Category: The Gathering

We’re coming to the end of our current series, “Inspire Greatness.” I’ve been very gratified by the feedback.  It’s exciting to see people really get beyond the survival/victim mode to a place where they really believe that using their everyday lives and everyday efforts they can inspire other people to a higher place.

We’re really going to hit the sweet spot this weekend by talking about how we attract the right kind of people in our lives.

This is really important, particularly for those of you who are looking to get married.  What you are thinking is, you’re asking God to bring Mr. Right or Mrs. Perfect into your life; that somehow you will see this right person and the light will come on and you’ll know this is a potential marriage made in heaven.  If that’s what you believe you’re going to be waiting a long time.

Maybe you’re a person who is looking for a new job or career, and you’re searching out there and sending your resume to just the right place. Maybe you’re a person who works your day’s work and then goes home to an apartment somewhere, orders in pizza and sits on the couch and watches TV until you fall asleep, cursing the world simply because you don’t have any friends. Maybe you’ve been divorced more than once and you wonder why you can’t find a good person.

Maybe it’s wake-up time, time to realize you attract what you are.  Instead of trying to look in the right place for the right people or person to marry, or the right woman for you, you need to focus all of your attention on being the right kind of person. The right kind of person attracts the right kind of person.

You attract what you are. If you are a loser, look around you and see who you’ve attracted into your life.  If you are a chronic complainer, listen to the people’s conversation.  If you’re damaged and wounded, what do you do?  You attract people and then run them off with your weirdness.

If you’re sick and tired of shallow, short-term, meaningless relationships, and you’re ready to attract winners around you, then this weekend is for you.  I’ll teach you right out of the Scriptures the three important roles that you play as you seek to bring the right people around you.  And let’s be honest, without people, you’re going to fail.  It doesn’t matter how well-educated you are, connected, what your parents did, you are going to succeed in direct proportion to the kind of people you’re able to attract and be around you over time.

No one succeeds without great people on your side, loving you, being generous to you, and creating goodwill.  If you don’t know how to do it, this weekend is a great time for you to be at The Gathering @ 9:00 and 10:30.  You’ll be glad you did. We’ll teach you how to make the connections that could change your world forever.

We’re coming to the end of our current series, “Inspire Greatness.” I’ve been very gratified by the feedback.  It’s exciting to see people really get beyond the survival/victim mode to a place where they really believe that using their everyday lives and everyday efforts they can inspire other people to a higher place.

We’re really going to hit the sweet spot this weekend by talking about how we attract the right kind of people in our lives.

This is really important, particularly for those of you who are looking to get married.  What you are thinking is, you’re asking God to bring Mr. Right or Mrs. Perfect into your life; that somehow you will see this right person and the light will come on and you’ll know this is a potential marriage made in heaven.  If that’s what you believe you’re going to be waiting a long time.

Maybe you’re a person who is looking for a new job or career, and you’re searching out there and sending your resume to just the right place. Maybe you’re a person who works your day’s work and then goes home to an apartment somewhere, orders in pizza and sits on the couch and watches TV until you fall asleep, cursing the world simply because you don’t have any friends. Maybe you’ve been divorced more than once and you wonder why you can’t find a good person.

Maybe it’s wake-up time, time to realize you attract what you are.  Instead of trying to look in the right place for the right people or person to marry, or the right woman for you, you need to focus all of your attention on being the right kind of person. The right kind of person attracts the right kind of person.

You attract what you are. If you are a loser, look around you and see who you’ve attracted into your life.  If you are a chronic complainer, listen to the people’s conversation.  If you’re damaged and wounded, what do you do?  You attract people and then run them off with your weirdness.

If you’re sick and tired of shallow, short-term, meaningless relationships, and you’re ready to attract winners around you, then this weekend is for you.  I’ll teach you right out of the Scriptures the three important roles that you play as you seek to bring the right people around you.  And let’s be honest, without people, you’re going to fail.  It doesn’t matter how well-educated you are, connected, what your parents did, you are going to succeed in direct proportion to the kind of people you’re able to attract and be around you over time.

No one succeeds without great people on your side, loving you, being generous to you, and creating goodwill.  If you don’t know how to do it, this weekend is a great time for you to be at The Gathering @ 9:00 and 10:30.  You’ll be glad you did. We’ll teach you how to make the connections that could change your world forever.

Everything we think, in everything we do, with everyone we meet,  and for every hope we have, there is risk involved.

Our country was built on the backs of those who conquered their fears and took risks worth taking.  And yet in our current climate with the very things we seem to be abandoning is our ability to understand how to take the right risk.

