I can recall a few years in my life where I was so happy to see the end come that the New Year's Party was a celebration of survival, with a huge does of, "Thank You God for bringing an end to this, let's get on with what's next!!"
1989 - While happy I graduated from college, my world was crushed by a broken engagement. I was happy to see the new decade begin.
1993 - One year married, being asked to leave a ministry job where I was successful because of church politics, homeless on our first anniversary, three different churches on my resume' in six months, and a move to Riverside, CA. Couldn't wait to be done with that year.
2000 - Started the year with struggles at church and at home, Beth with a difficult prengancy (that produced a beautiful baby girl!), and ended with shingles and massive stress. Partied like it was 1999 (yep, Prince reference...)!
2004 - Went from needing hernia surgery in January to needing chemotherapy and radiation in February to needing IV antibiotics for menengitis in May, and finally getting the hernia surgery in October. Words fail to describe how much I wanted that year over.
But as I write this, I don't think 2010 qualifies for this list. There were hard things for sure, like candidating at a new church, leaving the people I loved for 14 years in Pocatello, seeing the pain that has ensued since I left there, leading my family to start a new life in a new place, selling our house in a crappy market, then trying to buy one is a different kind of crappy market, adjusting to a new job, dealing with layoffs and credit union policies - to be sure, the transitions of my life this year have been many, varied, at times difficult, and full of surprises.
But in reality, there were just as many good times: finding out that God still had a plan for my life, and seeing it unfold each day, knowing I am right where He wants me, receiving the loving send off from friends and church family that we will never forget, knowing that our time in Pocatello was not wasted but very effective, being received with love by a great church family here, seeing the grace of God grow in my kids, watching my wife blossom in this new environment, seeing my own gifts of leadership and teaching affirmed and blessed as leaders around me grow and prosper, making new friends and having new adventures, and growing as much as I've ever grown in my life. All of that more than balances the scales.
No, 2010 is not a year I want to run from. It is going to be one that I will cherish, hard parts included. God is good, the rest is details. I'm going to celebrate the close of this year with some looks back over the next week, then lay into the year to come. Feel free to comment...
12.31.2010
12.28.2010
Rolling Into The New Year
Christmas Eve behind us, and a wonderful Thank You weekend, too (again, thanks to all of the LifePoint volunteers who make this place run each week, hope you enjoyed your weekend off!!), it's time to roll full tilt into the New Year!
I'm fired up about the series we're starting, called, "This Is YOUR Year!" Those habits and actions you've been putting off in your spiritual life, your relationships, even your health - This Is YOUR Year to get started on the healthy changes you want to see in your life. We're going to start the year off by team-teaching the message this weekend, so make plans to be here, it's going to be great!
What has me even MORE fired up is Warm-Up Weekend. Wear your favorite sweatshirt to services this weekend, and bring one (or more) to give away! We'd like to collect coats, sweatshirts, even sweat pants, either new or used in good condition, and we'll give them away to agencies in our valley that can give them away to people in need. Call it a generosity jump start to the year!
For the record, my family and I took the opportunity afforded us from Thank You weekend to go visit Pastor Jack Negrette and the gang out at CenterPoint Christian Fellowship, our daughter church in Dayton. Great message by Pastor Jack, and we received a warm, friendly welcome from the folks up there. They are doing an awesome job of reaching that community, keep them in your prayers!
I'm fired up about the series we're starting, called, "This Is YOUR Year!" Those habits and actions you've been putting off in your spiritual life, your relationships, even your health - This Is YOUR Year to get started on the healthy changes you want to see in your life. We're going to start the year off by team-teaching the message this weekend, so make plans to be here, it's going to be great!
What has me even MORE fired up is Warm-Up Weekend. Wear your favorite sweatshirt to services this weekend, and bring one (or more) to give away! We'd like to collect coats, sweatshirts, even sweat pants, either new or used in good condition, and we'll give them away to agencies in our valley that can give them away to people in need. Call it a generosity jump start to the year!
