How do you get ready to meet God on Sundays?

Just a little thought here. Are you ready to meet God on Sunday mornings at church? I mean, if the worship is doing the job, you will be ushered into the presence of God. If the pastor is doing his job, you will hear the voice and the will of God. If the Holy Spirit is doing His job (of all three components, this is the one that I am fully confident IS doing His job), then you will experience an attempt to get your attention to change, grow, continue, persevere, or whatever, but you can be confident God wants to interact with YOU.

So, are you ready? Do you prepare your heart BEFORE you show up at church? I used to have staff that would show up 15 minutes before church services would start. I challenged them to come and prepare for the people long before the people show up. Why? Because if I am not prepared to meet God today then how can I lead others to meet the Lord?

I like to get up real early on Sundays and go into the office and put the finishing touches on my message and read over it a few times to make sure I know it. Then, I spend at least an hour in worship. Just me and God with some help from my ITunes and various christian artists. I do this to prepare my heart to meet the Lord at Journey. I want to be prepared for the Lord to work in my life and in YOUR life. Why? Because I believe HE WILL! Do You? If you do, then get ready, prepare your heart and mind BEFORE you get to your church each and every Sunday. You are about to meet the KING OF KINGS!!

Take care,

Rod

Never mastered...

One of the reasons I love golf so much is simply because golf is a game that you can never master. There is always room for improvement. Even though I have a single digit handicap, I could never play on the PGA tour and I am not even the best golfer at the Fernley Golf Club. I am not even in the top 10! Golf really never lets you have an ego. I like that it takes work every time your out on the course.

Golf is a lot like the body of Christ, the church. I have never met anyone who has mastered the Christian life. I have met some who thought they had, but none has I am sure. We all strive to rid our life of bitterness, lack of forgiveness, hatred, dishonesty, greed, lust, and many other struggles. We try hard, but we never fully master them. We also try to think, act, and live "spiritually" (whatever that might mean). We try, but we never master it.

I don't have a problem with the fact that we never master the Christ-following life. But I got to be honest, I do have a problem with us allowing the things we struggle with to master us. I am always amazed to see people who have been following Christ for years to allow anger or bitterness or lack of forgiveness to be their master. I have seen good, Christ-following people ruin their own testimony by their inability to forgive the people of their past. If their is one thing that we can be thankful for and should try to emulate, it is the forgiveness we have received. Our forgiveness of others should be quick and complete, like that of Christ's.

I have seen people who understand scripture and can teach others, who love their families and love the church, but still struggle with faithful and generous giving. We have learned to rationalize it, but I believe that we can be selfish when it comes to the giving of our finances. Picture this: If Jesus were physically at your church services on Sunday and He passed the offering plate down each aisle, or stood beside the box in the back, would your standard of giving change?

No we will never master this Christ-following life. But what we must pursue with all our strength is that those things we struggle with in the flesh, let's not let them master us.

Matthew 6:24"You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both.

Take care,

Rod

Am I undivided?

It's early in the morning and I am sitting in my office with a cup of coffee, needing and hoping to hear from God. I say a short "Good morning Lord" prayer then as His Word sits open on my desk and I read Psalm 86.

As I read, I come to verses 10-13:

10 For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. ¹¹ Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. ¹² I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. ¹³ For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.

That verse 11 really stood out to me: "give me an undivided heart". What is David praying for here? When scriptures speak about an undivided heart it is speaking about a heart that "knows God and knows that He is Lord" (Jeremiah 24:7) and a person who's heart is backed up by his actions (Jeremiah 32:39).

I think that is the call of the church in the United States today. I think we have learned to separate our heart from our actions. In other words, we love Jesus as a Savior, full of never ending grace and mercy. But Jesus as Lord of our life is intermittent at best.

God not only wanted Israel to return to Him with an undivided heart, but He wants His church to have undivided hearts as well.

Does our life match up with our hopeful words? When we praise Jesus as our Savior do we submit to Him as our Master?

