Hey Gang, I hope everyone had a wonderful CHRISTmas!!

I wanted to put down some reflections that are on my heart from Sunday morning. I hope that you all had the opportunity to be at Real LIfe with us this weekend (www.forreallife.com). If not, we celebrated our successes for 2008 and talked about Change for 2009, give Vanessa a shout if you want to hear the message. As I look back at the morning and the message, I get so excited about 2009 and the possibilites for us as a group of people serving God! We have been given an amazing opportunity(and responsibility) to reach out to people in our communities, and to share with them a message of Jesus.

**Here are a couple of thoughts on our opportunity/responsibility:

What are you doing to get out of your spiritual comfort zone?

• Are you reading: the bible, books, blogs, etc? Are you searching for knowledge to make you better? Remember, it is going to "Cost" you to go to the next level!! We have to get out of our comfort zone to move forward in our spiritual life.

Once out of your comfort zone, are you open to and willing to change?

• Are you ok with putting your personal likes and dislikes asside in order for another person to get a glimpse of God and what a realtionship with Him could be like? As followers of Christ, we must be willing to look at things through the eyes of person who does not know Jesus. We have to be intentional about providing an atmosphere where people can check out the temperature of water, before having to jump in.

Exponential Growth Factor!

• I touched on this a little on Sunday. When we take things on our shoulders and "get things done" on our hard work and effort, we can grow Christs kingdom, only as big as we are able to keep things from falling thru the cracks. When we try to keep working hard on our own and trust and consult God on for the things that are seemingly going wrong, we still can see some kingdom growth. But I think what God has been trying to get us to see is that we have to put His desires first and foremost. We have to let Him use us, instead of Us using Him for our wants and wishes. In order to experience this "Exponential Growth Factor", we have to surrender our wants, desires and wishes to Him. Put Him First always! If we, as a church, can figure this out......."hold on to you fork" as Perry Noble would say!!! There is some great stuff coming our way!

Hey, that's all for now, but remember this Sunday starts "30 days to Live". You do not want to miss this! This series will be a great step in the direction of change for 2009!! See ya there.

Got this today from TheDailyVerse.com
If you don't subscribe, I would encourage you to check it out...

"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ... 2 Corinthians 10:5

You can't control everything that happens to you, but you do have the ability to choose how you respond to things. Choose to run your thoughts and your actions through the filter of Christ, taking captive those that won't move you, your situation or the Gospel forward."

Apparently, the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan is AMAZING. Although, I haven't read it, many of the people that I love are RAVING about it!

These quotes are from Perry Noble's blog, but come from Chan's book:

• “Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation?”
• “I quickly found that the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity. The goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don’t swear, and good church attendance. Taking the words of Christ literally and seriously is rarely considered.”
• “Jesus’ call to commitment is clear: He wants all or nothing. The thought of a person calling himself a “Christian” without being a devoted follower of Christ is absurd.”
• “Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” (DANG!!!)
• “Having faith often means doing what others see as crazy. Something is wrong when our lives make sense to other believers.”
• “If a guy were dating my daughter but didn’t want to spend the gas money to come and pick her up or refused to buy her dinner because it cost too much, I would question whether he were really in love with her. In the same way, I question whether many American churchgoers are really in love with God, because they are so hesitant to do anything for Him.”

How's that for blunt? Talk about a smackdown! I'm feeling convicted...how about you?

A Quote from Mark Batterson on his blog today -

"I have a little formula: change of pace + change of place = change of perspective. Works like a charm! We have to disrupt our routine so we can think new thoughts."

What do we need to do to disrupt our routine so we can think new thoughts?

I read a blog by Jenni Catron daily...This was part of today's....

Just thought I would share today’s verse:

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”Philippians 1:6

Commentary:God is doing something in you. If the going is tough, keep pressing forward. One way or other, the work He’s doing is going to get done, so your cooperation and willingness to play ball will only add to your joy and the end result according to His perfect design. Embrace the journey!

You can sign up for The Daily Verse HERE!

Are you impatient with the process right now? Is God doing something in you that you wish would just be finished? Hang on and enjoy the ride!

From BEYOND RELEVANCE:
The Stadium Principle (part 3) (copyrighted by Richard L. Reisling)

This is the third installment in The Stadium Principle. Let’s finish this off.

After many years of playing, usually someone with great talent develops—from little league to college to the big leagues. Picture a rising star with me. He’s like a Nolan Ryan or a Roger Clemens. He’s Randy Johnson. Ok, imagine it’s the bottom of the ninth inning at game seven of the World Series. We’re talking intense—the President of the United States threw out the first pitch, Grammy-award winner sang the national anthem like you’ve never heard it before, the game has been back and forth, back and forth. Bottom of the ninth and everything is on the line. Randy’s on the pitcher’s mound and it’s the moment of a lifetime for him. All of the years or little league and college ball have built up to this. Randy has lived baseball—eaten, drunk, and slept baseball. His friends love the game and they love how he plays the game. Bottom of the ninth—it’s a full count, two outs, one strike and we win. People are tuned in around the world watching this.

Do you think Randy Johnson, at this moment, remembers what it feels like to not care about baseball? Do you think he’d be able to relate to someone who has never been to a game at this moment? Just like Randy, do you think pastors who have lived church—eaten, drunk, and slept church—with friends who love God and admire them…do you think they remember what it’s like to be a stranger to church and to not know God? Do you think most pastors routinely remember what it’s like to hear about Jesus for the first time? It is almost counterintuitive. After all, as church leaders, we spend most of our time with church folk.

I say this in prayer that we never forget what is going on in the hearts and minds of those people in the upper deck. Those are the most overlooked and least connected with. It’s easy to pitch for the lower deck—they are the cheers we hear the loudest. A good pitcher learns how to make the game great for people at all levels of the stadium. God give us a heart for the upper decker and allow us to never forget the first time we heard the crack of the bat.

© Richard L. Reising