This Is My Life...

I have been really introspective lately. I dont know why and I am not sure that I like it. Not that I dont like self examination, it's just that I know it leads to change and I am not all that big of a fan of change. I really listened to the words of the Switchfoot song some time ago and the words are stuck in my head..."This is your life are you who you want to be?" So that is my question I ask myself every morning and every chance that I get now when I think of some of the parts of my life that make me, well, me. I am going to take some time here and write about them as they come to mind. Not because I want anyone to read them , but obviously I don't care if anyone does because I am posting them here, but because I want to be able to come back to what I have written and see just how I am measuring mylife. This is the Measurement of Mike afterall! I think I am really doing this because I am growing out of my comfort zone and I know I am capable of so much more and called to much more than I am doing now. I dont know what I expect to find...yeah I do i just think I dont want to see it. Here I go....

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Perspective

I heard this quote the other day, I forgot who I heard say it, but it has stayed with me since I heard it and this morning it is really resonating with my heart.

"To the world I am one, but to One I am the world."

What an amazing thought.
Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

I like Starbucks--Not This Much

I like Starbucks--Alot! I pass several of them on my way to various places. I am a regular at several stores--I spend alot of time writing in the ones near my house and I chill in one while mom gets her dialysis done. Never ever would I have ever thought to hit all of the Starbucks in my area in one day. This guy did though! I think he hit something like 171 stores in the Manhattan area. Crazy Caffeine Junky! That is just a cry for help. Check it:





Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

God--The Show Off

"There is a pattern that I see repeated throughout the Scriptures: Sometimes God won't intervene until something is humanly impossible. And he usually does it just in the nick of time." --Mark Patterson, In a Pit With a Lion On a Snowy Day

Isn't that the truth. Doesn't it always seem like God doesn't move in a situation that is rough on you until it seems there is no possible way out. It is almost like being in the deep end of the pool and not knowing how to swim and feeling yourself going under. You have gasped your last breath of air and have just about resigned yourself to the fact that this might be the last breath you will take, and then from no where someone jumps in and saves you. The bible says in Jeremiah that at just the right time God hears our cries for help and reaches down to save us. That is the hard part of this thing called faith. We have to trust that God knows exactly when that right time is. It would seem like the situations that help form our faith are the ones that are the roughest on us; the ones that push us beyond our known limits of endurance without completely breaking us to the point of no return. We come out of those situations with a deeper faith and trust in God than we had before we entered our rough times--that is if we maintain our trust in God and don't give up before we have had the chance to let God be God in our situations. I think the best part of being God must be the ability to show off when ever you want to. He lets us get to the point we are almost at our breaking point and then intervenes and puts everything back in its right place and restores order in our lives. I am Glad I serve a God like that. He allows me to get pushed out of my comfort zone and into situations where I have rely on Him for bigger and bigger intervention so my faith is built up and my relationship and dependence on Him increase.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Aquafina = Tap Water In A Bottle

=

I saw this while browsing the news and a sense of justification came over me! I have been saying for a very long time that bottled water from the big soda companies was a scam. The whole selling ice to eskimos thing comes to mind. According to new reports Pepsi is now going to put the fact that Aquafina water comes from a public source. Meaning it is tap water. The only place I would feel safe drinking tap water is in San Francisco where the majority of their water comes from Yosemite and needs very little processing to make it drinkable.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!

