Category: Today @ The Gathering

We continued our present series “They Promised Me Chocolate: The True Confessions of a Disappointed Christian.”

Nothing is more disconcerting than being disappointed with God. And yet, how many people are?  Even people who claim to be Christians don’t seem to really be enjoying their life with God.  Part of that stems from the assumptions that we’ve been taught, the things we’ve been promised, what I call the over-hyping of God.

The truth of the matter is this: Jesus doesn’t work for you. By that I mean He doesn’t reorient the center of the world around you for your wellbeing.  God doesn’t move to us.  We move to Him.  And as such, we need to understand that a life with God is on His terms, not our own.

Today we talked about some of the misconceptions; the five best things God never said: things we’ve been promised that God is never going to deliver on they simply aren’t true and would be harmful if applied.

If you know someone who is living with disappointment in their relationship with God; that God feels distant and non-responsive, this would be the talk to listen to.  You can either listen right here on my blog, or go to iTunes and subscribe.

Today @ The Gathering We continued our current series, “They Promised Me Chocolate” with installment number 3, “My Family Tree Gave Me Splinters.”

One of the most difficult realities new face in life is that it seems as if the very people at the core of our lives, those who we should be able to trust with our well-being are sometimes the first ones who disappoint us.

It is true that the closer you let a person into your life, the more they are able to hurt you, because the closer they are to you, the more you open up to them.

We gave three reasons today why family is so hard to get right.

1. You can’t fix them.  You are born into a family of damaged people.  You marry a damaged person.  You have children who get damaged.  And when you wake up and realize you can’t fix yourself, much less them, life gets interesting.
2. You can’t fire them. You can’t send them away because they’re your family.  You can’t give them a pink-slip and tell them not to come back because they are forever connected to you because they’re your family: in-laws, outlaws, aunts, uncles, cousins.  And your damaged family grows as your damaged family members marry damaged people.
3. You can’t free yourself from their influence. This is one of the hardest things to get over, and that is to face the fact that our families pass onto us a lot of the wounded-ness and damage that they themselves bear.  And so the journey to health and well-being is a challenge because we’re constantly having to face not only our own issues, but many times deal with those issues through the lens of our weird families.

We talked about the four ways in which we tend to pass on our hurt and wounded-ness to our children.

1. We tend to pass on our habits. For example if you smoke, it’s useless to tell your children not to smoke because they tend to imitate what their parents do.  If you have a habit of flying off the handle and becoming emotional, they would tend to do the very same thing.
2. We tend to pass on our hang-ups. Children aren’t born prejudiced.  They catch it from their parents.  And their parents caught it from their parents, and it begins to spread.
3. We tend to pass on our hurts. It’s an interesting fact of life that the hurt we receive from those who are closest to us we tend to pass on to those who are closest to us.
4. We tend to pass on our history. Not only is it the habits of our parents, but the habits of our grandparents and our family tree.

The challenge is to break that cycle, to free yourself from the bondage of the past, from the heritage that you received that you did nothing to create.  And while it’s not just as simple as these three things, there’s something that you can start today to break the bondage of a bad heritage.

1. At home I will be a healer, which is the never sour piece of our Bulldog Principle.  Remember, life will consistently and without warning let you down and so will your family.  But God never will.  As I begin to trust Him with my family issues, I refuse to become bitter, sour, and cynical.  How do I do that?  I make a commitment with my words and my attitudes that I will be a healer at all times.  I’ll ask myself, “Are these healing words? Is this a healing thing to do?  Will everyone win if I take this course of action?”
2. I will be an encourager which is the never settle piece.  I will constantly spur on my children, my in-laws and outlaws and encourage them.  I’ll encourage them to aim high, dream big, and trust God for a big life, to never settle for second-best or half-hearted efforts.   It should be our family who are our greatest cheerleaders.  Often though, the sad truth is, they are not.  I will break this bondage.  I will be a healer with my words and attitudes, and I will be an encourager.
3. I will be a bridge-builder, which means I will constantly be a source of reconciliation.  As the Scriptures say, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.  Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, this is how you serve God.”

Your family tree may have given you splinters.  You may be living today with deep disappointments, wounds and dysfunctions that were handed down by your family.  But you can break that cycle right now by re-centering your life; not with your family and their dysfunction, but with God, His goodness, and His grace that is extended to you in this moment.

