My brain is so fried after Catalyst West, I gotta take it easy today. I have so many notes and things to think through. I have several new songs to get, learn and teach. So many people I have connected with and now need to follow up with and get to know. It was only a couple days but I feel like it was weeks. Very good weeks, but still long.
So instead I just wanna give you a couple links to check out that I am excited to hit up myself! Check this out!
How often do you find yourself living knowing that God is real and out there but as if He is just the Man Upstairs. He is out there but you shouldn’t bother Him with your problems. Life sucks. Hard times have hit. Stress is piling up. Worries are keeping you awake at night. Too bad God is out there but doesn’t really concern Himself with the small stuff.
I know I live like this too often. I forget that God is there for all my issues. The relationship He wants from me is a personal one and not just knowledge based. If I don’t go to Him with the small things in my life am I really trusting Him with everything? Nope. He wants me to trust Him with everything. Through Jesus He made our problems personal to make it all right.
God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all.
Romans 8:3
I don’t like living like God is just up there for big things. I don’t like living like He isn’t always a personal God. I gotta remember that He wants to hear my small stuff. He wants me to trust Him with all my life.
Remember He wants all of you, too. He is your personal God as well. Let Him be.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow,
high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
Romans 8:31-39
Sometimes we just need this reminder. Life gets hard. It gets painful. You seem surrounded by enemies trying to hunt you down. BUT it is in those times that God shows up and shows us His power again. He shows us His love. His grace. His truth. I love that. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that NOTHING can get between us and God’s love.
When you read Luke, as Jesus is entering into Jerusalem everyone is singing His praises. But the Pharisees freaked out and tried to stop it.
Some Pharisees from the crowd told him, “Teacher, get your disciples under control!” But he said, “If they kept quiet, the stones would do it for them, shouting praise.”
Luke 19:39-40
I have always wanted to see that. Rocks crying out to God. That just seems so far beyond what I can understand and imagine, yet so insanely awesome. But they won’t. Not yet.
The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead.
Romans 3:19-21
Do you see the amazing privilege that we have here? The created world is being held back. The entire world wants to do something that we have the choice to do. They want to worship God. And we have a choice. Worship Him without being held back or live for ourselves. Unfortunately I do the latter far too much. I want to worship Him more. I need to worship Him more. (By the way, worshipping is way more than learning G, C, D and Em on the guitar and playing every worship song. It is much more than going to church and singing two fast, one slow, one fast…or verse one and two, skip verse three and end with verse 4…just depends on what church you go to.)
I want to worship/honor/praise/trust Him…
…with my attitude.
…with my family.
…with my road rage.
…with my tweets.
…with my life.
He deserves so much more worship than I give Him. The rocks know that. They want to let it rip, but it’s just not their time yet. Maybe we should start learning from them. Maybe I am dumber than a rock.
We just had our baby yesterday. What did you think I was gona talk about today? Of course I’m gonna talk about the baby. But you got a pretty good dose of Jessi yesterday so I’ll hit it from a different angle.
This is our first baby. We have never done this before. I had lots of people tell me all kinds of things in preparation.
But no amount of pep talks from everyone can really prepare you for what you are about to experience. Yes, the birthing process is amazing (and messy) but there is so much more to it than that. There is new life! There is a first breath. There are fingers and toes! There is lots of screaming. And through it all I don’t understand how anyone could miss God in the whole thing. I can’t in my wildest dreams imagine that what happened yesterday is happening by accident or because of survival of the fittest or whatever other theories one might have. There is no way that all the insane intricacies of that whole day are chance.
I mean seriously? I wouldn’t ever think of those things. To see everything that I did yesterday and walk away not KNOWING there is a Designer and Creator just seems crazy. I’m just still amazed that I get to see these things. And I’m just through day 1!
It’s true! The final countdown has arrived! Tomorrow morning (far too early) we will officially start a new journey. Pregnancy has been great…well…pregnancy, but in the morning that journey in which my wife has done such an excellent job, finally comes to a close. Only 13 days late! Tomorrow we will head to the hospital early in the morning and remove that little girl!
While this has been a long and extended journey, a whole new one begins tomorrow. It will include diapers, poop, crying and all the fun stuff, too. I don’t know what I am doing for the most part, but I figure she is a James and she will probably figure it out faster than her old man anyway (although I do know how to swaddle her).
Now that this chapter is closing, I think it’s a good time to stop (very briefly because it is about time the chapter ended) and say thank you to all of you who have been praying for our growing family. We have been extremely blessed with a healthy baby and momma and I would be willing to bet that is partly because of you. Thank you so much! We could never thank you enough for it. Please continue to pray for us as we grow and learn together, for Kara-Kae as she is recovering from “growing a life inside” of her (as she would say) and for our whole family as we adjust to a completely different life!
PS – Tomorrow we finally get to meet our little girl!