Mike

Tomorrow Never Comes

Driving home from an appointment today I had a random thought about tomorrow. It never comes. Yesterdays always happen. Another one is added every time we go to sleep and wake up again. It is always today. I am sitting in Starbucks right now waiting for my truck to get its new tires on--today. I am not in Starbucks tomorrow. I may plan to go to Starbucks and write tomorrow, but if I do make it there I will be doing it today again. I never get to work in tomorrow. Every time I am doing something I was going to do tomorrow, it is always today. Maybe that is why the bible says not to worry about tomorrow. Its pointless...it never comes.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing TODAY!
Mike

A Walk to Remember

Tonight I took a walk. This may not seem like a big deal to most folks, but I have a hard time walking and use a cane to help balance myself. Tonight's walk was something of an eye opener for me. I realize just how great is. I live in a great neighborhood, that is partially undeveloped so I was able to enjoy a lot of nature tonight. The sky, the stars, the sounds--it was just beautiful. It made me almost sad because I do live in such a good neighborhood. I realized that I am part of the fortunate few--not everyone gets to enjoy the luxury of walking around their neighborhood alone at night. Even if they did, very few have the time to walk around their neighborhood just for the sake of taking a walk. You never know what you take for granted until you almost can't do it anymore. Sometimes we just need to slow down in our lives and see the things we miss when we are going full speed ahead.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Not Why But Who

"The question we need to ask ourselves when God allows us to go through hard times is not why but who? In the mind of God, pain always has two intended recipients: us and someone else. If we choose not to take what we've experienced and find some way of using it to help other people, we miss a large part of why God allowed us to suffer in the first place." --Brian Jones, Second Guessing God

This switch in the mode of thinking can be powerful. It changes our situation from "poor me" to who can I help with my my learning through suffering. It puts us into the service oriented line of thinking that we are taught as disciples. It allows us to have some power in our suffering instead of us feeling completely worked over and powerless.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Tapas and Tithing

Last night I went to a bible study that some friends have in a store front . The leader said something that really made sense to me. We always hear preachers talking about giving to God and tithing. People really have it confused when they think that they are giving to God when they are tithing. God said that the first tenth of what we have is His. When we give that to God we are giving what is already His to begin with. When we have not given anything out of the remaining 90% of what we have left then we essentially have not yet given anything to God. How incredible is it that we have a hard time as the Body of Christ giving what He has said is already His, let alone giving anything that is ours to Him. I just thought that was a great point that she brought up.

We also happened upon a great restaurant last night across the shopping center where the bible study was held. The restaurant was called Honda Ya. It billed itself as a Japanese Pub. everything on the menu was like appetizer portion. I pretty much considered it a Japanese tapas bar. The food was excellent. We grubbed on California rolls, kalbe ribs, tempura, sausage tempura, and some tonkatsu. There is some stuff there for everyone. I was with my mom and she is not a big raw stuff eater so I didn't try any of that. their menu is extensive and it looks like I found a hangout.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

New Car Smell of Faith

I have always believed that there was more to being a follower of Christ than just saying a cute little prayer. It has been an annoying presence in my life to think that the church has failed new Christians in huge ways by not telling them of sacrifice and service. We promise them that their lives will be changed, but often times it is not the immediate change that they were expecting. They get through the honeymoon period of salvation where they tell all their friends and family that they are saved and how their lives are changed and then that feeling ends. The salvation buzz wears off and they realize that the changes they were expecting to see haven't happened yet and the miracles they were waiting on haven't manifested themselves yet. Brian Jones in his book Second Guessing God says that for him when he started having doubts it was like the new car smell wore off on his faith.

By the third page of his book I knew I had found a new favorite author. The first of the best passages in the book (and there are many) comes from a conversation between him and one of his mentors.

Brian: "My faith in God right now is like a walk on the beach. Ive taken off my shoes, and as i stand at the water's edge, the tide has started to roll across my feet. It feels wonderful. Up to this point my spiritual journey had been incredible, but in the last six months doubt has begun to paralyze me. It's like when the water goes back out to the ocean. It is washing away the sand underneath me, and my feet keep sinking lower and lower and lower. If this keeps up, there wont be anything left to stand on."

Mentor: "Brian, I have stood where you're standing. Ive felt the water cascade across my feet. I know how wonderful it feels. But Ive also had the water go back out to sea. I've felt the sand get washed out from underneath my feet...When the last grain of sand is finally gone, you're going to discover that you're standing on a rock."

