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.