I write mostly about leadership, family, and having a personal walk with God. I continue to be honored that people would choose to read what I write. This week alone I received over a dozen emails from church leaders looking for help with a leadership situation they are facing and/or from believers who need guidance for life.
If you are a Christian, why not quit the pretense, drop the costumes, and get in on the life that God intended for you? Start acting like whom you really are; a child of God, bought with a price, born again for a purpose of glorifying God. Start being like Jesus!
While I believe the Bible is full of leadership principles and the church today needs better leaders, there are still questions I have about the subject. Perhaps you can help:
Consider your life for just a moment. How compliant are you to the will of God for your life? Are you willing to follow God wherever He may lead? What if following God involves extreme sacrifice, which it most often will require you to do? Will you follow God then? If doing God’s will involves a total surrender of your life to Him will you still do His will?
The best you and I can do when going through difficult times is to cling closer and stronger to God during the hard times. Trusting Him through the hardest times of life is called faith. Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. When faith is displayed…God must surely smile!
Gerry True is someone I know only online, his leadership resume is intense and he’s worked with some great leaders. Gerry is a Minister of Communication Arts leading four teams; Worship Arts, Production Arts, Creative Arts, and Technical Arts at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio. You can read more about him HERE. You can follow Gerry on Twitter HERE. Just reading Gerry’s answers, I hope we bump into each other at a conference soon!
I know that is confusing, so let me illustrate it like this. If you were to leave my house in Tennessee and head to my mother’s family in Kansas, there are several routes you could take to get there. Ultimately one route is probably best, but you could get there from several directions. In accomplishing God’s end goal for our life, God sometimes allows different courses of reaching that end goal. God will even allow us to take turns that are not really His best plan for us. In that way, God has allowed His plan to be altered, but the overall end plan remains the same.
The Grace Community Church middle school camp is this week. Thanks to our family pastor Michael Bayne for letting me grab this video from his blog. (I didn’t ask permission, so I hope he’s okay with this.) Our youngest son Nate is serving as student pastor this summer and so he’s at the camp and in the video. I wish they would let me go sometime. I’d show them a water party!
I’m also reminded, however, as Memorial Day is designed to do, that many families have had to endure the delivering of their own “letter†from a fallen soldier. Today I’m praying God comforts them with the memories of happy times together and with the pride of knowing and enjoying the freedom their loved one gave his or her life to protect.
The experience with Diana reminded Cheryl and me how thankful we are for the volunteers we have at Grace Community Church. Each Sunday at least 150 to 200 people give of their time so that others can experience life change through the ministry of the church. The truth is that the structure and workings of a church are only as good as the church’s volunteers. We serve an incredibly amazing God, but He builds His church with people who are willing to love and serve others. The staff can and should do much to lead this, but regardless of the size of the church, paid staff is never enough to accomplish the mission.
Picnics, vacations, camps, flip flops, outdoor baptisms, fireworks, grilling, swimming pools, homemade ice cream, baseball, fresh vegetables from the garden….
I’m not going to ask today if you agree with what God is allowing or doing in your life right now, but I do want to ask this question, will you give Him permission to do it? A better question might be, does He have the right to do it?
Over 15 years ago, I started writing an Internet devotional, which was emailed daily to subscribers. This year I decided to collect a year’s worth and put them in a book. Mustard Seed Thoughts are short, easy-to-read and practical. In each devotional, I share personal life stories as they relate to the stories and truths from the Bible.
God may do the same with your life. God may have extreme changes in mind for your life. You may be in the midst of that process of change now. He may take away your health, break a relationship, change your career, but He will do whatever it takes to further shape you into Christ’s image and the plans He has for you.
Therein lies what I believe to be one of the largest mistake men and women make in a marriage. Whenever I believe Cheryl completely identifies with me or I completely identify with her, we are bound to run into some conflict. I will never understand the depth of emotions Cheryl is capable of producing and she will never understand the shallowness of emotions I am capable of maintaining. Neither of us is right or wrong, we are just different, and as I look at the situations we have handled together in life, I see why God allowed the uniqueness in each of us. I must be careful never to place expectations on Cheryl for her to be like me and she must do the same with me.
