The world around us quickly and fairly judges us on how much we love each other. Have you ever seen a Jesus fish on a car that honks furiously at you on the freeway and gives you the finger? Or a cross around the neck of a restaurant patron who is impatient and rude to his waiter?

These are the things that ruin the worlds view of Christ-followers. Usually by the time someone meets a Christian who truly loves the Lord and has a Christ-like attitude, their opinion of Christians is already tarnished by the many people who don’t live the life.

If we want to see people come to know the Lord, we must model a TRUE love towards others–no matter what the situation. Don’t lose your cool-you’ll also lose your witness.

Have y’all seen the movie SAVED? It’s a perfect example of reality. Hypocritical Christians that are sooo “Holier-than-thou” and truly evil themselves in their actions. People have criticized that movie for portraying Christians wrongly–and it does do a disservice to TRUE Christians–but unfortunatly, the portrayal of nominal Christians in that movie is all to true to our reality-and it is sad.

Wake up and love your neighbor!

Rick Warren says in “Better Together” (40 Days of Community devotional book) that the greatest lesson in life is love. That we are practicing on earth what we will do forever in eternity–and God wants us to be like Him, and He is love…

It is hard to think how life would be different if I WERE totally others-centered, instead of self-centered. The other day, Christy was feeling really sick, and I was home for about an hour before I had to go back to Church for the Wed evening service. The kids were kinda being abnoxious, and I actually thought to myself, “what can I do right now that would bless my wife”. So I washed the dishes and made her some macaroni and cheese from SCRATCH (yum). She WAS really blessed…but that’s the first time I’ve done that in a LONG time…I don’t know why it’s that way–but it’s been a while since I’ve thought that way.

But just imagine if I thought that way all the time–no doubt she would begin thinking of ways to bless me also–and our life would probably be better all around! Duh…I guess it’s just a matter of a complete shift in thought process–becoming others-centered rather than me-centered. What a journey…

BTW- that show LOST is so riveting. Really cool.

I’m turning my old Saturday Night Live tapes into DVDs with my Mac G5–it is fun! I found a tape that is probably four years old, or more! It had Norm McDonald doing Weekend Update (Bernie Mac was host). I didn’t even know I had tapes going back that far! The only problem is that sometimes the data stream from the VHS tape is compromised, and it creates gaps in the feed to the computer. It results in a choppy clip…bummer!! SO some stuff that was really funny I had to trash because of that…oh well. I think I just started DVD # 5. Yahoo!

Chris Tomlin is cool. We are doing “How Great is Our God” in church now (plus a ton of other stuff from old albums–Forever, We Fall Down, Enough, etc…) I’ll probably do “Holy is the Lord” before too long…although, I have really inundated the church with new songs recently. I have snuck them in through special music with individuals, the choir, etc…so they are learning stuff all the time and don’t even know it! This Sunday we do “For All You’ve Done” (from the newest Hillsong album of the same name) with the Midway Praise Choir, and then to do it again soon as a worship song. I think I may just be BRILLIANT!!!! AND cunning…or possibly, just a dork…

The only inherent problem with Chris’ music, is that it is consistently too high to sing congregationally. Most folks will tell you that a congregation can’t really sing much higher than a “D” (4th line on a treble cleff for sopranos) and they certainly cannot sing that note a lot in a row–but something like the chorus of “How Great Thou Art”, which goes up to a D at the beginning of the chorus, but stays low the rest of the time (mostly) is OK. On the other hand, a song like “How Great is Our God” stays up on Db’s for most of the Chorus AND during the verse some too. So I generally just take his songs down a 3rd or so…and it works out!

“Love your brothers and sisters in God’s family” 1 Peter 2:17b (NCV)

Small groups are awesome. I really have little problem showing love to people in my small group…there are some people in the congregation, though, that I have inadvertantly offended for one reason or another (mostly because I haven’t used their favorite old church thing or tradition–and that makes me automatically against them personally) and so now they think I hate them, and are bitter towards me. I can’t say it is easy to love them, they often cause strife in different areas, for the sake of causing strife. NOW THOSE kinds of people ARE hard to love. I need to love them-but it is hard…it’s easy to love people that love you, but not easy to love those that don’t…ugh…this stuff is hard to do

NO one said living a Christ-centered life of worship would be easy!! IT’S NOT!!!

HELP LORD!

MWS is one of my all-time favorite people in the universe. For some reason, God has tremendously blessed him-in so many ways. What a great artist!

Galatians 5:6
“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love”

I need to work on my love…it can be pretty shabby at times…probably more often than I’d like to admit…

I also hope you guys don’t think I was being too haughty in my last entry. In reading it, it can sound like I’ve got it down…but that’s not the case…I need help–I’m just a ragamuffin, too. I guess sometimes people’s attitudes can bother me, but I have attitude problems, too…just reminding myself…

and Once Again…MWS is awesome!

Day 3 of 40 Days of Community:
(BTW if you are also doing 40 DOC we are a week or two behind you…)
This campaign is all about love. 40 Days of Purpose was all about establishing and implementing the five purposes in your life. This campaign is all about learning how to love–Love others and Love God. Man, I wish I were as cool as Rick Warren-that guy ROCKS!! And so does 40 DOC!!

