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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The Great Divide — Directors Cut

By joel | Published: February 21, 2010

As we have embarked on our weekly study of Corinthi­ans I am using this blog space to expand on the series, answer fol­low up ques­tions, and include infor­ma­tion that just some­times does not fit into the con­text of Sun­day morning.

In today’s episoded of Director’s Cut (because I can­not think of a bet­ter name for it) we find our­self tak­ing a sec­ond look at a tough pas­sage that gets in the face of us Church goers and hits at sen­si­tive areas.  And when­ever you dig at that sen­si­tiv­ity you expose pain, and pain is just no fun.

This morn­ing is no dif­fer­ent.  We are doing a com­plete study of 1 Corinthi­ans and in so doing we are gonna tackle some tough sub­jects for us all.  Paul charges straight out of the gate in his let­ter at one of the biggest prob­lems that plagues the Church at Corinth and has plagued Churches for cen­turies.  Divi­sions over lead­ers, style, meth­ods, and the­ol­ogy.  In this case our pas­sage looked at divi­sion over lead­ers.   These divi­sions will pop up again later in the book as we see how the Church was not lov­ing one another but rather caus­ing hurt.

That being said I may have come out of the gate a bit strong myself, this morn­ing.  Being that this morn­ings mes­sage was a tough one, I went right after it.  Unfor­tu­nately I was made aware that I caused a ques­tion or two con­cern­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of a larger prob­lem at MCChurch and may have come off a bit harsh.  I did not intend to imply any prob­lem through my strength in tone.

Let me first be really really clear.  There are NO major divi­sions at MCChurch or issues, at least that I am aware of.  We are sim­ply human like every­one else and can eas­ily have our lit­tle things, and do occa­sion­ally have our lit­tle things.

Did I have any spe­cific thing in mind no.  Did I use a spe­cific exam­ple or two from the past, yes, because I felt it served a pur­pose and exposed that some­times even our Church can get caught up in this stuff and that we all can do dam­age even with the best intentions.

Let’s face it we all want to believe we go to the best Church on earth that has no issues and totally han­dles every­thing with Grace and Love.  It is just not real­ity on this side of eter­nity even though we strive for it to the great­est degree that God allows.  I had also  hoped by using exam­ples from our com­mu­nity to appro­pri­ately set the expec­ta­tion of open and authen­tic con­ver­sa­tion drenched in love that we can under­stand because they are ours.

In fact allow me to applaud my MCChurch fam­ily for their unity in the face of chal­lenges over their his­tory that eas­ily could have ripped us apart.  Instead they have been an exam­ple of grace and love with their eyes firmly fixed on Christ as we jour­ney together in know­ing Him more.  I am proud to say I have expe­ri­enced the best the Church has to offer at MCChurch and wish the same expe­ri­ence for every­one any­where the Lord may find you.

Now I did keep it per­sonal to us as a Church and to Chris­tian­ity in gen­eral for the sake of reflec­tion in hope­fully our jour­ney to be open, hon­est, and self aware of the things that can drag us apart.  But here is where I think an impor­tant part of the con­text may have been miss­ing in my method and per­haps my madness.

I have had a front row seat to two pow­er­ful min­istries make unfor­tu­nate errors in han­dling sit­u­a­tions that could have eas­ily been addressed in a much health­ier and holis­tic fash­ion (in my opin­ion, oth­ers may dis­agree).  The fall out was a sig­nif­i­cant body count of peo­ple who left those churches, some who fell away from Chris­tian­ity all together, and even more who bare the scars of being wounded by those unfor­tu­nate events.  The root, going way back to the begin­ning was the lack of acknowl­edg­ing and deal­ing openly and lov­ingly with dif­fer­ences that when left untouched in the dark fes­tered and turned into divi­sion, and resulted in split.