Many years ago I lived in Huntsville, Alabama and while there, I worked for an engineering firm that contracted out to NASA.  In the first days of my employment I met one of the most unique people I’ve every met.  His name was “Bulldog.”

Bulldog was a 93 year-old janitor, which means he was born in the 1800’s in the South.  And you can only imagine what atrocities he had seen.

He told stories about his grandfather being lynched when he was just a small boy; about his father being beaten and being refused admittance to the hospital just because of the color of his skin.  Bulldog himself walked with a limp from a beating he had received when he was just a teenager.

Bulldog was illiterate, poor, 93 years old and worked as a janitor. Yet he was the happiest, most vibrant and radiant person I’d ever met.  And to this day, I am hard-pressed to think of anyone who makes me smile more when I think of them than Bulldog did.

When I met Bulldog I was a young Christian.  And I found, in Bulldog, a mature one.  What I saw in him that day, that I’ve been trying to learn all these years, is to trust God with everything, all the time, without exception, no matter what the atrocity or adversity.

So today @ The Gathering we talked about what Bulldog taught me.  Bulldog always quoted bits and pieces of Psalm 37.  He would say the Good Lord taught not to fret, to trust and delight; to commit and be still.  Out of this pattern of trust came what I call, The Bulldog Principle.  There are three parts to it.

1. I will never sour. Bulldog had every reason to be bitter at the world, but he wasn’t.  He was happy.  Why?

• Because I am loved. You and I are loved by God, and His love is always more than enough.
• Because I am blessed. God’s love has brought me all of His blessings: the blessing of being alive, of being adopted, of being redeemed, forgiven; of being reconciled.
• Because I am called. I have a purpose, a destiny, and a goal toward which I am moving, and one for which I’ve been well-fitted and gifted.

2. I will never settle. Why?

• Because I serve a big God.
• Because love always finds a way. And love is indeed God’s motivation.
• Because anything is possible with this big God.

3. I will never stop. Why?

• Because I have a lot to learn.
• Because I have a lot to give.
• Because I have work to do. I will never stop growing, never stop stretching, never stop aspiring to greatness. Why?

All as an act of trust.  Trust is the thing God blesses, and the only thing God demands.  Some think it’s obedience and keeping the rules.  And those do have their place.  But it’s trust that separates the righteous from the wicked.  And it’s trust that God longs for, trust that God accepts, and trust that God rewards.  Every time I’m tempted to question God or to give up and to ask a long string of “why’s,” I think of the Bulldog Principles.  And I make a commitment all over again to never sour, never settle, and never stop. How about you?

Today we began what I think is one of the most important series I’ve ever done; a series that confronts, head-on, a dirty little secret; the things that we don’t want to admit as Christians.

Think about how over-hyped God is in churches.  If you love God He promises you an easy life with lots of great relationships.  You’ll never be estranged from your parents or your children.  Your marriage will never break up.  You’ll have all the money you’ll ever need, or at least more than other people who don’t love God as much as you do.  On and on the promises go, and the truth is, as a follower of Christ, I’m not immune to the same realities other people face.

And what do people face?  Disappointment.  Constantly.  And today we started dealing with our real disappointments.  The subtitle of this series is “True Confessions of a Disappointed Christian.”  I am a disappointed Christian.  That doesn’t mean that my delight still isn’t in Jesus Christ.  It’s just that delight lies beyond disappointment.

So today we started with “Your Dissatisfaction Guaranteed.” Think about how many things we see advertised with a guarantee.  But honestly, have you ever really seen a guarantee work?  When you try to take advantage of it, it’s always something you did or didn’t do, or the fine print that you didn’t read.  It’s always something about you.  There’s always an “out.”  As a matter of fact, the percentages are always against you.   That’s why people can glibly and easily guarantee your money back, knowing that you’re never really going to get your money back.  And most people are so cynical, we just buy things that don’t work and just accept it.

The pitch goes something like this:

1. You’re not enough.  That’s why you need our product or service.  And the promise is, if you’ll get our car, our deodorant, or our make-up, your life will be complete.
2. We can fix you. Again, we have the solution.
3. We guarantee it. And that’s where the problem is, isn’t it?  We guarantee that nothing will go wrong, you’ll never be disappointed and you’ll never be betrayed.

