be honest, it was a selfish prayer.  It surely wasn't "I'll drop my nets at once and follow you," but that's what I prayed.  

And that's what He did.  After a one line email, and one 40 minute conversation that followed, God began to orchestrate something over the next 4 months that I can't even begin to explain.

I'll spare you with many of the details...(there's a lot in 4 months) but I do want to announce to 99 percent of you that are hearing it for the first time that I have accepted a position at Fellowship Church in Grapevine/Fort Worth in their creative department.  I will be heading up their production & worship teams in charge services at the Fort Worth Campus.

Let's be honest, I'm way over my head with this gig, and completely honored to be a part of such a great church.  There is no doubt I have so much to learn, and I'm about to step into a world I've never seen. Many of you know that I'm way under qualified for this position.


I  honestly can't believe it's actually happening.  

Here's why none of you know yet:  I didn't know everything was final until Monday, and today is only Thursday - but I will be officially starting there this afternoon.  I'm sorry I haven't gotten a chance to tell you all personally before now.

There are more crazy details to explain why such a quick start, but please know I'm not leaving FBC this quick all together.  I will still come back every Friday in July to work here with our staff tying up lose ends and pouring out the little information I do know about my area. I also will be consulting if there is ever a need for the next 50 years.

To all of you:  I need you to know that I love you.  There are not enough words to explain how much you've changed my life. 

To my church family:  Thank you! You took me in and allowed me to serve along side of you.  You restored me when I was broken, you allowed me to make countless mistakes.  You loved me when at times, that was hard to do. You trusted me with responsibilities I wasn't qualified for.  I am truly grateful to you.

To my staff: You of all people know how much of a diva I can be, and I thank you for your grace.  I've never met a group of people who work as hard as you do, and care as much as you do for your community.  Thank you for allowing me to vent, over looking my OCD (and ADD), and not punching me when I deserved it.  

To the youth:  Thank you for listening to all those crappy messages I have given over the years.  I have watched so many of you grow into mature men and women, and it's been amazing to see.  God has done and will do some many amazing things through each one of you.  

To this community:  I love you!  I honestly do love you, and I will make every effort to keep in contact with you and to continue to share life with you.

P.S.  I'm going to live in K-town for at least another month, so I expect to get to hug all of you at least twice.

What Do You Believe?

So it's been awhile... ok it's been a decade since I've contributed my thoughts to the web. All my thoughts have gone towards seminary, which have left me with little to share with the world. But I'm back, and this time I come to you from the ipad. (one of the most useful things I"ve ever purchased. I would put it right up there with my toothbrush)

So here's my question. What do YOU believe? You personally... your own thoughts. If you are a follower of Jesus, do you believe the words you read and stories you hear?

Because think about it, we all believe something because someone before us once believed it. Information more often that not is being passed down or around from somewhere.

Those of us who grew up in the church believe most of what we believe because we were told to, or because we knew someone smarter than us believed the same.

When we ask this question about our faith, I believe it causes us to do some inventory on where we are spiritually. I don't know about you, but when I believe in something, it's hard for me not to voice what I believe. If we truly believe, than we must live and act that way.

Last night in youth ministry, we looked at Psalm 37:4
"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart."

If we as followers of Jesus say that we believe like we do, then why is this verse so hard to understand for many of us. I mean, we put it on coffee cups and t-shirts and those horrible Christian bumper stickers, but yet so few of us live in a way like this verse is real.

Why is that? Or better yet, what are our desires? or to make this more personal. What is your desire? Do you know? Have you grasped that? What does that look like that we are delighting ourselves in the Lord and Him giving us the desires of our hearts?
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I'll let you ponder on that while I smoothly transition my thoughts.

Here's what God has been teaching me lately.

Be patient, and quit tring to force something to happen. God operates on His time, and His plan. I feel like many of us need to be reminded of that. When it's His time, I promise you, you will be blown away when He wants to move you in another direction. God has just been blowing my head up with that lately.

When we begin to grasp an ounce of what it means to delight in Him, I truly believe He will give us the desires of our heart. I think I've spent most of my life trying to force something to happen, and each time only getting a lack luster result. It's those times when I allow Him to be in charge that I step back and say wow.