In addi­tion I have sat through ser­mons that spent more time trash­ing every other Church in the local area than it did focus­ing on the con­text of scrip­ture or the per­sonal appli­ca­tion to the folks sit­ting right there (this thank­fully was not at MCChurch).  I have heard of pas­tors from Churches in the same com­mu­nity be unwill­ing to talk with one another never mind find a com­mon cause to work toward in serv­ing their com­mu­nity.  I have heard of one Church call­ing another Church ter­ri­ble names, and for what.  That is not good enough!  Fol­low­ers of Jesus can do bet­ter and should do bet­ter.  And my hope, prayer, and deep deep desire is to see Churches be bea­cons of love, known for their uncom­mon unity and sol­i­dar­ity in purpose.

So this morn­ings topic was per­sonal to me because I have felt the effect of what seemed like inno­cent dif­fer­ences remain unac­knowl­edged, unowned, and undis­cussed turn into chasms that could not be crossed.  I have walked with friends, good friends, who were crushed under the wheels of it, and have felt the sep­a­ra­tion of bro­ken rela­tion­ships because of these things.  And I want and pray for bet­ter at MCChurch and your Church too.  It’s just not worth it.

So I went a lit­tle strong today because it’s per­sonal, because I love my MCChurch fam­ily too much, and I love my broth­ers and sis­ters out there and their Churches too much to see it hap­pen any­more.  Lord will­ing MCChurch will see God’s work con­tinue to be made even more alive in our weak­ness and any source of poten­tial divi­sion will be the cat­a­lyst for inno­va­tion, and the bedrock for cre­ativ­ity as God takes the things in us that could make us weak to show His strength.  My prayer is that if God con­victs the things unspo­ken will move from dark­ness to light, from unspo­ken to spo­ken, from hid­den to exposed, because that is the place that God works, con­victs, rec­on­ciles and heals.

I pray every­one would expe­ri­ence a healthy Church that is marked by love and under­stand­ing even when we take on the not so fun top­ics.  May we prayer­fully be guided by God to unity by humility.

My prayer is the appeal of Paul in 1 Cor. 1:10 that we would be uni­fied in mind and thought.  The pic­ture here is that of a fish­ing net being mended together.  Bring two pieces together for one pur­pose (catch­ing fish).   What a cool picture.

I guar­an­tee I will not always get it right, but I will do my best to make it right as I am a work in progress.

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The Power of Dreams

By joel | Published: February 18, 2010

I had the unique priv­i­lege and edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­nity to spend a por­tion of my day talk­ing with a prin­ci­pal of, what is in my opin­ion, one of the great design firms and inno­va­tors cur­rently out there today.  Some­times life throws us those neat lit­tle treats, the gifts that we get to enjoy.  I have had the chance to expe­ri­ence their work, be sur­rounded by the spaces they have designed that were inspired by dreams.  It is a unique expe­ri­ence to both enter into and be moved by a space.  By the place­ment of walls, win­dows, col­ors, and other stuff that elic­its feel­ings and response.  Since that con­ver­sa­tion I have spent time pray­ing over the dream here at MCChurch.  The pos­si­bil­i­ties, the future, the impact, the role we will play in God’s grander story of His King­dom and His peo­ple yes­ter­day, today, and tomor­row.  Just to spend some time won­der­ing what is it that God is invit­ing us into, what is it that He will do, what chap­ter of the story is He about to author.

I was struck by what a unique and won­der­ful gift it is to dream.  To won­der, to be cap­tured by an idea that knows no bounds, that can’t pos­si­bly fail, that will change lives, pos­si­bly even change the world.  Noth­ing can stop us in our dreams, pos­si­bil­i­ties are lim­it­less, bound­aries non exis­tence, the world is our oyster.

I began to think about what God was dream­ing and what he already new before the world was ever formed.  When He could have done what­ever He wanted when water could be pur­ple and the sky orange, and meat­balls could rain from the sky, and a warm sum­mer breeze smell like choco­late.  Yet the world we live in is His dream spo­ken.  Form put to ideas, a uni­verse that cries out to the nature of it’s cre­ated order and points in wor­ship to it’s creator.

