Do you like my pic?

Nertz scores posted soon…I should’ve beat everyone by a long shot, especially since at one point I was about 75 points ahead of the nearest person. I only beat Mike my 2 points. BUT I STILL BEAT HIM! Wahoo!

Going to Sea World and Jerry Seinfeld today. PLUS Al Clifft is coming tonight. What a day!

OK-

I’ve been working on a new acrostic for myself…no, I’m not writing a book, or a sermon…just trying to figure this whole thing out. Let me know what you guys think of it. Obviously, each one will have a bunch of sub-points to help explain it, but here’s my acrostic for the word BALANCE: (look at capital letters)

read your Bible
stay physically Active
Learn from others
Appreciate things around you
say No
Capitalize your free time
Eat regularly and healthily

These are things I’m thinking will help me to stay balanced in my daily life.
Is this practical??

Let me know…

C ya

A couple of quick lessons from Mark 5:1-20

1) People don’t like change, no matter how good, especially if it makes them uncomfortable.

Jesus gives a man freedom from evil spirits, and the people from the town PLEAD with him to leave. It originally stems from the fact that the herd of pigs were totally lost, but even then, I think the townspeople were more frightened by the idea that the now-formerly-demon-posessed guy was normal than anything else.” Forget about the pigs-this guy freaks us all out!” I think they were afraid of the change that Jesus was capable of bringing, and just a tinsy bit upset about the pigs…

2) Jesus wants us to tell other people about the things He has done for us!

As Jesus is leaving, the healed guy asks to go with, but Jesus tells him instead to go home to his family and “tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19) Go home to your FAMILY. Good place to start. I hardly ever speak up to my family (parents, brothers, etc..) about the good things God has done for Christy and I–and I’m not sure why…but He wants us to share our experiences with others!

Check out this Warren Barfield song. It’s great. We are doing it Sunday in church and it has a great message about compassion.

Currently Playing:
Tim Hughes: When Silence Falls

The CD above is an advance release of Tim Hughes’ new album (coming 08.24.04). It is good, I am only part of the way through it. This is the guy who wrote HERE I AM TO WORSHIP, so that gives you a little insight to the quality and style. FYI: Here I am to Worship happens to be the #1 worship song in the country right now according CCLI (www.ccli.com). This spot has been held by such familiar titles as Lord I Lift Your Name on High and Shout to the Lord in the recent past.

So today I read Mark 4:35-41

Of course, this is a cool miracle-who wouldn’t want to see Jesus command the ocean and have it happen! Here’s what stood out to me– “[Jesus] said to His disciples ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ ”
Ouch!
So things aren’t going great on this journey, the storm is raging and reaking havoc on the ship. The disciples start freakin’ out and go wake Jesus up from a nap he was taking below deck in a fury of panic, saying “Don’t you care if we DIE?”. He comes up, and says to the storm, “Quiet, be still” and it stops. His rebukes the disciples asking them why they don’t have any faith…but CHECK THIS OUT- it is easy to have faith when Jesus is: A) standing right in front of you in the flesh, and B) performing huge miracles right before your eyes.

So do we still have faith even when Jesus doesn’t calm the storm in our life?

How many times in our lives do we pray a prayer of panic to God saying, “Don’t you care what is happening to me?” as if God was taking a nap or something. But even when Jesus isn’t standing right in front of us, and even if the storm is raging, he still wants us to have faith in him!

The God who created the universe can certainly be in control of your life–He is not taking a nap!

Check out Mike Janke’s review of the One Nation Tour Concert here. It has pictures on it that I took! They turned out great! You guys can take me to a concert anytime! But I didn’t get to go back stage…

Oh yeah, and I beat Mike at Nertz last night. WOOHOO!

I have found that I have the most joy when I encourage others. Ironically, this happens less often than I’d like.
I’m not sure why this happens–you’d think that naturally, we’d feel best when we are encouraged, not when we are being an encourager…but for some reason, it brings my focus to the right place–others.
Our nature as humans is selfishness, but it is an act of self-lessness that I feel closer to Christ. THAT makes sense. Everything about Christ is upside-down in comparison to human nature…
It is my goal to be more encouraging–and perhaps even that’s selfish-but I want to be closer to Christ. If by encouraging others I can be more like him-than I’m gonna do it!