That is awesome. First to know that we don't go through things that others around us haven't been through. Second to know that as deep as the sand around us might seem, we have a foundation that we have built our house and our faith on. When it seems like we are sinking and have no hope left we will hit our rock and that will keep us from sinking any further. Sometimes I think those rough times hit our lives because we need to get back to the basics of our faith and our walk with Christ. those times usually help us get closer to Him and reinforce the faith that helped us start our walk with Him to begin with.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing

Traveling Light and Second Guessing God

I have one go to book that I have read over and over again, and with each time I complete it it ministers something new to my heart. That book is Traveling Light by Max Lucado. This book seems to have something encouraging to say on just about every issue of life I have encountered. Lucado spills biblical truths in a true storyteller's fashion. I absoultely, whole heartedly recommend this book to anyone who needs a little encouragement and a some relief from the baggage of life.

I have asked myself to read much more than I have in the past and one of the books I picked up was Second Guessing God by Brian Jones. I have been through the low places in my walk with God, where He seems so far away and so quiet. It is almost as if I am walking alone and have been forgotten by the One who said He would never leave me or forsake me. But to say that or to confess that to anyone let alone myself seems to be admitting that my faith is not solid and I am not the big spritual giant I want to be. While I don't think anyone except God could ever answer why we go through the things we go through here on this earth, Brian Jones takes a great stab at it, joining personal anecdotes with quotes from spiritual giants and of course the Bible. His writing is easy to follow and after looking at my copy of the book I can see he leaves a lot to be reconsidered after you read through it the first time (as my copy is all marked up). I reccommend this book to anyone who is going through those low times yourself. Not becaause it has all of the answers but because it humanizes and normalizes what you are going through, therefore making it easier to understand and to deal with.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!

Mike

Books, Their Covers, Photoshop and a Spiritual Application

I don’t use Photoshop or any of the other big photo editors. I have always thought that a photo should look exactly the way the original subject looked when you shot it. I saw something on YouTube yesterday that kind of freaked me out. It showed a photo from the beginning of the shoot to the end where the model ended up on the billboard. They changed her facial structure, eye color and all sorts of things about her. It was truly interesting to see that a person can make somebody look pretty much any way they want to. I have always heard that you should not judge a book by its cover—but I still do. I mean if the publisher can’t get you interested in the cover how can they intrigue you enough to picking up the book to read it? People are another story. There are some people who attract you because of the way that they look and when you start to talk to them you realize that is the extent of the attraction. Others don’t attract you at all through the eyes yet they captivate you with what is pouring out of them in terms of words and personality. I think the second group of people has been the ones that have drawn me in the most. They have been the ones that have the most into my life. As I took some more time and thought about the whole Photoshop video I saw, I began to think about how we all do this to a certain extent with ourselves in our daily lives. We try and change the way that we look or the way that we seem to those who are around us. We try to fix ourselves to be more appealing or we alter ourselves in ways in hopes of hiding our flaws. We try to represent ourselves in ways that are not true to who we really are. If we are not happy with who we really then I think we need to look inside of ourselves to see how we can reconcile who we are and how we feel about ourselves. If we are looking to change ourselves to be more appealing to others around us then I think we need to ask ourselves why these other people are so important to us that we would want to be something we are not for them. This has been something that I have struggled with my entire life. Never feeling good enough. Never feeling cool enough. Always looking for the next trend I could adopt as my own. I am working on this and have been for quite some time. I am thankful and remind myself that no matter how much I try to Photoshop my image, God isn’t fooled. He looks on the inside. He sees my heart. There is no using Photoshop there, that is constant and is only changed by filling with the Love of Christ or the lack of doing so.