It begins what I call the cynics’ cycle that goes something like:

1. We start out with awareness. We become aware that things are not right with us, oftentimes because people tell us we’re too fat, we’re too skinny, we’re too smart, we’re too dumb, we’re not in, we’re not enough.  And all of a sudden we begin to feel bad about ourselves.
2. They (our heroes, teachers, mentors, parents, people we admire) promise that they have the solution.
3. The promise creates an expectation.
4. The actual experience always falls short.
5. We start collecting disappointments, not admitting them because everyone else seems to be so happy.
6. We get trapped in a cycle that leads to despair.

What is despair? Despair happens over a long period of time when you deny your anger.  That leads us to three truths we dealt with about anger.

1. Anger denied is delayed. It never goes away.  It comes back at the worst possible moment.
2. Anger cannot be managed, no matter what people tell you.
3. Anger must be resolved.

So when you face your disappointments you can:

1. Sour and become a cynic.
2. Settle and become a critic.
3. Stop and become a relic.
4. Push past the disappointment to delight.

And that’s what we’re going to be dealing with for the rest of this series: how do you push past the disappointments rather than collecting them?  How do you get to the delight that always lies beyond the disappointment?

Today @ The Gathering we welcomed guest speaker, Ron Edmonson founding pastor of Grace Community Church in Clarksville, who taught from Luke 5:12 – 15.  Listen to the podcast of his message and ask yourself these questions:

1.  Most of us have something in our story we don’t want to share with everyone.  What mistake, hurt, or pain in your life do you hope no one in the church finds out about?

2.  Why do you think Jesus told the man not to tell anyone about what happened?

3. How would you have responded if you were the leper?

4. Has there ever been a time God did something in your life that you had no question it was God?  Did you share it with others?

5. What does Jesus treatment of the leper say about the way we should treat others?

6.   How does God call us to respond to people we don’t even want to be around?

7. Based on how Jesus treated the leper, how would you expect Him to treat you?

8. What is it in your life that is keeping you from fully realizing the love of Christ?

9. How much does God love you?

10.  How do you need to respond to God’s love for you?

This was a powerful message and these questions would be great to carry along to your Bible study group or for further discussion with your friends over coffee.

Join us next week @ The Gathering for the beginning of a brand new series entitled “They Promised Me Chocolate,” a 10-week lesson on how to push past disappointment to a better place.  Remember, the start of a new series is always a great time to bring your friends!

On October 25^th The Gathering will be having a baptism service.  In preparation for that, I thought it was time for me to do a teaching on what baptism is and isn’t.

Before we can understand what baptism is, we need to identify the three errors that surround it.

• Error number one says that baptism is essential to salvation. Nothing could be further from the truth.  We are not related to God on the basis of our works, religious or otherwise.
• Error number two: baptism is a means by which grace is dispensed or withheld.  In other words, the grace of God is applied to our lives through the physical act of baptism and then sustained through the physical act of communion.  Baptism is not the means by which the grace of God is applied, or reapplied, or withheld from our lives.
• Error number three: baptism is institutional property. There are large religious institutions that teach that when Jesus died and was resurrected, He gave the power of the resurrection to redeem as the spiritual and physical property of His church; and your relationship with God is measured by your relationship to the institution.  No relationship with the institutional church; no relationship to God.  This is a lie that should be rejected.

On the other hand, there are three reasons why we should be baptized.

1. It’s a matter of believe-ability. Once we believe, baptism is an expression of that belief in outward form.
2. It’s a matter of identity. It’s putting on the jersey, taking the stand, not being the fair weather fan or friend; but saying, “My whole life, my future, my faith, the way life is defined for me both now and in the future is always pushed through the matrix of Christ.”
3. It’s a matter of obedience. Christ was baptized and told us to go be baptized as an act of submission to His lordship in our lives.

We also talked about when we should be baptized.

1. First comes belief, which is an inward reality. Conversion happens to the heart; not just to the head, or as an outward sign of compliance.
2. Second comes repentance, which is an outward act. It means I change my mind, I turn course, things that I love I no longer pursue and the things I didn’t care for I now love.  Things of God now fill my heart, my hand, and my future.
3. Third comes baptism, which is a public statement. I’m saying to my friends and the people around me that I am taking a stand for Christ.  I am a follower of Jesus.  This is who I am and what I am becoming.