Just some tidbits from the devos…

“People who don’t love other believers, whom they have seen, can’t love God, whom they have not seen.” 1 John 4:20b (GW)

We love God by loving others.

The essence of love is not what we think or do or provide for others, but how much we give of ourselves. “Be full of love for others, following the example of Christ who loved you and gave himself to God as a sacrifice to take away your sins” Ephesians 5:2 (LB).

We love God when we see each other the way God sees us.
This is a VERY tough thing to do sometimes–yeah? Can I get an amen? I think I rarely have my “God’s eyes” glasses on…I’m too judgmental. God, help me to see people as you see them, and love them how you love them…

We love God when we become doers of the Word, and not mere hearers.
“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like” (James 1:23-24, NIV).
******The fact is, it is possible to diligently study the Scriptures, yet have no understanding of God’s love (John 5:39-40).******

WOW! How true that is!! I know people that study the BIble A TON, but rarely exhibit the fruits of the spirit or God’s love…it is a mystery to me that you don’t connect what you learn and your life…

This is why I love purpose-driven material so much. This stuff is made for practical, every-day living. It is chewable, digestible, and you can’t go away without knowing that you must take action on what you have just learned.
People often criticize the PD stuff because they’d rather have a verse-by-verse study, or it’s just too warm & fuzzy, they’d rather have exegetical study rather than topical…etc…etc…etc…but the reality is, I PERSONALLY have known too many “Bible Scholars” that are some of the biggest hypocrites and bigots on the planet. It doesn’t matter how much head knowledge you have if it doesn’t make for life change. The Pharisees WERE the “Bible Scholars” in Jesus’ day, and yet they challenged Him, were threatened by Him, and eventually plotted to have Judas betray Him into their hands.

Now, although many folks could argue-the Pharisees were a tool in God’s plan so that Jesus could sacrifice Himself on the cross for our redemption….and that is true, but it doesn’t mean that they were examples of people we should emulate.

Too many people spend too much time arguing the finer points of Theology-and don’t actually get around to loving others. What A WASTE!

I don’t care how much you know, I want to see Christ in you, and Lord, help others see Christ in me.

I’ve started my 40 Days of Community reading today. Our church is a couple of weeks behind others because we did a kickoff and week 0 message when everyone else was doing week 1 and 2. That’s cool with me, all the more purpose-driven! Yeah!

Learning to love. This book is great…(Better Together). Make sure you get one. CHECK IT OUT:

-God’s love FOR us gives us the REASON to love others

-God’s love IN us gives us the ABILITY to love others.

-God’s love THROUGH us gives us the WAY to love others.

That’s awesome. I am sucking in the love department a lot of times. I gotta be less selfish.

Get in a SMALL GROUP!!!!

ADIOS!

Psalm 91
1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say of the LORD , “He is my refuge and my fortress,
    my God, in whom I trust.”

I’m still trying to fathom that verse. Verse 2 is where part of the song “Made Me Glad” comes from–what a great song! We are going to start doing that one in church…For some reason in the past month or two I have had this large amount of new songs I’ve been wanting to do. I’m not sure why..but it’s cool. We did “How Great is Our God” from Chris Tomlin on Wed…and a bunch of others, including “Made Me Glad”. It’s great fun.

Thank you Lord for in-ear moniters. Never thought I would like ‘em, and now I’m hooked. Funny, huh?

We saw “Surviving Christmas” last night on a date. Not necessarily the greatest movie by any means, but had some definate 40 Days of Community themes in it. I mean, the whole thing is about a guy who doesn’t want to spend XMAS alone…he wants to spend it with a family and he doesn’t have one, so he rents one…good themes there. The other good Saddleback-friendly movie is I, Robot. The whole thing is about the robot who keeps saying “I know I’m here for a reason. I have a purpose in life…” it was so funny to me. I was like, “HEY, a purpose-driven robot!!” Loved it.

LOST is the best show. Wed nights @ 8PM. SOOOOO fantastic. But you really should’ve been watching from the beginning.

BTW- I won the last two NERTZ games. It was nice to do that again.

We’re praying that Amy has her baby so Derek can be around for the birth, rather than be out to sea.

Nathaniel was hilarious! We went to the Pumkin Patch–this little Harvest carnival of sorts–and he wanted to go on this humongous blow up slide. We thought he’d be too scared, but he insisted, so we let him. He was sooo funny. We’re going back JUST so I can get video footage of it.

You guys have got to check this album out!

It’s been a while.
I went to the SuperConference 2004 at Liberty University in Virginia. It was cool. I got to spend a lot of time with my cohorts, Chuck, Dustin, and Jose. We had fun. I would write more about it, but it would be too tremendously long…let’s just say this–God did some amazing things in my life during that time. Not because some speaker gave a great message, not because of a worship service, but because I was finally surrendering 100% to God-and was listening to what He had to say to me. I had some “Aha” moments…it was cool.

Our church is doing “40 Days of Community” starting this Sunday.

Our kids are sick. Yay. Getting up in the middle of the night is fun

I took pretty good notes from the SuperConference- email me if you want a copy of them. You can also download the main sessions on mp3 from www.superconference.us

I’m getting pretty knee deep into the Christmas Musical that we are doing- I may be blogging more sparcely…Mike Janke says he’s taking a break, too.

SNL opening was OK. I didn’t watch the debates, or I’m sure I would think it was funnier…