I see a dangerous practice in America's churches today of loving the Savior but ignoring the Lord. We often seem to have a rationalization of our actions with the hopeful belief of total forgiveness when we get to the gates of heaven, in spite of the collateral damage we have managed to leave while here on earth. Paul spoke of this in Romans when he wrote in Romans 6: ¹ What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ² By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Paul wrote this to remind us that Jesus can not be just our Savior...He must also be our Lord. A heart that is undivided lives a life that is not only saved by God but also is a servant to His will and His way.

Well, I got my prayer answered...God spoke to me. Now, what am I going to do about it? How about you?

Take care,

Rod

Whatever happened to that kind of commitment?

Did you know that professional golfers hit hundreds of golf balls a day and thousands of golf balls a week? When I think of that, my initial reaction is "Man, I would love to be able to do that!" But when I really think about it. I like to hit some balls at the range, but not hundreds of them at a time. In fact, the range bores me. I would much rather go out and play a round than hit 125 five irons. I'm not that committed. But I am amazed at how committed the pros are on the tour. Hitting 5 iron after 5 iron for hours. Chipping and putting for hours. All to maybe get one stroke better at the next tournament. It takes an amazing commitment to be a PGA tour pro. Then the more I read I begin to understand that the older the golfer gets, the more he has to work out and hit balls. His natural ability slows down a little and he has to make up for it by getting in shape, maybe even changing his shot a little, all little adjustments to keep himself competitive. His commitment level has to rise to a whole new level in order to remain competitive on the PGA tour.

I wonder what would happen if we could be that committed in the things of our lives. Not just our jobs and hobbies, but also things like our marriages and discipleship.

I wonder what kind of husbands and wives we could be if our commitment level would rise the longer we remained married. What if our devotion to each other and to the family actually increased over time? If we worked at the basics of selfless love, respect for one another, and unconditional love for our spouse each and every day. If we looked for new ways to honor our spouse and love them even more than we have in the past. If we didn't worry so much about how we were being treated, but instead practiced serving and loving our spouse over and over again. I wonder what would happen to not just our immediate family, but also our kids families and our grandkids? Did you know, that what you are doing now in your family will effect the next 5 generations? Pretty big responsibility isn't it? Do you have that kind of commitment?

Finally, I wonder what would happen if our commitment level to the things of Christ rose every day of our lives. If instead of getting into a rut in our life as a believer, we became a disciple of Christ. What if we actually went from believer to disciple? A follower, an imitator, a worker for the cause of Christ. When we take on the commitment level of increasing our involvement with the things of God, He truly then becomes our Lord. Lord means He's our master. He makes the rules of our lives. He decides how and where we are to live. He decides how the time and money of our lives is used. He decides. I wonder what would happen to our communities, our churches, and our world if we raised the level of our commitment to being a disciple, not just a believer, but a follower...I wonder? Do you have that kind of commitment?

I wonder what happened to that kind of commitment?

Take care,

Rod

The real deal...

If you know anything about me at all you know that I am an avid golfer. I love golf!

Well, recently I had a minor tragedy on the golf course. My Scotty Cameron putter lost a weight in the front of the club. I was devastated. I contacted the organization and they told me to take it to a retailer and they will return it to get it fixed. So I took it to a local retailer in Reno and he told me he would take care of her...(yes, I said her).

After a few moments he came back to me as I was looking at other things in the shop I could easily covet, and he asked "Mr. Idle did you buy that putter here?" "Nope", I said, "I bought on E*&y a few years ago." Then he told me the terrible news. "Well", he said, "I am sorry to tell you this, but it is a fake." All that went through my mind was: What?! Not my Scotty! Then what went through my mind was I paid that much money for a fake? I felt foolish.

Fakes are never, and I mean never, as good as the real thing! The same is true with our faith. Scriptures tell us that true religion, the faith God accepts as pure is this: "to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

This past weekend was "Superbowl" weekend for the church. Resurrection Sunday. It was an awesome weekend. We had our highest attendance in the short history of Journey, 360 people showed up. It was a great feeling. But it was a feeling. The real success of ministry is not in attendance alone, although I think numbers are a sign of health, but the real success of the church is how they are doing in meeting the needs of the needy AND how they are pursuing holy living.

Now I want to be careful here, but I think sometimes the church and sometimes pastors can fall for a sort of "fake" success. We get a lot of people to come to our church and feel that that can mean success. Don't get me wrong, I love it when people come to the church and our seats are full and all of that...but the real religion of Journey needs to that we meet the needs of our community AND live holy lives.