If you know someone who is struggling with the meaning of baptism because they’ve been raised in an environment that made baptism essential to salvation, this would be a great talk to get and listen to.  If you’ve not been baptized, join us on the 25^th @ The Gathering.  It will be a joyful time.  You can go to TheGatheringNashville.com and sign up.

We finished our series “What’s Your Big Hurry?” today @ The Gathering with installment number 8 entitled, “Someday We All Go Back to Zero.”

We talked about the three gifts God gives us on our life’s journey:

1. The gift of hello, which guarantees that there are all kinds of new people coming into our lives; healthy people, exciting people, people we can connect to help  get to where we need to be and also, in turn, help them.  Always new people, always exciting new things, always more opportunity – that’s a gift from God called the gift of hello.
2. The gift of good-bye. Sometimes relationships just simply end; relationships with people we work with, even a career, a marriage.  Relationships that were once good turn toxic.  And at those moments, God gives us the ability to walk away to give the gift of good-bye, and accept the gift of hello to new, healthy people who are coming into our lives for this leg of our journey.
3. The third gift is a gift of a fresh start. There is a little known concept in the Old Testament called the year of jubilee.  Every fiftieth year, no matter what had happened in the fifty years before, all original deeds to property went back to the original families and owners.  This basically meant that no matter how badly you’d messed up, even to the point of losing the family land through bad business deals or investments, there would be at the fiftieth year the ability to start over.  The fresh start is something that God promises each one of us everyday as we get up.

But the question is, how do you get unstuck when you feel like opportunity has dried up and people simply won’t respond to you?  Here are the five ways to get unstuck.

1. Get up.  One of the first signs of depression is when you want to stay in bed too long.  You want to lie around and do nothing.  You have no energy; not because you are physically sick, but you emotionally and spiritually don’t have anything better to do.
2. Suit up. Shave, shower, put some clothes, wear your best, and get out and show people you are open for business and you are serious.
3. Show up. I truly believe that over 70% of life is showing up.  We’ve been lied to when we’re told there is little opportunity because there are way too many people out there for the small piece of the pie.  The truth is, there are very few people showing up to really seize the opportunities that are there every day.  You need to be one of them.
4. Do the next right thing. It’s like the old saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”  Maybe your goals, dreams, and aspirations, maybe just getting out of the rut you are in right now is going to take time and seems overwhelming because of the money and resources required.  How in the world will you ever make it?  You do it by doing the next right thing one day at a time.  And you string those days into weeks, weeks into months, and those months into years and amazing things begin to happen.
5. Trust God with the results.  This is a sowing and reaping thing.  God won’t do my part and I can’t do God’s part.  I sow, and God makes it grow.  If I get up and suit up, show up each day, accept God’s gift of hello, good-bye, an a fresh start by doing the next right thing, really amazing things begin to happen.

Remember, this could be the first day of a brand new beginning, a fresh start.  Maybe you won’t do much today.  Maybe for you, a lot is getting up, suiting up, and just getting out and being where other people are.  Maybe you need to find an exciting, dynamic church and just start gathering there around other happy people; people who are energetic, people who believe that God is close and gracious, that He responds to our acts no matter how small, with love and faithfulness.  You can get unstuck, you can begin again, and your future can be far greater than anything you’ve ever known.

I have a confession to make.  I’m a people-pleaser.  And guess what, so are you.  Everyone is to some degree or another,  But it is the degree to which we give into that impulse that we lose our lives and live by impulse and temptation.

Trying to please people may seem like a good thing on the surface, but if we take it too far, we lose our sense of selfhood and identity, our sense of being an individual created by God to be a distinctive person who can make decisions to not just be independent, but to be interdependent.

In the pursuit of people-pleasing, we do really self-destructive things. So her are the 7 reasons why really smart people on the route to trying to please everyone and make everyone happy, often self-destruct.