Thriller...The Prison Remake

I have nothing against a person being punished for crime. I won't mention my views on capital punishment or anything of the like. I do however believe there is such a thing a s cruel and unusual punishment. I don't think it has anything to do with Arizona's Tent City, or revived chain gangs. I don't think that it has anything to do with making the inmates wearing pink jumpsuits or pink underwear. I found the definition of cruel and unusual punishment abroad in the Philippines. There is a prison in Cebu that has taken cruel and unusual to the cruelest and most unusual levels. They have made their inmates learn the dance moves to Michael Jackson's Thriller. I think the UN or Red Cross should step in immediately. Take a look:




The problem isn't the Thriller video by itself, they also made them choreograph routines to the music from Sister Act--now that is a crime against humanity!

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Quotable Quotes--Seth Godin , The Dip

"Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can't see it. At the same time, the smartest people are realistic about not imagining light when there isn't any."--Seth Godin, The Dip

There have been times in my life when I wanted to make a name for myself and thought that I had the perfect idea or project that would help me do just that. I focused most of my time and my energy on the creation and implementation of that idea. Not only that I would invest the time and energies of the people that I had working for me on my pet project. When it became even possible that the idea wasn't going to be successful, I focused more of my energy and time and more of my resources (human and otherwise) on the success of my great idea. I had Wizard of Oz syndrome--Pay no mind to what's behind the curtain. I tried to force myself and those who were working on the project to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Putting a spin on a slowly or rapidly failing idea was a lot easier than admitting that it was a failure. In the process I wasted (squandered really) my time and energy, and that of the people I had working on the project, on a project that would have been better being sent out to pasture with the other well intentioned but unsuccessful ideas. It would have been better to accept the idea as a failure and move on to the next one. How can I apply this to the spiritual life?

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

A Rare Breed...

I take my mom to dialysis at 4:45 three times a week. I drop her off then I head to the Starbucks that is in the same shopping center. I was noticing today (maybe because I actually slept last night and am more lucid than normal) that the barristas are a rare breed. Not all of them but just the ones that open the store in the morning. They are definite morning people. They have energy, they have senses of humor and they have personality. I was shocked this morning, because a couple of them actually made me smile before 9am--a feat almost unheard of. I walked in to the store this morning hearing one of them say he grew up a "poor black child." Of course it was funny because he is a white guy. When I was a manager for the largest retailer in the world my associates knew not to talk to me about anything that was not a pressing matter until at least 9am or 2 cups of coffee whatever came first. I take my hat off to the people that decide to make people their morning coffee and try to make them smile first thing in the morning. I take my hat off to my Starbucks barristas in Fullerton that make me smile 3 times a week.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Quotable Quotes--Seth Godin , The Dip

"Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success." --Seth Godin, The Dip

One of the biggest points that I have taken away from this book is mediocrity is not okay. Yet that is what most of us choose when we make the decision to know something about everything or at least a lot of things. We never perfect our knowledge in one area and become an expert on the subject. Experts are scarce. We need to focus on greatness and narrow our scope of knowledge and skill a little. Well roundedness is not as good when you have the opportunity to have expertise.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing.
Mike

Love and Hate

I have heard over and over again the phrase of "Love the sinner and hate the sin." Most of the time it is used in the context of a group that the church has done its best to keep at its periphery for years and is now realizing that that mode of action has been wrong and now want to incorporate that group. Again most of the time I have seen it used specifically when a writer has been talking about the gay sector of society. For so long this group has been the outcasts of the church and not made to feel very welcome in the sanctuaries of God's House. Now many churches are "turning a blind eye" to the very the things that kept these people segregated from the fellowship of the house of God with the covering of saying that we need to love the sinner and hate the sin. I have looked and looked but I cannot find that approach or method of evangelizing in the Bible anywhere. Maybe I am not seeing it or am reading something out of context, but I cannot find that anywhere in the Bible. I do see the first part of that though. Love. Love was at the very foundation of what Jesus spent His time in ministry teaching. He actively loved the people in society that society itself had deemed unworthy of love. In fact the fact that Jesus was even here on earth walking with men is a sign of just how much He loved us. Nowhere can I find where He told someone I love you but hate what you do or hate the sin that has you tripped up. He went from town to town teaching and being moved by the love He felt for people and the compassion that He had on their condition of life (spiritual ans physical). Love. Its that simple. Its what He taught and its how He lived. Love the sinner, they don't have to know that you hate their actions. What they do is a part of them. You can't tell someone you love them, pass judgement on their actions and then expect them to believe you love them. Love, the real kind of love that we are shown in Jesus' teachings and actions will speak louder than any word we can ever speak and will show the ones we are loving the truth faster than any sermon we could ever preach.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Quotable Quotes