So let me stop and ask you: If your a pastor, is your church meeting the needs of the community in which God has placed you? AND pastor or not, are you pursuing holy living? Are you trying "...to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." You see, I can fool you, but I can't fool God. One day I will stand before the Father and He will have seen through all the "stuff" and see the real me. He won't be impressed because I was the pastor of a growing church or that I said the right things and looked the right way. He is looking for me to lead people in meeting the needs of others and He is looking for me to keep myself from getting polluted by the world. That is what is real to Him. That is not fake...it's the real deal.

Take care,

Rod

Emotions...

I am not a counselor. I counsel, but I am not a trained counselor. There are many things I am not trained to help a person overcome. But one thing I seem to run into a lot is not deep, dark stuff from the past. It is a mistaken approach to life that many people live by, but it's dangerous.

Many people seem to live by their emotions. I think that the church has even helped this happen by telling people that God's goal for our life is for us to be happy. That we are in the center of God's universe. He is pursuing us.

Please don't be offended, but I truly think that sometimes God doesn't care at all if we are happy or not. (Just ask Job, Jonah, Moses, or Paul). You see I don't think I am in the center of God's universe. I think He needs to be in the center of mine.

With the popular teaching that God wants you and I to be happy, I think it has led us to believe that happiness is a top priority of life. Therefore we allow our emotions to be our master. To quote a popular pastor "Emotions make great servants, but lousy masters."

If you are making life decisions based on how you feel, how happy you are, or how happy someone makes you, you are headed for tough times. Emotions lead us up and down like a roller coaster. When we are happy we choose to be devoted, generous, and caring. When we are NOT happy we tend to be less devoted, stingy, and self-focused.

One of the attributes I love about God is that He is not whimsical. He is immutable. Unchangeable. He will always act in accordance with His character. Could you imagine if God behaved in accordance to His feelings! I am pretty sure that there would be times I would be in BIG trouble.

Let's remember, God is not in existence for our happiness. Rather, the opposite is true. We exist to make God happy.

The Cause

I am reading a book by Matthew Barnett called "The Cause Within You". I love what God has done through Matthew's life. If you have never read it before I would encourage you to read "The Church That Never Sleeps" written by him as well. That book helped form the vision for ministry that God laid on my heart.

In his book "The Cause..." he wrote "Fear cannot own you when a great cause rules your heart." For some reason that line just jumped off the page at me. I wasn't sure why, but it stuck with me. I prayed over it and I came to believe that God is going to call me or Journey Community Church or both to do something that has the potential to "scare" us.

This past week it came. Our Crisis Pregnancy Center in our small little city help over 10 young lady's each week. Over 550 people were helped in 2010 through the crisis pregnancy center of Fernley NV. In a town of 18000 people it just seemed to me that was a lot of people. We have supported this ministry since our beginning in 2009 for $250 a month. I knew it wasn't a lot, but it was to us, a new church in a struggling economy. But I always wanted to do more and knew that one day we would increase our support and increase our volunteers there.

Our CPC lost it's financing support from Reno and now has to find new ways to raise $2000 per month in order to keep their doors open. I shared this with our small group because we are studying the book "The Hole In Our Gospel" and it challenges us to find ways to increase our "reach" into the world. So I shared it as a prayer request. Then God immediately convicted me and said "Really Rod, do you really need to pray about it?" The answer was no, I didn't need to pray about it. I know what God expects of His people in times like this. He expects us to protect the unborn...to stand up and defend life...to keep the CPC open in Fernley.

So we are. Yep, there is some fear, but it does not own me. A great cause rules my heart. Not sure how this is going to get done, but that is not my concern. My concern is faithfulness and generosity.

What I ask:

Pray and Give and Volunteer to help this place of hope, help and love stay open in Fernley. 550 women and girls last year!!! Wow, that is a place that we must keep open.

It's a great cause! It's a moment of, as Bill Hybels calls it, Holy Discontent. A great cause will wreck you. Help if you can, Pray when you think of it, and do not FEAR...

Take care and Hit 'em straight!

Rod