1. Smart people self-destruct when they lack boundaries.  Being a Christian isn’t just about a relationship, it is about a set of ethics; a set of standards revealed by God.  We can call them the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule; whatever God prohibits that become our boundaries.  When you fail to have boundaries in your life, ethical standards, places you won’t go, and things you won’t do in the weakest moment of impulse and temptation, you self-destruct.
2. Smart people self-destruct when they lack margin. Margin is like the white space in a book.  You need financial, emotional, and spiritual margin so that when you get overstressed or overworked you don’t fall off the edge.
3. Smart people self-destruct when they lack identity. As a Christian my identity is found in my relationship with God, not in my relationship to people, places, or things.
4. Smart people self-destruct when they lack audacity. Audacity is the power to say “no” when everything else says, “yes,” and to say “yes” when everything else says, “no.”
5. Smart people self-destruct when they lack an inner life.  God created us separate from the animal world when he gave us the ability to think and have an inner dialogue; to be rooted in truth, beauty and honor rather than just responding to the emotional stimuli around us.  An inner life allows me to say “no” when impulse says “do something” or “say something.”
6. Smart people self-destruct when they lack a dissenting voice. This is not negative person or someone who just says “no,” but a person who takes our interest at heart and challenges us to think through our actions before we take them.
7. Smart people self-destruct when they lose hope. When you lose hope, you lose humanity.  When you lose humanity, you lose life.  Without hope, we become nothing more than animals out to get “ours.”  Hope is the ability to trust that God is doing the most loving thing in our lives no matter what the circumstances; that God can be trusted in the future to deliver on what He promised.

Though God never promised that we wouldn’t be lonely, He promised we would never be alone.  Though He never promised we wouldn’t get hurt, He promised that He would get us home safely.  He never promised that we would have all we wanted, but that we would have all we need.  He never promised we would never lose, but that nothing of significance would ever be lost.  He never promised us a life of ease, just a life worth the effort.

Today @ The Gathering we talked about compassion.  There’s an Old Testament reference in the book of Amos where the shepherd fought for the sheep even though he was only going to be able to save two legs or the piece of an ear.  What a beautiful imagery of how far the love of God extends even when He’s seen that the case is hopeless.

We talked about the seven sounds of apathy.  When you hear these sounds you know that your family, organization, or movement is drifting toward irrelevance and ultimately death.  Some of the things we hear apathy say are:

• “They should know better.”
• “They made their own bed; let them lie in it.”
• “They are just that way; they’ll never change.”
• “I have my own problems to worry about; why should I worry about anyone else?”
• “It’s my money; I’ll do as I please.”
• “I’m too busy to be bothered.”
• “God helps those who help themselves.  That’s why God loves me; because I help myself.”

We talked about the power of compassion.  If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, the first evidence is generosity.  That generosity is motivated by the love of God poured out in our hearts.

So as you move forward through your week remember, people matter more than things, plans, businesses, organizations, and policy manuals.  Show compassion to people.  Do it consistently, do it form the heart, do it in unexpected ways, and you’ll have a bright future.

Today at The Gathering I finished our present series, “The Power To Prevail,” with the last installment, “Turning Failure Into Fertilizer.”

We talked about the three main reasons we fail.

1.    Sometimes we fail because of circumstances. The stock market goes south, a market shifts, we get our realtors license the day before the bottom falls out.

2.    Sometimes we fail because of competencies.  We don’t have the skill set to succeed at what we’re trying.  It doesn’t mean we can’t get smarter and it doesn’t mean we won’t succeed in the future, but right now we need to get smarter.

3.    Sometimes we fail because of character.  I’ve found over the years this by far accounts for the greatest percentage of failure.

The point is, you’re not a failure because you’ve failed; you’re a failure if you avoid changing what needs to be changed so you won’t repeat the same old behavior.  It’s been said that the definition of lunacy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  If you’re failing and it’s related to character, it means you need to change.  Losers resist change in the following three ways:

1.    They avoid the bad news.  They don’t get on the scales.  They don’t measure anything.  They don’t balance their checkbook.  They dread reading the mail.  They just simply think avoiding it will make it go away.

2.    They deflect personal responsibility by placing the blame on others. “It’s my mother, my father, my background, my environment, the government.”

3.    They would rather complain than change. Somehow we get stuck in the same old responses: shaming, blaming, and criticizing.  It’s always someone else, not us.

One of the most important things to realize if you are a child of God, if you’re related to God through Jesus Christ, if you live with a converted heart, something more than just joining a church or assuming a certain set of facts; I’m talking about a real heartfelt passionate connection to Christ, to God; if that’s true for you then you are a child of God, you’ve been adopted, you’re a son or a daughter.  So God relates to you as a father would relate to a son or daughter.  So when He sees you going down the wrong path, He sends failure into your life for one of four reasons.

