Tomorrow @ The Gathering we’re going to be talking about how to relate to God.  How do you get close to God? We’re going to be asking four questions that will help you take an inventory of your own life.  If God is a distant, abstract idea; something that conjures up bad memories of the past, why and how do you get over it?

This will be a great day to bring someone who is struggling in their faith and wants to know how to get unstuck.  If there is a God , if He loves us, if He has a will for our lives, if He’s ready and willing to be involved in our lives, to take care of us, love us and support us, and provide all our needs, I want to know about it.  And I want to know how to make the connection.

So join us tomorrow @ The Gathering at 9:00 and 10:30 for Step # 11 in our summer series,12 Steps Up, for a talk entitled, Hook Up.  How do you get close, stay close, and have an intimate relationship with God?

There are three basic issues in life, it seems to me.

• The internal me who struggles to be happy, whole, and excited about who I am and where I am.
• The relational me, the personal me, how I deal with navigating the relationships in my life.
• The public me, my work.

Since we spend so much time in our work life, why aren’t we enjoying it more.  Are we?  The people I am talking to seem to be caught in a catch-22.  One, they are glad to have a job, even if it is not a job they love or feel particularly rewarded by.  Or they have lost a job and hesitate to go back to an industry or career for which they have no passion.

I just finished reading a book called Crush It! Easy read, simple idea, said in a fresh new way, “Find your passion and have fun the rest of your life.”

Working was meant to be fun, I’m convinced of it.  It wasn’t meant to be difficult, drab and boring.  But boy, howdy,  is the space in which we work changing!  And changing for the better for those who have a passion: a passion to help people, a passion to lift, to love, to help other people get the life they want.

Here is my challenge.  Maybe you don’t have any fun at work because you don’t see how what you do is connected to helping other people get what they want and need in life.

You can never be great doing mindless, pointless work.  You need to know that what you’re doing makes a difference in the life of another person.

Here’s what I’d like to hear.  Some of you tell me what you do, and why you love it and have fun doing it; so much fun that “retirement” doesn’t even enter into the equation.

Last week we dealt with the four greatest pressure points in marriage talking about the pressure brought into the marriage by in-laws and children.

Today we’ll finish the discussion by adding the pressure points of religion and money.

Join us at 10:00 AM Central time for the live version of the David and Paula Show.  If you can’t join us at 10:00, make sure you subscribe to the David and Paula Show at iTunes, or go to the web site and listen to the online version.

No matter what you do in life, whether you are a professional, in the service industry, or a teacher, your level of success will be determined by your ability to tell interesting stories really well.

Life is about story, adventure, journey.  It’s about not only experiencing for yourself, but interfacing with other people who help you along that journey and give you better ways to experience your life.

So ask yourself: Am I telling really interesting stories; stories about my product, my service?  And am I doing it really really well?  It takes both.

If your career is stuck, maybe it’s not the work itself. Maybe it’s that you’ve lost the joy and the passion of telling the story of what it is you do, the help you offer, the solution you believe in.  Or maybe you still believe in it but you’re not taking the time to tell your story really well.  Is it compelling?  Does it incite, inspire, encourage, even outrage at times?

Your life might be improved, your career even saved if you realize that your job is to tell interesting stories really, really well.

I am a churchman.  By that I mean I don’t just attend a church, lead a church, I believe in the church; not as an organization or an institution, but more as a movement, a gathering of like-minded men and women looking not only for the answers to their life, but seeking to understand God and how His world works.

I believe in the American church.  I’ve seen her go through at least three significant movements in my lifetime.  And as I’ve studied them as a student, I’ve come face-to-face with the truth of the old adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

With that in mind, if you’re looking for a church, and you should be,  if you’re in a church that’s dead and stale and doesn’t believe anything, you should get out today, regardless of whose feelings it hurts.  So here are the five things I just simply couldn’t abide in the church I commit to:

1. I can’t commit to a program-driven church. I was raised in a denomination known for its programs. The mathematical equation was always in play.  If you want to have 10 people in Sunday School, have one teacher.  If you want to have 20, have 2.  If you want to have a hundred, have ten classes.  Maybe that worked, but it certainly doesn’t work today.  People are not looking for a program to be plugged into.
2. I can’t commit to a committee-centric church. There are churches in which the first thing they want to do is give you a job, put you on a committee. Someone said, “a camel is a horse put together by a committee.”  You get the point.  Committees, in my opinion, are worthless.  Yeah, I said it – worthless.
3. I can’t commit to a traditional church. I don’t mean that traditions are bad.  As a matter of fact, I believe that traditions are good things.  Traditionalism is being stuck in the past while living in the present.  We do the things we do because grandma or grandpa or our favorite pastor did or didn’t do them.  Life’s too short to waste it in a stuck church.
4. I can’t commit to a church that doesn’t have a high view of Scriptures and the proper view of Jesus. I can tolerate a lot of things; differences on whether we should drink or not drink alcoholic beverages, differences on whether we baptize by sprinkling or immersion, or whether to use real wine or grape juice, whether women can be pastors or not.  But what I can’t abide is an undercutting of the sacred Scriptures as the total, absolute foundation on which we base all of our teachings.  I also couldn’t compromise on the full deity of Jesus Christ; that He is indeed the way, the truth, and the life.
5. I can’t commit to a church that wears suits and takes itself too seriously. We’d all like to believe that our church is the best church in town, or at least an important church that the community couldn’t do with out.  We are very serious about our place in society.  I’ve just realized that the only unchangeable certainty is that God will accomplish His purposes.  I see them as three: redemption, reconciliation, and ultimate restoration.