For the record, my family and I took the opportunity afforded us from Thank You weekend to go visit Pastor Jack Negrette and the gang out at CenterPoint Christian Fellowship, our daughter church in Dayton. Great message by Pastor Jack, and we received a warm, friendly welcome from the folks up there. They are doing an awesome job of reaching that community, keep them in your prayers!
12.25.2010
Merry Christmas!!
The lyric that keeps running through my head is from the Chris Tomlin version of Joy to the World: "Joy! Unspeakable JOY! An overflowing well, No tongue can tell! Joy! Unspeakable Joy! Rises in my soul, Never lets me go!"
Ever since we started working on our Christmas Eve services, that song has been in my head and heart. Unspeakable Joy! God loves us so much, He wouldn't let us alone. He gave the most expensive, beautiful, amazing, personal, thoughtful gift ever: Jesus! Angels sang because the joy is too much to just say, it had to be sung! The shepherds didn't just listen to the news, they had to see it for themselves. The Magi saw the star and didn't just imagine what it was about, they had to go see the newborn King.
So when people ask why we did six Christmas Eve services, it's simple: it's because we had to. We had to celebrate the gift of love that God gave us in Jesus. We had to share with our community the joy we feel for what God has done and is doing in us. We had to remind ourselves that it's not about us, but about the Best Gift Ever.
We had over 2600 people come to our services the last three days, including an overflow crowd of 800+ for the 4:30 service yesterday. Lots of new faces, lots of folks bringing their friends, neighbors and co-workers to come share the JOY. Such a great turn out has to be the work of tons of Lifers making the effort to invite people. Way to GO!
What I'm most proud of is the amazing group of volunteers who gave of themselves to build the sets, play the songs, usher the crowds, care for the kids, bake the cookies, serve the coffee and cocoa, play the nativity scene parts, dance their legs off, sing their hearts out and generally give of their gifts to celebrate the Gift of Jesus this year. I was so blessed and blown away by the hearts of those who came early, stayed late, sweated the details and gave their best to make the services a great experience for all who came.
To the volunteers: THANK YOU for all you gave to make it wonderful! (take the weekend off, you deserve it!!) To the staff: THANK YOU for your incredible servant-leadership. You blessed and blessed, gave and gave. I'm proud to be a part of your team! To all who came and brought friends and neighbors: THANK YOU for making the effort, taking the chance, and filling the house, just like Jesus said to!
Merry Christmas, everyone! May God's Best Gift be yours in fuller and fuller measure this year, and may your hearts be full of Unspeakable Joy!!
Ever since we started working on our Christmas Eve services, that song has been in my head and heart. Unspeakable Joy! God loves us so much, He wouldn't let us alone. He gave the most expensive, beautiful, amazing, personal, thoughtful gift ever: Jesus! Angels sang because the joy is too much to just say, it had to be sung! The shepherds didn't just listen to the news, they had to see it for themselves. The Magi saw the star and didn't just imagine what it was about, they had to go see the newborn King.
So when people ask why we did six Christmas Eve services, it's simple: it's because we had to. We had to celebrate the gift of love that God gave us in Jesus. We had to share with our community the joy we feel for what God has done and is doing in us. We had to remind ourselves that it's not about us, but about the Best Gift Ever.
We had over 2600 people come to our services the last three days, including an overflow crowd of 800+ for the 4:30 service yesterday. Lots of new faces, lots of folks bringing their friends, neighbors and co-workers to come share the JOY. Such a great turn out has to be the work of tons of Lifers making the effort to invite people. Way to GO!
What I'm most proud of is the amazing group of volunteers who gave of themselves to build the sets, play the songs, usher the crowds, care for the kids, bake the cookies, serve the coffee and cocoa, play the nativity scene parts, dance their legs off, sing their hearts out and generally give of their gifts to celebrate the Gift of Jesus this year. I was so blessed and blown away by the hearts of those who came early, stayed late, sweated the details and gave their best to make the services a great experience for all who came.