1.    To stop your progress.

2.    To starve your pride. The Scriptures tell us that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

3.    To turn you around. That’s the definition of repent: to change your mind enough to turn around and go in a different direction.

4.    To win your heart.

The amazing thing is God cares when we hurt.  He created the church as a place where we can gather around our common pain, but be held together by our common passion.  We come together needing God’s love and healing.  We stay together because we have received it and we want to extend it to the rest of the world.

The Gathering is an exceptional place, made up of exceptional people.  But let’s face it; we’re messy.  That’s why we must specialize in God-simple.  God the Father loves His children and He will discipline us out of love to bring us back into alignment for our own good. That’s the lesson to be learned.

Next weekend is Easter. It’s an opportunity to invite someone to come and be a part of the experience.  We’ll begin a brand new series called “Fight Back!” The truth of the matter is, you can’t always turn the other cheek.  This would be a great time to invite someone to experience The Gathering, and what following Jesus Christ could mean in their lives.

Today at The Gathering we continued in our current series, “The Power To Prevail: Turning Adversities Into Advantages.”

Today we talked about taking stress, something we all experience as long as we’re alive, and turning it into strength; something few us seem able to do because we don’t know how.

There is one odd thing about Christianity that needs to be corrected.  And that is the view that, what Christianity is about is salvation and the next life.  The truth of the matter is, the redemption that Jesus died to achieve is an eternal redemption of this life and the life to come, no matter what it may be.

No matter how much we try to focus on heaven, none of us can comprehend what eternity will be, or how it could possibly be better than the best life we have in the here and now, with all of our friends and familiar things around us.  But the truth of the matter is, we’re not called to focus on that, or to completely understand something that we have no way of comparing or experiencing in the present.  Our calling is to live.

I’ve discovered my job as an agent of change, as someone who fosters hope and inspires action, is to remind people not that they are going to die, but that they are not dead yet.

So we looked at the greatest Christian who ever lived, the great missionary Paul, and his analogy of life with God as a race.  We learned some specific things: one, that we’re all in a race and that there is a goal.  Though there will be rewards at the end of the race (that is, in heaven) not everyone will be treated the same way.  Some people in heaven will lose their rewards while other people will gain them.  There will be recognition for those rewards.  How this all works itself out is a topic for another day.

We also learned that the race is specific to us.  It is a particular race.  We have to define what our own win is.  My win is being a speaker for God, fostering hope, leading change, and inspiring action. But using my gifts to write, to speak, to motivate, to lead, to organize, to gather, and to move people forward is my win.  This may not be and probably isn’t yours.  But you need to find one and define what that is.

All of us want to live a great life and turn stress into strength but we just don’t know how.  So what I did today was gave a learning tool called STP.

1.    The “S” stands for self-discipline, which means we make ourselves do what we’ll be glad we did in the future; not just what we want to do in the present.
2.    The “T” stands for training, which isn’t just showing up and trying, but it’s preparing ahead of time.  Remember that the will to win must always be preceded by the will to prepare to win.  Preparation is everything.  Even though a hundred-yard dash lasts only 9 seconds or so, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours are put into the preparation for that nine seconds.
3.    The “P” stands for perseverance.  Perseverance is pushing through in the quitting moments when all the odds seem to be going against you.  It’s getting up one more day; getting up, suiting up, showing up, doing the next right thing, and doing that thing with everything we have as though its success all depends on us, while at the same time knowing that all the success we achieve will depend upon God.

Next week we’ll continue with number seven in our series, “Turning Risk Into Reward.”

Today at The Gathering we continued in our current series, “The Power To Prevail.”  This is based on my book, “The Power To Prevail.”

I’ve set up a web site called ThePowerToPrevail.com where you can go and get a free course in The Power To Prevail delivered straight to your inbox, find the book, and also download the audio if you’re too busy to read.

Today we talked about “Turning Anxieties Into Action.” It seems like everywhere we turn today people are anxious.  They’re anxious about the market: the housing market, the job market, Wall Street, the government, the future, their savings, 401k’s.  But really, is this unlike any other time in the world?  We live in a dangerous place and worries and anxieties can overcome you and drive you into a corner of paranoia and inactivity.

