The Sign says…

Recently I was at a 2 day seminar in Oklahoma City where the teacher used various signs as illustrations. We all see the signs on the road around us and they speak to us. “Stop”, there is danger ahead unless you evaluate your surroundings. The same with “yield”. Go slow into your heading and read your surroundings.  ”Road Work Ahead” (we see alot of these lately ) which tells us to slow down and watch out for others ahead. There is a lot to be said here about warnings and clarity when you apply this to the spiritual surroundings of our day.

I was just reading/studying several chapters of Jeremiah this morning. It’s hard for me to read through books like this mainly because of all the middle eastern names of kings and rulers and such. You can easily get lost trying to correctly pronounce them all. But the content of what God was saying through the prophet’s writings is amazing and something we need to learn from today. The signs are simply laid out that if we will live right, love God and serve Him only, not only do we have promise and covenant that we will live a strong, healthy life but it promises our family, our state and even our nation supernatural protection and provision. Do we still care about where our help comes from?

God is looking for people of obedience to His word. It is not hard, it just takes a commitment to make good choices based from what we know is right. Why do we make this so difficult? Love the Lord YOUR God with all your heart(passions), all your mind(thought processes), all your body(physical needs and actions) and all your soul(your choices)! By doing this, you give no place for evil or wrong doing to move in. Come on… we have enough signs around us and taught to us that we have no excuse how we should live and what we should or should not do. When people make smart choices, based from good and not evil, we see the results of it around us. When people do the opposite, again, you see the results of sin and evil. And we wonder why bad things are happening all around us. People, it is the results of sin in our nation that we see.

The signs are warnings that something needs to change. Is that something your own life and choices? I believe and live in the gift of grace and forgiveness of God! But I’m also convinced that God is the same, yesterday, today and forever and we had better heed the signs that will bring us back to a fear (reverence) of the God that is still in control of our surroundings, our nations, our world!

Digging Deep

I haven’t blogged in a month but June has been a hard month for me spiritually. Thank you all for your prayers during this time. God has taught me in this period to dig deep into my soul and spirit to make good decisions in desperate times based from my knowledge of the word, wisdom acquired from God, and even the heritage of my dad and mom.

Proverbs 1:8 says My son, hear (or heed to and do) the instruction of your father and do not forsake the law (or conscience, character & standard building teachings) of your mother. 

My dad instilled inside of me a spirit of excellence and “can do”. I have found over the years, even though I used to complain when dad would demand me to work with him and help him in projects, there is nothing I can’t do when I apply knowledge, wisdom and effort (You should understand at this point that our wisdom, not the wisdom that we get from God,  is actually gained in experience). So the more we do in most cases, the more we know and understand. Then there’s that excellence thing that seems to haunt me only because others don’t seem to get it and I seem to expect it from everyone because I expect it from myself. I was taught in my early years, which is the years that form us, that if I’m going to do something, give it my best… not half-way, not a good effort, but my best! Even though I struggle more with this externally when it comes to dealing with other personalities, I owe a great deal of thanksgiving to my dad for this training. I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Mom. Wow, where do I start, trying to keep a blog short, when talking about my mother! I really miss her! Even though I rebelled for a period of my earlier years, there is something instilled in me by my mom that might be recognized as faith by most, but to me, it is so much more. She taught me by example how to have Christian character in the face of adversities. I was taught by mom that I’m not going to get away with anything  I do (and she prayed that way) if it leans to the side of wrong or bad choices, and I shouldn’t expect to… that would only allow me to go further down a bad path. She also taught me by teaching and example to take power and dominion over our circumstances… and the neat thing is, when you get aggressive and couple it with faith based on God’s word, it really does work! This kind of stuff will never leave me because I have seen it and experienced it and no one can take that away from me.

So, in times of toughness, I dig deep to what I know is truth and what I have been taught by good leaders that works. I encourage you who read this to dig deep into your soul and your spirit in what you know will produce the positive outcome you are looking for. You know the truth, it’s just hard sometimes to put action behind it to make it happen. But in this day and age, we had better dig deep, trust God in all we do and with all we have and do what we know is right!

The PowerPlant for Purpose

I was thinking about the power of the Holy Spirit and this came to mind. The region of the UK at one time had many growing churches and was known as a world leader for evangelism. The Welsh Revival of 1903 had a direct influence on the renown Azuza Street outpouring in Los Angeles which in turn ignited the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements that many of us are a part of today. The truth now is, that sadly, most of the Welsh churches today are either closed down or dying and the leaders are extremely discouraged.

Shonda and I have visited the UK on occasion and we have spent time in Wales. It seems that the church lost ground when it stopped praying for the power of the Holy Spirit and ignored it’s purpose of pursuing the lost. If a church loses sight of these two principles, death is certain. These simple truths built the First Century church from an illegal group of Christ followers to a powerful force that changed the world. Notice what happened in Acts 2 in the very first moments of the first church. The Holy Spirit baptised believers with power and thousands of people were saved on the first day of church existence.

In Wales, the church became to formal and refused to change with culture changes created by two world wars. The church became obsessed with chapels and steeples instead of people. The churches teachings did not emphasize prayer, the power of the Holy Spirit or a passion for the lost. Because of it, the church lost it’s relevance and now the only ones attending are a few committed followers, most over the age of 60. The Welsh church will become extinct if changes are not made soon. The stagering thought is that this is what they say now about America.