To the volunteers: THANK YOU for all you gave to make it wonderful! (take the weekend off, you deserve it!!) To the staff: THANK YOU for your incredible servant-leadership. You blessed and blessed, gave and gave. I'm proud to be a part of your team! To all who came and brought friends and neighbors: THANK YOU for making the effort, taking the chance, and filling the house, just like Jesus said to!
Merry Christmas, everyone! May God's Best Gift be yours in fuller and fuller measure this year, and may your hearts be full of Unspeakable Joy!!
12.20.2010
Just Got Back From Dress Rehersal
So glad we get to rehearse first, because working the bugs out is important, but after our dress rehearsal tonight, I'm excited. We're going to offer six Christmas Eve services at LifePoint Church, and the music, dancing, drama, all of it will be an opportunity to celebrate the gift of God's love in Jesus. And from the shepherds to the singers, the wise men to the tech crew, we're fired up to share God's love with the people who come.
If you are coming to our services, please get there early, bring a friend, sit up close, and be ready to enjoy the celebration! If you can't make it (all my Idaho, Tennessee, Oregon and Washington peeps!), please pray for us! We have an opportunity to share God's love with thousands of people this year, and we want to do our best for God's glory.
It's going to be great, don't miss it! I'll try to blog after each night's services and let you know how it goes.
Merry Christmas, and All God's Best!!
If you are coming to our services, please get there early, bring a friend, sit up close, and be ready to enjoy the celebration! If you can't make it (all my Idaho, Tennessee, Oregon and Washington peeps!), please pray for us! We have an opportunity to share God's love with thousands of people this year, and we want to do our best for God's glory.
It's going to be great, don't miss it! I'll try to blog after each night's services and let you know how it goes.
Merry Christmas, and All God's Best!!
12.14.2010
Giving Myself a Gift This Christmas
I figured out what I need for Christmas. I'm not sure what I want (I want a lot of things, but they are just that... wants. And not many are going to fit in the budget, but that's a post for a different day), but I know what I need.
I need permission.
I have some feelings. I'm a guy, so I have a harder time verbalizing them or even recognizing them, but I recognize the symptoms of having them. I'm feeling those symptoms today, so I know that there are some feelings rattling around in my life.
So I was talking to a friend today, and they said that I needed to give myself permission to feel those feelings. It was the most simple thought, but it was huge for me, an epiphany, "like lightning hit my brain!"
I am going to give myself permission this Christmas to feel my feelings. I'm going to be okay with having them, with acknowledging them, and with dealing with them. Period. It will be the best present I can give myself this year. Permission to feel? GRANTED! I can feel what it is like to be in a new place for Christmas, what it feels like to miss my friends, what it feels like to want to be with my family and know that I can't. I can feel anticipation for Christmas and the little nervousness of wanting to do well my first time at LifePoint Church on Christmas Eve. I can feel the awkwardness of new friendships and the distance of old ones. I give myself permission.
I was reminded that emotions and feelings are all over the Bible, even among leaders of God's people. So I'm in good company. Moses, David, Jeremiah, even Jesus had feelings. Mary was scared, so the angel said, "Don't be afraid." Peter got mad, Paul got frustrated, and on down the list. We all have feelings.
Do you need permission to feel this Christmas? It's okay, give yourself the gift of feeling your feelings. Then, each time you do, say a prayer and ask God to show you if there is bitterness, or fear, or unforgiveness or something else under those feelings that needs to be rooted out and dealt with. Because the greatest gift you could give yourself is the freedom that comes from allowing God's help into your life to deal with difficult emotions, feelings and situations.
This Christmas, enjoy the gift of feeling. Feel all of it: the wonder, the love, the grace, the amazement of the gift of Jesus Christ. Feel it all. Take it all in, and give great thanks to the giver of all good gifts.
I need permission.