I have spent a lot of time reflect­ing on Joshua in the first chap­ter of the book that bears his name and have won­dered what it must have been like to hear the voice of God so clearly.  And then to look across the river Jor­dan into a new land, a land God promised to Abra­ham, and to won­der, to dream about what it would be like to finally live there.  To lead the peo­ple there, and see God build His peo­ple there.  What did Joshua dream?  How scared was he?  What did he pray?  How alive did he feel in that moment.

Sadly, to roughly quote one of my favorite authors, we expe­ri­ence most of our dreams in our sleep…  Few dare to dream wide awake, to live to see the real­ity of a dream come to life, to risk com­mu­ni­cat­ing the dream, to chase the dream, jour­ney toward its real­iza­tion and expe­ri­ence the exhil­a­ra­tion of vic­tory and the sting of fail­ure along the way with all the lessons to be learned and sto­ries to be told.

I pray for myself, my fam­ily, my Church, and for any­one else who should stum­ble across these ran­dom thoughts.  I pray for the bold­ness to dream wide awake and to be will­ing to risk to live the dream. And I hope some day to hear the sto­ries, because the good Lord knows they will be great stories.

To quote Steven Tyler  “Dream on”

Feel­ing a bit cheesy now, until next time

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The Corinthians — The Dream — Director’s cut

By joel | Published: February 16, 2010

So I hope over the com­ing weeks to blog some of the stuff from our new series at Marsh Creek Church enti­tled The Corinthi­ans.  This past Sun­day we kicked it all off by look­ing back at the plant of the Corinthian Church by Paul.  What I found so unique about this par­tic­u­lar Church plant was Paul’s method­ol­ogy was a dif­fer­ent than in pre­vi­ous plants.  Paul’s nor­mal M.O. beyond going to the jews first was to argue for the gospel at the cen­ter of town with the other philoso­phers of the day in a Bat­tle Royal of Philoso­phers.  In Corinth, Paul engages in the busi­ness com­mu­nity by work­ing along side some friends and devel­ops rela­tion­ships with those he comes into con­tact with in the com­mu­nity.  And through this net­work of rela­tion­ships Acts 18 notes “many believed and were bap­tized”.  Paul’s method­ol­ogy in Corinth fit the cul­ture he found him­self in.  He adapted, with­out com­pro­mis­ing the gospel.

The take away, each of us has been placed by God exactly where He wants, for the pur­pose of His King­dom and the Glory of His name.  And it is God who is already at work around us and is just eager for us to see what He is doing in the peo­ple we are already sur­rounded by, so that they can know Him, like we know Him.

The thought I wanted to add was one that unfor­tu­nately got cut from the ser­mon I deliv­ered on Sun­day.  At least in my opin­ion some­times a ser­mon like this can be deliv­ered in a way that feels like a “bring your friends to Church to get saved and pad our num­bers in the seats” ser­mon.  What I wished I had said and had writ­ten in my orig­i­nal man­u­script is that we judge our God ordained suc­cess at Marsh Creek Church by sto­ries.  We look to the sto­ries of lives changed by the mirac­u­lous work of God using us as He sees fit in the places He has put us.  We look to the sto­ries of God’s redemp­tive work in draw­ing us close to Him and giv­ing us the courage to take the next step of faith.  We look to the sto­ries of those who have been so impacted by know­ing God that they com­mit to serve Him with their life in the places God is call­ing them to.

Sto­ries are the tan­gi­ble evi­dence and expe­ri­ence of God’s work in the peo­ple he loves so dearly.  At the end of the day that is what we pray for.  That is when we know we are lis­ten­ing and respond­ing to God’s voice, when we are work within His will, and the story He is writ­ing in Cen­tral Chester County.

