Stress

This last month has been absolutely crazy! I finished my classes at the university, so we are now looking for a job and a home in Houston. I have been to Houston once a week in my search and have so far been unsuccessful. Houston is expensive. To get a similar house in a similar neighbourhood as the one we're in now, I am going to have to pay $400 more each month! And that doesn't include the fact that electricity is more expensive in Houston. In my search for a home and a job, some faith issues surfaced. Turns out I don't trust God as much as I thought I did. For me, it's easy to say I trust God when everything is relatively stable, but when things start getting crazy, my true level of trust comes out and I am ashamed to say it's pretty miserable. I spent a day praying over the whole situation and that I would trust God more. It helped. At the end of the day I really felt God saying that he has always got me through everything and he's not going to stop now. I am beginning to gain some trust, but still nothing has happened. I still don't have a job and I still don't have a house, and I will still be moving in 3 weeks, but I know that God has everything worked out just right.

P.S. We could really use some prayer that we would find a house and I would find a job and that we would continue to trust God more and more.

Fear

I decided long ago that my priority in life is God and the pursuit of knowing Him, whatever that means. I am discovering that fear often takes over my decision making abilities. On the flip side, I am a passionate guy who goes all out or not at all. I believe that if something is worth doing, then I am going to give it all I got. If something isn't worth doing, I'm simply not going to do it. This has sometimes made my marriage difficult. I will decide that I am going to get involved in something, then I'll spend money and time I don't have on whatever it is I decided I'm going to do. I have spent too much money on things I don't even use anymore. For example, I spent about $150 on a bowling ball, a bowling ball bag, and bowling shoes, which I used for about two months and haven't touched since. I was into MMA, so I bought some nice MMA shorts, which I still wear because they are the most comfortable shorts in the world, some great MMA gloves, training gloves, mouthpiece, and a membership to the Grappler's Lair where I trained sometimes 5 days a week. Don't get me wrong, I had a blast getting beat up everyday, and met some good friends and got the chance to injure a cop, but this was all wants and desires rather than needs. Anyways, having decided that the pursuit of God is number one in my life, I am moving my two kids and pregnant wife to a suburb of Houston where I will hopefully learn a little bit about how to start a church. As soon as I have a good grasp on it, or after I've been there a year and a half, I will move my wife and three children half way around the world to a land we've never been to with people we don't know in order to learn as much as I can about God. The biggest difference between pursuing God and pursuing my own little interests, is that pursuing God has the authority to change everything. As I pursue God, I am willing to go where I need to go, do what I need to do, and change what I need to change all for the benefit of knowing Him more. As I pursue wants and desires, they do not have the authority to move my family, impoverish me, set me up for failure, or take away from my end goal in life, "To glorify God by enjoying Him forever." Not to say that this always happens perfectly. Being a selfish person, I naturally seek my own gain rather than the gain of the God I am seeking to know more. I constantly have to confess to God my lack of single-mindedness, and must take hold of the grace He has freely given me through the cross of Jesus the Christ.
Anyways, fear creeps in constantly in this journey to God-closeness, and I have to remind myself again and again how much He loves me and how He is molding my life into Christlikeness. I have to remember that even though circumstances might be difficult at the time, God is still here and still loves me and will finish the good work He begun in me. I am scared of moving to a country that is not my own. I am afraid of failure in another part of the world and no means of getting home. I am afraid of my own lack of faithfulness in this journey. I am fearful of being hated by people. I am terrified that in my own pursuit of God, I will unknowingly put my children in an unsafe place and something will happen to them.
I have to remind myself that God has called me to Himself and has a plan for my life and it is not for my bad, but His good.

Confession

I had the awesome pleasure of hearing one of my spiritual heros present a great talk on his new book, "God Next Door." The book, and his personal philosophy on ministry, is all about seeing your neighbourhood as a place of ministry and mission. His whole presentation focused on how we have decentralized community and no longer love our neighbours. In today's society, the home is no longer the center of our communities. Back in the day, the neighbourhood was the place of community and fellowship, and now we don't even know our neighbours.

This hit me in the face. I really want to be on mission in my neighbourhood, but I am extremely horrible at it. I have talked to my neighbours, but I don't really know them. I haven't tried to have my neighbours over for dinner, I haven't reached out to my neighbours, I haven't shared the Gospel with my neighbours. I have failed at community within my neighbourhood. I have failed at loving my neighbours. I have removed the people who live close to me from who I consider neighbours.

Father, put in me a deep desire to honor you by loving my neighbour. Help me to live as Christ and not care about anything else in this life. Teach me to love.