I have some feelings. I'm a guy, so I have a harder time verbalizing them or even recognizing them, but I recognize the symptoms of having them. I'm feeling those symptoms today, so I know that there are some feelings rattling around in my life.
So I was talking to a friend today, and they said that I needed to give myself permission to feel those feelings. It was the most simple thought, but it was huge for me, an epiphany, "like lightning hit my brain!"
I am going to give myself permission this Christmas to feel my feelings. I'm going to be okay with having them, with acknowledging them, and with dealing with them. Period. It will be the best present I can give myself this year. Permission to feel? GRANTED! I can feel what it is like to be in a new place for Christmas, what it feels like to miss my friends, what it feels like to want to be with my family and know that I can't. I can feel anticipation for Christmas and the little nervousness of wanting to do well my first time at LifePoint Church on Christmas Eve. I can feel the awkwardness of new friendships and the distance of old ones. I give myself permission.
I was reminded that emotions and feelings are all over the Bible, even among leaders of God's people. So I'm in good company. Moses, David, Jeremiah, even Jesus had feelings. Mary was scared, so the angel said, "Don't be afraid." Peter got mad, Paul got frustrated, and on down the list. We all have feelings.
Do you need permission to feel this Christmas? It's okay, give yourself the gift of feeling your feelings. Then, each time you do, say a prayer and ask God to show you if there is bitterness, or fear, or unforgiveness or something else under those feelings that needs to be rooted out and dealt with. Because the greatest gift you could give yourself is the freedom that comes from allowing God's help into your life to deal with difficult emotions, feelings and situations.
This Christmas, enjoy the gift of feeling. Feel all of it: the wonder, the love, the grace, the amazement of the gift of Jesus Christ. Feel it all. Take it all in, and give great thanks to the giver of all good gifts.
12.10.2010
It's the Waiting...
I'm excited for this weekend. The second in our Thoughtful Gifts series is coming (aren't you at least a little curious what Frankincense is all about?), the announcement I get to make about the food pantry is so cool, and the song right before the teaching will be...
But it's Christmas, so we have to wait. No peaking! No hints, no pinching the presents, no shaking the packages.
That's one place where Easter and Christmas are so different. Easter is a weekend, perhaps a whole week. Christmas is a season. It is weeks long, even if you have the patience to wait for Thanksgiving to be over before you start. We have a whole season of Christmas, which means a lot of waiting until the big day.
In some churches, they celebrate the waiting with the tradition of Advent, the time right before Christmas, leading up to and waiting for the coming Savior. Can you imagine, celebrating waiting? But we wait at Christmas. We wait through the season to the celebration. We wait to unwrap the gifts under the tree. We wait.
Just like the world waited for a Savior. Just like Israel waited for Messiah. Just like we wait today for the return of our triumphant King of Glory. Waiting isn't my favorite part, but it is a big part of Christmas and following Jesus.
Merry waiting. May the time we spend be time not wasted, but time invested in the now and coming Kingdom of God.
But it's Christmas, so we have to wait. No peaking! No hints, no pinching the presents, no shaking the packages.
That's one place where Easter and Christmas are so different. Easter is a weekend, perhaps a whole week. Christmas is a season. It is weeks long, even if you have the patience to wait for Thanksgiving to be over before you start. We have a whole season of Christmas, which means a lot of waiting until the big day.
In some churches, they celebrate the waiting with the tradition of Advent, the time right before Christmas, leading up to and waiting for the coming Savior. Can you imagine, celebrating waiting? But we wait at Christmas. We wait through the season to the celebration. We wait to unwrap the gifts under the tree. We wait.
Just like the world waited for a Savior. Just like Israel waited for Messiah. Just like we wait today for the return of our triumphant King of Glory. Waiting isn't my favorite part, but it is a big part of Christmas and following Jesus.
Merry waiting. May the time we spend be time not wasted, but time invested in the now and coming Kingdom of God.
12.05.2010
Weekend Wrap
Some thoughts at the end of a great weekend at LifePoint Church:
- I love Christmas! (not news, but I just like saying it!!)