I am reading The Dip by Seth Godin. This has come highly recommended to me and has gotten some great reviews. It is also very, very easy reading. Here's a great quote from the book:

"The problem with infinity is that there's too much of it." --Seth Godin

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Random Starbucks Thought...

I have been sitting here in Starbucks since about 5:10 this morning. I dropped my mom off at dialysis and will go pick her up in about 3 hours. As I sit here I am just thinking how good God is. It is amazing how much He loves us and How much mercy He has extended to us. If we allow Him to He will speak to us all day long if only we can be quiet enough to listen. He turns even the plainest events in my daily routine into lessons for me. He truly meets me exactly where I am at each day. He is amazing!

Be Blessesd and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Happy Birthday KSR!!

Happy Birthday Kimberly! You are truly an amazing and gifted woman. God has great things in store for you and for all of us through you! Thank you for your friendship.

Always,

Mike

Novels That Allow You to Escape

I know so many people that are constantly in a book. Most of them are reading so heavy duty stuff, very little fiction reading goes on. I love to read too. Books about discipleship or spiritual development are on the top of my reading lists. But occasionally I like to take a break from expanding my mind. I need a good fictional story to get me involved and before I know it hours have passed. One of my go to authors for that is Patricia Cornwell. I picked up one of her novels yesterday in the bookstore and started reading it. I was a third of the way through the novel before I realized it. She is mystery writer and one of her best known characters is Kay Scarpetta--a medical examiner with a law degree that would make any of the CSI's look like sesame street. If you like crime thrillers Patricia Cornwell is the autor for you. Right now I am reader Predator. She was also befriended early in life by the recently passed Ruth Graham. She published a biography of Ruth Bell Graham in the late 90's. Read up on Cornwell her accomplishments are amazing.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Reflections on a Blog Blessing

When I started this blog, I wanted to use it as a tool to journal my thoughts and feelings about what I was experiencing in life so I could go back to it with the hopes of measuring some sort of growth. It was never my intention to write for a specific audience or to become a faithful reader of others blogs; there have been some blogs however that have truly touched my life. These are the blogs that write like I hoped and still hope to write--with raw feeling, uncaring of the words used or the emotions felt behind the words because the words are truly just the expressions of those real emotions and thoughts. There is one blog (RAW CHRISTIANITY by Gunner Gundersen) that has not only interested me in from a human interest appeal but also because of the writers true love for Christ in every situation. It is easy to see through the words he writes that his love for Christ and his desire to be discipled by the principles the bible teaches is at the very core of his existence. If you want to see what he and his wife have been going through with an international adoption check out his blog for the details of their faith and acceptance of God's will and purpose in each of the steps they have undertaken so far. They are an amazing testament to faith in God and his Goodness. Where many seek the hand of God before they seek His face, they have sought His face first and trusted His hand to move in the way that is best for their lives and all the lives involved in the process.

