?‘s to help you find your idols…

By joel | Published: June 2, 2010

Hey Friends,
I promised on Sun­day I would post a longer list of ques­tions you could your ask your­self in an effort toward rec­og­niz­ing and uproot­ing idols in your life.  Wel here they are.  As we dis­cussed idols are often good things in our life that make us happy and make life worth liv­ing, THAT become ele­vated to a posi­tion our life where they become the only thing.  Ulti­mately idols are the root of our sin­ful nature.  We need to go beyond just rec­og­niz­ing and repent­ing of our idols but ulti­mately we need to replace them with Jesus life in our life and focus our lives in wor­ship, in glory of the one thing we are called to trea­sure and desire most… God!

Kill an idol my friends…

What am I most afraid of?
What do I long for most pas­sion­ately?
Where do I run for com­fort?
What do I com­plain about most
What makes me hap­pi­est?
How do I explain myself to other peo­ple?
What has caused me to be angry with God?
What do I brag about?
What do I want to have more than any­thing else?
What do I sac­ri­fice the most for in my life?
If I could change one thing about my life, what would it be?
Whose approval am I seek­ing?
What do I want to control/​master?
What com­fort do I trea­sure most?

*By way of note I am indebted to the work of Dr. Tim Keller in his book Coun­ter­fiet Gods and Mark Driscoll for this broader list of ques­tions as well as their tremen­dous work on this sub­ject.  If you want to dig deeper.  Check them both out…

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Does the Church add up?

By joel | Published: May 27, 2010

The fol­low­ing email was sent to Tim Steven’s Exec­u­tive Pas­tor at Granger Church and posted on his blog                           ( http://​www​.lead​ings​mart​.com/​2​0​1​0​/​0​5​/​s​o​m​e​t​h​i​n​g​-​j​u​s​t​-​d​o​e​s​n​t​-​a​d​d​-​u​p​.​h​tml ).  Jack’s thoughts really res­onate with me because I agree, and I am a Pas­tor… The one poten­tially prop­a­gat­ing the prob­lem.  The ques­tion is do the meth­ods of the Church work today.  This res­onated to me so I want to throw it out there for you all with some thoughts.

“I left a com­ment but also wanted to email you. My name is (Jack) and my wife and I are cur­rently attend­ing a mega church in Phoenix. Hav­ing said all that I just wanted to say that I have been bur­dened by the thought of some­thing just not adding up with the “come to us” strat­egy in today’s church cul­ture. I haven’t been able to get it off my mind lately. I feel like some­thing is wrong. Not that the Church isn’t doing good in the world, but that we aren’t liv­ing up to the capa­bil­i­ties God has equipped us with. I feel like my heart is to reach a crowd of peo­ple that the church has seem­ingly avoided due to it’s “come to me” atti­tude. I am really look­ing for­ward to see­ing what you post in the days to come about this sit­u­a­tion. It has been on the fore­front of my mind and heart non-​​stop lately. Do you think that we have totally strayed from what the Church’s strat­egy was intended to be? Do you feel like my gen­er­a­tion (I’m 20) will be the one to fix these issues?  I know my heart is to be a part of a local church but to do min­istry in what seems to be an uncon­ven­tional, mis­sional AND attrac­tional way.  Maybe in the near future what is on my heart won’t be too uncon­ven­tional after all.”

Now that you have read Jack’s elo­quent thoughts and spir­i­tual dis­con­tent with the com­mon solu­tion I want to add my own sense of uneasi­ness with where the Church is at today.  Tim to his credit despite defend­ing, and rightly so, his Church’s, and mine for that mat­ter, cur­rent method­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy; notes that we maybe are only effec­tive at reach­ing 40% of our com­mu­nity and shrink­ing.  I would argue our effec­tive­ness is less, as in like 20%.