Some­times some good stuff get’s cut from a ser­mon acci­den­tally.  But to me this thought was too impor­tant.  I don’t write this to sound super spir­i­tual, or to imply I some­how have arrived.  Far from it my friends.  Writ­ing this put’s it out there so you all can hold me account­able, because let’s be hon­est crappy atten­dance and a tight bud­get are not fun.  But together we can pray more care­fully, and look more intently to what God is doing, and then go obe­di­ently to join Him.

So in clos­ing to quote the most inter­est man on earth “stay thirsty my friends”.  Thirsty for the work of God in your life, and then to pour that work into the lives of oth­ers for the Glory of God.

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Help for Haiti

By joel | Published: January 14, 2010

I fig­ured it high time to dust off the old blog and engage the world again.  Iron­i­cally I find no bet­ter time than to offer some thoughts and reflect on this weeks events.

The dis­as­ter in Haiti is per­sonal for me because I have been there and have had a chance to be impacted by their peo­ple.  Their faith, their gen­eros­ity, their hos­pi­tal­ity despite their worldly poverty showed me how rich they truly are.  What was crushed in a few short moments was largely built by hand over weeks, months, and years.  Each cement col­umn and floor was hand stirred and poured by pass­ing buck­ets of cement.  Many patiently waited for a long time to receive the hos­pi­tals and schools that would pro­vide a higher qual­ity of life and an oppor­tu­nity to impact their neigh­bor­hood for Gods King­dom.  It breaks my heart to know what was so painstak­ingly built now lays crushed around them.  I am glad to see the world rally to help them.  I am greatly encour­aged to see the response of the Church in this time of cri­sis to bring aid as well.  In many ways lead­ing the charge as they have been there so long work­ing with the peo­ple of Haiti.  My prayer for them as a nation is that despite their sig­nif­i­cant suf­fer­ing, and untold hor­ror this moment will be a turn­ing point for them.  A time in which we come together and help them rebuild.  And in rebuild­ing we are able to give them far more than we have ever given before.  I pray they will be over­whelmed by the gen­eros­ity of the world and espe­cially Amer­ica and more impor­tantly the Church.  I pray that in rebuild­ing we can offer them things that will work to get rid of hunger, poverty, and dis­ease that plagued them because they often could not get or pro­vide for these needs.  I pray the images we see on TV would haunt us, dis­turb our souls and move us to action.  Because as dear as Haiti is to me, this is just one of many heart­break­ing real­i­ties around the world wait­ing on the rest of the world to look in and see and move to action.

The Church is alive and well down in Haiti and God has been doing unbe­liev­able things.  They have a strong faith, and stead­fast hope in the Lord.  I was encour­aged today as I was scan­ning the news to hear that they were gath­er­ing in town squares, fields, and open spaces to pray, com­fort one another, and wor­ship together.  In their grief they con­tinue to seek God, despite the sig­nif­i­cant dis­as­ter they face.

If you are part of the Marsh Creek Church fam­ily we will take a spe­cial offer­ing this week to aid in the recov­ery.  We have also been col­lect­ing shoes and have found out those shoes will go to the peo­ple of Haiti.  I can tell you that this need alone is sig­nif­i­cant and will go along way in the rebuild­ing effort.  Many do not have shoes and are sig­nif­i­cantly hin­dered by hav­ing to go bare­foot on unpaved roads that are lit­tered with streams of raw sewage and trash.  This was before the dis­as­ter.  Now they must con­tend with impass­able roads and col­lapsed build­ings.  Shoes for their feet will impact them a great deal.  So please plan to come pre­pared.  For those who may read this from other Church com­mu­ni­ties take the lead as God moves on your heart to respond.

And let us allow this to be one more moment that moves us closer to the heart of Christ as we hum­ble our­selves to serve our broth­ers and sis­ters in need.