- I love the Christmas platform set! The great volunteers, under the direction of Wanda and with great leadership by Sunny have transformed the platform into a warm and inviting, fun place to share Jesus.
- I loved the worship this weekend! I don't normally look for more banjo in my life, but this weekend's set was both spectacular musically AND deeply worshipful. It can be hard to enter into worship with Christmas songs, but the team did a fantastic job of leading us to do just that.
- I saw the ushers setting up more seats in the back. Just sayin...
- I thought the Spirit was great this weekend, lots of people stepping up to volunteer to help with Christmas Eve services, lots of great conversations, and new faces all over the place.
- Hearing great things about our Home Warmers delivering fire wood and inviting people to church.
- LOVED sharing the Food Pantry stats: 39 families per month, 9 new families per month, and almost 2800 people fed this year. Going to break 3000 with YOUR HELP!!
Alright, I'm done. Heading for bed. God is working, Lives are changing, Jesus is coming!!
12.02.2010
Christmas Time Is Here...
All day, that song from the Peanut's Christmas special is in my head. I've always been a "no Christmas until after Thanksgiving" guy, but this year is different. First, all the prep work for Christmas had to be started on much earlier for me than I'm used to, and second, the constant unpacking of boxes in our house has meant that its felt a lot like Christmas for a while anyway.
One of the boxes we have unpacked is the gift my staff and elders in Pocatello gave us as a going away present. It's a wonderful nativity scene, with wise men and shepherds, cows and baby Jesus. Beth collects nativity scenes, but this one is obviously special to us. The staff each wrote a message on the back of bottom of the characters, and I purposely didn't read them until we pulled the set out this year. I wanted to save some of the joy for later, and now it was suddenly later. It was good to think about my friends back in Idaho, and to remember their generosity and grace to us.
All of Christmas is like that. We spend a lot of time being nostalgic, thinking back to Christmases past, remembering friends and loved ones, sharing thoughts of good times we had. And hopefully, we also spend a little time thinking about the greatest gift we've ever received, Jesus Christ coming to Earth to be our Savior. Maybe, in all the hustle and bustle, above the nostalgia and the memories, we can also take some time to think ahead to the day we get to unwrap the rest of the gift of Jesus, the day we see Him face to face. Maybe in the midst of it all, you and I can find some time to think about what waits for us in the future, too. All the generosity of God's grace isn't contained in the past, or even in the present. There's a future to grace, a future with Christ in Heaven, looking at Jesus the way the shepherds did, singing to Him like the angels did, and touching His had like Mary and Joseph must have in that stable.
Just a Christmas thought to start your month.
One of the boxes we have unpacked is the gift my staff and elders in Pocatello gave us as a going away present. It's a wonderful nativity scene, with wise men and shepherds, cows and baby Jesus. Beth collects nativity scenes, but this one is obviously special to us. The staff each wrote a message on the back of bottom of the characters, and I purposely didn't read them until we pulled the set out this year. I wanted to save some of the joy for later, and now it was suddenly later. It was good to think about my friends back in Idaho, and to remember their generosity and grace to us.
All of Christmas is like that. We spend a lot of time being nostalgic, thinking back to Christmases past, remembering friends and loved ones, sharing thoughts of good times we had. And hopefully, we also spend a little time thinking about the greatest gift we've ever received, Jesus Christ coming to Earth to be our Savior. Maybe, in all the hustle and bustle, above the nostalgia and the memories, we can also take some time to think ahead to the day we get to unwrap the rest of the gift of Jesus, the day we see Him face to face. Maybe in the midst of it all, you and I can find some time to think about what waits for us in the future, too. All the generosity of God's grace isn't contained in the past, or even in the present. There's a future to grace, a future with Christ in Heaven, looking at Jesus the way the shepherds did, singing to Him like the angels did, and touching His had like Mary and Joseph must have in that stable.
Just a Christmas thought to start your month.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.JPG)
Posts