Today we asked the question, “What best describes you?” Are you:
1.    A low-try, low-trust person; a drifter?
2.    A high-try, low-trust person; a driver?
3.    A low-try, high-trust person; a dreamer?
4.    Or are you one of these rare people, a high-try, high-trust person, which is a daring-doer? This means you get up every day, you suit up, show up and do the next right thing; act as though everything depends on you, and trust as though everything depends on God.  If you are, you are what we call an action-oriented person.

How do you know if you’re an action-oriented person?  Here are the three qualities:

1.    They think big.  They realize that by faith, with God nothing is impossible; that one person, one woman, one man, one teenager, one single person with faith can change the world.
2.    The difference between action-oriented people and those who just have their heads in the sky is that action-oriented people act small.  They realize that life is lived in the everyday, the mundane, and the routine.  That’s where greatness is grown.
3.    They lean hard.  They lean on God.  They get up every single day knowing that God won’t do for them what He’s given them the power to do.  And what He wants to do for us, He waits to do through us.  This is about a relationship, not a transfer of assets.  So we lean hard and trust in God.

If you haven’t subscribed to the podcast to get these talks delivered straight to your iPod, please do it, or go listen online.  Help spread the word of this positive message.

Also don’t forget our citywide Gathering For Prayer at 6:30 tomorrow night, March 9th. This is going to be an awesome night.  I hope you are planning to attend and bring someone with you.  If you know people who are without jobs, have been laid-off, are in fear of being laid-off, who need prayer, who are serious about getting serious with God in prayer, bring them with you.

Today @ The Gathering we continued in our current series. “The Power To Prevail,” with an installment entitled, “Turning Your Can’ts Into Cans.”

This is a really serious concept because so many people you hear talking, talk about their can’ts; not their cans: what they might do if other things were available.  The truth is, you can’t build a life on the negative, or a can’t.  But we so early learn what we can’t do.

We talked about the three ways we learn how to live a small life, or a can’t life:

1.    We learn what we can’t do by listening to our critics; and there are plenty of them out there.

2.    We learn by living with comparisons that are false.

3.    We learn by losing artificial competitions that we don’t need to be in to start with.

We used the Romans 8:28-31 passage as a group affirmation; that we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, and those who have been called.  The truth of the matter is, not everyone can make that statement with any degree of assurance.  But if you are a follower of Jesus, you should be able to say, “And we know.”  The word know there is the idea of knowing by experience.  You can know a thing objectively as a piece of information, but when you live with it, it becomes a part of you.  The question is, how do you do that?  How do you translate what you hear from a speaker, or read from a book, into real life?  I’ve found the most helpful thing to do is to make strong affirmations.

Here are the three affirmations that we talked about today:

1.    With God’s help, I will excel at what I must do with what’s available.  No excuses, no copping out, and no living someone else’s life.  I will excel at what I must do; not what someone else must do, but what I must do with what is available, trusting that God will make what else I need available in the future.

2.    With God’s help I will derail the devices of difficult people.  Remember, hurt people hurt people.  Much of what you experience in the way of broken relationships has nothing to do with you, but with what other people already bring to the table.  You deal with this by understanding these two statements: If you live reacting to the hurt of hurting people you’re going to be frustrated.  But if you live by acting in light of the hurt of hurting people, you’ll be fulfilled.

3.    With God’s help, I will prevail against prevailing wisdom. Remember, the facts ain’t always the facts, and experts have been proven wrong more times than not.  Today is not the time to be involved in making world globes.  Boundaries change and they move constantly in the real world.  And that’s also true in the spiritual world.

We also emphasized again, our Call To Prayer on Monday, March 9th.  This is going to be an awesome night.  I hope you are planning to attend and bring someone with you.  If you know people who are without jobs, have been laid-off, are in fear of being laid-off, who need prayer, who are serious about getting serious with God in prayer, bring them with you.  You’ll be glad you did.

Today at The Gathering we continued in our current series, “The Power To Prevail,” with part two, “Turning Fear Into Faith.”

We live in a time gripped by fear.  And because fear is so prevalent and so destructive, we tend to think all fear is bad.  The truth is, fear can be a very good thing. Fear is the thing that keeps you out of the middle of an Interstate, keeps your hand off a hot stove, or sends you to an emergency room when you have chest pains.  It’s not the fear that’s bad.  It’s what you do with it.  That’s why, with the power to prevail, you turn fear into faith.