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Journey — The Beginning

By joel | Published: October 24, 2009

Tonight, actu­ally all day I have been pray­ing for tomorrow’s lead­er­ship team meet­ing.  I am both excited and ner­vous.  We are about to head out on a new jour­ney as a Church.  We are try­ing to under­stand our­selves, our his­tory, and finally and most impor­tantly our jour­ney in God’s story.  That is the most excit­ing part of the whole thing.  The dis­cov­ery of Marsh Creek Church’s role in God’s story.  What is he doing around us and how can we join him in the work He is already doing.  So often we lay the best made plans and ask God to bless them.  I am pray­ing that we get a strong vision for God’s dream and join Him in His work in Cen­tral Chester County.  I am pray­ing for unity for our team.  An unity of vision, and direc­tion that can only come through God’s pres­ence among us.  I am pray­ing like many other Churches these days for God’s favor.  He is the builder of His Church and we sim­ply wait on Him and join Him in what he is doing.  That’s when it becomes a God thing, and some­thing so far beyond what we can do that it should be the only thing we want to be a part of.  I am pray­ing we can think real big, super big, God sized big.  I can’t wait for the jour­ney.  I will keep you posted here as to What God is doing and where things are headed.

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Our souls go hungry

By joel | Published: October 16, 2009

I was read­ing Eccle­si­astes 6 this morn­ing and came across verse 7.

“We work to feed our appetites,
mean­while our souls go hungry”

Those words hit me.  How much time do we spend feed­ing our appetites.  I think the author hit the nail on the head for the com­mon con­di­tion of the Amer­i­can Church goer.  We spend so much time chas­ing after all the things we have sur­rounded our­selves with, we strive after more and more and to what end.  When are we sat­is­fied and mean­while all the time we go hun­gry and are in fact, prob­a­bly starving.

It’s a rainy cold day here in Pa, but is one of those days where you long for a soul sat­is­fy­ing meal like spaghetti and meat­balls, a good stew, lasagna, hot choco­late, or what­ever else is your thing. Some­thing that just warms you from the inside out, makes the whole house smell good.

It’s also a good day to take stock of what your appetite longs for and ask God for soul sat­is­fac­tion (which would also be a real good band name now that I see it in print).  Pray that God would put you in touch with your soul hunger, and that He would give you the heart to pur­sue him for the sat­is­fac­tion of your deep­est needs and desires.  That He becomes the only source.  And we rec­og­nize all the rest as His blessing.

I long to have my soul sat­is­fied, and I am pray­ing the same for you

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Monday Morning Quarterback — Sunday

By joel | Published: October 4, 2009

Today was another great day at MCC.  Here are just some thoughts about this week­ends stuff.

–Yesterday’s Mon­ster Yard Sale was a big time suc­cess.  The Park­ing lot was packed all day with all sorts of peo­ple con­nect­ing.  It was such a bless­ing to see the fruit of all the hard work put in.  We made enough money to help with some long over­due needs for Children’s and youth.  Spe­cial thanks to Lau­rel Mcder­mott, Lau­rel Stroud, Kristin Marks, and Heather Stieger.  With­out their hard and tire­less work this event would not have been nearly as suc­cess­ful.  They rocked and I am so grate­ful to have them as lead­ers as at the Church

–Expe­ri­enced the bless­ings of God’s pro­vi­sion for good weather for the Yard Sale and the Wed­ding I did yes­ter­day which was out­side.  It is always a hum­bling honor to cel­e­brate God’s work among peo­ple who love him as a rela­tion­ship comes together in per­fect weather.

–Saw a big time response to Gen­eros­ity Can…  Buckle up Chester County, Marsh Creek Church is com­ing to bless your socks off.

–Was blessed  to have my good friend Shelby Abbott rock it at the Evan­ge­lism Class after Church.  He had a great turn out, and I am pray­ing for big time returns on the invest­ment made to reach the world for Christ.

–As a Church we are step­ping up to the plate with our tithe.  I am look­ing for­ward to see how God will work.  This is a big time step of faith for us as a Church in tough eco­nomic times.