Here is just some of the words that have ministered to me this week from this blog:

"Oftentimes maturity is not found in learning new things but learning old things in new and deeper ways. We know that God is sovereign, but we are learning that God is sovereign. We know that providence is astounding, but we are astounded by providence. We have submitted our lives to the will of God, but God is bringing us to a deeper submission. We have learned a certain level of contentment, but God is pushing us for more. I am getting less and less embarrassed about having to learn simple things. I am also less and less prone to think that I have learned something as deeply as I can learn it. The Lord always pushes deeper, because He is molding us into the image of His Son whose character is like a bottomless, full, refreshing well. So I do not care if I learn something simply, as long as I learn it deeply."

"We praise Him not just because those things are good but because He is good, and because He would’ve been good even if those things had been bad. This is not theological lingo or a cheap ideal embraced by cold, unfeeling believers who have unbreakable hearts. It is at the very core of God’s character, and we count ourselves privileged to know it, to believe it, to enjoy it, and to cling to it. We are not unfeeling. We simply believe in someone greater than our feelings."

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

I Exist...

About a week or so ago I wrote a post about needing sometimes to know that I exist. We are surrounding by all kinds of things in our world that can make us seem insignificant. I just needed to know that I was was leaving my impression on this world. How amazing is it that yesterday in the mail I received this:

All I can say is wow and thank you. I know I exist.

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!

Mike

The Answer...

I can't remember where I found this but I came across it in my favorites folder...Something to think about




Be Blessed and Be a Blessing!
Mike

Thought Provoker for Tuesday

"The greatest threat to devotion to Christ is service for Christ."--quoted in The Great Omission by Dallas Willard

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing.
Mike

Be Still

One of the hardest things for me to do at any time is to be be still. Well let me re-say that--I can be still, I just can't be still and be awake. If I manage to be still, it is nearly impossible for me to be still ane be silent. Yet this is one of the diswciplines that we need to be successful at in the process of becoming a better disciple. We need to emulate Jesus's actions when he went off into retreat by Himself to be alone with God. I have found that these periods of stillness for me have been awesome in their abilities to recharge me and to refocus my walk with Christ. I use it as a time not to pray or send my supplication to heaven, but rather as a time to listen to what Heaven is trying to say to me. I use it as a time to be alone with God and to help me center in on His presence around me and in my life. I dont allow myself to think of things I need to do or to use the time as a strategy or planning session. I do my best to be still and to know that He is God. I resign all I am again to Him and to His will for my life. I find that is truly best done in stillness. Especially forced stillness. It makes you have faith in what you are doing and reminds you that there is always a greater One that can do everything better than you. This time of stillness allows me to truly be an empty vessel and allows Him to fill me with all that He has for me at that time. We become closer to Christ as disciples in this time of quietness because we are practicing His presence, offering oursleves as students to learn from what He has to say to us. Practicing the presence of God is what discipleship is all about. Yeah that's it...practicing the presence of God--What a revelation.



Be Blessed, Be a Blessing, And Be Still.

Mike

Discipleship Rant

I am learning more and more that discipleship is far deeper than I could ever have imagined. Upon the discovery of that I have decided that I feel robbed of all the good that the search for true discipleship has provided me. Robbed not in the sense that it is unattainable, but in the sense that it was never shown to me or taught to me earlier in life. We were always taught that the basis of a significant discipleship relationship with God was based in scripture reading and prayer. If that was all that it took for a person to be a disciple of Christ then there are more disciples of Christ than we know. But that is not it. Simply reading scripture cant get me any closer to being a disciple of Christ than reading a history text book. We have all these daily reading plans that help us read the bible through completely in a given amount of time, and they do really nothing for us spiritually. We may earn a gold star from ourselves and be able to say in conversation that we have read the entire Bible x amount of times, but how much closer to Christ and the way of life He taught His original disciples did we become in the process. I think a person would be better off spending time reading a verse of scripture and meditating on it for a long period time, committing it to memory and then finding ways to apply it to their life and actually becoming the living version of that scripture. Could you imagine what our homes, churches, and world would look like if we had people that truly embodied passages of scripture like the Beatitudes? How amazing would that be? I am not saying the scripture reading is pointless, because we need to be filled with the Word all time; I just believe that we should be looking for quality and not quantity. We should be looking to have a means of calling scripture to our minds at any given instant so we can keep the word of God constantly at the forefront of our minds. If I read the bible through in an entire year what have I retained as compared to me picking a passage of scripture to memorize and meditate on for a week or a month? How likely am I to be able to apply a scripture to my life and become a living embodiment of it if I read it once in a period of a year. I would definitely argue that the discipleship process is a process that requires discipline, but I would also argue that those disciplines that we have been taught in terms of discipleship need to be reevaluated in terms of the benefit they are providing to the disciple and the actual success they have had in terms of helping a person reach a closer relationship with Christ.