This weekend at The Gathering we’re going to be talking about the principles in the Scriptures, which teach us about risk and why it is always true that if you risk nothing, you reap nothing.

Maybe you know someone who has been burnt by the risk they took to get married and it didn’t work, or a friend who has lost a job, or maybe some family members who are gripped by fear.  This weekend we are going to learn straight from sacred Scripture how to take only the right risks and what the results are.

Go beyond just inviting a friend.  Tell them you will pick them up or meet at the theatre and go with them to either the 9:00 or 10:30 service.  And then do this: plan on having brunch or coffee afterward to talk about information you’ve just received and see what amazing things can come out of these faith-based, inspiring conversations.

Tomorrow @ The Gathering we’re going to be continuing our series, Inspire Greatness. I hope you’re taking this seriously because the world needs men and women who live in a world bigger than a little, bitty world of me, myself, and my stuff.

If you are a person who’s looking for purpose in life, for meaning; if your passion for life and joy for life has moved to the back burner or has left the building, The Gathering will be for you.  We will tell you how to create excitement, joy, and momentum; how to get up every single day and live your life for something bigger than just the next paycheck or payment; to have a marriage stronger and relationships more enduring than just the kind you’ve experienced in the past based on take care of me, love me, and help me.

With the earthquakes in Haiti, with the divorce rate, with taxes and jobs, with industries in turmoil, this is the day for bigger, bolder thinking.  And this may be the very moment that the change you’re looking for will come.

Join us @ The Gathering, 9:00 & 10:30. It could change your life for the rest of your life, and the lives of everyone who needs what you’ve got.

This weekend @ The Gathering we’ll continue our present series with a talk entitled, “Bigger is Seldom Better.”

Right in the middle of the Christmas season many of us are striving and struggling to come up with a new, creative gift to give the people we love.

A lot of times we think that the bigger the box, the bigger the price (especially if something comes with payments) is going to be the very gift that shows people we love them and dazzle them beyond anything they’ve ever experienced.

But maybe you’re also at a time this Christmas when you don’t have the money to buy big boxes and can’t dazzle people with the price you pay for gifts this year.  Maybe you’re ready to listen and understand the greatest principle of all; that the best gifts can’t be wrapped, can’t be contained, insured, or even lost.  The greatest gifts are profoundly spiritual, emotional, and psychological, and then get translated to the physical and financial.

So this weekend we’re going to be talking about the seven best gifts that anyone can be given through Christmas. Maybe you’re someone who’s looking for something beyond just the next gift or party.  Maybe you’d love to unwrap something this Christmas that would change your life forever.  That’s possible.  As a matter of fact, the very best things in life; the highest, most expensive gifts that God can give are the ones that you’ll never put in a corner, under a tree, or in the attic. You’ll use them every single day of your life.

Remember, this weekend at The Gathering, at 9:00 and 10:30 AM, we’ll continue our series, “They Promised Me Chocolate.” If you’ve missed any of them you can go by the CD table at the end of each service and receive a free CD.  The only thing we ask is that you give it away once you’re done with it.  Or if you’re ready right now to listen, go to iTunes, search David Foster at The Gathering and you’ll find all the talks, both in audio and video.

This weekend at The Gathering we’ll be continuing our series “They Promised me Chocolate” with installment number 8; dealing with disappointments that we face in our work life.

Work is one of those things that so many of us do without thinking about.  It’s like breathing or eating.  It’s just what we do.   We follow the path of least resistance or worse than that, we enter into a career path picked out for us by other people without understanding the importance of work.

This weekend we’re going to be talking about the proper perspectives of work and six reasons why it is God’s will that we work.  We somehow think that work is a curse from God on mankind.  But the truth is, work is a gift.

We’re going to be talking about the difference between career and calling; the difference between jobs and work.  Oftentimes we confuse a job with the work we’re supposed to do.  One is permanent.  The other is temporary. 

If you know someone who’s been laid off, lost their job, or making a transition, this would be a great weekend to bring them.  We’ll have a lot of good information to help them make great decisions as they choose a new career or calling.

Tomorrow @ The Gathering we’re going to continue with our series, “They Promised Me Chocolate: The True Confessions of a Disappointed Christian,” by talking about parenting.

No place in human relationships can there be such a contrast to the idea of having kids.  On the one hand, it’s a dream, a desire, a passion.  And on the other hand it’s a lifelong responsibility that at times can feel like you’re living in the pit of hell.  Yeah, that’s true.  When our kids go wrong, no matter what happens in our lives, our lives go wrong right along with them.

