I like to think this is what it looks like.

Jon Acuff is someone that I follow and pay attention to on a regular basis but today, he posted something on his blog that REALLY hit home with me right now.

Check his post out here:  The Map & The Plan

God has a plan for us, His plan is for His purpose, not ours.  Yes, sometimes he prepares us in such a way that His plan BECOMES ours but most of the time, He isn’t so concerned with our plans.

I’m in this place where it’s obvious God is leading me and my family to something.  I’m just sitting here thinking, “map it out for me God, please stop making me guess.”  I’m hoping that He will give me strength to be willing to prepare for what He has in store, that He will help me be faithful to Him and trust Him.

How about you, does this hit home with you?

Considering Sacrifice

Sacrifice: “to SUFFER loss of, give up, renounce, injure, or destroy especially for an ideal, belief, or end”

Have you ever considered what it means to sacrifice?  I mean, really suffering for something?  I don’t mean, have you considered dying for something, I don’t think that we here in the good ol’ USofA have to worry much about that.  I mean, have you considered what you are willing to do for someone, or something that will cost you?

I’m at this point in my life where I have realized that I need to decide what & who is worth sacrificing for.

For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

Here are my criteria so far (keep in mind that these criteria all go through the lens of “what does God think” first, these are secondary):

1. How does this affect me financially?
2. Is it possible to involve my family?
3. Can I do this (or not do this) and still hold my integrity?
4. Who can I help through the process?

I want to be a person who has sacrificed for the people around me, who has earned his stripes.

What are your criteria?

We discussed how blessed we are here in the US and how there is very little reliance on God.  Yes, we TRY to put God first and give him credit but we don’t rely on God to provide us the food that we eat and water that we drink.  We EARN that.  Right?

There are people around this world who literally rely on God to provide their next meal.  The faith that those people have is something that I can barely grasp.  We rely on ourselves while 99% of the world MUST rely on something/someone else.   The thing about the 99% is that God provides and they know it.

What about you?  Can you see the difference between my faith and the rest of the world?

Their newest Campaign – Labels Lie. is the most simple message in a very radical, eye catching form!

This one about Jennifer is great!  What a story of redemption and Second Chances.

(I hate that I have to do this:)

WARNING: This links to the POTSC website has some foul language.

Kind of like writing the wrong things on your blog.

As you can tell, it’s been a while since I have posted anything of significance. There is a reason for that.

I have thought a lot about it and I want to make the blog more focused. It feels too much like a windy road map. So, with that in mind, I’m going to relaunch the site at the beginning of the year with a more focused approached.

I’m wondering, what would you like Me to write more about?

Women of Faith

As you should be aware, I am not a woman, but my wife is.  So, she attended women of faith for me and put together some thoughts below.  I hope you enjoy them:

1. We LOVED our seats!  (Thank you Booksneeze!)
2. We enjoyed the atmosphere – it’s always good to be around like minded women who care about similar things and want to be God fearing
3. The Music was EXTREMELY worshipful – Selah was the group who lead worship.  I have liked them for a long time but this experience was surprisingly worshipful and the music helped us focus on the Word to be delivered.
4. Brenda Warner was BY FAR my favorite speaker of the entire weekend.  Her story about how she has come to a life of following Jesus and learning from her children how to do that was inspiring… People MUST hear her story.

Holly in our AMAZING Seats!

Yes, I love "Friends"

“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, tfor all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.”  John 15:15

Jesus gives His disciples a new designation and I believe that designation made ALL the difference in the world when it came to the Church’s success and the disciple’s individual success.

I had two interesting conversations about this fact in the last couple of days…

There is something to be said about Friends starting something together.  It’s almost like the secret ingredient to us succeeding in our endeavors.  Look at Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak and the start of Apple Computer, or Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams & Biz Stone.  These two corporate (technology) examples are examples that people who are of like mind and have similar goals (friends) can do something of significance  by putting in the hard work, together!

It’s obvious that someone can have success without their friends being involved in their endeavor but why would you want to?  I’m personally convicted that if I’m going to succeed I need to surround myself with people who I call Friends and who I can do life with.

What do you think?  Do you think it’s the secret ingredient?

It has appropriately been placed in the “Christian Nightmare” Category.

We are struggling with the fact that we haven’t found a place, mainly because we feel like God has brought us here and we have followed him to this point, now He is being extremely quiet and we are hanging out to dry.  He is testing our faith and our family to see what we are made of, right now, I feel like we are made of jello that is slowing going down the garbage disposal.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that we are dealing with a 1st world problem (looking for a bigger house) when there are people starving and desperate for His help so don’t miss this.

The reason I’m writing this post is because I have to share what the people in our community have done for us so far.

1. One of my best friends in the world called me, out of the blue, just to take our girls off our hands (for HOURS) so that Mary and I could spend some quality time together!
2. We posted a cry out on Facebook because our daughter (she’s 3) is having a VERY hard time with all of the adjustments we’ve made so far.  It’s affected her moods and how she is dealing with even the simplest of things. (New church & new place to live)
3. Our small group leader emailed me today just to ask how we were doing with the transition.
4. I meet with a couple of guys on Monday mornings to walk through the Bible and talk about how to be a Godly dad and husband, they PRAYED for me, that God’s Spirit would play out and speak.
5. I got to pray with my sister-in-law on Sunday morning IN CHURCH and she prayed for us that God would speedily show up and do what we are asking.