One thing that Tim states that I find inter­est­ing is that we go to the mall, to a con­cert, to a sports venue ergo we go to Church to be spir­i­tual or to get our Church expe­ri­ence.  I would argue that even though we go to places to get things the Church is dif­fer­ent because it is who we are as fol­low­ers of Christ.  We have done our­selves a dis­ser­vice over hun­dreds if not the bet­ter part of a thou­sand years by mak­ing the Church a des­ti­na­tion and not a real­ity.  And now our cul­ture is look­ing for the real­ity of Jesus not the destination.

The chal­lenge for the Church mov­ing into the future is how do we live this out, speak this lan­guage in an authen­tic and rel­e­vant way.  I believe it will mean we rede­fine what we call suc­cess, we rede­fine what we con­sider works which is hard because it feels like it flies in the face of every­thing we know and has yet to be cre­ated.  But this is the place where the next inno­va­tion and cre­ation of God’s work in a new mil­le­nium will happen.

I can­not claim to have an answer but read­ily feel the heart of Jack…  A heart that cries out there must be more than this… Some­thing more mean­ing­ful… Some­thing where the true capac­ity of the gospel is unleashed and we can claim and praise God that Jesus’ words were true in that we have seen even greater things than those that fol­lowed Him on earth.  That we with all hon­esty can say to a man, woman, and child we have seen the move­ment of the Holy Spirit in a pow­er­ful and pro­found way that only God could have initiated.

Our world, our cul­ture.  Is look­ing for real, look­ing for tran­scen­dent, look­ing for mean­ing­ful, life chang­ing, and pur­pose­ful.  We are search­ing every­where for it… But will only ever find it in God.  I want to know that, I want my Church to know that, I want Cen­tral Chester County to know that.  I pray for that day, and pray that God would lead us toward our ver­sion of the answer which I believe won’t be so much of an answer but more of a jour­ney that molds and shapes itself over time as we exegete our cul­ture and God’s word firmly plant­ing our­selves in the gospel.

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Stories — The Church has left the building?

By joel | Published: May 25, 2010

Hey All,

Wanted to fol­low up on my last post about this past Sun­day with some sto­ries and quotes.  I hope to throw a pic­tures up soon as well. Enjoy!

but I will say how awe­some it was that every­one in our group pitched in where are strengths are. My mom and I tag-​​teamed on cook­ies (much bet­ter than we’ve ever worked together before … must be the size of the kitchen lol), George offered to tackle the onions, and Stephen gra­ciously taste-​​tested every­thing ;] Even the kids begged to do some­thing, and they did a great job plop­ping dough balls on the cookie sheets for us while the adults grabbed lunch. I found out from Mar­cia (via Face­book) that the meal we made is for one of Bridge of Hope’s men­tor­ing ses­sions. How cool is that? Here we were men­tor­ing each other, help­ing, shar­ing our sto­ries, and gen­er­ally get­ting to know each other, mak­ing food that will a group of men­tors to help out peo­ple who need it? – helping them, shar­ing sto­ries, get­ting to know each other and such. I also shared our church for­mat with one of my cowork­ers today, who’s in lead­er­ship at her church. She thought our idea was awe­some and wished her church was that kind of church. I can’t wait to do it again! (I heard a rumor about Octo­ber… will we rake at Arlene’s? She really needs it! About 8 youth did it last year, and it took 50+ bags to take care of most of it. I doubt we’ll be able to trick the youth again this year to go, though.)
The only down­side I can think of was how long we took, and we may have been the last group to fin­ish. It was the cook­ies that took for­ever, so per­haps next time we can think of doing brown­ies or a sheet cake. We didn’t leave Marcia’s until almost 2. (But the cook­ies tasted awe­some, so I guess that’s okay.)-

