The Goal of Life

Most of us, especially us ambitious folks, are always setting and striving for goals.  I believe that in terms of leadership this is a great thing.  We press forward to reach a mark so we grow, improve, and so forth.  But the goal of life, if we will embrace it with abandon will keep all of the “other” goals in life in perspective.  Check out this quote from Oswald Chambers:

“In our natural life our ambitions change as we grow, but in the Christian life the goal is given at the very beginning, and the beginning and the end are exactly the same, namely, the Lord Himself.  We start with Christ and we end with Him-”. . . till we all come . . . to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ . . .” (Ephesians 4:13), not simply to our own idea of what the Christian life should be.”

So TODAY set your eyes on the prize which is Christ Jesus Himself.  Abandon yourself to Him and be laid bare before Him that your very life will be to do the will of Him who has called you and set you apart for Himself!  He is the goal of life.

“The Gathered Church”

Here is a phenomenal quote by Bob Kauflin from his book “Worship Matters” about the purpose of the gathered church, the local body.  You really need to buy his book and read it.  Good stuff.

“On Sundays God wants us to do more than sing songs together and have wonderful worship experiences.  He wants to knit the fabric of our lives together.  For many, church has become all about me – what I’m learning, what I’m seeking, what I’m desperate for, what I need, how I’ve been affected, what I can do.  We see ourselves as isolated individuals all seeking personal encounters with God, wherever we can find them.

Sadly, this reflects our individualistic, me-obsessed culture.  Rather seeing ourselves as part of a worship community, we become worship comsumers.  We want worship on demand, served up in our own way, at our own time, and with our own music.”

“A worship community is made up of individuals whose lives are centered around the Savior they worship together each week.  A worshiping community expects to encounter God’s presence not only on Sunday morning but every day.  A worshiping community recognizes that passionate times of singing God’s praise flow from and lead to passionate lives lived for the glory of Jesus Christ.”

~ Bob Kauflin

The Key of Effective Ministry

These are some thoughts taken from Carol Cymbala’s book, “He’s Been Faithful”.  These quotes are generally directed about worship music, but have direct application to all areas of Christian life and ministry.

“Our ministry is to lead people to an encounter with Jesus Christ”

“. . . we can’t lead people to God unless we first allow him to fill us with his Holy Spirit and love”

“Unless your heart is full of God’s love, you will never have the compassion you need to see people through his eyes”

“Sometimes I hear people in churches talking about music as though the music itself were the answer. ‘That song really works,’ they say. but no song “works” when it comes to changing people’s hearts.  Only God can change our hearts.  Just because a song provokes an emotional response doesn’t mean it’s working on a spiritual level.”

“I don’t believe that God is looking for songs to anoint.  Neither is he looking for perfect music. If he wanted perfection, he would simply command the angels to sing.  No, what God is looking for are people available to be used by him to spread the gospel and see his name alone glorified.”

“That’s how real ministry happens. Whether it’s a sermon, a small group discussion, or feeding the hungry, the truth is the same. Those who really minister are those whose hearts have been emptied of self and filled with the grace and love of Jesus Christ.’

The Work of Prayer

I’ve been working through a strong personal call to deeper prayer and intercession lately.  I was at Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York this past week to attend their Tuesday Night service.  There Pastor Cymbala gave a great teaching on prayer.  Then today I opened up “My Upmost for His Highest” and there again was a great word on prayer and intercession.  Take a few minutes and take a look, see how God would stir your heart to engage more in the work of prayer.

My Upmost for His Highest March 30th

Catch Up and Great Quote!

Hi gang, We’ve been a little swamped as of late.  We pray all is well with all of you!  We’ve been watching the Lord do amazing things at our church, preparing for the events coming this Fall, and we spent some time in NC over this past weekend at Mike and Sarah Blair’s “The Happening”.  Good times!  Head over to Facebook and check out the photos all tagged up from the event.

Here’s a great quote from a book I was reading this Morning:

“…life’s great moments evolve from simple acts of cooperation with God’s mysterious promptings – nudges that always lean toward finding what’s been lost and freeing what’s been enslaved.”

~ Bill Hybels from: “Just Walk Across the Room“

Content

Here is some great perspective for all of us.  Take some time and read and really settle in your heart this story.  It’s a excerpt from Matt Redman’s “The Unquenchable Worshiper” (you need to read that book!) 