Be Still

Here is my response to our staff as we discuss the word intimacy and what that means in our relationship with Christ. It had to be delivered at 8 am on Tuesday morning, and I actually made the deadline.

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Wow, it's early, and everyone knows I don't do early, but here we go. I struggled and struggled what to get everyone for Christmas, and since we weren't getting a bonus, I knew I had to be creative, and than it hit me. I've decided to allow everyone unlimited access to read, download, and even share with your friends all of the run on sentences and horribly placed punctuations marks that will soon follow in the paragraphs below. Yes, that's free of charge, and you can thank me later with large tangible gifts.... 

Now, sit up straight, place your hands in your lap, turn off anything that may distract you, and get your popcorn ready...

One of the things that I realize every year is that it seems that Christmas should be the time a year where we are reminded deeply about what it means to love Christ and for our passions to be renewed. If I’m honest and I really look at the first Christmas and read that peaceful quiet intimate moment between a husband and wife as they gaze into the eyes of of their son and savior I can see that Christmas now is not the same.

 To me the way we do Christmas has a much different feeling. With parties on every night of the week, Christmas pageants, community celebrations, and of course the annual trip to visit the family, Christmas for me anyways seems to be the opposite of intimate.

 And to be completely transparent the word intimacy is a hard one for me. Because I’m not sure that I’m very good at it. But the two things I understand about intimacy on any level is that it can not be forced and it can not be rushed.

When I look at my life I can see that many times those two things are happening on many accounts if I’m not careful. God constantly uses this Psalm and particularly vs. 10 to remind me to take a step back and to be quiet and to be still. Both of which I’m horrible about doing.

Psalm 46 10 & 11

10 “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
11 The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. 

It was verse 10 that I could sense God saying over and over to me on October 27th a couple a years ago as I drove home completely broken. It was that car ride that I questioned God for the first time in my life, and didn’t have a clue what he was doing or where I would end up.( It wasn’t the most comforting verse at the time, I I thought to myself, why this verse God, why this verse? Could I please  get a strong sense of Romans 8:28 or something a little more cheerful, but it was vs.10 that I believe he continued to drill into my soul)

It was that same verse that I remember reading in a hotel room in California not to long ago wondering why I was so frustrated. I could later see he was showing me that I’d been living the past two years of life out of bitterness and never took time to deal with what I needed to deal with. it was simply me that was getting in the way of God restoring me. (that may only make sense to me)

 Intimacy takes time, it takes work, and for probably all of us, it takes us to the place where we’ve got to be still. To drop all of our agendas, our pride and the thought that we can do this on our own. I'm sure we’ve all been to that place in ministry when we’ve tried to force something to work for weeks or months, and it wasn’t until we were still, that God did the very thing we were trying to do.

For all of us this season, let us be still, let us praise God for who he is, and what he has done. Let us celebrate life with him, and let us be reminded that He is God and he is with us.

Regret

If you don't deal with your regrets from your past in the present, they will always come back to haunt you in the future.


I've got some regrets in my life.  So do you.  Let's deal with them now, and move on.

My Personality Traits

Took a little personality test, and here are the results.




Conscientious
You feel it's important to work according to a plan and finish every task, to do things correctly and thoroughly. You are not the kind of person who abandons a project before finishing it, or slacks off when you've lost interest.

Passionate
You are in touch with your emotions, and sometimes you react before you think. The good news: you don't tamp down your feelings. The bad news: you sometimes say or do things that you later wish you could take back.
You do not live your life on an even keel; you do not go for long periods without experiencing some mood swings.

Aesthetic
You appreciate art, beauty, and design; you know that they are not superficial but absolutely crucial to living the good life. You have good taste, and you're proud of it. Those with a high score on the "aesthetic" trait are often employed in literary or artistic professions, enjoy domestic activities — doing things around the house — and are enthusiastic about the arts, reading, and travel.
You don't think it's pretentious to be moved by art and beauty. You're not one of those who believe it doesn't matter what something looks like as long as it does its job.

Assertive
You behave in a confident and forceful manner, take charge of the situation, raise your hand in class, stand up for what you think is right, and lead others. Among those who have a high score on the "assertive" trait, many have jobs in which they are valued for their organizational skills as well as their talent for supervising others.
You are not interested in fading into the woodwork, leaving everything to fate, taking more time than necessary to accomplish a task, or avoiding confrontation.

