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Rebuilding The Wall...

Quiet lives of desperation invested in a small story. On Sunday, Andy used those words to describe people who are living without a God sized vision. People muddling through their days while trying to ignore the nagging voice in the back of their heads. The voice that keeps insisting that God has something more for them, that they must have been placed on this earth to live a more courageous life.

Have you ever shut off the alarm and refused to leave your bed, not because you were sleepy, but because you simply didn't want to face the day? Because you were convinced that this day would be just another mundane repetition of the previous day? Because living a life with so little sense of purpose made you feel like you were dying inside?

I have.

In his book, Wide Awake, Erwin McManus makes the following observation:
"For years I woke up each day with a sadness I couldn't shake, and then more sadness met me the moment I crawled out of bed. Thankfully, it is not so today. My best dreams are no longer wasted on my sleep. I find myself closing my eyes each night, eagerly waiting for tomorrow to come. There is nothing like feeling fully alive and dreaming wide awake. I am living a life beyond my wildest dreams-and I had some wild dreams."

Erwin McManus made the transition from dreamer to liver of dreams by reaching for the vision that God had laid in front of him. How do you and I follow this same path? Andy said that you experience your God sized vision by connecting with God, discovering your significance and then utilizing this experience for an eternal impact.

So what about it? Are you living out your dreams or wallowing in a quiet life of desperation? Think about this question when the alarm clock rings tomorrow.

- Don

Boxed...

Pneuma. The Greek word literally means spirit or wind. The great sweeping wind that blows through your kitchen window on a spring day, scattering the mail and the kids’ school papers, while reducing your neatly ordered life to chaos. What a fitting metaphor for God’s presence.

The writer of the New Testament book of Acts seems to agree. He uses the word pneuma in chapter 2, verse 2 when he writes, “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.” Think about that image for a moment. After Jesus ascended into heaven, his followers gathered together in the upper room of a building and prayed for direction. As they sat trying to determine how to carryout the ministry Jesus had begun, a wind blew through the house, reaching into every dusty corner of their lives.

On Sunday, Andy Rainey talked about how we like to compartmentalize our lives into nice, neat boxes. Work goes in one box, social life another, and God in still another. Whether we act like this because of fear, or a need to be in control, the result is the same. We stifle God. You can’t box the wind.

Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) Like the wind, the God who spoke the universe into being will not be relegated to a minor role in our lives. He wants to blow through the entirety of our existence, upsetting our neat piles and turning our thoughts towards him. But just as our God refuses to live in a box, he also refuses to force his way into our lives. The final decision resides with each of us.

Are you willing to open the window?

Feel the change...

What role does the Bible play in growing our faith?


So I had a friend of mine who was really struggling in a particular area of his life. He felt like for every step he took forward, he fell back another two. Even though he knew that what he was doing was wrong, he kept falling into the same old trap. One night he asked me, "Am I the only one who's ever felt like this?"

In answer I emailed this scripture from the book of Romans chapter 7 verses 18-19, "18 I know there is nothing good in my sinful nature. I want to do what is good, but I can't. 19 I don't do the good things I want to do. I keep on doing the evil things I don't want to do."

In this particular passage, the Apostle Paul is wrestling with his sinful nature and he expresses a common frustration. Who hasn't sat back after a particularly bad decision and wondered why we knowingly embraced a choice that led to death? All of us have been there.

Now the point of this story isn't to excuse my friend's behavior. What he did was wrong, no two ways about it. But by reading
about the struggle Paul endured two thousand years ago, my friend was able to gain some perspective, dust himself off, and try again. Paul also ends his painful deliberations on a victorious note. In verses 24-25, Paul says, "24 What a terrible failure I am! Who will save me from this sin that brings death to my body? 25 I give thanks to God. He will do it through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Often times we look at the writers of the Bible as superhuman beings whose every thought was whispered to them by God. But sometimes, in my darkest moments, I find comfort in the fact that the Bible is a collection of stories about people. People who sometimes succeeded in pleasing God and sometimes failed miserably. People who were just like me.

Pick up your Bible and read a couple of verses. You might be surprised at who you find staring back from the pages.


- Don

Pivotal Circumstance...

I knew it was coming, all the signs pointed to it and I had already looked at our budget and knew we would be OK for a little while, but as I was walking toward the meeting room I wondered if everything was really going to be OK. And as the words hung in the air I almost couldn't believe what I was hearing... "Due to the recent lack of sales company wide we are eliminating several of the Contractors and unfortunately you are one of them." I returned to my desk and quickly let my wife know that my days were numbered.

We can't always see our circumstances coming, but they often have the same affect. Whether it is a loss of a job, death of a friend, health problem, etc. the circumstances leave us dazed and disoriented for a moment before we realize we have a choice to make...

Do I trust God in-spite of what I am experiencing and feeling? Or do I start to question God's intentions and take matters into my own hands?

