A life-changing love affair.

A life-changing love affair. That's what I'm proposing. Something that invades your heart in such a way that you can neither deny its influence or reject its power. I'm talking about the Word of God. Charles Spurgeon, powerful pastor and writer, once said, "Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose. It will defend itself."

That's real power. And, honestly, that's what many of our churches and their respective people are missing. Real power.

I read recently of a group of college students who got together just to read the Word. That's it. No other agenda. They would meet weekly to read through Scripture and to take it to heart. They would read a story where God promised He could heal and they would pray healing for a friend. They would read how God promised to never leave us alone and would offer up the names of lonely people on their campus. Reading God's plan for sex and marriage prompted them to pray for the sexual activity of friends and roommates. Lives were being changed because of the power of the Bible and their belief in that power.

The flip-side is this...I've served in churches where the Bible wasn't even part of the message on Sunday. It was a feel-good, meditative thought that didn't rely on the power of the written word to be the foundation of the spoken Word. Needless to say, we didn't stay long at that church and that church never amounted to much.

My prayer for Ridgeview is that we would become passionate lovers of this Word that God has given us. It has extreme power to offer healing, mercy, love, grace, strength and information for living our lives...but only if we soak it in. What would happen if we were more adamant about having our Bible with us than our cell phone? What if we spent as much time reading the Bible weekly as we did the newspaper or our favorite magazines? What if the Bread of Life really became as important to us as our food?

We would undoubtedly find ourselves in the midst of the next great Revival (dare I say, greatest revival). Stop what you are doing right now. Pick up His love letter to you and begin to read daily His message for your life. One verse a day, one thought at a time, you will find His power for your life ready and waiting.

Sometimes I get it right...

Sometimes I get it right...and sometimes I don't. I'm big enough to admit that and not crazy enough to believe that most of you don't already realize it. Today, I'll give you an example of times when I did both.

Sunday, I slipped. My words from the platform of our church may have given some of you the impression that I was not celebrating the ministry of our church on Saturday. You might have thought that, somehow, I didn't value your service to the families we helped or that I questioned your motives. Nothing could be further from the truth. I celebrate along with our staff, the wonderful heart with which the 40 plus members of Ridgeview served Saturday. You guys were pure reflections of Christ as you painted, ripped up floors, tore down ceilings, hung new gutters, laid new floors, etc. So, when I said Sunday that I "disagreed" with Pastor Eddie's announcement, I didn't mean that you guys weren't awesome. I was simply saying that serving for serving's sake is never enough. Real change comes when ALL that we do is done for His glory. Two people can stand side by side and lay sandbags on a river bank but they may do it for different reasons. One may be looking to build a resume and the other look to share His renown. Guess which one has experienced true life change? Sorry if I gave any other impression than the one that God's glory is why we exist. When we do it right, we do it for Him.

Now, about getting it right. I won't go into all the details (I'll let the link below do that for me). Just suffice it to say that I think I got God's voice exactly right when I chose to marry Lisa two plus years ago. I am a blessed man...far more than I deserve. And the swirling of our two families together has been a wonderful way for all six of us to bring glory to God. After all, without Him, who knows where this cat would wind up? Enjoy the read:
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090727/COUNTY090101/907270307/1164/COUNTY09/Two+families+come+together+as+one

I'm having a mountain top experience.

I'm having a mountain top experience. Seriously, I'm on top of Lookout Mountain right now with some of our kids from Ridgeview at Student Life camp. We are winding down day three and it's been a great week. Two things I want you to see in my brief blog today. Number one: Ridgies, you have some amazing youth. They are incredible teens with good hearts, great minds and talent galore. I've loved having this time with them as we listen to speakers, worship together and open up God's word every day. Secondly, God is up to something big in many areas of our church. I see His rumblings in our kids' (who, I have heard this week, had an amazing time at their camp over the weekend). I hear it in the hearts of our teens who are seeking God so desperately and are raising their expectations of what He can do. And I see it in the faces of each of you, week-after-week as we come together for worship. God will absolutely satisfy you church. You simply have to remove all the distractions, all the barriers and take down all the walls. He wants to pour out His Spirit in our midst, Ridgies. Are we ready to receive what He has to offer? Love you guys and can't wait to stand before you again this week as your Shepherd. I am amazed at our Savior.

We all need intentional practices.

We all need intentional practices. They are the only way to break the bad habits that can control our lives...like the ones that Paul talks about in Romans 7. As we walk this journey, we find so many times that the "old self"--the propensity to sin--wants to take us places we don't need to go. These are your personal areas of weakness--envy, anger, lust, self-worth--you name your weakness, there's a safe bet that you have some bad habits in that area. These habits may be mental (most are), emotional or physical. Whatever the case, the only way to break them is to put in their place, intentional habits that will replace them.

Let me give you an example unrelated to spiritual things but just as appropriate. Harrison (my son) loves chewing gum. Wherever he is, whatever he is doing, if someone offers him gum, he is a willing consumer. At least he was until recently. He got braces. And, as any good orthodontist would tell you, gum isn't good for your braces. So Harrison had to learn how to break that habit. He didn't make it 24 hours before he already had a piece of gum in his mouth--not because he purposely wanted to break the orthodontist's rules. It was a habit. For weeks after he got his braces on, he would hop into my truck, open the console where I keep some gum and start to pull out a piece. The habit was killing him.

Thankfully, he's worked his way past it. But it wasn't easy. He had to develop some new, intentional practices that would keep his mind off of the gum and focused on more important things. The same thing is true for you and I in our faith walk. Some intentional practices include reading your Bible, learning Scripture, praying, meditating, spending time in silence, learning new worship music, thinking positive thoughts that God has about you or writing in a journal.

These intentional practices help to take the old ways of thinking from your mind and replace them with "Christ thoughts". Only through intentional actions can you find a way to put the "old man" in his place and live a life that more closely resembles that of Jesus.

Here's a birthday thought.

Here's a birthday thought. I've heard it said that one measure of success is not whether you have tough problems to deal with, everyone has those in their life, but whether you are still dealing with the same problems as last year. It's a benchmark to determine if your life is a journey with potholes along the way or more like a rut that you can't seem to get yourself out of.

Mine is a journey. A tough one sometimes, but a journey nonetheless. And while some of the tough problems have seemed surmountable, God has always been faithful to help me overcome or work my way through.

As one author put it, it's not that we overestimate the storms of life. They are scary and dangerous. It's that we underestimate the strength of God. I don't want to live the next 42 years believing in a "wimpy" God. I pray I never underestimate Him or His ability to deliver me to the next part of my journey.

Thanks for the many birthday wishes today. My friends are a huge part of why I consider myself to be such a blessed man.