“I recently heard the story of Fanny Crosby, the American hymn writer who lived during the nineteenth century. She described a life-changing incident that happened to her as a baby:

“When about six weeks old I was taken sick and my eyes grew very weak and those who had charge of me poulticed my eyes. Their lack of knowledge and skill destroyed my sight forever. As I grew older they told me I should never see the faces of my friends, the flowers of the field, the blue of the skies, or the golden beauty of the stars. Soon I learned what other children possessed, but I made up my mind to store away a little jewel in my heart which I called ‘Content.’”

In fact, Fanny Crosby was only eight years old when she wrote this song:

O what a happy soul am I!/Although I cannot see,

I am resolved that in this world/Contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy,/That other people don’t.

To weep and sigh because I’m blind,/I cannot, and I won’t.

This contented worshipper went on to write around 8,000 hymns of praise. Those thousands of songs were simply the result of a fire that burned in her heart for Jesus and could not be put out. Someone once asked her, “Fanny, do you wish you had not been blinded?” She replied, in typical style, “Well, the good thing about being blind is that the very first face I’ll see will be the face of Jesus.”

Many people might have chosen the path of bitterness and complaint as their response to God; but she chose the path of contentment and praise. The choice between these two paths faces us each day, with every situation that’s thrown our way. Bitterness dampens and eventually destroys love for God. It eats away at the statement “God is love” and tells us he is not faithful. But contentment does the opposite: It fuels the heart with endless reasons to praise God. And there are endless reasons to praise him. ” ~ Matt Redman

Truth and Meaning

I’m not sure that Truth without Meaning can cause change in the human heart.  Just a list of facts without an internalized experience is simply a list of facts.  “The sun sets every day” is a fact, but  . . . “Fire fades low upon the earth and gives way to a rising ocean of cool midnight blues” stirs images and deeper meaning.  We need art, music, poetry, those hidden languages of heart that go beyond words.  Check out the following quote and take time this week to begin to let the truth have deep meaning in your life!

“I wondered if when we take Christian theology out of the context of its narrative, when we ignore the poetry in which it is presented, when we turn it into formulas to help us achieve the American dream, we lose its meaning entirely, and the ideas become fodder for the head but have no impact on the way we live our lives or think about God.  This is, perhaps, why people are so hostile toward religion.” ~ Donald Miller,  Searching for God Knows What

Blue Like Jazz and Imago Dei

If you have not read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller yet. You need too. It should be required reading. It will challenge you to examine the roots of our our faith in Christ. Whether it is based in our idea of Christ or in the actually living person. Whether we are only committed to the “party line” or what is actually transformational. Buy it or Borrow it and Read it.

Donald Miller attends Imago Dei in Portland, OR. You should check out their site and glean some ideas of missional community from them. Good Stuff.

Blessings!
Scott

Oh, Happy Labor Day. Spend some time with your family, those you love, and those in need.

Thriving Artist

Buy at Amazon

Recomended Reading for all of us who are artists in the Body. I love Rory Noland’s call for artist to return to being “servant artists”.

What is the Church to do?

“ ‘I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, non-religious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized – whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ – but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view’ (1 Corinthians 9:19-22, the Message).

This is an exciting time to be alive. The world is changing fast. We are thinking differently, approaching life with new expectations and a different set of questions. Sociologists call it a paradigm shift.

Author Leonard Sweet describes different reactions to this shift, distinguishing those who are native to the new worldview (generally younger people born in post modernity) from those (generally older people) who find themselves immigrants, seeking to learn a new language of thought that will never be their mother tongue.

But whether you are a native or an immigrant, the challenges of relating what you believe to the world in which you find yourself remain the same. Graham Clay has noted that Western culture experiences major cultural shifts at least every 200 years. He argues that, just as the world changed forever with the invention of the printing press and the industrial revolution, so this generation stands at a time of profound social change. With the invention of the Internet, satellite communication, and low-cost air travel (not to mention global terrorism and the rise of tribalism), the Western worldview is becoming more complex and possibly less rationalistic.

The challenges for the Church at such a time are profound. A generation that finds itself in the crux of such a change has a significant responsibility for shaping the new ways of thinking that will define its own age but also that of the coming era. When Christians get it right at such times, adapting themselves to the changing culture and finding new language for timeless truths, the Gospel spreads more easily for years to come because it makes sense to people. However, when the Church gets it wrong by resisting change and enshining nostalgia, we risk apparent irrelevance and an upward struggle.

Will Jesus Christ be famous and favored in the coming age, or will He be a peripheral choice on the menu of social preference? You can call the culture “progressive”, “emerging”, or “post modern”. The challenge is the same: To reinvent the Church without changing the message, to reach this generation for the sake of the age to come.”

Pete Greig and Dave Roberts from Red Moon Rising