So for me, I wear jeans to church.  I have for 20 years, not because I think it’s cool, just because it fits me.  There are other places where suits on people fit.  Those are the kinds of churches you might need to go to if jeans and t-shirts offend you.  But for me, bottom line, I think we need to gather in joy, not in a solemn recounting on the fall.

Here is a bonus point.  I couldn’t commit to a church where I didn’t hear constant laughter; not only in the hallways and the parking lots, but in the main room, the room we love to call “the sanctuary.”  God is a God of generosity, creativity, joy.  He is a happy God Who has planned a future beyond anything we can imagine.

Find yourself a great church you can commit to, and see the amazing things God will do.

I, like you, have listened to the saga of the LeBron James free-agent dance.

As it turns out, LeBron and some of his friends turned the system in on itself and beat the owners at their own game.  And now they are very, very angry.

James is criticized for making his decision public on ESPN, when exactly what he did was use the sports-crazed nation against itself in order to raise millions of dollars for the Big Brothers organization.   That’s being smart.

That night, the owner of the Cavaliers came out with an emotionally scathing, slanderous attack against James.  But let’s talk about what’s fair here.  If James hadn’t played up to the Cavaliers’ standards they would be the first to send him on the road.  And trust me, having lived in Music City, I’ve seen more than a few famous people dropped by their record label and they never heard a word form them until they saw it on CNN.  This happens all the time.  That doesn’t mean it should, it just means this is an issue of integrity.

Integrity resides on both sides of the working equation. That’s why I am such an advocate of entrepreneurial efforts to build your own businesses, work for yourself, and then if you work for a jerk, you’re the problem.

Big companies employing tens of thousands of people in the public arena who don’t give the support, the resources, who even force them into dishonest practices are sowing the seeds of their own demise. As are workers who cheat on their time-cards, who play around on the internet instead of being focused on the work at hand.

Integrity extends in the lives of our families; husbands flirting with their secretaries, women at home on Facebook rekindling old flames.  It is a matter of integrity.

What we need, I’m convinced, is a conviction that doing the right thing is not just the right thing, it will yield the right results. We’re not honest because it’s the policy; we’re honest because it’s right.  And when you do what’s right, ultimately it comes back to you.

It’s called the law of reciprocity. It’s what Jesus taught when he said, “Give and it shall be given unto you.”  Give and you shall be given.  Give what you give and you’ll get it back. It applies to the amount as well.  It also applies to integrity.  So whether you’re LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers, AT&T, BP, McDonalds, or a Mom & Pop store down the street, integrity on both sides of the fence, is the most profitable strategy you could ever commit to.

There’s an interesting statement made in 1 John 3 that goes like this:  “If our conscience is clear, we can come to God with perfect assurance and trust.”

Two words that stand out there are conscience and perfect. If our conscience is clear (and whose is?) we can come to God with perfect assurance and trust. Maybe that’s the key, isn’t it – to learn to listen to our conscience, our inner voice; that part of us created in the image of God that allows us to be more than mere mortals.

I asked four questions this morning to help people get a sense of how much we live outside ourselves.  I asked:

1. Am I driven by the need to fix others?
2. Do I ignore my internal sensors, like my conscience?
3. Do I avoid disciplines aimed at long-term gains? Do I live on the basis of my emotions alone?
4. Do I assume I can go on this way indefinitely?

These are the ways in which we choose to live our lives on the outside of ourselves so we won’t have to face ourselves.  But until we face ourselves our conscience will never be clear and we will never attain the one thing we want more thank anything in life: perfect assurance and trust in God and His love, grace, and His promises.

Today we talked about learning to listen to our lives: to our motives, to our emotions, to our relationships around us, and to our inner voice – our spirit.

If you are a person overcome by hurry, worry, and speed; if you’re worn out at the end of every day, confused, or feel stuck, this talk is just for you.

Tomorrow @ The Gathering we’ll continue our summer series, “12 Steps Up: How Messy People Mature” with Step #10 Listen Up.

How many times in one day do I hear people say, “I’m busy, I’m in a hurry, I’m worn out, I’m tired, I need a vacation”?  More than a few, I can tell you.  And this busy sickness of hurried syndrome is a big deal because it’s robbing us of our ability to listen to our lives.

You are the creation of a creative, generous, fun, wildly unpredictable God. You have a body, a mind, a soul and we are created to work together in harmony even under the greatest human stress.  Part of your creation is the ability to listen to your life, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

This weekend at The Gathering we’ll be talking about how to listen to your life. I’ll give you a little quiz to see whether or not you’re going so fast that you’re ignoring the warning signs of danger ahead.  It would be a great time to grab a friend and bring them to either the 9:00 or 10:30 AM service and let them experience what we mean when we say The Gathering specializes in God simple, not church complicated.

At The Gathering you’ll be accepted, embraced, loved and celebrated for who you are, not where you’ve been.  If you’re looking for a place where you feel like people understand what you’re going through, what you’ve gone through, and even where you want to go The Gathering is a great place to start on your journey back to God.

Marriage is the most important relationship any two people will have on this planet. A man pledging his love to a woman, a woman doing the same, and joining together to grow great lives is not only sacred and honorable, but downright difficult.

We’ve discovered the number one reason why people wind up in divorce court is they are no longer living on the same page. They started out there, it got them to the altar to say, “I do,” but since that moment they’ve drifted apart.  Something is wedged between them.  On this show, we will identify those four pressure points that if allowed to drift and expand out of proportion, can drive you apart for good.

Join us for the David and Paula Show this morning at 10:00 Central time, as we give time-tested advice on how to live, love, and have a life all at the same time.