–I am hum­bled God’s pro­vi­sion in a very busy week that every­thing got done, and peo­ple were blessed.  He is gracious.

–Pray­ing God will use us as we lay our trea­sure, tal­ents, and time before His thrown for the pur­pose of His Kingdom

–Glad to see new faces and some faces that have not been around for awhile.  See­ing the Church com­mu­nity do it’s thing never gets old.

–Thank you God for your love and work in and through us.  Pray­ing for more great things this week

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Basic for Granted

By joel | Published: September 27, 2009

This past week I was struck with an inter­est­ing and unex­pected life les­son.  After a blessed Mon­day, thanks to a gen­er­ous invi­ta­tion to a great round of golf, I came down that after­noon with a small cough.  Later that night the cough felt like a rag­ing fire in my lunges and I was hav­ing a hard time breath­ing com­fort­ably.  Tues­day fol­lowed filled with more cough­ing and more short­ness of breath.  Finally at mid­night on Tues­day after a bat­tery of cold and flu meds I woke up and could not catch my breath.

Despite my best effort I could not take a sat­is­fy­ing breath.  It was if some­one was sit­ting on my chest.  At this point I became just a lit­tle wor­ried.  I went down­stairs and asked my wife to use her finally tuned med­ical skills to deter­mine if I was just being a wuss or if I should head to the ER to get looked at.  She sug­gested the lat­ter, thankfully.

I know what idiot dri­ves him­self to the ER while he can’t breath well.  I am a guy, what else is there to say.

On the way there, still try­ing to take a breath I was struck by how much time I had spent think­ing about this basic gift of breath­ing.  Each day we breath in an out thou­sands of times, in a life time mil­lions maybe even bil­lions of times and yet we never think about this most basic life sus­tain­ing bless­ing that most of us enjoy with rel­a­tive ease and security.

Finally after a thank­fully short ER process they hooked me up with some Oxy­gen, and some breath­ing treat­ments to open up my lungs and I was finally able to take deep soul sat­is­fy­ing breaths.  I felt my shoul­ders, back, neck, and chest relax and was so thank­ful to be able to breath again.

I know, get to the point, right.  While I was hav­ing this expe­ri­ence, maybe it was the lack of air, or the delu­sion of sick­ness… but songs like “this is the air I breath” started going through my mind… and “as a deer pants for water, so my soul longs after thee”.  This idea of long­ing that which we take most for granted became a vivid real­ity.  More impor­tantly the spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance of breath, of life giv­ing air, of the spirit of God in whose image we have been imprinted with and whose Spirit dwells within those who call Him Lord.

So many of us take His pres­ence for granted.  His sus­tain­ing of the most basic ele­ments of life… our beat­ing heart, our flow­ing blood, our breath, our brain… He sus­tains, gra­ciously sus­tains, every aspect that is crit­i­cal to our sur­vival that we never even think about until it is chal­lenged.  We for­get God, above all, until we notice we no longer expe­ri­ence His pres­ence.  And much like my dif­fi­culty in breath­ing made me appre­ci­ate breath­ing, we notice when life get’s dif­fi­cult how long it has actu­ally been since we have had a long sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence in just bask­ing in the pres­ence of God.  In just tak­ing a deep, long, soul fill­ing, breath of Christ’s pres­ence in our life and enjoy the ben­e­fit of His close­ness.  And as so many of have said, if God no longer feels close, guess how moved.

So take a moment, a few moments, and spend time rec­og­niz­ing God’s gra­cious and His pres­ence in the world.  Thank him for His pres­ence even if you have not noticed it recently.  And more impor­tantly thank Him for all the gifts He gra­ciously gives that you and I never even noticed until they are taken away or inhib­ited in any way.  Bask in His pres­ence, fill your soul with the pres­ence of His love, med­i­tate on His word and allow His word’s to sink deep.  Do some­thing He has gifted you to enjoy!

Breath, breath deep.  God is good

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