Church was awesome yesterday. Chuck is a great speaker, and it was an incredible service. I love services like that! Praise the Lord!

I am sure a lot of you are wondering why there is a picture of Galadriel (from Lord of the Rings) on my blog. Here’s the deal-I like LOTR and when I took this LOTR personality test (it was like, “see what character from the movie you are the most like”…) and I was thinking that I would be like Frodo, or Sam–but no, I’m like Galadriel, the Elf goddess or whatever she is…

Our church signed up for 40 Days of Community-a follow up program to the incredible 40 Days of Purpose we did about a year and a half ago. I am positive 40Days of Community will be tremendous. I can’t wait! I heard the opening message at the Saddleback conference (I’m pretty sure that’s what it was) and was really inspired. For some reason, IT JUST MAKES SENSE–and God hangs out quite a bit over there at Saddleback…. ——COMING IN OCTOBER

God is so patient, isn’t He?
Revelation 3:20
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

God waits for us to ask before He pours out His blessings on us.
God waits for us to surrender to Him before He leads us to the right places.
God waits for us to seek Him before He reveals Himself to us.
But every time we ask, seek, or surrender-He is there. He is so kind and patient. And I just envision God not being like, “It’s about time!”, but more like, “ahhhh, I’m so glad you asked! Here…”

Not that God is our puppet or anything. His plans are always different than our plans-and surrender means just that-giving up our plans for His, but I just was amazed at God’s patience today, and I wanted to share that…

The One Nation Tour concert last night was great! What do you expect when you get together guys like Michael W. Smith, MercyMe, and Dave Crowder? We got to hear a couple of new songs from MWS that were good, and his new pop album comes out Oct 26th, so I’ll be looking forward to getting that for SURE!

They also did a great job in providing visual stimuli for the audience. There was a huge screen behind the performers that for most songs had motion video or motion graphics going on during the songs. I thought that added a nice touch. We are already wired to like that stuff in our media culture today–and it was particularly powerful on songs when the graphics were themematically tied into the song. Songs like “This is Your time” and “There She Stands” were among a couple that stood out to me…it was all great, though…

Check out Mike Janke’s blog for more info about the concert, and no doubt a link to his review on www.cmcentral.com

Do you know how hard it is to surrender to Christ everyday? This stuff is not easy folks! It’s like a constant do-over (remember that phrase from the playground?). “No, no, no–DO OVER!”
I don’t know who reads this thing, but I would appreciate your prayers. I want to stay surrendered-or at least have the insight to see when I’m not…thanks

BACK TO WORK!

We just got back from vacation. It was great, but got a little difficult near the end. Nathaniel was really homesick the last couple of days, and towards the end Noah started waking up around 3 AM as chipper as can be! The kids woke us up at about 6AM the last day and Christy and I said to each other, “OK, what do you say we just get out of here?”. And, of course, as soon as we started driving, the kids fell asleep. Those crazy, cute little guys…

All in all, though, vacation was great. I got to spend a lot of quality time with family-immediate and not. We zipped up to Chico first (zipped in about 14 hours), and hung out w/Christy’s folks who are living up there for a year, escaping the busy life of The O.C.
Next we cruised over to Twain Harte (cruised in about 5 hours) and hung out with my extended family for a few days. We stayed at my folks house and got to spend some time with them and my brothers and sister, and all of the various children. Counting our kids and theirs, one of the evenings there was a kid who was 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 years old. YIKES! It was great fun though.

OK- The VIllage was incredible! M. Night Shyamalan is the best filmmaker of our millennium (sorry Steven Speilberg). I have been a die hard Speilberg fan for years, but Shyamalan has suprised, delighted, and entertained me with each and every one of his films to date. The Village is a little scary…

I’m going to a Michael W. Smith/MercyMe/Dave Crowder concert right now. PLUS I will post my review of the Saddleback festival as promised. It’s coming…

A SUMMER’S NIGHT is coming very soon…Aug 14th is the evening concert and dessert @ 6:30 PM. It will undoubtably be the best the Midway Praise Choir sounds all year long. Don’t Miss it!