How to get lucky, healed, and generous

I'm not sure that I ever saw this stuff quite so clearly. Proverbs 3 really helps me see it.

Like, How to live a lucky life, favored by 'the gods', where things sort of lean you way and you get more than your share of breaks. Proverbs 3:3 spells it out. Luck ("favor") is not about circumstances that just happen. It actually comes from two character qualities- loyalty and kindness. If you are a person who has become loyal, and deeply kind, luck starts happening your way. I can become lucky on purpose!

That really helps me.

And I have been in those places after a deep hurt where I felt I would never be whole again. I have often been tempted to think that all I needed to heal, was time. But I was wrong- and many times time only deepened the hurt! But vs. 5 and 7 give me clear (if not always easy) steps for how to find my way back to emotional health when someone or some devil tried to steal it away. "Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart, ...distrust everyone else, even your own self!" (My paraphrase)

In Proverbs 3, I found how to get enough money to share, how to feel loved by God, and how to get respect. It shows me specific steps so that I can diagnose and fix what is missing so far in my journey to change the world in a good direction! I am no longer waiting for good things to just happen in their own good time. I can make them happen!

All of these things are things I NEED to accomplish the vision that God put on my heat for 09. I am eager to get started...

slow learning

I like consensus leadership. I like sitting with peers and 'talkin' shop' and finding things we agree on and doing them together.

But I keep discovering that my style there is often not the best leadership. Its often better, I am learning, to lay out a well ordered plan, and then ask for people to contribute, rather than discussing the entire thing together from the very start.

God help me have the courage to develop and lay out the plan, the humility to let people then tear it apart until it fits them, and the wisdom to know what to give away and what to keep.

The Dreaming God's Dream wave

"Dreaming God's Dream" turned out to be more than I expected. God did things in people's hearts, especially in the area of creating vision in us again.

Since Sunday, I have heard from quite a few people who wrote, called, or stopped by to say that they are flowing in vision again. I have heard about several dreams, breakthrough ideas for a couple of businesses, and a couple of parents finding courage to parent through tough times again.

"Vision lift" seems to be happening. This is what I would call the syndrome when we feed off each other in the area of vision, and we help each other focus on the future more than hurt about the past.

It all feels very, very powerful. God is up to stuff, and I get to see it and watch it unfold. We are all going to have some cool stories to tell about what He did, I think.

This weekend; Dreaming God's Dream!

This weekend is the scariest, most powerful, most community changing sermon material I have been given by the Holy Spirit in a long time. Maybe ever.

Because it is one thing to preach a subject well. It's quite another to live it.

2 days ago, I was almost hyper-ventilating with the scope of what God has instructed us to do this year. I love that He asked us, but sometimes, I confess, I wonder about His judgement in asking ME to have anything to do with it.

Not that I don't trust the power of God. It's that I don't trust my flesh. God is so powerful, huge, and well able to do this stuff without me. The part that scares me is my penchant for messing things up, and forcing Him to do stuff without me. You know, like if He can't trust me to stay the course, or to hang on when life gets scary.

SO here we go- Dreaming God's Dream. I get the feeling that this could be the best ever.

God, help me not mess up what you want to do. 

John Wega, US Christian Commission

I asked John Wega of the US Christian Commission to come and be interviewed for my "Developing Outreach and Discipleship Programs" class tonight. (Thanks Tom Rees for this fantastic class idea).

John, a member of Bethel Assembly in Littlestown,  is doing some amazing outreach to tourists in Gettysburg. A few years ago he (A medical biologist) discovered that there were thousands of virtually untold stories of how believers ministered to the soldiers who fought and died at Gettysburg, and brought thousands of them to Christ.

John has become an dominant historian, documenting and collecting these stories of Christian work around and through the Civil War battles. He has re-constituted the US Christian Commission, and is again using it as a platform for reaching people with eternal life. He builds and conducts tireless period-perfect chapels on the battlefields and in the town of Gettysburg, challenging listeners with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He owns and operates a museum, conducts "living histry' exhibits that really honor both the history and Jesus, and conducts tours that honor the men and women who worked so hard to help hurting soldiers, and make an eternal difference.

I have often been deeply frustrated with how little I or we do to reach the millions of tourists who visit Gettysburg. John really encouraged me with the work that he is doing, and the affect that it is having. He is a man of real vision, courage, and positive action for God.

Way to go John!

Gotta be a God thing

If this is gonna happen- if we are going to be able to plant 10 churches in partnership with other churches in the community, well, it is going to HAVE to be a God thing.

I am more and more aware of how difficult it can be for churches to work together closely on a project such as this. I am not amazed that it doesn't happen more.

I guess the bottom line is, we are asking churches to trust us that we will make this a win for them, and will do everything we can to make it something that will cause their churches to grow, even while they plant another one.