So this weekend we’re going to talk about how to raise super-confident kids in a super-cynical world.  It is possible, but we’re going to have to understand what parenting is and what it isn’t.  We’re going to be talking about the four things that make parenting absolutely miserable.  We’re going to expose some of the myths we’ve bought into.  Things like:

• If you just love your kids and take them to church, everything will be ok.
• If you bring them into the world and support them financially, that’s all they really need.
• Or the idea that kids want what you can buy them more than they want you.

It’s a tangled up mess when we approach parenting with these faulty ways of thinking.

But we’re going to spend the major part of our time talking about the four keys to parenting successfully.  I didn’t say without stress, work, or disappointments along the way.  These are four practices – habits – that are absolutely essential if you’re going to be able to raise your kids to adulthood.

Here is one of the questions I have for you.  If you have kids, or grandkids, have you set out some goals that you have in raising them? For me, I set 4 for my three daughters; four characteristics that I wanted to see in their lives as adults.  And I am happy to say that each one of them reflects them in spades.  What are they?  I’ll tell you Sunday.

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This weekend @ The Gathering we’ll be continuing our present series, “They Promised Me Chocolate.”

We’re talking about the 10 greatest disappointments I’ve ever faced, and this week we really get down to the heart of the matter.

Disappointment ultimately comes down to your relationship with God. Think about it.  God can make everything go right: all your days be perfect, all your teeth be brilliantly white, all your relationships be successful, and your bank account always going up and to the right.

Everything that gets to you first goes through Him.  Think of that.  Nothing, no matter how bad and severe it may seem to you at the moment, gets to you at least without God’s permission. So the question is, “Is God good or not good?”  And if He is good and great, how can He allow things to happen that He had promised He never would?  Enter the problem.

Most people you know have a bad relationship with God based on really bad information. I call it the over-hyping and the over-selling of God: talking heads trying to make God look better and sound better than they think He really is, making promises God never made to people in order to get them to give more money, attend their church or make a public confession of Jesus as their Savior.  In an effort to get people saved, we’ve told them things about God that He never promised. God never promised that if you loved Him, life would be easy.  He never promised that if you would give money He would multiply it back to you and you’d be rich, or at least have all the money you ever wanted in order to buy all the things you thought you ever needed to make you happy.

God never promised that you wouldn’t get hurt, that you wouldn’t feel lonely, that you wouldn’t be betrayed.  He never promised that you wouldn’t get sick, your children wouldn’t die before you, or that you wouldn’t get cancer.  God never promised to give you a pass or to make your life easier if you accepted Him as your Savior.

So the question is, what did God say?  And how do we reconcile our disappointments so we get the true promises God has made and understand that He can be trusted?  Understand that the only thing He demands from us is our trust; not our moral perfection, not our promises to do better, not our efforts to save the world, not our attempts to fix our family, but a trust that He will always do the loving and gracious thing no matter what the circumstances.

If you know someone who is wanting to come back to their faith, maybe they are mad at God, or maybe feeling the need for God for the first time in a long time, in this world of uncertainty, this weekend would be a great weekend to come.  We’ll find out the five best things God did say and build our lives around that.

Remember, disappointment is God’s way of getting us to love Him against our will.  You can collect disappointments or push past them to delight. Few people do.  But those who do know that it makes all the difference.

This weekend @ The Gathering we’ll be continuing our present series, “They Promised Me Chocolate” with installment number three.  We’ll be turning this week, applying the Bulldog Principles (never sour, never settle, never stop) to the major disappointments that we’re bound to face.  We’re going to be starting with the disappointments we face from our family.

All of us are members of families populated with messy people. The truth is, people come in one basic size: messed-up.  And we’re all on the continuum between what we are and what we ought to be.  We are fallen, broken, and damaged in various ways.  And we bring all of our issues (spiritual, emotional, and relational) to our families.

Who of us hasn’t been in a situation where our families, instead of being the encouragers and healers that they ought to be, were the very people who wounded us the most?  This is possible mainly because our family is the first place we learn how to trust, or live in suspicion.

This weekend we’re going to be talking about why our families damage us so much, how it happens, and what the solutions are.  We’ll learn how to take the Bulldog Principles of trust and apply them to our family situation.

No matter how dysfunctional your family is, no matter how great the disappointments have become, your family is still your family.  You will never be able to run far enough to get away from their influence.  So you might as well learn the three important ways in which you can bring redemption, reconciliation, and restoration to your family.  It can be done, and you can be the one who starts the process.

Remember at 9:00 and 10:30 AM this coming Sunday, we’ll be talking about family disappointments and how to remove the splinters you’ve received from your family tree.  You know someone who needs the hope and encouragement that comes from gathering together.  The Gathering specializes in God simple; not church complicated and our goal is to help you make the original connection or reconnect to God, yourself, others, and your place in the world.