-Kelly
“I will say how awe­some it was that every­one in our group pitched in where are strengths are. My mom and I tag-​​teamed on cook­ies (much bet­ter than we’ve ever worked together before … must be the size of the kitchen lol), George offered to tackle the onions, and Stephen gra­ciously taste-​​tested every­thing ;] Even the kids begged to do some­thing, and they did a great job plop­ping dough balls on the cookie sheets for us while the adults grabbed lunch. I found out from Mar­cia (via Face­book) that the meal we made is for one of Bridge of Hope’s men­tor­ing ses­sions. How cool is that? Here we were men­tor­ing each other, help­ing, shar­ing our sto­ries, and gen­er­ally get­ting to know each other, mak­ing food that will a group of men­tors to help out peo­ple who need it? – helping them, shar­ing sto­ries, get­ting to know each other and such. I also shared our church for­mat with one of my cowork­ers today, who’s in lead­er­ship at her church. She thought our idea was awe­some and wished her church was that kind of church. I can’t wait to do it again!”

–Stephen
“I really enjoyed the fel­low­ship and get­ting to know 2 new men who attend MCC (Isaac & George).  All while doing some­thing good for the community.”

-Heidi
“I think it was a great way to get to know peo­ple from church while doing some­thing nice for the com­mu­nity.  A win win event! =:)”

–Penny
“We had a great group of kids at the park.  Because there were so many we were done very quickly.  West White­land had a cou­ple peo­ple out to guide us and it was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence.  I was so thank­ful to those doing child­care.  We were able to have the big­ger kids help in the gar­den but then go play when they were done.  The weather also held out so it was an enjoy­able day.  I can’t wait to go back with my fam­ily and see the butterflys”

–Rich
“We went to the home of Mar­ian (don’t know last name), in Cheyney.  We were met there by her son, Larry, who was wield­ing a chain saw when we arrived.  We were sup­posed to only have 6 vol­un­teers on the job, but were chal­lenged when we saw the work that was before us: clear­ing approx. 100 ft. of wild bushes, for­sythia plants that had grown 10 ft. high, sticker bushes, tree trim­ming, etc.  Undaunted, our orig­i­nal crew:  Kelly and Joe Joyce (sp.), Rad­cliff and Cathy Cun­ning­ham, and Lau­rel and Mac, dug right in.  How­ever, we were glad that we were joined later by Lau­rel and Jason Stroud, Angel­ica Tam­borino and Riley McDermott.

It was amaz­ing how much work our folks did in an hour and a half!  Joe’s pic­tures fea­ture promi­nently the high and wide stack of debris that was piled up after we con­cluded our work.  We also lined up for a “tug of war” as we pulled Larry’s lawn trac­tor out of the swamp their lower back yard had become.

Mar­ian and Larry were extremely pleased, and sur­prised, at what we had accom­plished dur­ing our time there.  I was, too”


–Stephanie
“My group went to see Ms. Dorothy Book in Thorn­dale.  What a sweet lady.  She made me laugh because she reminds me of my mother in law.  Loves her gar­den, real­izes she needs the help to main­tain it now, but watches your every move.  lol  But in all seri­ous­ness, she was so appre­cia­tive.  I was blessed to have a few gar­den­ers with me so they were able to chat her up about her dif­fer­ent types of plants and flow­ers.  She was offer­ing flow­ers and plants to everyone.…her way of try­ing to say thank you.  It was very sweet.  Joe A. took before pics.  Cora took the after pics.  So it will be cool to see the difference.

Every­one was all smiles and jumped in!  Dar­lene and I are both going back in the next cou­ple of weeks to help fin­ish one or two items that we could not do because of the wet­ness and damp­ness.    I was happy to see my team not mind get­ting down and dirty to help another.  It was a great way to start the day.” 

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The Church has left the building

By joel | Published: May 23, 2010

This morn­ing is a morn­ing that will live on in my mem­ory for a long time.  We have been preach­ing about the true nature of the Church.  One that is not con­fined to a build­ing or an hour but is unleashed to change the world through the power of Jesus.

This morn­ing at @MCCExton (Marsh Creek Church) sac­ri­ficed their nor­mal time together to serve our com­mu­nity.  When we came up with the idea were excited by the poten­tial but had no idea what to expect.  A lot was put into the morn­ing by some great peo­ple to make it orga­nized and well run.