Good vs. Great

I had a discussion with a great friend of mine and I thought I'd share a little bit about what we decided.
He had brought up the idea of good vs. great a couple of months ago when talking about songwriting. He said that if we as songwriters get stuck on something good, like a good melody or a good guitar line, we will never find what is great. He was telling me that if I like a song and have something good, to throw it out and write something great. I took the principle and applied it to life as a Christian. So many times I settle for good when God offers me great. Let me explain what I mean. As a follower of Jesus, I have offered to me the greatness of knowing God. He reveals himself to me as I love and serve him and that is his desire for my life. John 17:3 says that eternal life is knowing God. The Bible says that God desires to give us abundant life, which is knowing God and walking in His grace and mercy and getting to be a part of His greatness and glory. As a weak, small little man, I often trade knowing God for doing good. I determine that rather than sinking into God and who he is, I will just be good and do the right things. That's fine, but it's not what God wants for me. He wants me to know Him and to walk everyday in his love and mercy. He wants me to delight in Him and in return he will give me the desires of my heart. He wants me to draw near to him and in return he will draw near to me. He wants his grace to be enough in my life, so that I don't need anything else.
We were applying this concept to our local church. How often we settle for good: nice Sunday morning service, good music, we look good from the outside, we are morally good, we dress up, we are growing in numbers a little bit, we have a few baptisms a year, occasionally a small group will get too big and have to split; when God wants GREAT for His church: people coming into the family daily, the love among us to be so great that people come into our body in droves, the city we live in to be changed by our love for God and his love for us, transformation in the lives of the church, the name of Jesus to be proclaimed boldly and gracefully, a deep and passionate love for the lost that Jesus' name might br praised louder in Killeen. We sacrifice going after greatness for staying in goodness. I'm not saying we're not doing things right, because we are doing somethings right. I'm just saying I want more. I want to have to plant churches all over Killeen because we can't find a building big enough to house all the new believers. I want the city of Killeen to be known for its love for Jesus. I want every new soldier that comes into Fort Hood to be totally and completely loved by this community. I want Killeen to grow because everyone wants to be a part of this community of love. I want God to be glorified and praised in everything we do.
Why settle for good when God wants great?

Knowing God

God has really been working on me this week. He has hit me with some huge realizations about the Christian life, and even more about a life as a pastor. I have been convicted about my lack of passion for the Word. If I'm going to be a pastor, I have to be as awesome pastor. By awesome, I mean that I have to know the Bible because I will be held accountable for how I teach it. If I am to be an awesome pastor and really know the Word, I must dig into it with a ferocity I have not yet grasped. This week, through a couple different things, God confronted my laziness in regards to digging into his Word, and has renewed my mind through his Word. He showed me just how important knowing him is. "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (Jn 17:3). I guess it's good that right now I'm reading "Knowing God" by J.I. Packer. Hopefully God will continue to pull me closer and closer to him as I begin to dig into his word and get to know him better

Co-Labourers

Last week I went to Canada with my church planting class. We went to the baptist seminary in Cochrane which is just outside of Calgary in the province of Alberta. The purpose of the trip was to learn about church planting in Canada, and to learn more about God's grace. I think the mission was accomplished.
We arrived at the seminary late Saturday night and went to sleep pretty quickly. Early Sunday morning, James Hoskins and I left for Lethbridge, a city of 80,000 people 3 hours southeast of Cochrane. We attended A Place Called Hope (http://www.aplacecalledhope.ca), which is a southern baptist church. The church meets in the gymnasium of an elementary school there in Lethbridge. In Lethbridge, about 40% of the people attend some sort of religious service on Sunday mornings, and about half of those are Mormans. The percentage of born-again evangelical Christians is estimated between 7 and 10%. The church is about 3 years old. Having been born and raised in bible belt Texas, I have developed a very small world view, and have a hard time believing the numbers that people claim about Christianity in the world. I don't understand how there are parts of America that don't have very many Christian churches, and that there are places in America where the name of Jesus isn't proclaimed out of love. Going to Canada gave me a fresh glimpse of the difficulties of planting a Jesus-loving church in a place where so few other Christ-followers live. Pastor Scott Dollar left his job here in the States to move to a city where I believe he is the only Baptist church, and one of the few evangelical churches in the city. He moved to a city where he knew the Gospel would meet resistance. He chose to move his family to a different country with a different culture because he believes that Canadians need Jesus just as much as Americans do. He left behind everything he knew to proclaim the Gospel in a place where, at many times, he would be the only one doing so. I thank God that there are people out there that are willing to say, "Yes!" to God. People who are willing to go no matter where He sends them, and proclaim the Gospel to the dark parts of the world. I pray that my life will be reflective of my Saviour, and that all I will know in this life is Christ and him crucified. "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." There are workers out there, loving Jesus in the darkest places of the globe.

On a different topic, one of the highlights of the trip for me was when James and I drove down a rocky road that was heading towards the rocky mountains and a snow storm. While we were driving down this road, we spotted a moose grazing. It was beautiful.

An Ode to Chris

26 years ago today, a little squirt of a boy was born, and his parents named him Christopher.
He wasn't anything special right out of the gates, just a normal, homeschooled boy.
As he grew,
Some people knew
That he might be different.
Some people laughed while others got on board.
Soon he had a fan club, even though it never got bigger than 4 people.
He kept on growing,
the world not knowing
that he might be different.
As he entered the strange land of high school/college/home school, things started changing.
His hair started falling out, his guitar skills got crazy mad, and he fell in love.
People started to see a man forming out of mushy stuff and muckyness.
Those around him began to admire the great words of wisdom that came out of his mouth.
He would say things like, "What's that over there?" and, "If God were a pretzel, what shape would he be?"
We didn't understand, but we thought it was funny, so we laughed.
Then, only a few days shy of his 26th birthday, that's right, just a few days ago, he had a son.

I know this ode to Chris is not all encompassing for the man many of us know and the rest wish they knew, but he means a ton to me and so I wanted to show him some love with an ode.

Chris. I love you, and will be walking right beside you for the rest of your life, even though we probably won't live on the same continent and we'll never see each other except when we iChat. You've been there for me when I needed you and I will do my best to always be there for you.

Happy Birthday!!