PSS – And you probably will too.
Throughout a pregnancy there are many different aches, pains, and discomforts most of which I have no room to talk about and will not pretend I even kind of understand. But as a husband of a pregnant wife the worst thing is watching her hurt and not be able to do anything. Yeah, I can go get food and water. I can help her up. I can rub her back. But I still can’t fix the problem.
As a man, that is a major issue. I want so desperately to fix her pain. I wanna make it better now. I want to see her sleep comfortably without the tiniest hint of discomfort written on her forehead. Now that we are 11 days past our due date the discomfort and pains seem to have worsened and also seem to be sharpening by the day. With those aches and pains comes more desire and want in me to fix her problems.
I bet that this is a little bit of how God feels when we are in pain because we are trying to run our own lives. He wants so bad to make it all better for us (not in the money and security and happiness sort of way but the contentment and joy and relational way). We just have to allow Him to take care of us. I wish it was that way for husbands too.
Well, we’re having some issues with “our” Internet at the house for some reason so I am blogging today from my iPhone. Therefore it will not be extremely long today, but I wanted to give you all an update on our baby situation. We are truckin’ along at 40 weeks and 6 days now and Little Baby James is still all curled up and comfy inside my wonderful preggo. KK is doing far better than I would have. We are learning patience and God’s timing through this whole ordeal, too.
It hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world, but we are resting in the fact that there is a perfect plan am a perfect person in control of it all. We are bummed for the family that they didn’t get to see our little girl as soon as she arrives, but we have been very blessed to get to have them all here. We are so thankful that they all had the ability to come out and even more so the desire to be a part! I don’t ever want to take that for granted.
So as we are closing up week 41, thank you foe your prayers and encouragement. This little one will be here really soon since we will be taking her out toward the end of week 42 if she doesn’t decide to take the trip on her own. She will be here and our lives will never be the same. Funny how that used to seem so crazy and now as we are days away from it I can’t wait! (minus the not sleeping much ever again part). Thanks again for your prayers. Please keep them coming and we will give you some more updates as we get closer and then have the pleasure of showing off our little baby and her new name to the world!
Yesterday around 1 PM my grandma, Granmary, finally went home to see her Creator. I would say that at 95 she lived quite a life. She was huge into missions and there are many more people that now know the Lord because of her. She loved her Sooner football and walked with her sister from her house in Norman to Oklahoma football games well into her 80′s! She loved her family and brought up three pretty amazing sons who all had 3+ kids each who many of them have had multiple kids as well. She and Papa left quite a nice little legacy there.
For all of you that think you are good at Scrabble, she would kick your butt. I used to think I was decent at Boggle, but she would come up with words that had to have been made up! I’m not sure that anyone has EVER done more crossword puzzles than she did in her lifetime and she did it all with her tongue twisted and sticking out too (apparently that helps you think)!
I am very thankful for all the things she has done for me and my family and the love that she continuously showed us (even when I was playing with a ball in the house, knocked down one of the “special” plates from the mantle, broke it and found out there was one less plate that would be passed down to us). I am thankful that she got to see her sons and their wives for extended periods of time before she went home. I am thankful that she is no longer fighting (although she was quite the fighter and did so for a long time) and is now resting and worshipping with a scene that I can’t even imagine!
Goodbye Granmary! I hope that when I get to be 95 I can follow your example and look back and see the countless ways that God has used me to change my world. Tell everyone we said hi!
Change is a crazy thing sometimes. As children, change is hard. As a young adult we don’t seem to necessarily mind change or at least we seem to be better at coping with it. But it seems to me that many times as we get older change gets hard again. Last year I went for a job interview at a restaurant while my wife and I were in between churches. As I was filling out my application and waiting for an interview an older guy came up to me and told me that they have a “no facial hair other than mustaches” policy. I was a little caught off guard, but knew this was not gonna be the place for me.
Each new generation wants to (re)invent their own style (which is generally a mutation of several generations before them). We are constantly looking for bigger, better, faster. We want new and fresh. So at what point in our lives do we stop this search? When do we stop looking for and implementing change? Do we just assume that because it worked for us it will work for the next generation?
Technology, music, clothes, hair and many other things look completely different than they did for our parents and than theirs did for their parents. Knowing this is true, why do we as church leaders all over the world assume that it doesn’t apply to the church as well? As Craig Groeschel always drilled into our heads at LifeChurch.tv, the methods change but the message never does.
Disclaimer: I am not always good at changing. I like my routines. I like my comforts. But I do hope and pray that I can continue to wrap my mind around changing methods in order to reach those that the old “style” isn’t hitting. If I do get to that point, I hope that I have the smarts to step down from my role and let someone else in!
Do you accept, embrace and implement change?
What are you doing to change the methods from the old to reach the new with the only constant in our universe, Jesus Christ?
