It's Been A While

It has been a while since my last blog post.  It has been a roller coaster ride over the last several weeks.  One thing that has been constant over the last several weeks,  God loves me and has a plan for me. 

I am truly excited each time I am with the middle school students at my church.  These youth are amazing.  To see how they are inviting their friends to our services throughout the week.  To see how God is really working in the lives of some of them is AWESOME!!!!  For example, one of the middle school guys stayed behind after our Wednesday night small group was over this past week.  He said that he was going to start his own small group as soon as his football season was over.  He is inviting all of his teammates to get together weekly for small group.  As the middle school leader, I am so excited for him.  I have seen a passion to share the Gospel with others in him for some time.  During our small group time each week, he is a sponge.  He is constantly asking questions and taking notes.  It has me digging deeper in Scripture, just because I know that he will be asking questions that the normal middle school student wouldn't have.  God is working through this young man and my prayer is that God will use him to reach the guys on his team.  But that is the passion that God wants from each and every one of us that are a child of God.  A passion to learn more from His Word and a passion to make disciples.  So please keep this young man in your prayers as he prepares for this small group.  That God will use him to reach the lost guys on his team.

Keep Christ First
Billy 

Getting Radical

First of all, I am not having a flashback to a scene of a 80's movie.  What does the word radical mean?  The dictionary definition is thoroughgoing or extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms.  What does radical mean to a child of God?  The greatest example of being radical is found in the life of Jesus Christ.  Just take some time reading the life of Christ in the New Testament and you will find numerous times that Jesus said something or did something that had the Pharisees or high priests angry.  The church is more than just going to meet a couple of hours a week and maybe one day when your old, your name gets put on a pew in the sanctuary.  John 15:13 Jesus says, Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.  There has been only One that could have gave His life to pay the sin debt for each of us.  So what does that verse mean for us?  To love others as He loves us.  Put away our self for the needs of others.  Being God's hands and feet.  We unfortunately live in a world that there is pain, suffering, and loneliness all around us.  Don't wait for your church to designate a week to help others or for a charity to reach out.  See a need and meet that need.  It opens the door for you to share the love of God to someone that doesn't know Him.  Be the radical example of someone that loves others the way that Christ loves you.

Why Do I Have To Suffer By Being A Follower of God

There is an amazing passage of Scripture that I think most can relate to in sometime in our life.  It is Psalm 73.  This is the Psalm of Asaph.  He opens up and shares with us what he is dealing with.  Asaph had the God-given talent to write and play music.  In II Chronicles 29:30, Asaph was recognized as a seer by King Hezekiah.  Asaph has a pure heart and followed the Lord.  But in Psalm 73, he is struggling with his walk.  He is looking at the wicked and venting about all the things that have, the things they are doing, the peace that seem to have.  They are carefree and wealthy.  He is feeling punished for doing the right thing.  But then he really sees that all of that will go away.  The life that they are living will end in destruction.  His tunes changes, he realizes that God is holding him in His right hand, protecting him.  God is guiding him and one day he will be with God.  Asaph says in verse 26-28,  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.  Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.  But as for me, it is good to be near God.  I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds.  He sees that our reward is spending an eternity with our Lord.  Our purpose for being on this earth is to worship Him and tell others about Him. 

What Do You Mean, You Can't!

I enjoy reading blogs from several different men of God.  There subject matter covers everything from whats going on at their churches to things God has shown them in Scripture.  One particular blog that I always take time to read and it really gets me to think is Perry Noble's blog.  Perry Noble is the pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.  Perry speaks his mind and never sugar coats what God has revealed to him.  His blog post yesterday was on the subject of saying "I Can't" to God. 

That got me to thinking about how many times that I have said that very thing to God.  We live in a world where success and possessions have become the focus and the things that God wants us to do have been set aside.  God commands us in Mark 12:30-31, to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, strength, and to love our neighbors.  I had to take a gut check a couple of years ago.  I was so wrapped up in having stuff and how people saw me that I was saying that very thing to God, I Can't!  At first, it was a very difficult thing to do.  But now, I have placed everything in the Lord's hands.  The outcome has been God blessing my family. 