This Is Your Life...

I listen to music all the time and it seems that when I hear a song for like the thousandth time I finally hear it. That was the case with This Is Your Life by Switchfoot. I don't know what brought it on or why I finally heard it but the words are pretty profound on a very simplistic level. I think personally one of the things that has tripped me up the most in my discipleship walk with Christ has been my past. It seems to be the only thing that has a way of manipulating itself back into my life and catching me off guard. I am frequently reminding myself and my past that God has forgotten all the things I have done before Him and I will do the same thing. As a memory comes to play in my life and it does not edify or encourage or serve a purpose in my ministry, I submit to the captivity of Christ and go on my way. I often look back on my life and the choices that I have made and I have to forgive myself. There are things there that have really hindered me and what I have been called to do. There are also parts of my past that I am glad that God has forgotten. But I know that I was made a new creature in Christ and I work each day to become more like Him. I wake up in the morning knowing there is nothing I can do about yesterday and I commit to not allowing it trip up my today. I realize that tomorrow is something that I may never get to see, so I don't focus any more time than I need to on it. My priority is today, this is where I can make an impact in my life and in the lives of others. I ask my myself in the morning is this where you want to be in life spiritually and then listen to God's direction for the day and follow accordingly.



Be Blessed and Be a Blessing.
Mike

Great Omission

Since I felt called to the ministry, I have had an urgency in my heart for discipleship. I had a horrible and very minimal understanding of discipleship growing up. And it is sad to say that that was the understanding that I was taught in church. As the church we often design, redesign or create programs and then they end up becoming our focus that we have designed the program to become our focus and not the goal the program was supposed accomplish. Discipleship is not a new concept. It is not something that we have to design programs for or set up committees to accomplish. Discipleship is about going back to the basics Jesus spent time teaching to the crowds that followed him and more in depth to the 12 He chose to sit at His feet.

The Great Omission by Dallas Willard has been a breath of fresh air and has confirmed what I have been feeling. I don't really enjoy reading topical books unless they are edifying, but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Although it reads like a college text book sometimes, it is easily understood especially if you have a heart for teaching people about trues discipleship or on the quest to find it for yourself. If you can I suggest you pick it up as a summer read.

Lost Connection

Sometime in the last week I have lost the connection between my mind and my hands. I have had a lot of thoughts that I thought I would like to write down here on my blog but I just couldn't muster up the energy or motivation to crack open my computer. I write here not because I care about a readership or "link love"; I write here because I have always enjoyed going back and reading what I was thinking about or feeling on a particular day. It is kind of a measurement of growth (or sometimes non growth) for me. I wanted to have something that I could go back and measure my life with. There has just been something holding me back lately and I quite frankly it is a little irritating now. I have found myself becoming short with people and allowing my thoughts to run from me and get into a whole lot of trouble before I can reign them back into the submission of Christ. I would like to attribute it to a breakthrough that I am gonna experience soon and the enemy is trying to discourage me from pressing into it. I am not really sure. There is a lot going on in my life, but not too much that should have me feeling nasty. I am most definitely not the only one that goes through something like this, I would love to know what people do themselves to get out of slumps. You never know what people go through unless you ask and most of the time you would never even imagine half of the stuff they are going through.