Category: Life

Hebrews is one of my favorite books of the Bible.  It has so much to say to us about pursuing life with Christ.  I have always loved Hebrews 11, sometimes known as the “Heroes of Faith” chapter.  Well, McManus, in Wide Awake gives some great insight to this chapter as well.  He states, “If one thing is clear in this passage from Hebrews, it is that how long you live does not reflect how well you live.  The real question is, were you alive when you died?”  That is a heavy statement.  Do you get what he is saying?  It really doesn’t matter how long you live.  The length of your life is not a good indication of how well you are living your life.  But what does he mean by “were you alive when you died?”  That is the part that got me to thinking a lot about my life.  It is completely possible to live your life simply going through the motions; settling for a mediocre life because it’s comfortable or safe.  But is that what God has in store for our lives?  In the movie To Save a Life, Chris, a youth minister who is trying to help the main character Jake, puts it this way.  He says, “Jake, God wants so much more for your life than just fine.”  That sums it up.  When we settle for “fine” or “safe” or “mediocre” lives, then we really aren’t living the lives that God has prepared for us.  We might as well say that we are living our lives but we really aren’t alive.  I think that is what McManus is trying to say.  Let’s live our lives in such a way that there is no doubt that we were truly alive when this life comes to an end.

That leads directly to the next thought.  If we are living out our dreams and pursuing the life that God has prepared for us, then nothing can stop us.  I wrote yesterday about the idea that if God is for us then nothing can stop us.  Even if our lives come to an end, our dreams, if we have truly started trying to live them out, won’t just magically disappear.  Think about people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa.  They lived their lives with a dream and actively pursued those dreams.  One was killed and one lived a long life, yet their dreams continued in those that they touched with their lives.  McManus writes, “It is easier to kill a person than it is to kill a dream, once it captures your soul.”  Once a dream is realized and you are pursuing that dream, then, even if you are killed or die, that dream lives on in the people you have touched.  So again, let’s live our lives in such a way that there is no doubt that we were truly alive when this life comes to an end.

God Bless.

So yesterday I wrote  about dreaming big.  I mentioned the book that I had just started reading, Wide Awake, by Erwin McManus.  Well, I’m now about halfway through the book, and I just can’t seem to put it down.  I have been feeling God’s tug in my life for the past few months, telling me that it might be time to start looking for a ministry again.  The problem was that I was still looking at the past.  I was looking at the things that I saw as failures in my life.  I wasn’t listening to God and being an optimist, looking for the next bigger and better life change that God has in store for Kelley and I.  McManus really laid some heavy thoughts on me tonight as I was reading.  In fact, here it is 2:00 AM again and my mind is racing so much that I have to get these thoughts out before I can even begin to think about sleep.  Here’s the plan for tonight; I’m going to leave some quotes from McManus and over the next few days, I’m going to expand my thoughts about what he is saying:

1.  “If nothing can stop God, then who can stop you when you are pursuing him and living for his purpose?”

2.  “I wonder if for many of us, the only thing stopping us from living the life God created us to live — the life of our dreams — is to let go of a life so good that it betrays the great .  Are we willing to give up all the things we have right now to be able to obtain that which God longs for us tomorrow?”

3.  “If one thing is clear in this passage from Hebrews (he is writing of Hebrews 11), it is that how long you live does not reflect how well you live.  The real question is, were you alive when you died?”

4.  “It is easier to kill a person than it is to kill a dream, once it captures your soul.”

5.  “Maybe that’s just it; it’s the pursuit that brings happiness.  When you’re pursuing, you’re believing and expecting.  It brings fulfillment even when the task remains unfulfilled.  By the way, research reveals that the people most rooted or grounded in reality are those who could be considered depressed.  Reality is really overrated; it makes you a pessimist.  Te be an optimist, you must be a dreamer.  You must awaken the hero within you that sees beyond the problem to the promise.  I call this hero the Believer.”

Well, I’m going to leave it at that tonight.  I will revisit each of these in upcoming posts.  Feel free to start thinking through these on your own and maybe together, we can begin to start living the lives God has called us to.

This happens from time to time.  I’m sitting here at almost 2:00 AM and even though I’m tired, I can’t make myself go to sleep.  I have too much on my mind.  You see, I was recently given the opportunity to preach at my home church, Crossroads Christian Church in Gray, TN.  It had been almost a year since I had gotten to preach anywhere.  It was so refreshing to get to preach God’s word again.  I had almost forgotten how much I really enjoy and feel called to preach.  It is one of my greatest passions.  With this reminder, I have now started getting the itch to start actively looking for wherever God is sending my wife and I next.  It’s time to be in a full-time ministry somewhere.  Along with all of this, I started reading a new book earlier tonight.  Wide Awake, written by Erwin McManus has already started to make me think about some heavy thoughts.  I’m just a couple of chapters into the book, but the basic premise seems to be that we aren’t believing in God enough to allow ourselves to dream big about what we can do in our lives.  God is asking us what we would like, and we don’t have enough faith to ask for something grand.  Now, McManus is not talking about material wealth here.  He is talking about dreaming big with what we can do for God in our lives when we trust Him enough to just ask for something huge.