Then we saw the weather fore­cast.  Rain! Ugh

I will admit as pumped as I was this for this morn­ing when I woke up I was not feel­ing it .  I fig­ured on a sunny day if we got like 2/​3 of our nor­mal group we would be doing good.  On a rainy day I have to admit I thought we were toast.  This would be a test of our heart.

Well I learned a lot about the Marsh Creek folk.  Nothin get’s these peo­ple down.  Not only did they show, but they showed strong.  They were jacked this morn­ing and ready to roll.

I had the tremen­dous for­tune of serv­ing along side the crew at the West White­land Park right off of Ship Rd. in Exton. I would say we had a strong crew and a ton of kids.  The play­ground was rolling strong, we had a game of kick ball going and our crew rocked out 20+ wheel bar­rows of mulch in under an hour.  It was some of the most fun I have had in a while just hang­ing out, talk­ing green thumb, mov­ing mulch, and lov­ing life.  It was a great way to spend time this morn­ing just lov­ing God, and lovin each other while we did our small part to bless the community.

This after­noon I feel so blessed.  I look for­ward to post­ing some more sto­ries and pics from this morn­ing here.

Much love and respect to my MCCEx­ton fam.  You guys, rock and reg­u­larly rock my world

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Why I can’t wait for Sunday!

By joel | Published: May 21, 2010

This is an open let­ter to our com­mu­nity, but if you read this and want to join us please, please come on by.  Unfor­tu­nately when we sent this out it got messed up so I am post­ing it here for the peo­ple.  Sorry for the complications.

Hey Marsh Creek Fam­ily,
I wanted to write you a quick note to tell you why I am so psy­ched about Sun­day.  We have been telling you for a few weeks we are doing some­thing spe­cial that requires you to wear com­fort­able clothes and bring a cam­era.  Shelby let you all know this past week that our some­thing spe­cial would serve the community.

Well the scoop is… This Sun­day the Church is leav­ing the build­ing.  We will gather at our nor­mal time at 10am (even though we know many of you all come at 10:10 — wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and begin our wor­ship ser­vice as nor­mal.  At the point of where the ser­mon nor­mally goes we will be head­ing out to par­tic­i­pate in one of five orga­nized projects around the com­mu­nity for the rest of the morning.

Why are we doing this…
1. Scrip­ture teaches that fol­low­ers of Jesus are known by their love, and our love is expe­ri­enced best when we, like Paul taught in 1 Cor. 9 this past week, become a ser­vant to all.

2. The Church is the peo­ple… that would be you all…  Not the build­ing or a ser­vice.  Wor­ship is more than just songs.  This is a tan­gi­ble way in which we will live lives of wor­ship, by serv­ing out of love along­side those we love.

3.  95% of peo­ple will hear, accept, and know Jesus love through a per­sonal rela­tion­ships.  This oppor­tu­nity places us in rela­tion­ship with our com­mu­nity directly and indi­rectly mak­ing it eas­ier for the com­mu­nity to under­stand what we are all about because they have seen what we are all about.  We want our lives to live in such a way our words can be heard.

4. It is a bless­ing and unique priv­i­lege to serve together as fam­i­lies and as a broader com­mu­nity together in rela­tion­ship.  We are really look­ing for­ward to see­ing sons and daugh­ters work­ing along­side Mom and Dad.  The next gen­er­a­tion work­ing along side other gen­er­a­tions.  Even those that are in lower ele­men­tary will be able to par­tic­i­pate in many if not all of these events.  This day will eas­ily be a high­light of our year, as our Bap­tism and Pic­nic have become a high­light for our Church fam­ily.  Why?  Because we are all together cel­e­brat­ing the good­ness of God in community.

What are we doing…
We have a num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties that range in inter­est and scope, take a look over them and come pre­pared with your 1st and 2nd preferences..