We are trusting in God to make that happen. Not because it's our idea (planting churches). It's His. And He will do it -build His church- with or without us.

I want it to be with.

Christmas night in the emergency room

So I had a great Christmas...mostly.

Christmas morning we have Candace & Aaron, Jake & Shawna, and Julie's immediate family over for a breakfast feast. Then in the afternoon we went to Grandmas in Millersville. Very nice.

When we got home there was a mound of Christmas goodies that nice people at church gave us. I took a couple of hands full of some kind of candy coated popcorn and nuts thing, and ate it like there was going to be a famine. Like I needed more junk.

About 15 minutes later, I started feeling pressure in my stomach. It got worse, and worse untilI had trouble breathing and functioning at all. I was very tired from doing the three Christmas Eve service, and had wanted to go to bed early. But instead, I paced the floor in the worst agony I have ever been in.

For hours.

Julie prayed over me awhile. Finally, I told her to please to go to bed, while I walked and twisted to get some kind of relief. I tried laying, and sitting, and doing whatever I could think of to get a little relief. Nothing seemed to help. I was crying in excruciating pain. About 3:17am I had enough. I left Julie a note to please sleep on, but I was going to the hospital to find out how a lizard had crawled into my stomach and had a thousand babies.

In the hospital, they told me that I had gallstones, and that I might get more attacks until I one day get tired of it and take out my gallbladder.

So today I am sore from all the tension of being in so much pain. I am also a bit suspicious of food- it may not be my friend anymore. And I am seeking answers about gall stones.

Steve and Tracy Wulf

In the rush of deadlines and Christmas events, I have still not written about my friend Steve Wulf. Steve and Tracy have planted Connection Point church in Tampa in September. They are dong quite well. Steve is full of vision, passion, and excellence. I got to meet Tracy's Dad, who is also part of the team, the worship leader, and another leader or two.

I believe Steve and Tracy are excellent leaders and will go far. They have a great plan and are executing it very well. Not only will they plant this church, but many more churches will come out of this one as well.

These days 60 people gather weekly and being assimilated into a powerful force for God in the Citrus Park area of Tampa. Discipleship is happening, and the group is growing steadily. Outreach plans and development ideas are flowing.

Because this church exists, precious individuals will live for eternity in Heaven. Marriages will become storybook love lives, and serious illnesses will be healed, and world changing children will be raised. I am deeply honored to have friends like Steve and Tracy, and believe that God will use them incredibly to do great things.

Freedom Valley got to play a very small role in this new church's planting. We are the sponsoring church, have given a few dollars, and have guarateed their financial responsbility to ARC. I am chairman of the board. I pray for them often, and we hope to be able to give more finances in the near future. These items don't seem like much but it is an honor to have ANY role in something this powerful.

God has a great plan, and I am always amazed that He allows me to be part of it.  Life giving churches being planted are one of the great thrills of my life, and certainly the great hope for America.

strategy wanted

I would like to be the kind of guy that thinks big. Big enough to build actual plans to affect an entire nation with goodness, forgiveness, love, and vision. 

Jesus.

Does that kind of stuff only happen by circumstantial fortune? Or is there a way to strategically make it happen?

There are 4 million people in Tampa alone, I was told today. We found a couple of new and  growing churches. Some of them are doing stupendous jobs, but still only reaching several thousand all together. To reach this city (only one of many in my beloved country), we would need literally hundreds of them if we were content to raise the water level by only 10 degrees!

God has given us a tiny little plan to raise the water level in a tiny little county (Adams) by a degree or two- perhaps even three if we are blessed. That could make a big difference for us. But if we want to reach a nation, somebody needs to think a LOT larger than ANY plans I have heard of.

God, please help me think a little more of your thoughts. Help me do my part on my scale, while I seek and find you on how to do a far larger thing than I even know how to imagine. 

My big brother is 18 years older than me. He talks of retirement, and fights health issues. If I become like him in the next 18 years, I would surely like to make them count in a way that gets a lot of people walking into Heaven for eternity.

holding the new baby

Almost 22 years ago, I held my oldest daughter for the first time.

I was completely unprepared for the rush of feelings and powerful ideas that rocked my world as I held her. I couldn't stop looking at her, or finding other people who had to look at her too. And if some unfortunate soul in a rough mood would have looked at her even slightly oddly, I would be in prison for life.

It's not the same, but neither is it unrelated to what I feel this week as I travel to Tampa and spend a little time in the world of our newest church plant, Connection Point.

Don't get me wrong. I had little to do with this church plant. But we helped where we could, and need to celebrate what God did in bringing this new entity into the world. Steve and Tracy Wulf are the church planters, and people I am very proud to work with.

The bottom line is, people will spend eternity in Heaven because of this new church. This is as exciting as when each of my four awesome children were born.

I can't wait to see and hear about what God is doing.