Here is just one example of what God can do when you are obedient.  Last winter, my wife and I began to talk about the idea of opening up our home on Sunday nights to the youth of our church and any other teenager that wanted to come.  We felt God was leading us to do this.  We kicked questions around for a couple of months.  How can we afford to feed them?   We don't have enough room?  What are they going to do while there here?  The more that we talked about it, the more that it seemed that there was no way that we could do this.  We finally turned it over to God.  In the spring, we started opening up our home on Sunday nights to the youth.  Our first night, we had 15 teenagers.  We fed them, had a devotion with them, and played a game.  It has been almost 5 months since we started, there are around 30 or so regulars.  We have even had some nights where there were close to 50 sitting all around our living room.  They still get fed when they come.  Parents have volunteered to prepare the meal or to bring things.  The devotion time has been opened up to any of the youth that want to share something with the group.  My role on Sunday nights have become, making sure the bathrooms are clean and to get the activity ready for the night.  The real blessing that has come from the friendships that we are developing with their parents.  Seeing the relationships grow among the youth and listening to the youth sharing a devotion with each other.  Even some of the middle school youth have shared what God has given them.  God has blessed us in so many ways by doing what He wanted us to do.  I want to invite you to come and see what the Lord is doing in our group.  If you have a teenager, we hangout from 5PM to 8PM every Sunday night.

The Fear of Failure

We all have times in our lives where we fail in something.  Its part of life and the important thing is how we deal with that failure.  The fear of failure takes control of us and we do nothing because of it.   Jesus talks about this very thing in Matthew 25, when he tells about three servants that were given money by their master.  The first two servants took it and invested it and doubled it for their master.  They took risk and it worked out for them.  Then there was the third servant, he was scared of failing his master and he took his and buried it.  When he brought it back to his master, the master called him lazy, he did nothing because of fear.  We spend so much time worrying about what others think of us, that we become consumed with that and not with what God commands us to do.  We need to grow from our spiritual failures and God can use our failures to make us stronger.  For example, Billy Graham said that he had written four messages when he was first asked to preach.  He said, that I got up there and gave all four of them in about ten minutes.  What if he had said that I am not cut out for this and gave up.  He would have never became the evangelist that shared the Gospel to the countless thousands that have heard him preach.  God uses failures to give us direction in life.  This week, look to God to help you overcome your fears of failure and that He will use you for the purpose that He has for you. 

A WOW Moment

Everyone knows what a WOW moment is.  When you hear or read something and all that can be said is, WOW!  I had one of these moments just the other day.  I am new to Twitter and I follow Gary Morgan, a pastor in the Nashville area.  He was the camp pastor at the Fuge camp that we took our youth group to this summer.  His tweet was, Why is the church the most likely place to find people doing something just once a week and expecting life changing results?  When I read this all that could be said was WOW!  This is a bold statement, but sadly its true for many believers that walk into a church building on Sunday mornings.  Show up, sing the songs, and listen to the sermon.  Walk out feeling good that they heard a good message.  The rest of the week, they never open a Bible or pray.  What's worse, there life never reflects Christ.  Growing up, I thought all you had to do as a Christian was to just go to church.  God wants us to have a close relationship with Him and the only way that we can ever have that is through studying His Word and talking to Him in prayer.  Take some time and spend it with Him each day, it will change your life. 

We are FREE

With this being the July 4th holiday weekend.  We celebrate the freedom that we have as Americans.  But I was thinking about all of the freedoms that we have as Americans that we overlook.  The freedom to assemble as a body of believers.  To go into a building and not have to worry about being arrested or executed for doing this.  Owning a Bible or sharing the Word of God to those that we come into contact with on a daily basis.  So many of our brothers and sisters in Christ are persecuted daily for sharing God's love to others on foreign soil.  The sad thing is that we have this freedom and so many are embarrassed or scared to do so.  While death is a part of life and people are dying daily, we are so consumed with what others think of us that we don't say a thing.  The opportunities that God gives us daily, we just stay silent and people die without Christ.  On the mission field, men and women are sharing the Gospel to villages and countries all over the world.  Our mission field is here and the calling that God has given us is in Matthew 28.  The message that Matthew 9 gives has never been more true than today.  The harvest is great but the workers are few.  We have been freed from our sin debt, when Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose three days later.  He defeated the one thing that we could not have.  God's love for us is the greatest gift that we could ever have been given.  Its time for the children of God to step up and share that gift with our families, friends, and those that we come in contact with daily.  Stop worrying about what people think and start doing what God called us to do

Keep Christ First
Billy