1. Serv­ing Exton and West White­land town­ship by mulching and plant­ing at the But­ter­fly Park they are devel­op­ing. (all mate­ri­als are pro­vided along with child­care at this loca­tion on the playground)

2.  Serv­ing Safe Har­bor by prepar­ing food that will be deliv­ered fresh that night to be served the next day.  Par­tic­i­pants can serve the food on Mon­day the 24th if they can but not required.   The menu and food that is needed will be pro­vided.  (Kids are welcome)

3.Serving Bridge of Hope by prepar­ing food that will be deliv­ered frozen to be served on Mon­day, June 14th.  Par­tic­i­pants can serve on the 14th if they can but not required. The menu and food that is needed will be pro­vided.  (Kids are welcome)

4.  Serv­ing Home of the Spar­row projects by help­ing an elderly lady, who lives in Thorn­dale.  They will be doing yard work & paint­ing a bird bath.  All nec­es­sary sup­plies are there.

5. Serv­ing Home of the Spar­row projects by help­ing an elderly lady who lives in West Chester.  They will be doing yard work.  All nec­es­sary sup­plies provided.

I can’t wait for this Sun­day because Jesus came to call us all into rela­tion­ship with Him, to know and expe­ri­ence His love, and to Go in His power and share that love with the world.  Every Sun­day I have the joy of wor­ship­ping along­side you all, study­ing God’s word, and relat­ing in com­mu­nity.  This Sun­day I can’t wait to wor­ship along­side you in ser­vice to our com­mu­nity, because I believe noth­ing will impact our world more than God’s peo­ple moved by prayer, empower by His Spirit, serv­ing the peo­ple He has called us to for the Glory of His King­dom and the Fame of His name.

I invite you all to join me as the Church leaves the build­ing and loves on the peo­ple of Cen­tral Chester County in a big way.

I can’t wait to see you on Sun­day
Joel

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Will you do something great?

By joel | Published: May 20, 2010

I have been read­ing John Maxwell’s Every­one Com­mu­ni­cates, Few Con­nect which is a book I highly rec­om­mend.  In my read­ing today I came across the fol­low­ing pas­sage I wanted to share with you all.

“Pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln, an incred­i­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tor, was known dur­ing the Civil War to attend a church not far from the White House on Wednes­day nights.  The preacher, Dr. Gur­ley, allowed the pres­i­dent to sit in the pastor’s study with the door open to the chan­cel so he could lis­ten to the ser­mon with­out hav­ing to inter­act with the crowd.

One Wednes­day evening Lin­coln and a com­pan­ion walked back to the White House after the ser­mon, the president’s com­pan­ion asked, “What did you think of tonight’s sermon?”

“Well” Lin­coln responded, “it was bril­liantly con­ceived, bib­li­cal, rel­e­vant, and well presented.”

“So it was a great ser­mon?” his com­pan­ion asked

“No” Lin­coln replied. “It failed.  It failed because, Dr. Gur­ley did not ask us to do some­thing great.”

That pas­sage to me sums up the bulk of preach­ing I have heard over a life­time and I feel unfor­tu­nately sums up most of the preach­ing I do (although I would say I am rarely bril­liant despite my desire to be rel­e­vant, bib­li­cal, and well presented).

This hits me hard because I firmly believe God cre­ated us for some­thing great, for great things, for things that Jesus promised would be even greater than what He saw or did while He was on earth.  Yet rarely are we asked to attempt great things or dare to do so.  Even this past week I preached on the impor­tance of being a mis­sion­ary to the peo­ple God has placed us among I feel I failed to call Marsh Creek Church to do some­thing great, some­thing epic, some­thing that will change the world.

To those who com­mu­ni­cate for a liv­ing, or even reg­u­larly in your daily life, what great thing are you chal­leng­ing those around you to do?  For me the gaunt­let has been thrown down.  Because I believe the Church should be the place where the great­est things in our lives are con­ceived.  Where lives are inspired to make dreams become real­ity.  Because we are loved by a God who empow­ers us to live the bless­ing of life He has given us to it’s fullest.

