Contentment...

I hope that this message finds you all doing extremely well and enjoying the amazing luxuries that we all enjoy as Americans. I wanted to share this metaphorical "crowbar" with all of you. It's too great not to tell about.

In light of this weekends events, i.e. the "GO" Celebration, I thought this would be a good thing for all of us to check out. In case some of you don't know what I'm talking about, our churh is hosting about 45 missionary families this weekend and we are pouring into their hearts and lives and thanking them for what they do for our King. We will be listening to their stories and the challenges that they lay out for us through the Holy Scriptures of our Powerful Lord. Our Wednesday night service has been moved to Friday night and I hope to see all of you guys there to hear about the amazing stories that two of these missionaries are going to share with our student ministry.

Josh Patterson is the Executive pastor of The Village Church in Dallas, TX. Matt Chandler, whom Jamie and I have pictures with and Kyle, Jamie, and I have huge respect for as a teacher, is the lead pastor/teaching pastor at The Village. Josh recently preached a message called "Contentment". The first fifteen minutes he talks about his trip to Africa and the things that he saw. My explanation does not do it justice, so just listen to it. Be prepared, in the words of Kyle, "You'll be angry, hurt, moved, happy, joyous, and crushed." I love you all.

You can download it on iTunes under The Village Church podcast for free or you can download it from their website at this address...http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/sermons

For His glory, for His people,

Teachability...

First of all, as far as our English language is concerned, I am not sure that "teachability" is even a word. Blogger spell check says that it is not. However, if I were going to assign a definition to the word "teachability" this would be it:

teachability: The capability and or eagerness of one to learn from a given situation or over a certain time period.
What is your teachability?

That being said, I want to ask this question in regards to Collision '09 (ie. DNOW) and any given life circumstance or even life itself, "What is your teachability?".
Because we deem ourselves as intelligent life forms, we assume that most of us have the ability to adapt and to learn. Whether we realize it or not, we learn everyday. We see things that others do and learn from their decisions whether or not we will allow ourselves to enter into the same circumstances that they were in and whether or not we will handle ourselves in like manor.
Our salvation is much the same as our everyday life. As a matter of fact, our salvation is very much a part of our everyday life and thus part of our learning process. Paul says that we should work through our salvation with fear and trembling. If we are working through something, are we not learning from the experiences that we have? Each day we are faced with choices that will ultimately lead us to ten, fifteen, fifty years down the road. As we go throughout our day we have encounters that we call, "experiences" that shape who we are as human beings and as Christians for those of us who believe and have accepted Christ as our Savior. Through those expereinces we learn to trust or not to trust. We learn to have joy in this circumstance and be furious over injustice in another. We learn that we should be humble in this circumstance and then awe struck and blown away in another.
The Holy Spirit guides us down paths that will further perfect our salvation and ultimately bring us closer to Christ and make us more like Him. On these journies, we are shown things that we need to surrender to Christ and let him have control of in our lives. Many times these things invlolve lying, sexual immorality, cheating, anger, stealing, etc. But also at times they include our letting go of our will and control. They may involve things like, career decisions, relationships, being called to ministry, our desires, etc. Not all things that we learn from and must surrender to God are bad. Some are very good. We simply can not make those things ultimate in our lives. For if we do, they become our gods and we worhsip them and not the true Creator.
My point to all of this is that this week is our Disciple Now weekend at church where many of our students come together for a time of worship and teaching and are encouraged to bring their friends to see and experience the power of the Almighty. If we truly believe in the power and sovereignty of our Lord, then we believe that all of us are here for a purpose and by divine appointment. All of you are where you are for a reason and that reason may only be known to God himself. This week and this weekend, this year and at every point in our lives, the Spirit is trying to teach us something. He is trying to mold us and make us more like himself by replacing the things that are in us that are of ourself and not of him. My questions is what is your spirit like right now? Are you ready and asking God what it is that he wants to teach you this week or weekend or day or year? That's a hard place to be at times because we often don't want to hear what he wants to teach. We must be open and be willing to learn from our Lord. We must submit our will and our hearts to him, proclaiming that he is King of our lives and that we will listen to whatever he asks us to do. So, ask yourself and let the Spirit guide you in your thoughts and prayer as you ask, "What is my teachability?".

Stethoscope or guitar...

As a senior in high school my close friends and I, the "three musketeers" as our English teacher called us, had high hopes and aspirations of becoming great and successful men. We would be wealthy and call each other on the weekend in between patients and cases and family outings and schedule tee times at the golf course in Augusta, GA. Two of us started in Biology and Chemistry at Louisiana College and one at Louisiana Tech in Chemical Engineering. However within two years we had all changed and lent ourselves more to the things that we had said that we would never do. One changed to business, one to agriculture, and one to kinesiology. We left our dreams. Could we have achieved them? Yes. Was it the best thing and would we be where we are today? I doubt it.
I've been graduated from college for almost three years now. I've always struggled with money and power and fame. I've always wanted to be the Lex Luther, not so much the sadistic and hateful wretch that he is, but the guy that can do anything he wants at the slightest whelm. I always knew that I had it in me to be the successful doctor or the wealthy and powerful businessman; however, I've never really felt like that was God's will for my life.
Recently, my wife and I, well more so me than her, have become addicted to the TV show, House M.D. I am excited like a school boy at how he handles himself and the knowledge that he and the other doctors seem simply to carry in their pockets along with their stethoscopes and extra seringes. My friends will tell you that I have a bad tendency to let my mind and imagination adapt to whatever it is that I'm watching at the time. This could be a case of that or it could just be something that I've dealt with internally for quite sometime. Watching that show reminds me and makes me think of what I could have been, or...what I could be. I remember how I decided to get out of pre-med because I couldn't handle the responsiblity of having a person's life in my hands. Is it really in my hands and not in God's? No. However, to the world and to my guilty conscience, the life would be in my hands. I couldn't handle knowing that because of a mistake I made or simply because the person was beyond care, that they would die. That bothered me to no end and I never even had anything like that happen. I never made it to med-school although I've thought of trying several times.
The question that I've posed to myself in the past few hours is this. Is the job that I'm in now not that much different? In my heart and my knowledge I posses the "medicine" of life. I know what can cure a person's wretched soul and restore them to a true relationship with Christ. However, I let people die. And truth be told, so do you. That is disheartening. That troubles me. I've felt many times and still struggle with the idea sometimes that I could be making a larger impact in the world if I were working as a doctor and saving people's lives and making a lot of money where I could financially bless people and not have to worry any at all about my family and where I could give God the glory for saving their life and not take it for myself. I've struggled with that many times and to be honest, at times, I still do. I wonder if a guitar is just as effective as a stethoscope.
In my heart, I know that it is. God uses me and many others to teach and tell of his good news and great "medicine for the soul" that without the doctors of the gospel, they would never hear. So is one profession more impactful than the other? In some circles, one might say that being a minister is more effective and another circle would say that a doctor of medicine is more effective. However, I beleive that we both can and do make a huge impact on the world and do a great deal for our God. God gave us medicine and God gave us the Gospel. He made us and only he can fix all parts of us.
So are we as ministers as knowledgeable about lupus, cancer, anemia, and all the other crazy and long worded diseases that Dr. Greg House is? No. However, we do deal with people's lives and their eternity every day. I wonder why so many of us don't take it as seriously as the doctors of medicine do. We are "Doctors of the Gospel", so to speak. Stethoscope or guitar? I'll keep my guitar for now.