Cautious
You very rarely make a move without first considering the pros and cons and, therefore, rarely do anything foolish or extravagant.
You are not rash; you almost never act before you think and, therefore, rarely end up doing things you later regret.

Organized
You like to think a task through before you embark on it. If it's the slightest bit complicated, you make a list (even if it's only in your mind) and methodically work your way through it. When you have a goal in mind, you're not satisfied until you reach it.
You are not one of those people who ignore the details, and you don't understand how anyone can get anything accomplished without thoughtful planning ahead of time.

Curious
You like to get to the bottom of things. You're not content knowing what someone did; you want to know why they did it.
You don't simply take things as they are and move on; you're not content skimming along on the surface; you don't feel you're wasting time by digging for the meaning of things.

Optimistic
You are a "glass half-full" kind of person, always on the lookout for the silver lining. Your happiness is contagious, which is why others like to be around you.
You do not feel that the world is an intrinsically depressing place; you are not the kind of "realist" who thinks that only fools find joy in life.

Creative
You are good at solving problems, coming up with original ideas, and seeing connections between things, connections that most other people miss. People with a high score on the "creative" trait often are employed in such fields as finance and scientific research, and enjoy avant garde and classical music as well as literary fiction and scholarly non-fiction.
You do not shun abstractions and concepts in favor of the concrete and tangible.

Efficient
You are very well organized, even a bit anal. You like to stick to your plans and finish on deadline, wasting as little time as possible in the process.
You are not comfortable when things do not go according to plan, nor are you a procrastinator. You don't waste time when you can be getting down to business.

I Will Vs. I Can

There is a big difference between I can and I will. In my world, I hear a lot of I can, and not a lot of I will. With I can, there is a chance to back out, and not live up to your word, but I will says commitment. I'm reminded the words I speak and the commitments I make matter.

Ecclesiastes 5

1 Be careful what you do when you enter the house of God. Some fools go there to offer sacrifices, even though they haven’t sinned. But it’s best just to listen when you go to worship. 2 Don’t talk before you think or make promises to God without thinking them through. God is in heaven, and you are on earth, so don’t talk too much. 3 If you keep thinking about something, you will dream about it. If you talk too much, you will say the wrong thing.

4 God doesn’t like fools. So don’t be slow to keep your promises to God. 5 It’s better not to make a promise at all than to make one and not keep it. 6 Don’t let your mouth get you in trouble!

Based on Experience

So last week, Steve came to me and asked me if I would preach on Sunday night. I told him I would love too and was really excited to do so. In 7 or 8 years of ministry, I've been fortunate enough to speak hundreds of times, so this shouldn't have been any big deal for me to get ready for. I realized shortly after saying yes, that wasn't the case. As I did a lot of wrestling with the text that week, I found out there was a lot of emotion wrapped up in this for me and self imposed pressure to perform.

(Many of you who know me well, know this is one of the things I obsess about in my life. I've spent more time watching & listening to guys that I'm willing to admit.

Yeah, it's probably a little weird to you, and at times, weird to me to)

The reasons I thought I had to perform:

1. We've got the best in the business around here when it comes to communicating.
2. It had been over 2 1/2 years since I was asked to speak to a mainly adult audience.

When those are at the forefront of your brain, you automatically think you've got to rise up to the challenge...

Saying all that.... well... It wasn't the best sermon I've ever preached. I mean, it was probably a 6.5 I struggled through a lot of it, had a hard time balancing my time, struggled into transitioning on to the next point, and really left with out a strong conclusion.

Putting all that pressure on yourself and then not performing, you might imagine how disappointed I was.

However this was the best thing that could have ever happen to me because of all the stuff I learned / relearned.

Here's what I Learned:

1. Know your audience. Just because you are successful with one audience doesn't mean that will carry over.

2. Allow the people in the audience who you trust to be honest with you.

3. Allow the experts to critique you, and make you better. I sat down with Steve and Brent and listened intently as they poured so much into me.

4. Don't think you are to good to learn from everyone. If you can't learn from people, than you've got a heart issue.

5. Realize that everyone won't think you are Billy Graham.

6. It's in these moments that God renews your passion to refine the gifts God has given you.

7. Let it go, trust God, and get ready for the next week.