We must continue to learn from what happened in Wales or America will be a repeat of the mistakes and we too will become powerless and irrelevant. As for Mending Hearts, we are constantly trying to stay within the balance of being relevant, powerful and prayerful. My heart always is stirred for the lost and I pray that will continue to influence our church body. We cannot change what has happened to Wales in the past, but we can pray for the fire of God to be reignited there and to never die here. May our hearts remain ablaze for God, His power to change the world and win the lost.

Oh My Goodness, Lord have Mercy!

Have you ever heard yourself in desperate times? Now for some, you may use other choice words which I surely don’t want to know about! That’s a whole different Blog. ; )

The word says in one of the most well known scriptures in the BIG family Bible, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…” Psalms 23:6a

Most everybody knows it and can even qoute it but do we really believe it enough to speak it out and take advantage of it? The Lord’s Goodness not “Oh My Goodness”… think about it. In the book of James it says that “every good thing is from above”. WOW! Every detail of good that happens in your life comes from God (and I thought it was all me-JK). Recently I was checked in my heart that I don’t always acknowledge Him for every good thing. I should praise Him! I should thank Him! There are many times in life that we experience bad things that even happen to good people, but the majority of my life is so good, especially since I made the committment to walk with Jesus and that new nature.

His mercy… oh thank you Lord for your Mercy!I heard a man say when I was at Rhema Bible College, “Mercy from God means that you don’t get what you really deserve and Grace from God is getting what we really don’t deserve”. Let me tell you, we should thank God for His daily doses of mercy.  

Goodness and Mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. One more thing to point out. These words “follow me” in the original Hebrew language has the meaning to run after or to chase or pursue after! You need to know and understand that our God loves us all so much, that He wants His goodness and mercy to chase us down so that we can experience the good life! God is so awesome!

Oh His Goodness… and by the way, He will have Mercy!

Is church working for you?

Recently, I am working on some ongoing projects at MHC including adding a video booth for video mixing, recording DVD’s, Camera and Live streaming equipment and lighting control. In all this, it really started me to thinking about something. We live in a wired-up society and we are bombarded with a plethora of sounds, instant messages, texting, Facebook wall posts, Twitter tweets and pod-casting, which by the way we also have up-and-running for MHC!

What happens to the churches atmosphere when our wired systems malfunction? Can we still hear God’s voice without all this? When all is quiet and the band stops playing, when the sound system wigs or the special stage lighting isn’t working and no one is leading the way to the next step… does God still have the right of passage? Do we need all this to worship and create an atmosphere for more people to come and enjoy themselves or is worship in itself really an atmosphere all of it’s own? Think about it.

I like our building and it’s cutting edge color and crisp, streamline decor. I like the electronics, the sound, the lights and the media. I love our people, our staff, and all the volunteers that make MHC tic!   But what I love most is the way the truth of the scriptures is told in our church. I love God’s presence and believe me, He is experienced on a regular basis. I love that the revelation of grace is known to be more than enough for every situation our community faces.

Church is not about buildings or spiritual rock stars. Church works when all the simple ingredients are mixed together. There must be people who love one another. There must be prayer and worship centered in the living God! The Word of God must be taught in its’ entirety and the Lord’s death and resurrection must be remebered with communion. People should get baptised at some point during their newly acquired salvation experience and those with needs should have them met from the resources of those who have plenty for themselves at the moment.

As the pastor of Mending Hearts, I hope we never try to substitute hype for worship or allow technoglogy to determine our passion for His presence because the church works just fine, even when our systems don’t!

About Time

I was thinking it was about time I put something else up for you all to read. After all, it’s been nearly a month since my last blog and my goal was every week!
Man… life is so busy and it seems the older you get, time goes by quicker… or does it? It really doesn’t, it just seems that way. We all have the same amount of time every day don’t we? What we do with time is the real question.

Mending Hearts Church just had an incredible meeting with Eric Hinson, Paul and Glenna Moore and Leonard and Ann Clayburn. What a time we had with them! 4 complete days of fun and relationship building with some of the greatest people alive today. Here we are 2 days later and I’m still tired but I wouldn’t have traded that time for nothing. Every night after the services, we had the women of our church bringing food for a private dinner for all the ministers that were attending. We spent hours after each service just laughing at stories and sharing encouragment to each other. It was like theropy for us. I feel revived and refreshed just from the time we all had together! That’s not even including the services we had with the Word of God that was preached and the prayer lines where we seen miracles and peoples spirits renewed. WOW!

Time is what we make it and it’s ticking away right now. I will never have these last few minutes back that I have spent sharing with you. I hope you have enjoyed reading this and I hope it helps you to value your time and friends while you have them. God Bless!

Hello There!

First time to BLOG! What can I say… taking the time to write has not been one of my priorities until now.

I just want to take another opportunity to post to all who will read, what God is speaking to me personally and what I believe He is saying to the church, the real body of Christ. God proves Himself to me over and over when I just simply choose to believe in what He can do. Because it is so easy to become a product of what we live with and are around, sometimes I find myself limiting my faith to what I think I can do or what our church can or can’t do. It is only when I am challenged or even rebuked by Him for not believing that He is bigger than I am, or can do so more than I/we can that I find He really is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him! [Hebrews 11:6]

 Trust Him! Believe in Him! Seek Him and He will show Himself!