Leaving Las Vegas...

I love the Sheryl Crow song Leaving Las Vegas:

The song holds a special meaning today as we get out of here and head back to the more comfortable surroundings of Parker, Colorado.

The great thing about this trip was the time I had with Kitty celebrating 17 years of marriage!  Not always easy years, but fruitful in many ways (certainly four ways I immediately think of:) And I wouldn't change anything if it meant not being married to her now!  We had a great time at LOVE, the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show.....it's the best show I've seen in years and definitely in my top ten of all time.  Jay Leno was very good last night, just wish it had not been a late 10:00pm show.....I know my oldest son is laughing now...Great dinners, time talking with Kitty and holding hands made the whole trip worth while!

Realizing that I'm going to sound "holier-than-thou", I'm still baffled by lure of all-night gambling and drunk-fests. Every morning that I got up early to go to the little coffee shop near our elevators, I was amazed at the numbers of girls in short black dresses "falling" their way back to the elevators.  It feels like a "shift-change" from about 6:00am-7:30am....where the all-nighters lose steam and the rest of us are starting our days.  At my age, there's no way I could survive here for long.  We stayed up until midnight two nights in a row and I feel like I need to go to bed around 8:00 tonight to catch up.....guess I'm showing my age....again, insert my son laughing here:)

All in all, Vegas is a nice place to visit, even for people like us that don't like to gamble.  The shows, the food, the people-watching is fun......now I need to get home today so I can rest and hug my kids! (Thanks to Cyd btw for watching the rugrats while we were gone)

This is So True!

"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition."

                                                                                             Indira Gandhi

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Mature Faith...Do I really want to pray for that?

"Mature faith cannot grow when we are surfeited with all kinds of spiritual comforts and consolations.  All these must be removed if we are to advance in the pure trust of God.  The Lord withdraws all tangible supports to purify our hearts, to discern if we are in love with the gifts of the Giver or the Giver of the gifts. (underline mine)



The question is, do I worship God or do I worship my experience of God?  Do I worship God or do I worship my idea of Him?"
                                                                           Brennan Manning



I'm becoming more and more uncomfortable with the fact that when I want to grow in faith, and that becomes my prayer, God may answer it by taking away the things I'm comfortable with.  If I want a better prayer life, God may take me to my knees where He is the only One I can turn to.  If I want to grow in Simplicity, I should be ready for my possessions to be tested.  The question of whether I value my experiences with God more than just God himself is a good one....it should keep my focus on the person of Jesus rather than the "life results" from following Him.  Whether desert or mountain top, rich or poor, sickness or health, energized or tired.....still my love is for Jesus and not dependent on my circumstances...at least that's my target!



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A Good Night!

When your 16 year old son wants to sit down and watch a John Wayne movie, you know that you're raising them correctly!

"Train up a child in the way that they should go and they will not depart from it..."
                                                                              Proverbs


Rio Bravo on a Monday night with Carson (and now William too)......a good night!

Better than a good quote....

"If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
                                                          Albert Einstein





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To Many Offerings...?

Just finished reading Exodus this morning.  That book has much to digest and I feel like I need a vacation after reading it.  I love the final chapters about the Tabernacle, the construction of it, and then the closing of the book being the dramatic scene of God filling the tablenacle with His glory.

Something else caught my eye this morning that I found interesting....and very sad...for us today.  In chapter 36:

³ They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning. ⁴⁵ and said to Moses, “The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the LORD commanded to be done.” So all the skilled workers who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left what they were doing
 ⁶ Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp: “No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.” And so the people were restrained from bringing more, ⁷ because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work. 

I don't think I have once stood in front of a congregation and told them to stop giving or signing up for something.  What a feeling it must have been to have "more than enough to do all the work!"

I also found it interesting that the exact measurements of gold and silver used in the tabernacle were given....gold (29 talents & 730 shekels), silver (100 talents & 1775 shekels).  I decided to do some figuring to see just how much this "portable" worship center would cost today, not including all the furnishings, jewels and fabric/wood used.  The gold would translate (using 70 pounds per talent) to about 2030 pounds...over 1 ton!  The silver would translate to about 3.8 tons!  In today's prices of gold ($1356) and silver ($29.91), that means they gave over $44 MILLION dollars in gold and $3.6 MILLION in silver....call it $48 Million Dollars just in gold and silver it would cost us to construct a duplicate Tabernacle today!  Would anyone today spend this much on a portable tent to meet with God in?  I think not....

How much is it worth to us to meet with God's presence?  What are we willing to sacrifice in our life and show Him his value (worship)?  Do we "give more than enough to do all the work?" or is it always a struggle of priorities?

I hope I can always give more than enough to do the work!

What Does It Take To Be Happy?

