Scavenger hunt

Hello everyone, the scavenger hunt is coming this Saturday @ 6:30 pm. Invite your friends and be ready for a CRAZY time! The scavenger hunt is one of my favorite events.

I do need some help from you though.

If you can come up with 5 things you think would be cool to do as part of the scavenger hunt, email them to me or post them here. Please come up with challenges we can do or ask questions for which you don’t have answers.

This is going to be a lot of fun!

Small things

Don’t forget, as we talked about this Wednesday night: size is not equated with power. Small things can have a big impact on our lives and on the lives of others. Our daily choices, that seem insignificant, over time can have a huge impact on our lives. Those choices can be for good or bad.

Please find a way to show someone a simple, selfless expression of love this week. If you think of something good, let’s talk about it on here.

Prayer

On this idea of serving and loving others, how comfortable do you feel praying with your friends? Would you feel awkward asking a friend if you could pray for them when they are talking about not getting along with their parents or the pressure they feel to “go to far” with their boyfriend or girlfriend? Will you commit to pray for your friends that are hurting, even though they have no interest in God?

God answers our prayers and does amazing things that we can’t manufacture on our own through prayer.

What are your thoughts?

Ideas

We still have 2 more prizes to give away for people that decide to comment on the site. Hurry so you can get in on that!

As promised, I want to try and share some ideas on how we can actually love others on a daily basis.

My first thought is within our own houses. How do we love the people we live with?

For my wife, one practical thing I can do is actively listen to her. She enjoys talking a little more than I do, but I make it a point to actually sit and listen to what she has to say. I listen without speaking or putting in my 2 cents until she asks for it. By doing that, I show that I love her and care about her. I want her to know that I think she has valuable things to say and that I think she rocks!

Jesus listens to us, so one way I can love others in my own home is by actively listening to others. What about you? What are your ideas?

Pursuit

I learned a lesson from my dog, Diego, yesterday.

For the past 4 weeks, this huge, 7-pound squirrel has been camping out in our maple tree in our back yard. Diego, a 20-pound Jack Russell terrier, has been absolutely consumed with this squirrel. He has spent most of his days sitting by the door, waiting for the opportunity to terrorize this squirrel. Most of the time, he sprints out the door, only to find the squirrel frantically scurrying up the tree, clinging to any substantial piece of bark that will sustain his rather husky body.

Yesterday, after this 4 week, all-consuming hunting campaign, Diego reached his goal. He killed the squirrel. And this taught me a lesson.

What most would have considered impossible, Diego accomplished. The squirrel was much more nimble than Diego. The squirrel spent more time in the back yard than Diego did; it was the squirrel’s terrain. Diego had every reason to give up. He had zero success in his 4 weeks of scouting this animal out. He had no reason to think he could ever catch this menace. I bet our other dog, Miley, talked smack to him every day about how awful he was as a squirrel hunter.

But, Diego never gave up.

How often do I give up my pursuits? How many times do I resist being singularly focused on a goal? How often do I let failure define me? How often do I simply give up because I have no hope for success? How often do I listen to the critics that say something can’t be done? How much more could God do with me if I simply committed my all to him in everything and kept striving, even in the midst of failure?

I think he could do a lot with that kind of focus. In fact, he sent us some instructions to back this idea up:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3:23-24).

Are you focused on giving your best in all things? If so, you just might be able to kill a squirrel (or maybe something a little more significant).

Rest

Hey everybody, hope you are enjoying your break and taking some time to rest. Yes, I said rest.

We often blow off rest and stay as busy as possible, but God really values rest. Why do you think he created the universe in 6 days, then decided to rest? I think he was trying to model that for us. As God, I doubt he really needed to rest and relax, but I think part of the reason he did it was to show us that we need rest. If even God rested, do we think we are so much better than God that we don’t rest? That seems ridiculous. Out of the Ten Commandments, the commandment that God took the most time explaining was about the Sabbath, which is supposed to be for rest.

So, take it from a guy who doesn’t do this so well: REST. Take it easy. Relax. Enjoy some time with family and friends. Don’t forget the talent show Wednesday and FREE bowling this Saturday in Solvay.

Today’s thoughts

When I think about God’s love, sometimes it is just hard to understand. I don’t feel like I am an awful person, but how can I really match up with a perfect, holy, compassionate God? I do all kinds of stupid stuff and say all kinds of stupid things. I often care more about myself than anyone else. What do I do with that?

When I feel like this, I come back to this verse (Romans 5:8):

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God knows how much we struggle and how messed up we can be. Despite that, Jesus still gave up his life, knowing we are a bunch of mess-ups who don’t get it right the majority of the time. God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us. When I grasp that and hold onto it, no matter how rotten I feel, God seems to work powerfully within me and through me. In the end, it’s not about us–it’s about him and how great he is.

Just a few thoughts I thought I would share.

Grace

Hey guys and girls, I hope you have a good Good Friday (you like how I used “good” twice there, don’t you?) and I hope you take a moment to read over the Easter story in the book of Luke. If you ever feel like your life has no value, that you are a failure and everyone is better than you, that you are the biggest screw-up on earth…or any thought on that wavelength, remember this: the one God of the universe gave up his life for you. He would’ve done it for you if you were the only human around. God is all about love and giving us what we don’t deserve. He loves us because he loves us and we can’t earn that. That’s what grace is all about. We are made right with God by what he has done for us, not what we can do for him.

See you this weekend!

Break it down

I was reading Luke 23:44-46 the other day and I came away with some new thoughts.  This passage takes place when Jesus is on the cross, he has been there for a few hours and it says that darkness took over the whole land.  In fact, the sun stopped shining.  Some of Jesus’ followers were there watching him die.  Then, the curtain in the Temple tore in half.  Everything these people could hold onto, in any way, shape, form and fashion, was breaking down.  What did they have to look forward to?  Where was any sense of hope?

In our lives, sometimes it can seem like everything thing has broken down.  Nothing is in place as it should be.  I think those are times when God can move powerfully or times when we can grow disheartened and give up.  When everything falls apart, do we embrace change and what God might be doing through that change or do we turn our heads and hide?  Do we fear the worst has taken place?  God might need to shake us up to do what he ultimately desires and what is ultimately best for us.  I want to be open to that.

Radical

I have been reading a paragraph from the book of Luke each day for about 3 months now.  Last year, I read through the Bible in a little over 90 days and that was awesome, but I wanted to study Jesus in depth, soaking on each word he had to say.  Today I came to Luke 13:10-17 and I came away with this one thought: Jesus was a radical!

Jesus was a radical.  He didn’t function as this nice guy around all of the people that were supposed to be churched and had it all together.  He was a radical.  Sometimes, it can read like he did things to make the religious people mad.  Really, he was just doing what was right and by him doing the things that were right, it ticked people off because it made them look and feel bad.  Why did it make them feel bad?  Because THEIR HEARTS WERE IN THE WRONG PLACE.  Their faith had become all about them and how close they could seemingly get to God.  Jesus sought out the last, the least, and the lost at all costs, regardless of whether or not it was the socially acceptable thing to do and when he did that, he did it solely out of love for those people.  Because he did that, the religious people got mad.  He came to serve.  The religious people had no idea of service, it was all about them.  They were just consumers of religious information.  Jesus didn’t necessarily target the religious people or try to make them mad.  He made them mad when he focused on actually DOING something for those that were unfamiliar with God, those that were in need.

How many times are we focused on the last, the least, and the lost?  How many times are we only focused on consuming religious information ourselves and we could care less about others?  How often are we out just to make people mad?  These were questions I came away with from my reading about the radical Jesus, the one I want to get to know better.

Thoughts?