We talked about the destructive power of fear to give us a backdrop against which to understand the power of faith.  We said bad fear does three things:

1.    Fear paralyzes meaningful action. That’s why people don’t spend money and take vacations when they can fully afford it and plan to do it, but they are afraid of what’s ahead.  Now some of that fear is prudent and wise, but much of it is foolish and faith-less.

2.    Fear sterilizes meaningful creative thinking. The greatest services, institutions, and products in our country were created during down times, not up times.  It’s when the money is low and everyone is quitting and jumping ship that the greatest opportunities arise through creative thinking.  Innovation only happens in the face of great need.

3.    Fear polarizes meaningful collaboration. This is probably the worst effect of bad fear because it keeps us from people.  It makes us label people, and labels are libels most of the time.

What does faith do?  What faith does is easier to describe than what faith is.  Doctrinal and theoretical definitions of faith are meaningless, just like trying to define love.  We may not have acceptable definitions of either love or faith, but we definitely can recognize them when they are in operation. So here are the eight things that faith does:

1.    It stretches my imagination.
2.    It expands the scope of what’s possible.
3.    It answers my prayers. The Scriptures tell us that if we believe, we will receive what we ask for in prayer.  The truth is, most of us don’t believe it.
4.    It attaches meaning to the mundane.  Too many of us are waiting for the big event, the great moment for our ship to come in.  There are no defining moments in life other than those linked together by the mundane moments.
5.    It raises my expectations.
6.    It rewards my everyday efforts.
7.    It overcomes my adversities.
8.    It renews my connection to hope.

If you want to know more, check out the podcast.

Also check out the Power To Prevail web site and sign up for the free downloads.  If you’re too busy to read a book, you can download and listen to the entire book read by me, the author.

Also check out our Call to Prayer on March 9th.  Maybe you’ll want to be part of this historic event.

Here’s what I want to leave you with.  What God wants to do for you, He waits to do through you.  Maybe that’s why you haven’t seen the hand of God in your life; because you’ve been sitting on the couch and waiting for Him to be your butler or waiter, rather than your Savior.

Today at The Gathering we completed our first series of the year, “4 Dumbest Things We Do During Down Times,” with installment number four, “We Wait It Out and Get Left Behind.”

This is a talk about the true meaning of patience; that virtue that sees us through down times.  An awfully lot of people misunderstand what patience is.  So we talked about three things it isn’t.

1.    Patience is not laziness.

2.    Patience is not passivity; just sitting around and doing nothing and waiting for the world to act on you.

3.    Patience is not resignation. The whole fatalistic whatever will be will be attitude isn’t backed up by a single verse in sacred Scripture.

Patience is what we need during this global transformation; the patience to understand these three things:

1.    Life isn’t a marathon, so you need to pace yourself.  It isn’t the fastest off the starting block or the fastest in the first three miles.  A marathon is a full 26 miles plus.  It’s living well and finishing well.  And you have to do that at your own pace.

2.    Since life is about advancing one day at a time, you need to learn to brace yourself.  We don’t advance without opposition; without periods of failure, of reverse.  No one wins every time.  No one hits the ball every time they come up to bat.  You need to learn how to face adversity and turn it into an advantage.  This is so important I wrote an entire book on it entitled, “The Power To Prevail.”

3.    Since life is about getting back up once you’ve been knocked down, you learn to grace yourself.  By that I mean, a lot of times the dumb things that happen to us, we do to ourselves.  So we need to learn to accept and receive the grace we give to other people.  This is absolutely essential.

This series completes the month of January in a brand new year.  It’s hard to believe that the first month of 2009 is already gone.  But this could be your best year yet if you follow the insight that comes from the sacred Scripture that we’ve dealt with over the last four weeks.  If you’re not aware, a free CD of each message is available at the end of every service.  The only thing we ask you to do is pass it along to someone else when you’re done so The Word can get out.

As I announced this morning, next weekend Paula and I will be taking our first weekend away from The Gathering and I’ve invited Dr. Stephen Mansfield to speak.  One of the most prolific authors in our time, an exceptional speaker, and an even better person, Stephen has been a great friend over the years.  Make sure you bring someone with you to enjoy this gifted teacher next week at The Gathering at both the 9:00 and 10:30 services.