So now I ask you all to do some­thing great, the only thing that will impact a life for eter­nity.  Will you be will­ing to share your faith with some­one who God has placed in your life so that they have the oppor­tu­nity to know the God who loves them, for­gave them, and saved them for eter­nity so they could be loved, and know His presence.

I was just quoted a stag­ger­ing stat yes­ter­day by a good friend.  That 95% of peo­ple who come to know Jesus per­son­ally do so because of a per­sonal rela­tion­ship.  So Church ser­vices, evan­ge­lis­tic events, con­certs, etc. only account for 5%.  You are the X fac­tor, the dif­fer­ence maker, the one empow­ered by God to do great things for the glory of His King­dom.
I would argue that the great­est thing that can be done in life is to impact a life for the great­est pos­si­ble good.  You are sur­rounded by lives you have the oppor­tu­nity to impact.  Will you do some­thing great?

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My prayer for the Church

By joel | Published: May 12, 2010

Our staff read the fol­low­ing the other day in a book we are study­ing together.  It is part of a Fran­cis­can bene­dic­tion.  The prayer is one that ask’s God to wreck you in a good way.  To dis­quiet your soul in such a way that are starv­ing for more of Him.  To give you a Holy pas­sion for a cause, and finally for the fool­ish­ness to believe the impos­si­ble is pos­si­ble through God.

May God bless you with dis­com­fort at easy answers, half truths, and super­fi­cial rela­tion­ships, so that yo may live deep within your heart

May God bless you with anger at injus­tice, oppres­sion, and the exploita­tion of peo­ple, so that you may work for jus­tice,  free­dom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suf­fer from pain, rejec­tion, and star­va­tion, so that you may reach out your nad to com­fort them and to turn their pain into joy

And may God bless you with enough fool­ish­ness to believe that you can make a dif­fer­ence in this world, so that you can do what oth­ers claim is impossible.

Amen

This is a dan­ger­ous prayer.  This sort of prayer is a cat­a­lyst toward some­thing much big­ger than your­self, that will push you well out­side your com­fort zone, and into a place where God com­pletely fills the hori­zon, and every moment because you are com­pletely depen­dent on Him; And you are see­ing Him do amaz­ing things in, through, and around you.


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Is your best life lived in your dreams?

By joel | Published: May 4, 2010

I meant this post for a week ago and have since pro­cras­ti­nated.  The worse news is now that I am finally get­ting around to this post I am real­iz­ing it has been a month and half since I last wrote.  Shame on me!  I know I have dis­ap­pointed my loyal reader out there.  So who­ever you are, I am sorry and thank you for hang­ing strong.  I look for­ward to the day where I can make reader plural, account­ing for more read­ers.  But I digress.

A week ago at Marsh Creek Church we preached on the sin­gle life and God’s gift of sea­son in our life.  The encour­age­ment is to embrace the sea­son you are in.  Take hold of it, suck the mar­row out it, live the life you have for all it is worth.  Regard­less of our sta­tion in life we are more prone to notice what we don’t have, and com­ment on what we wish would hap­pen, or what we would like to get, achieve, become.

For many this means the best hours of their day are spent asleep.  In their dreams they find the per­fect life part­ner, have the per­fect career, the per­fect kids, the per­fect car, the per­fect min­istry, the per­fect Church, etc.  For many of us our best life is lived in our dreams.  Author and Pas­tor Erwin McManus does this sub­ject a ton more jus­tice in his book Wide Awake which is well worth the read.

It is a sad state that our best life is bot­tled up in the most inac­tive ours of our exis­tence and when we do come to and set our feet on the ground of real­ity we feel we have to set­tle.  I do not believe God cre­ated us for this.  When He cre­ated mankind He put mankind in par­adise and gave them pur­pose in rela­tion­ship with Him.  It was per­fect and I believe they were truly sat­is­fied.  They were liv­ing wide awake.