Watched a Francis Chan talk here:( http://www.cornerstonesimi.com/special/media_player.html )  It's his message on 5/31/09...scroll down to watch it.  This a must see...

It's a good question for us to ask of ourselves.  Paul, as he was in prison, wrote about his contentment in Phil. 4.  Big question from talk....."are you content wherever you are, whatever you have?"  I can't always say yes....circumstances seem to blow us like the wind back and forth.  Finding Paul's secret to being content with whatever life dishes out is a real maturity I hope to develop and find.

Great quote from the message above: "Life a life that demands an explanation!"

Can people look as you and explain why you're happy and content?  or why your unhappy?  What if our life circumstances didn't explain why we were so happy and content, but it was our relationship and stability with Jesus?   I want that!

The "Song" IS the point....

From Yahoo news about the Super Bowl opening last night....

"Perhaps she was too concerned with breaking Patti LaBelle's record for turning single-syllable words into entire paragraphs during the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," but noted ex-teen queen Christina Aguilera botched the national anthem something fierce before the Super Bowl. Aguilera started out all right, but she had a problem with the ramparts -- specifically, the "O'er the ramparts we watched" line, which she left out altogether.....Aguilera tried to make up for it by combining two lines -- "What so proudly we watched," instead of "What so proudly we hailed", but let's just say that it was too late to reverse the error. Twitter blew up, and all Aguilera could do was to over-sing every word from there on out, which she most certainly did."

This was a good reminder for all of us who are called Worship Leaders and Teachers of God's word... It can so easily become about us, as we add too many notes and turn single-syllable thoughts into entire paragraphs.   The worship moments of a service are about the songs, not us and not our "performance" of it.  It's not even about what the song is doing to us emotionally.....we need to let the words of truth and the activity of singing them speak for itself.  This holds for teaching as well.  It's a hard line to walk when taking a few paragraphs that take 3 minutes to read slowly and turning them into a 30 minute message...we need teaching and we need to "discuss" what the writer meant, but those of us who teach need to be careful of our own commentary and opinion, less we add too many notes to "singing".


I feel bad for Ms Aguilera, but these are the kind of mistakes that eventually lead to humility and maturity....at least I hope!


Just remember.....the song IS the point, not the performance of it.

Being a Producer...

This quote came up on my Google homepage today:

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

                                                             Oscar Wilde

To me, only "existing" means I'm living only as a consumer.  We have a tendancy to only look for what makes us happy, makes us secure, makes our life better.  It's not that those things are wrong, but we miss out on best part of life....producing something.  Being a producer of something, creating something and living it out is what brings real joy, real meaning to life!

I'm reading Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in A Thousand Years.  In it, he talks about our story, what story we are leaving behind.  What will someone say about us when it's over, when it's done?  Do we want the legacy of someone who produced something?  Ministry, compassion, justice...or are we ok with just being a consumer of life, hoping our life is happier by finding the things that help us get thru each day?

The book of James talks about faith being dead without working it out in our life....without producing something with it.  We may have great discipline in taking in information from scripture, bible studies, praying, etc....but without it showing up in our life production, it's dead.  

May I see the day when the Church is a real producer of things in the lives of people...

Wrong Focus.....

On the plane ride home from Arkansas this week, I was looking in Southwest Airline's magazine and saw an interesting one page article. 

The headline read, "During an NFL game, the ball is in play less than 11 minutes".

The article went on to explain that the average broadcast lasts 185 minutes.  Of that time, the players spend 75 minutes in huddles or milling around the line of scrimmage.  Broadcasters dedicate 17 minutes of airtime to replays.  Cutaway shots to refs and barrel-bellied coaches total 13 minutes...and up to 60 minutes go to commercials.  Cheerleaders get about 3 sec.

It made me wonder about how we do church....we spend a lot of time, talking about God, planning, replaying what we've done and even doing commercials for what's coming up.....but how much time is the ball really IN PLAY?

I've always thought a good church model would be where you "Talk 1, Walk 1".  One Sunday is dedicated to preaching and corporate worship, the next Sunday dedicated to serving and loving the community (putting the ball in play).  The Church has to stop standing on the sidelines watching replays and get out on the field and play....practice/talk/huddles are only designed to precede action, not precede more planning.

Of course one could consider the gathering of believers on Sundays part of 'putting the ball in play.'  I totally agree.  Huddles and practice help develop teamwork and community among the players...but ultimately, a football team has a goal and they move  down the field.  The practice/huddle is not the ultimate goal....and I would offer, neither is the corporate worship meeting. 

Jesus wants more than 11 minutes of us in our game of life.  He wants a constant yielding of everything we have and are.  Continual worship and praise lived out each waking moment.  It's a hard thing to do, but a goal worth striving for...the convicting thing for me to look at is whether or not I am leading people to the "huddle" or to "put the ball in play?"