This weekend @ The Gathering we’ll be continuing our brand new series, “They Promised Me Chocolate: The True Confessions of a Disappointed Christian.” We’re talking about pushing past disappointment to delight.

Last week we introduced this idea of disappointment; that we all get disappointed regularly.  As a matter of fact God sets us up so that everything that He gives us, no matter what it is, will ultimately disappoint us.  Why?  Because He’s mean and cruel?  No.  Because He doesn’t want us to find our satisfaction and our ultimate delight in the things He provides, and fail to fall in love with Him.

We’re going to be talking about a key ingredient in your life with God.  It may not be what you think.  It’s something that God requires.  As a matter of fact, it’s the only thing God requires.

God doesn’t require high morality.  He doesn’t require perfection.  He doesn’t require that we make promises that we can’t keep or make changes to our lives to make us more acceptable in His sight.  He demands one thing and one thing only.  With it, everything God has to offer is yours.  Without it, not even God’s mercy or grace will be yours on a permanent basis.  This ingredient is so important that we have to get our eyes set on it before we can move forward.  It is the key to understanding what I call the bulldog principle.

This weekend we’ll be talking about a unique individual I met when I moved to Huntsville, Alabama back in 1973.  He was a 93 year-old janitor who walked with a limp, was deaf in one ear, had two teeth, and was the happiest spiritual man I’ve ever met, before or since.  He had something that set him apart from all the NASA engineers around.

And what I learned from “Bulldog” in those days still holds true today, so many years afterward.  He had that one thing, that key ingredient, that “it” that unlocks  the life with God.  What is “it?”  Come and find out this weekend @ The Gathering at 9:00 and 10:30 am.

As you may have heard, Magic Johnson released a new book last week.  And in it he decided to take on, what appeared to the world as one of his best friends, Isaiah Thomas.

He accused Thomas of spreading rumors that Magic was gay; particularly when the news came out that he’d been infected by the AIDS virus.  Then he went on to talk about how no one liked Thomas, and no one wanted him on the Dream Team, and other kinds of slur and accusations against Isaiah.

Here is the point.  I am not sure any of us found out anything new about Isaiah Thomas that wasn’t already known.  While a brilliant player, and maybe even a good person, Isaiah has a reputation for being difficult.  A lot of high-performers do.  That’s not the point.  Magic Johnson has had an off-the-charts likeability.  His big smile brings you in.  Even when he revealed he was infected with HIV virus many years ago, the suspected scandal didn’t follow; in part because of his open, positive demeanor.

But now we’ve been introduced to a new Magic Johnson; someone who holds grudges, vindictive, mean, or at the very best, just in need of selling books.  And I’m very disappointed.

But that’s the nature of life, isn’t it.  Our heroes disappoint us.  They are the “they” that we somehow put up on a pedestal thinking they’ll never make a mistake; never miss-step, or miss-speak.  And when they do we are devastated.

It reminds me that I’m called to love people, help people, serve people, lift them, inspire them, forgive them, help redeem them, and reclaim them.  But to worship them, no matter how mild a form that may take, is to set myself up for major disappointment.

So as we begin a brand new series tomorrow, we’re going to talk about the ten most powerful disappointments that I have faced.  Yes, I am a disappointed Christian; and I should be.  And during this series we’ll find out why.  True confessions of a disappointed Christian is the series that maybe you’ve been waiting for.

Maybe you’ve been let down by the revelations this week of what’s gone on at work or with a family member.  Or maybe Magic Johnson, a hero to you, has let you down as well.  You don’t need to get over it; you need to get beyond it.  There is only one way and we’ll talk about it in this brand new series, “They Promised Me Chocolate: The True Confessions of a Disappointed Christian.”

This weekend we’re glad to welcome a good friend of mine, Ron Edmonson; Founding Pastor of the Grace Community Church in Clarksville, TN.

Ron is a great communicator and one of the best leaders I know.  He is building a great church that’s doing a fantastic job reaching out to people who are opting out of religion, but who are looking for a vital relationship with God.

Ron is also co-host of a Christian talk show, which can be heard via the Internet at wjzm.com and blogs
regularly on leadership, family and church life. Ron and his wife Cheryl have two sons, Jeremy, 21 and Nathaniel, 18 who have both experienced  a call to full-time ministry.

I know you’re going to enjoy meeting this good brother and great man of God.

Blog: http://www.ronedmondson.com
Church: http://www.gcomchurch.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ronedmondson
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ronedmondson