I want to encour­age us all to take stock of where we are and the dreams we desire to take hold of.  Prayer­fully lay these desires before the Lord, but also do some­thing about it.  Even if it is a small thing.  Stop wait­ing to live, and start liv­ing today.  The act of liv­ing, of pur­su­ing our God given call, pas­sions, dreams, pur­pose and tal­ent is our spir­i­tual acto of wor­ship.  Sun­day does not have to be the best and only hour you wor­ship.  It is the cel­e­bra­tion of all the wor­ship­ping you have been doing all week because you are alive, and liv­ing life!  Life is too short and too hard to set­tle for sec­ond best.  So live, cease the day, and praise God for the oppor­tu­nity to do so along with the bless­ings that come your way.

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Miracle Gro — Directors Cut — Leadership Math

By joel | Published: March 14, 2010

Today God just rocked my world as I had the oppor­tu­nity to preach on what the great­est unrec­og­nized truth’s of his scrip­ture.  God grows things.  That it.  Period.  End of story.  Meth­ods, Philoso­phies, Min­istry plans, strate­gic ini­tia­tives check your ego at the door because it don’t mat­ter if God aint grow­ing it.

This truth requires our depen­dence.  We have no con­trol over it.  We can try and man­u­fac­ture it, but the thin veil of our efforts will quickly be dis­cov­ered in the body count of burn out.

One of he things that unfor­tu­nately did not make the final cut on today’s ser­mon is the real math of God’s work to grow.  We mea­sure growth by sto­ries.  That is our math among lead­er­ship at MCChurch and I pray that is the math wher­ever you find your­self.  You see mar­ket­ing can make num­bers, big givers can pad num­bers, and nice build­ings are nice, but the real math is in the sto­ries of God’s work among the peo­ple He is impact­ing for the glory of His King­dom.  When our Church’s are filled with the exploits of God’s King­dom, the other things will fol­low as God gifts. And we thank God for those gra­cious gifts because they are all from Him, and Him alone.

So cel­e­brate the sto­ries my friends.  Tell the sto­ries, find the sto­ries.  Because the work of God is found in the sto­ries of real lives impacted by His love

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Wise like Jesus — Directors Cut — The next step

By joel | Published: March 11, 2010

This past week at MCChurch we grap­pled with the idea of being spir­i­tual peo­ple.  The path­way to spir­i­tu­al­ity begins with our spend­ing time with God in His word.  Who­ever you are, wher­ever you are I chal­lenge you to humbly place your­self in His word and receive the things His word teaches you.  Wres­tle with it, pray over it, dis­agree with it, argue with it, thank him for it, repent because of it.  As we lis­ten and respond we know God more.

As you embark on this jour­ney go out and buy a new Bible.  Just the other day I had a good friend pick me up a Bible from her book store.  I for­got the fun, and won­der of own­ing a new unmarked Bible.  I opened it for the first time last night with the antic­i­pa­tion of all the things God has to say to me, and how this book will walk with me through this jour­ney.  Some­times it is good to mix things up.  To go out and mark the jour­ney with a mile­stone that  marks some­thing new, the next step, or next leg of the jour­ney.  For a long time I have stud­ied out of two other Bibles one was my Dad’s from when I was a kid, and the other I received as a gift from my par­ents as a stu­dent.  Both are well marked we have jour­neyed a long way together.  They are tes­ta­ment to the lessons learned and the things taught to me by God.  And now I have a new Bible to walk this next leg of the jour­ney with me together.  To show me new insights as God’s Holy Spirit works in me to uncover the words He has for me to shape me into His likeness.

I know it’s cool these days to have your e-​​bible, you­ver­sion thing on your ipod, iphone, crack­berry, and soon to be ipad.  But there is some­thing spe­cial about the mate­ri­al­ity of a book, a new Bible wait­ing to be opened, to be read, to be high­lighted and under­lined.  To be marked up with thoughts, and dog eared to be remembered.

Regard­less of how you do it, do it, get in to it, to use a scrip­tural metaphor drink deep, feast.  As you do, you will be changed.  Guaranteed

“Stay thirsty my friends”

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