Well for me I found my prayer life elevate as I tried to seek God and see what He might be be doing... I wasn't at all happy about the situation I found myself in. I felt like that job was exactly where God wanted me to be for a season. Then I was relieved of my contract 5 months early and I found myself questioning the timing, but through it all I trusted and sought God.

My pivotal circumstance turned out to be one that altered the course of my life and now as I look back on it I wonder if I would be on this journey I now find myself in? I wonder if this is what it took for God to get me to leverage my life for His?

What circumstance are you facing?
Do you trust God in-spite of what you are feeling or do you find yourself questioning God's intentions?
Will you allow God to leverage your circumstance for His glory?

I'd love to hear your thoughts...


- Rainey

Feel The Power!

“Give God the first minutes of your day.”

Normally this isn’t too much of a stretch for me. As an aspiring writer, my alarm clock starts chiming at 4:50 so I can spend time moving a chapter a little farther down the road, editing a magazine article, or tinkering with a short story before work. Until this week. Until I signed a little pledge card Sunday morning and dropped it in the offering plate. Until I spent Sunday and Monday nights coughing and Tuesday night staring at the ceiling while the digital clock on the nightstand next to me counted down the minutes until sunrise.

Funny how that works, isn’t it? Because when the alarm started beeping this morning, the question running through my head wasn’t “I’m so tired, how am I going to make it through the day?” or even “What am I worried about that I couldn’t sleep last night?” No, the question battering the inside of my skull at 4:50 this morning wasn’t so politically correct. It went something like this, “Why am I doing this? Do I really think God is going to show up?”

Wow. Amazing how your thoughts crystallize after three nights without sleeping. How about it LifePoint? Am I the only one struggling to get up this week, secretly wondering if God is really going to show up? Is anybody who agreed to start giving God their first dollars this month, now having second thoughts? Is anybody else wondering whether they will really hear from God if they fast a Starbucks latte?

Or am I the only one?

As I read this post, I start to think that maybe I’m asking the wrong question. When I wrote my name on that card Sunday morning, I don’t remember seeing a box for God to check or a line where he could sign. I don’t remember hearing him say that he was in on this deal at all. Because when we get right down to it, the question that I should be asking isn’t “God, are you really going to show up if I get out of bed?” but, “Don, are you really going to be obedient even if you don’t know whether or not God will show up?”

The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews says in Chapter 11 verse 1 that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Sure enough to make decisions based on what we know God wants us to do even when we aren’t confident of the results. Faith isn’t something you stumble into, but it might require stumbling out of bed at 4:50 in the morning.

Is anybody with me?

- Don

Providential Relationships...

Bam! Bam! Bam! The door to my dorm room shuddered under the
determined blows. Rolling over on my bed, I glanced at my alarm clock.
Quarter after nine. Still plenty of time to make my 10:30 class-no
reason to getup. But I knew of only one person who would beat on
someone's door with the intensity of a jackhammer. And he wasn't going
to go away.

With a sign, I rolled out of bed and unlocked the door. A
moment later, the door burst open and Rich Jarvi exploded into my room
like a miniature tornado, oblivious to the pile of dirty laundry he had
to sidestep on his way to shake my hand.

"Hi, Don," he said, unnaturally chipper at such an ungodly hour
on a Monday morning, "just wanted to make sure that you'll be at Bible
study this afternoon."

"Yeah, Rich, I'll be there," I said, knowing all the while that
if I didn't show up I'd only get a repeat performance of this morning's
wakeup call. After a couple more minutes of small talk, Rich bustled
out of my room, undoubtedly off to wake up another unsuspecting college student.

Rich worked as a campus minister for The Navigators and he went
out of his way to pursue me during my college years. Though we attended a University designed to allow students to become lost in the crowd, Rich refused to let my friends and I fall by the wayside. He would come to check up on us several times a week, Bible in hand, and he somehow always knew whether or not we were really home. If we didn't answer right away, he'd stand in the hall, oblivious to the looks he got from other residents, and pound on our doors until we opened.

You see that year, my first year away from the steadying
influence of family and church, I felt spiritually adrift and didn't
particularly want anything to do with God. So He pursued me instead by
using Rich Jarvi, a middle aged, unassuming man who wasn't too proud to wade into the freshman dorms at The Ohio State University and drag some wayward kids back to God.

Andy said on Sunday that God uses human relationships to
influence faith and I bet if you took an honest look at your own faith
story, you'd find a Rich Jarvi waiting in the wings. In Revelations
3:20 Jesus tells the Apostle John, "Here I am! I stand at the door and
knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and
eat with him and he with me."

During those trying days in college, when I felt farthest from
God, my savior was still standing at the door and knocking. He just
looked a little like Rich Jarvi.

* So what about you? Are you willing to be a Rich Jarvi? This
week put yourself in an intentional relational environment and see what
happens. Blog about the experience.


Don