So all of this has got me thinking, and I can’t get my mind to shut off.  It has got me thinking about what I would like to be able to do with my life, where I would like to end up.  Man, do I have some big dreams.  Now, I’m just beginning to believe that maybe I can actually achieve some of them.  I can only reach them by trusting God.  What are my dreams?  Where do I want my life to end up?  Am I stuck where I’m at right now because I’ve been too scared to trust God?  It’s kind of  scary to start actually trying to answer these questions.  I think I have been too scared to trust God because I was questioning whether or not I would ever be able to succeed in a ministry position.  It’s also scary to start allowing myself to really start believing I may be able to reach my dreams.  I want to preach.  I want to preach to as many people as I can and the sky is the limit on this.  The more people who I have the opportunity to speak in front of at a time, the more confident I am.  I dream of being the preaching minister at a local church, preferably in the South, but also getting to speak across the country.

Do I dare dream of such lofty goals?  Well, I am laying this all at God’s feet.  I’m trusting Him.  I don’t want to speak all across the country because I want to be famous.  I really have no desire for  people know my name, but I dream of the opportunity to help lead as many to Christ as I can.  I also dream of writing one day, even one day in the near future.  I love blogging, even though I don’t get to do it very much.  But I really want to write a book.  I have a great idea and I’m allowing myself to dream of the day that I can write to help youth workers.  There are so many other things that I have dreams about being able to do in my life.  I’m excited to see where God is leading.  I’m sure Kelley and I are in for a wild ride, but we’re dreaming!

This semester during CSM’s Wednesday night youth group, our teaching times have been centered around the idea of believing in God but living like He doesn’t exist.  On the surface this seems strange, but once thinking about it, this is something that a lot (if not most) Christians do with their entire lives.  Kit came up with this idea, I’m guessing, while reading the book that we used as the base for our lessons.  This is where the strange name comes in.  The book is The Christian Atheist by Craig Groeschel.  The name of this book just really seems strange on the surface, but after reading it and really digging into the idea, this is actually one of the most accurate depictions of the way most American Christians seem to act.  As I said before, the main idea behind this is that we say we believe in God but then we live like He doesn’t exist.  I just finished reading the entire book a few days ago, and it was a great read.  Groeschel writes in a very straightforward and easy to read way.  The way he communicates his ideas in each chapter is very clear.  The book is full of personal experiences and practical advice.  Some of the chapters might seem to have an obvious solution but this is a great read.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who feels like they aren’t reaching the full potential of their Christian walk.  Do you believe in God but live like he doesn’t exist?  Read The Christian Atheist and start letting God become real in your life again.

I recently finished Francis Chan’s second book entitled Forgotten God.  If you’re anything like me, that title really strikes up an interest in seeing what he is talking about.  This is an extremely well written book and a great follow-up to Crazy Love.  Chan argues that the church as a whole has forgotten a very important part of the Trinity and I am pretty sure that I would agree with this.  Unfortunately, it seems that we have forgotten the power and the importance of the Holy Spirit.    What I really love about this book, however, is that Chan doesn’t just make a claim that we have forgotten the Holy Spirit.  The book is full of encouragement and advice about how to engage the Holy Spirit in your own lives.  He points out where we have seemingly missed the point and challenges us to go back and make the changes.  The scary thing is that he states that we can have a seemingly successful church without the Holy Spirit.  You might be asking yourselves how this is possible, but I can really see where he is coming from.  Think about it.  If you get a dynamic speaker, a great band and really cool visuals, you can draw loads of people in.  And the Holy Spirit isn’t even necessary for this combination to draw people in.  But here is the deal.  Drawing people in is not enough.  You might be able to draw people in but these people might just be there for a show.  The Holy Spirit is necessary to cause those life-changing decisions to be made on a consistent basis and this cannot be faked.  Chan is really practical about this as well.  At the end of each chapter, he tells a story of a person/couple that exhibits exactly what he is talking about in the chapter.  I highly recommend this book to anyone that is searching for something more than just a show from their church.  I also challenge anyone that reads this to take Chan’s challenge of trying to read the Bible again without any preconceived ideas of what you will find and then see what this Word of God tells us about the Holy Spirit.